You Are Not So Smart
By You Are Not So Smart
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Subscribers: 5499
Reviews: 8
Episodes: 257
Ben C
May 19, 2020
Most informative, enlightening & useful podcast I have come across. Focused on the human experience and relevant to pretty much anyone with an inquiring mind. If you like it, it will send you off on many new paths of research & discovery.
FischerCheese
Jun 22, 2019
A fantastic podcast. In a totally fun way, he dives into all the different reasons why smart people make dumb decisions. It will help you understand the root cause behind SO MANY of today's problems. You will walk away a more humble person.
Jun 19, 2019
Jan 10, 2019
Nov 27, 2018
Description
| Episode | Date |
|---|---|
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260 - The Science of Stuck - Britt Frank (rebroadcast)
00:49:27
Feeling stuck? Can't build momentum to escape all the loops keeping you from moving forward? Our guest in this episode is professor, author, therapist, and speaker Britt Frank, a trauma specialist who treats people with unique and powerful techniques and approaches which help clients to get out of the feeling of being stuck. In the show, we nerd out with Britt about how hard it is to be a person, and though this interview is supposed to be about her new book - "The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through Inertia to Find your Path Forward" – at least of half of this interview turned out to be was wide-ranging conversation chasing down many nested tangents about everything from procrastination to somatic markers to trauma to the multitudes of the self and more. |
May 28, 2023 |
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259 - Think Again - Adam Grant (rebroadcast)
00:55:41
How to manage procrastination according to Margaret Atwood, how to work around your first-instinct fallacy, the upsides of imposter syndrome, the best way to avoid falling prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect, how to avoid thinking like a preacher, prosecutor, or politician so you can think like a scientist instead – and that’s just the beginning of the conversation in this episode with psychologist, podcast host, and author Adam Grant. In the show, we discuss both his new book – Think Again: The Power of Knowing What you Don’t Know – and his TED Original Podcast, WorkLife, in which he interviewed Margaret Atwood, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, to learn how she deals with the constant allure of social media and streaming videos in a future where giving in to procrastination is easier than it has ever been. In the show, you’ll hear portions of that interview followed by a lengthy interview with Grant about his new book in this all-over-the-place, extensive exploration of how to rethink your own thinking. - How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome - David McRaney’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmcraney - YANSS Twitter: https://twitter.com/notsmartblog - Show Notes: www.youarenotsosmart.com - Newsletter: https://davidmcraney.substack.com |
May 13, 2023 |
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258 - Under Alien Skies - Phil Plait
01:08:34
Astronomer Phil Plait joins us to discuss his new book, Under Alien Skies, in which he describes what it would be like (through human eyes and real physical experiences) to actually travel to Saturn, Mars, asteroids, and distant stars. Also, we discuss the recent surge in UFO sighting as well as his famous talk at The Amazing Meeting more than a decade ago in which he asked all science communicators and critical thinkers to approach those who believe in pseudoscience with empathy and respect instead of scorn and vitriol. And, we run through the history of James Randi's popularization of the big-S Skeptic movement.
