Episode 318 - Predicting and Preventing Mass Shooting w/ Dr. James Meindl
Release Date: 07/30/2025
ABA Inside Track
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.
info_outlineABA Inside Track
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...
info_outlineABA Inside Track
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...
info_outlineABA Inside Track
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...
info_outlineABA Inside Track
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...
info_outlineABA Inside Track
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...
info_outlineABA Inside Track
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_outlineABA Inside Track
While we’ve been discussing how to move away from just getting parents to buy in to proposed behavioral treatments, there’s still a huge gap between what works, what parents are told could work, and what parents like (when everything works). So we decided to kick off our Special Guest Month by having two experts at parent training, Drs. Roseanne Lesack and Jillian Wilson, help us figure out how to effectively promote better social validity practices when collaborating with parents. We revisit the classic Allen and Warzak article on parental nonadherence and delve deeply into what treatment...
info_outlineABA Inside Track
Nothing says “summertime” like visiting friends. And what’s the podcast equivalent of a summer get together? Why a whole month devoted to guest episodes! This July we’re doing a world tour of topics from all over the ABA map. We kick things off with Dr. Roseanne Lesack and Dr. Jillian Wilson updating us on some of the best practices in improving social validity of parent training planning before crossing the country to discuss many of the questionable practices lurking in single-case experimental design with Dr. Matthew Tincani. Next we take a quick trip back home in our ongoing series...
info_outlineABA Inside Track
Enjoy a short preview of our latest full-length Book Club episode. Want to hear the whole thing and get 2.0 CEs for FREE? Subscribe to today at the premium $10+ levels for that plus other bonuses! It's the ginormous book that got Book Club Guy, Alan Haberman, to travel to Massachusetts to talk about. But did we have a good time reading the tome that is synonomous with "trauma care"? Our Summer 2025 Book Club choice is the best-selling "The Body Keeps the Score", a go-to reference for anyone interested in learning more about trauma and its treatment. But, because it's us, if you...
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.