Episode 318 - Predicting and Preventing Mass Shooting w/ Dr. James Meindl
Release Date: 07/30/2025
ABA Inside Track
Despite the huge increase in discussion articles, think pieces, personal sharing of tools, and summaries of commonly-liked programs, there is a real dearth of research on what ACTUALLY works in supervision practices. And we weren’t the only people to wonder this. That’s why we’re joined this week by Dr. Natalie Andzik and Dr. Michael Kranak who’ve written their fair share of all of the above research when it comes to supervision and have thoughts about where the field is and where we need to go to ensure only the best for our trainees. This episode is available for 1.0 SUPERVISION CEU....
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This year we’re kicking off Supervision September by focusing our supervisory efforts with a growing category of supervisees, individuals with disabilities. Because, for a field based on helping people, we don’t always practice what we preach with our colleagues! We discuss the culture of disability in regards to humility in supervision as well as how to bring what other fields have learned to our own behavior analysis trainees. This episode is available for 1.0 SUPERVISION or 1.0 ETHICS/CULTURAL CEU. Articles discussed this episode: doi: 10.1037/a0033338 doi: 10.1007/s40617-023-00846-5 ...
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Can you believe it! It’s Supervision September! An enitre month of episodes all about supervision, supervising, and supersizing your abilities to lead the next generation of awesome behavior analysts. We’ve got the amazing duo of Dr. Michael Kranak and Dr. Natalie Andzik reviewing what we ACTUALLY know about supervision from an evidence-based perspective. We’ve got a discussion with the core crew about building supervision skills that also promote disability affirming practices. And, in case you thought we couldn’t fit 4 hours of supervision talk into 3 weeks of episodes, we crammed in...
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One of our longest running mysteries is finally revealed in this week’s episode: Why does Jackie hate DROs so much? This episode is available for 1.0 LEARNING CEU. Articles discussed this episode: doi: 10.1901/jaba.1993.26-143 doi: 10.1002/jaba.736 doi: 10.1007/s40732-016-0214-z If you're interested in ordering CEs for listening to this episode, click to go to the store page. You'll need to enter your name, BCBA #, and the two episode secret code words to complete the purchase. Email us at for further assistance.
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Teaching new skills is a lot of fun. But sometimes it seems to take forever. And since we all only have so much time to learn everything needed to maximize access to reinforcement in our lives, we don’t really have the luxury of time to mess about. So, in good behavior analyst fashion, we look for a better way to min-max our learning activities. Thanks to our awesome patrons, we’re talking about increasing the efficiency of skill acquisition through preference assessment, choice, , and reinforcement timing. So many options, but which ones actually matter when it comes to running the most...
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UNLOCKED from our , it’s the “Good Night, Sweet Dreams, I Love You” Book Club! Interested in more Book Clubs? Want to vote on what we read next? Feeling FOMO at getting this a full year late? Wish your 2 CEs for listening to the episode were FREE??? to get all of our episodes a week early, access to these bonus episodes, plus other goodies. There’s nothing more amazing than spending time with kids, whether in your family or as clients. But, man, is putting them to bed when you’re exhausted after a long day and they just have to watch one more episode of “Bluey” before they...
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If you’re looking for a podcast that describes some vacation activities AND lays out the content of multiple future episodes with citations to research articles, we’re your #1 source! Between describing waterskiing mishaps and Pocono hikes, we’ve got a brand new Listener Choice episode all about speeding up skill acqusition (and a ) and our Book Club on Pat Friman’s “Good Night, Sweet Dreams, I Love You” now UNLOCKED for all. Then to wrap up this hot month, the answer a the long-running podcast mystery: Why does Jackie hate DROs so much? And who REALLY got married to Rob? (SPOILER...
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One of the most exciting parts of any conference (shout out to !) is getting to see something new. And this week, we’re bringing that something new to the podcast with a behavioral hypothesis as to how fame-seeking mass shooters develop behavioral repertoires that can lead to tragedy. We’re excited to bring Dr. James Meindl’s work in this area to our audience as an amazing example of how behavior analysis can be supportive in the treatment of socially relevant causes. We review what information exists in the prediction of mass shooting behavior, how many of the reported patterns may...
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This week we’re revisiting our long-running series on professional collaboration by discussing how behavior analysts can engage in practices to work well with special education teachers. And, as a special treat, we’re joined by long-time friend of the show and special education teacher/BCBA extrordinaire, Carolyn Beaumier. We dig into recent articles on some of the “faux pas” BCBAs often find themselves in when working with educators and hear some tried and true strategies from someone who’s been on both sides of the behavioral consulting role. Plus, first-hand stories of how well...
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Though we’ve long been huge fans of single-case research designs—what behavior analyst isn’t?—and hold peer-reviewed research papers as one of our favorite genres of non-fiction, is it possible that not every research paper is…on the level? Sadly, for many coplex reasons, not every research paper you read is without risk for following questionable research practices. To help our field put a stop to this, Dr. Matthew Tincani has some ideas on how we can do better by looking at a number of open science practices. This week, Dr. Tincani called out the best and brightest to has out what...
info_outlineOne of the most exciting parts of any conference (shout out to BABAT!) is getting to see something new. And this week, we’re bringing that something new to the podcast with a behavioral hypothesis as to how fame-seeking mass shooters develop behavioral repertoires that can lead to tragedy. We’re excited to bring Dr. James Meindl’s work in this area to our audience as an amazing example of how behavior analysis can be supportive in the treatment of socially relevant causes. We review what information exists in the prediction of mass shooting behavior, how many of the reported patterns may function behaviorally, and, most importantly, what this could mean in the prevention of mass shooter behaviors actually resulting in violence.
This episode is available for 1.0 LEARNING CEU.
Articles discussed this episode:
Meindl, J.N., Ivy, J.W, Delgado, D.M., & Swafford, L. (under review). Towards a functional account of mass-shooting: Prediction and influence of violent behavior.
Meindl, J.N. & Ivy, J.W. (2018). Reducing media-induced mass killings: Lessons from suicide prevention. American Behavioral Scientist, 62, 242-259. doi: 10.1177/0002764218756918
If you're interested in ordering CEs for listening to this episode, click here to go to the store page. You'll need to enter your name, BCBA #, and the two episode secret code words to complete the purchase. Email us at [email protected] for further assistance.