- How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome - David McRaney’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmcraney - YANSS Twitter: https://twitter.com/notsmartblog - Show Notes: www.youarenotsosmart.com - Newsletter: https://davidmcraney.substack.com |
Apr 30, 2023 |
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257 - What Do You Mean? - Celeste Kidd
00:49:14
Is a hotdog a sandwich? Well, that depends on your definition of a sandwich (and a hotdog), and according to the most recent research in cognitive science, the odds that your concept of a sandwich is the same as another person's concept are shockingly low. In this episode we explore how understanding why that question became a world-spanning argument in the mid 2010s helps us understand some of the world-spanning arguments vexing us today. • Celeste Kidd's Website: https://www.kiddlab.com • Celeste Kidd's Twitter: https://twitter.com/celestekidd • How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome • David McRaney’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmcraney • YANSS Twitter: https://twitter.com/notsmartblog • Show Notes: www.youarenotsosmart.com • Newsletter: https://davidmcraney.substack.com • Latent Diversity in Human Concepts: https://tinyurl.com/25544m3v |
Apr 16, 2023 |
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256 - The Persuaders - Anand Giridharadas
01:10:23
This is the third episode in a three-part series about how to have difficult conversations with people who see the world differently, how to have better debates about contentious issues, and how to ethically and scientifically persuade one another about things that matter – in short, this is a three-part series about How Minds Change (which is also the title of my new book). There seems to be a movement afoot, a new wave of nonfiction about how to reduce all this argumentative madness and epistemic chaos. I want to boost everyone’s signal on this issue, so I thought it would be nice to collaborate instead of compete, since that’s part of what we are all proselytizing with these books. So this episode’s guest is Anand Giridharadas, the author of The Persuaders – a book about activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens who are on the ground working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy. |
Apr 02, 2023 |
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255 - Good Arguments - Bo Seo
01:04:27
This is the second episode in a three-part series about how to have difficult conversations with people who see the world differently, how to have better debates about contentious issues, and how to ethically and scientifically persuade one another about things that matter – in short, this is a three-part series about How Minds Change (which is also the title of my new book). There seems to be a movement afoot, a new wave of nonfiction about how to reduce all this argumentative madness and epistemic chaos. I want to boost everyone's signal on this issue, so I thought it would be nice to collaborate instead of compete, since that's part of what we are all proselytizing with these books. So this episode’s guest is Bo Seo, the author of Good Arguments – a book about how he became a world debate champion in which he not only teaches us how to apply what he has learned to everyday life but imagines communities built around, not despite, constant arguing and disagreement. Seo says that a political life without constant disagreement would be impoverished. As he puts it, quote, "Nations are, at their best, evolving arguments. As he writes, “In a liberal democracy, good arguments are not what societies should do but also what they should be.” See believes that on well curated, well moderated platforms, ones that value good faith interactions, arguing and disagreement would flip from being catalysts for polarization to the very engine of depolarization and change. In the interview, he not only tells us how to defend ourselves against bad arguments, but explains how in his mind a great democracy isn’t a place where everyone agrees and sees eye-to-eye, but one where we work to have better quality disagreements. - Bo Seo’s Website: www.helloboseo.com - How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome - David McRaney’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmcraney - YANSS Twitter: https://twitter.com/notsmartblog - Show Notes: www.youarenotsosmart.com - Newsletter: https://davidmcraney.substack.com |
Mar 19, 2023 |
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254 - I Never Thought of It That Way - Mónica Guzmán
00:51:50
This is the first episode in a three-part series about how to have difficult conversations with people who see the world differently, how to have better debates about contentious issues, and how to ethically and scientifically persuade one another about things that matter – in short, this is a three-part series about How Minds Change (which is also the title of my new book). There seems to be a movement afoot, a new wave of nonfiction about how to reduce all this argumentative madness and epistemic chaos. I want to boost everyone's signal on this issue, so I thought it would be nice to collaborate instead of compete, since that's part of what we are all proselytizing with these books. So this episode’s guest is Mónica Guzmán, the author of I Never Thought of It That Way – a book with very practical advice on how to have productive conversations in a polarized political environment via authentic curiosity about where people’s opinions, attitudes, and values come from. In short, it’s about how to reduce polarization and learn from those with whom we disagree by establishing the sort of dynamic in which they will eagerly learn from us as well. - How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome - Show Notes: www.youarenotsosmart.com - Newsletter: https://davidmcraney.substack.com - David McRaney’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmcraney - YANSS Twitter: https://twitter.com/notsmartblog - Mónica Guzmán’s Website: https://www.moniguzman.com - Mónica Guzmán’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/moniguzman - I Never Thought of it That Way: https://www.moniguzman.com/book - Braver Angels: https://braverangels.org - My Article on Intellectual Humility: https://bigthink.com/the-well/change-your-mind-intellectual-humility/ |
Mar 05, 2023 |
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253 - The World's Greatest Con - Brian Brushwood (rebroadcast)
00:53:10
In this episode, we sit down with famed stage magician and infamous instructor of the school of scams, Brian Brushwood, whose new podcast explores the world's greatest con artists and con jobs from World War II to modern game shows. We cover everything in this episode from why you can't con an honest person to the power of shame and fame to folk psychology to how the British conned Hitler using one of the oldest tricks in the book to how one man broke the code for Press Your Luck earning him the most money ever awarded in a single day on any program in the history of game shows.
