On this week’s episode, Jon Wertheim talks with middleweight fighter Luke Rockhold ahead of his middleweight championship rematch against Chris Weidman at UFC 199 on June 4. Calling in from Las Vegas, Rockhold (15-2 MMA, 5-1 UFC) talks about his preparation, mentally and physically, for his fight against Weidman, whom he beat for the UFC’s 185-pound belt at UFC 194 in December.

This week’s episode features a conversation about how fans self-identify with Ed Hirt, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University. Hirt has studied, among other things, how wins and losses affect fans’ perception of their own abilities and why the attachment to a sports team can create a more powerful group experience than almost any other movement or event.

Former NBA player John Amaechi discusses his life after basketball as an organizational consultant and performance coach, how his career might have gone differently with the lessons he’s taken from his post-NBA graduate studies in psychology and what impresses him most about the Warriors’ team chemistry.

March Madness has descended upon the sports world once again, and from casual fans to diehard bracket-trackers, everyone is on high alert for the next team from a little-known school to take the NCAA tournament by storm. But why are we so predisposed to pulling for the little guy? On this week’s episode, USF professor Joe Vandello joins the show to discuss his research on this topic and its impact not only on how Americans view the tournament and other big sporting events but how they approach presidential elections and other major world events.

Scott Kutcher, a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavior sciences at the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine, joins the show this week to talk about the scientific world of sleep and what other teams can learn from the Yankees’ decision to start their spring training workouts later in the day than usual. How significant are the benefits of a good night’s sleep at the highest athletic level? Brain on Sports is brought to you by FreshBooks. It’s smart, mobile accounting, designed specifically for freelancers and small business owners. You can try FreshBooks for 30 days on us, with no credit card required. Go to FreshBooks.com/sports and enter SPORTS in the “How your heard about us” section.

On this week’s episode, Jon Wertheim talks with actor Jason Sudeikis, who is known for his comedic roles in Horrible Bosses, We Are the Millers and Saturday Night Live, about his new biopic titled Race. Sudeikis plays Larry Snyder, coach of African American athlete Jesse Owens, who won a record-breaking four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, where he confronted racial barriers in Nazi Germany​. Sudeikis talks with Wertheim about the parallels between sports and Saturday Night Live, how athletics has shaped his life and career, the difference between comedy and a historical movie like Race, the similarities between sports and acting and more.

On this week’s episode, Sommers and Wertheim explore the myth of the good-looking quarterback, one of the chapters in their new book, This is Your Brain on Sports. The pair explains the photo experiment they conducted where a sample group judged quarterbacks’ attractiveness and how his attractiveness relates to success on the field. Sommers and Wertheim also discuss the “halo effect” with NFL quarterbacks and people in everyday life.

On this week’s episode, Sam is joined by two of the founders of the Duke Behavioral Science Sports Initiative: Kevin Brilliant, a business strategy and analytics manager for the Chicago Bulls, and Sanyin Siang, executive director of the Coach K Leadership and Ethics Center at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. Together they discuss the science behind why fans make the choices that they make and how teams can use that information to improve the fan experience at their home stadiums. This week's show is brought to you by FreshBooks. For freelancers and small business owners, Freshbooks takes the pain out of accounting. Have a question about the service? A real-live human will answer every call in about three rings. Get your 30-day free trial by going to FreshBooks.com slash BRAIN and entering the promo code BRAIN.

Can the number of high-fives, hugs and chest-bumps a team exchanges impact its win-loss record? Michael Kraus, a professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management, joins the show to discuss his study on the correlation between physical touch and performance among NBA teams, and how lessons from those findings can be taken off the court and into our business and personal relationships.

On this week’s episode, Wertheim and Sommers use the wild events of the opening rounds of the NFL playoffs to discuss the presence of “hotheads” and rash decision-makers in the sports world. Who’s responsible for players that fly off the handle and lose their cool in the heat of competition, and do the words we use to describe their behavior match up with the science behind what’s going on in their brains? This Is Your Brain on Sports is sponsored by the SeatGeek app, available in app stores and at seatgeek.com. Enter code BRAIN in the app to for a $20 rebate off your first ticket purchase. We are also sponsored by FanDuel. Enter promo code BRAIN at FanDuel.com for up to $200 in bonus cash.