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Feb 19, 2023 |
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252 - Procrastination - Britt Frank
00:41:36
It’s February. It’s that time of year when we start to wonder if we might not follow through with our New Year’s resolutions. It’s that time of the year when procrastination becomes a centerpiece of our psychological concerns. Our guest in this episode is professor, author, therapist, and speaker Britt Frank, a trauma specialist who treats people with a unique and powerful set of techniques and approaches which, taken together, helps clients to get out of the feeling of being STUCK. Author of The Science of Stuck, she says, “Procrastination is not a character flaw. Nor is it a sign of weakness. Nor is it a sign of laziness. Procrastination is an indicator that internal consent has not been given. When our inner parts are distressed, afraid, sad, angry, grief-stricken or anxious, it is important to listen to their concerns, not to shame them or coerce them into action.” In the show you’ll learn about the physiological origins of procrastination – the inner brake pedal and gas pedal – and what to do to escape the two different versions of this universal challenge to getting unstuck and getting things done.
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Feb 05, 2023 |
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251 - Come up for Air - Nick Sonnenberg
00:44:07
Nick Sonnenberg doesn’t believe there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done. That’s because when his business was in crisis mode, he developed a framework for eliminating inefficiencies and preventing the sort of metawork – working on working – that leads to scavenger hunts and meetings that could be emails, and for that matter, email runarounds that get everyone ever farther from inbox zero. He turned that framework into a consultancy business, and put it all together in a new book for people who feel underwater titled Come up For Air.
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Jan 22, 2023 |
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250 - Awe - Dacher Keltner
00:54:18
In this episode we sit down with psychologist Dacher Keltner, one of the world’s leading experts on the science of emotion, the man Pixar hired to help them write Inside Out. In his new book – Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life – he outlines his years of work in this field, the health benefits of awe, the evolutionary origins and likely functions, and how to better pursue more awe and wonder in your own life.
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Jan 08, 2023 |
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249 - The Power of Surprise (rebroadcast)
01:00:38
In this episode, Micheal Rousell, author of The Power of Surprise, explains the science of surprise at the level of neurons and brain structures, and then talk about how surprises often lead to the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, the different personal narratives that guide our behaviors and motivations and goals, and, perhaps most importantly, our willingness to be surprised again so that we can change and grow. In the show, you will how we can use the current understanding of how surprise leads to learning, and how learning depends on interpretation, to improve our lives, and the lives of others
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Dec 24, 2022 |
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248 - Visual Thinking - Temple Grandin
00:47:58
Temple Grandin was born in 1947 at a time when words like neurodivergent and neurotypical had yet to enter the lexicon, at a time when autism was not well understood, and since she didn’t develop speech until much later than most children she might have led a much different life if it hadn’t been for people around her who worked very hard to open up a space for her to thrive and explore her talents and abilities. In this episode we discuss all that as well as her latest book, Visual Thinking, all about three distinct ways that human brains create human minds to make sense of the world outside of their skulls.
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Dec 11, 2022 |
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247 - Narcissism (rebroadcast)
00:56:51
In this episode we explore what narcissism is (and what is most-definitely is not). There is a form of narcissism which has been, up until now, confused with psychopathy. But a new paper, the result of years of experiments, suggests narcissists are not psychopaths, and psychopaths are not narcissists. In the psychological literature, narcissism comes in two varieties. Grandiose narcissists tend to really, truly love themselves and heavily manipulate their social environment for personal gain. Vulnerable narcissists don’t love themselves, not their true selves. Vulnerable narcissists love their image, and they are highly aware of the fact that it is an image and work very hard to prevent anyone else realizing that. According to the research explored in this episode, there is no such thing as a grandiose narcissist – that’s just another way to describe a psychopath.
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Nov 27, 2022 |
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246 - Ideaflow - Jeremy Utley
01:11:32
In this episode we sit down with Jeremy Utley of the Stanford d.school to discuss his new book, Ideaflow, which is all about how to create a practice for producing and trading ideas in massive quantities – whether in an organization or as an individual entrepreneur or content-creator – along with a system for sorting the garbage from the gold. We discuss, among many other things, why it is important to focus on input more than output, how to stop obsessing over quality while generating quantity, and peanut butter pumps.
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Nov 13, 2022 |
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245 - The Conspiracy Theorist Who Changed His Mind - Tim Harford
00:44:48
Here’s a special bonus episode featuring my recent conversation with Tim Harford, author, economic journalist, and host of the Cautionary Tales podcast. We discussed a story from my new book, How Minds Change, about a conspiracy theorist who was certain 9/11 was an inside job until he actually visited Ground Zero to meet architects, engineers and the relatives of the dead. Tim and I reflect on what he can teach us about those who hold strong beliefs even in the face of damning, contrary evidence and why persuasion, especially if attempted poorly, isn't always the right answer. • Hear more from Cautionary Tales at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/ctsmart • How Minds Change: https://www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome
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Oct 28, 2022 |
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244 - Quit - Annie Duke
00:57:51
I recently sat down for a live event and Q&A with the great Annie Duke to discuss her new book, Quit: The power of knowing when to walk away. This episode is the audio from that event. Quit is all about how to develop a very particular skill: how to train your brain to make it easier to know which goals and plans are worth sticking to and which are not. - How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome - Show Notes: www.youarenotsosmart.com - Newsletter: https://davidmcraney.substack.com - Annie Duke's Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnnieDuke
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Oct 16, 2022 |
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243 - Psychological Tweetathon with Jay Van Bavel
01:08:41
In this episode we sit down with NYU psychologist Jay Van Bavel who is very good at Twitter. His feed is always overflowing with the absolute latest and greatest research from psychology with links to papers as they come out – on many of the topics we so often explore on this podcast – and in this episode we discuss ten of those tweets and the research he’s shared.
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Oct 03, 2022 |
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242 - Survival of the Richest - Douglas Rushkoff
01:01:33
In this episode we sit down with Douglas Rushkoff, a media scholar, journalist, and professor of digital economics who has a new fire in his belly when it comes to the world of billionaire preppers, which comes across in his new book Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires – inspired by his invitation to consult a group of the world’s richest people on how to spend their money now to survive an apocalypse they fear is coming within their lifetimes.
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Sep 18, 2022 |
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241 - The Status Game - Will Storr
01:17:42
In this episode we welcome back author Will Storr whose new book, The Status Game, feels like required reading for anyone confused, curious, or worried about how politics, cults, conspiracy theories communities, social media, religious fundamentalism, polarization, and extremism are affecting us - everywhere, on and offline, across cultures, and across the world. What is The Status Game? It’s our primate propensity to perpetually pursue points that will provide a higher level of regard among the people who can (if we provoked such a response) take those points away. And deeper still, it’s the propensity to, once we find a group of people who regularly give us those points, care about what they think more than just about anything else. In the interview, we discuss our inescapable obsession with reputation and why we are deeply motivated to avoid losing this game through the fear of shame, ostracism, embarrassment, and humiliation while also deeply motivated to win this game by earning what will provide pride, fame, adoration, respect, and status.
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Sep 04, 2022 |
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240 - QAnon and Conspiracy Narratives (rebroadcast)
01:21:17
When we talk about conspiracy theories we tend to focus on what people believe instead of why, and, more importantly, why they believe those things and not other things. In this episode, we sit down with two psychologists working to change that, and in addition, change the term itself from conspiracy theory to conspiracy narrative, which more accurately describes what makes any one conspiracy appealing enough to form a community around it and in rare cases result in collective action.
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Aug 22, 2022 |
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239 - You're Invited - Jon Levy
01:04:18
Our guest in this episode is the behavioral scientist Jon Levy who wrote a book titled You’re Invited, the Art and Science of Cultivating influence. The book details how Jon was able to convince groups of Nobel Laureates, Olympians, celebrities, Fortune 500 executives, and even a princess to not only give him advice, but cook him dinner, wash his dishes, sweep his floors, and then thank him for the experience.
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Aug 07, 2022 |
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238 - Chess Queens - Jennifer Shahade
00:59:44
In this episode we sit down with Jennifer Shahade, a two-time U.S. Women’s Chess Champion, author, speaker, and professional poker player whose new book, Chess Queens, is the true story of the greatest female players of all time interwoven with her own experiences as a chess champion.
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Jul 25, 2022 |
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237 - Reactance - Michele Belot
00:40:22
New research suggests people on opposite sides of wedge issues want to listen to each other. We are each eager to hear differing opinions and understand opposing views, and when we do it can change our minds (at least a little), but only when we aren't triggered by the psychological phenomenon of reactance - one of several ideas we explore in this episode.
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Jul 10, 2022 |
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236 - How Minds Change
01:44:16
In this episode I read an excerpt from my new book How Minds Change, a portion concerning how to change minds about abortion rights, and Chris Clearfield interviews me about that very same book - which is out now and available everywhere.
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Jun 27, 2022 |
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235 - Tough - Terry Crews
01:09:50
Terry Crews, actor, athlete, artist, President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho, star of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, host of America’s Got Talent - that Terry Crews joins us to discuss his new book, Tough. In the book, Terry shares the raw story of his quest to find the true meaning of toughness and in so doing fundamentally change his concept of himself by uprooting a deeply ingrained toxic masculinity and finally confronting his insecurities, painful memories, and limiting beliefs. Link to preorder How Minds Change: https://www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome |
Jun 13, 2022 |
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234 - The Truth Wins - Tom Stafford
00:48:47
Link to preorder How Minds Change and get your preorder bonuses: https://www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome Deliberation. Debate. Conversation. Though it can feel like that’s what we are doing online as we trade arguments back and forth, most of the places where we currently gather make it much easier to produce arguments in isolation rather than evaluate them together in groups. The latest research suggests we will need much more of the latter if we hope to create a new, modern, functioning marketplace of ideas. In this episode, psychologist Tom Stafford takes us through his research into how to do just that. |
May 29, 2022 |
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233 - The Puzzler - A. J. Jacobs
00:57:21
Link to preorder How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome His new book, The Puzzler, is a fun, weird, refreshingly scientific book all about the human brain's fascination with puzzles. Seriously, there’s all sorts of explorations in the book about neural pathways, behavioral routines, how we learn, what gets us into loops, and - this is true - a few attempts to solve the puzzle of our very existence. Patreon: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Twitter: www.twitter.com/notsmartblog |
May 16, 2022 |
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232 - Think Again - Adam Grant
00:56:18
How to manage procrastination according to Margaret Atwood, how to work around your first-instinct fallacy, the upsides of imposter syndrome, the best way to avoid falling prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect, how to avoid thinking like a preacher, prosecutor, or politician so you can think like a scientist instead – and that’s just the beginning of the conversation in this episode with psychologist, podcast host, and author Adam Grant. |
May 01, 2022 |
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231 - On Being Certain - Robert Burton (rebroadcast)
00:54:05
In this episode, we sit down with neurologist Robert Burton, author of On Being Certain, a book that fundamentally changed the way I think about what a belief actually is. That’s because the book posits conclusions are not conscious choices, and certainty is not even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing,” as he puts it, are "sensations that feel like thoughts, but arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that function independently of reason." |
Apr 17, 2022 |
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230 - The Science of Stuck - Britt Frank
00:50:41
Feeling stuck? Can't build momentum to escape all the loops keeping you from moving forward? Our guest in this episode is professor, author, therapist, and speaker Britt Frank, a trauma specialist who treats people with a unique and powerful set of techniques and approaches which, taken together, helps clients to get out of the feeling of being STUCK. In the show, we nerd out with Britt about how hard it is to be a person, and though this interview is supposed to be about her new book - "The Science of Stuck, Breaking Through Inertia to Find your Path Forward - at least of half of this interview turned out to be was wide-ranging conversation chasing down many nested tangents about everything from procrastination to somatic markers to trauma to the multitudes of the self and more.
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Apr 03, 2022 |
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229 - What's Your Problem? - Jacob Goldstein
00:48:34
In this episode, Jacob Goldstein, the longtime host of NPR’s Planet Money, talks about his new podcast about technology and business called What’s Your Problem? with Jacob Goldstein. Goldstein spent more than a decade as co-host of Planet Money reporting stories that make economic journalism approachable. In his new weekly show, What’s Your Problem?, Goldstein’s curiosity leads him into conversations with top global entrepreneurs and engineers about the cutting-edge problems they’re trying to solve. Each episode focuses on a new company and innovator and their challenges, from teaching computers to understand humans better to running a niche business where access to consumers hinges on tech company algorithms. |
Mar 27, 2022 |
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228 - The Power of Regret - Daniel H. Pink
00:43:08
NO REGRETS - Our guest in this episode of the You Are Not So Smart podcast is Daniel Pink, the five-time NYT Bestselling author of When and To Sell is Human and Drive and A Whole New Mind. His new book is The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, a rebuke of the concept of "no regrets" and exploration of the benefits of regret and how to harness them. |
Mar 19, 2022 |
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227 - Imaginable - Jane McGonigal
00:59:59
Jane McGonigal's new books details how she creates alternate reality games in which people take part in virtual worlds, and, in so doing, gain a sensitively to the cues (and a familiarity with the conditions) that could lead to certain outcomes, making it possible to both prevent those outcomes and create the futures they'd rather live in instead.LINK TO LINK TO THE FREE CONVERSATION LAB WORKSHOP: https://www.mishaglouberman.com/free-convolab-march14 |
Mar 06, 2022 |
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226 - The World's Greatest Con - Brian Brushwood
00:54:06
In this episode, we sit down with famed stage magician, infamous instructor of the school of scams, Brian Brushwood, whose new podcast explores the world's greatest con artists and con jobs from World War II to modern game shows. We cover everything in this episode from why you can't con an honest person to the power of shame and fame to folk psychology to how the British conned Hitler using one of the oldest tricks in the book to how one man broke the code for Press Your Luck earning him the most money ever awarded in a single day on any program in the history of game shows. |
Feb 20, 2022 |
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225 - Blindsight and Neuromarketing
00:59:30
In this episode, neuromarketing experts Prince Ghuman and Matt Johnson discuss the many strange examples from their book, Blindsight, in an effort to make us all smarter consumers, empowered to make better decisions after touring a showcase of all the less-obvious ways marketing, advertising, venues, restaurants, shopping malls, casinos, social media companies, and more, knowingly use neuroscience and psychology to affect our behavior. |
Feb 06, 2022 |
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224 - The Conversation Lab - Misha Glouberman
01:02:30
In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we sit down once again with Misha Glouberman, an expert on conflict and conversation, to discuss how best to improve your communication skills and turn what you suspect will be a difficult interaction into something marvelous and fruitful - the sort of talk that strengthens your relationship with the other person and leaves you both feeling like you gained and learned something – the kind you'd like to have again. Mentioned in the show, here is the link to a free online class with Misha Glouberman on Feb 1st. |
Jan 23, 2022 |
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223 - To Persuade is Human?
01:05:53
This episode, featuring Andy Luttrell of the Opinion Science Podcast, is all about a machine, built by IBM, that can debate human beings on any issue, which leads to the question: is persuasion, with language, using arguments, and the ability to alter another person’s attitudes, beliefs, values, opinions, and behavior a uniquely human phenomenon, or could you be persuaded to change your mind by an artificial intelligence designed to do just that? If so, what does that say about opinions, our arguments, and in the end, our minds? |
Jan 09, 2022 |
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222 - The Power of Surprise - Michael Rousell
01:01:38
Not all surprises trigger change, but almost all change is triggered by surprise. In this episode, Micheal Rousell, author of The Power of Surprise, explains the science of surprise at the level of neurons and brain structures, and then talk about how surprises often lead to the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, the different personal narratives that guide our behaviors and motivations and goals, and, perhaps most importantly, our willingness to be surprised again so that we can change and grow. |
Dec 27, 2021 |
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221 - Conversations and Conversions at the Portable Planetarium
00:43:58
In this episode we sit down with Joey Rodman (@okiespacequeen), a science educator in Oklahoma whose recent Twitter thread about using a portable planetarium to reach out to flat earthers went viral thanks to their counterintuitive advice about how to discuss science denial and conspiracy theories with people who may have never interacted with a scientist before. After years of on-the-ground, one-on-one conversations, Joey has developed a technique similar to those we've discussed on the show, including street epistemology, motivational interviewing, deep canvassing, and even the socratic method. It shares elements with all of these, but was developed in-person through conversations with people who met with Joey in their communities and home towns. |
Dec 12, 2021 |
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220 - A Very Short History of Life on Earth - Henry Gee
00:58:06
In this episode, we sit down with Henry Ernest Gee, the paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and senior editor of the scientific journal Nature. |
Nov 28, 2021 |
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219 - Irrational Labs - Evelyn Gosnell
00:44:18
In this episode we sit down with expert in behavioral economics Evelyn Gosnell, who is also the managing director of Irrational Labs, an organization that uses social science to help other organizations make big decisions, fight misinformation, and design better products and services. |
Nov 14, 2021 |
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218 - Unwinding Anxiety - Jud Brewer
00:57:22
In this episode, Dr. Jud Brewer, a neuroscientist and addiction psychiatrist, discusses the biological origins of anxiety and how to unwind our feedback loops using techniques derived from his lab’s research. Since his last appearance on the show, Dr. Jud has written and published a book which is now a NYT bestseller titled Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind which he describes as, “a clinically proven step-by-step plan to break the cycle of worry and fear that drives anxiety and addictive habits.” |
Oct 31, 2021 |
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217 - Livewired - David Eagleman (rebroadcast)
01:13:41
In this episode we sit down with neuroscientist David Eagleman to learn how brains turn noise into signal, chaos into order, electrical spikes into meaning, and how new technology can expand subjective reality in ways never before possible. In his new book, Livewired, Eagleman explores how brains come into the world "half baked" so they can create reality itself out of the inputs and experiences available. And now, thanks to that plug-and-play plasticity, with the latest tools, not only can we return senses to people who've lost them, but we can add to any brain senses we can't imagine. Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com
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Oct 17, 2021 |
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216 - Shape - Jordan Ellenberg
01:16:16
In this episode, we sit down with Jordan Ellenberg, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His writing has appeared in Slate, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe, and he is the New York Times bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong – but in this episode we will discuss his new book, Shape: The hidden geometry of information, biology, strategy, democracy and everything else. |
Oct 03, 2021 |
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215 - Jerks at Work - Tessa West
01:20:10
In this live taping of the podcast at Caveat in NYC, Dr. Tessa West, the author of Jerks at Work, conducts quizzes to see what kind of jerk you are and what kind of jerk most-easily persuades you in the workplace. You will also learn how to counteract the behaviors of people who make work suck more than it should. West is a leading expert on interpersonal interaction and communication and will explain how to make work suck less as we return to our offices and figure out how to balance working remotely with working in-person after a year of re-imagining what work even means. West’s new book is an exploration of all the psychological research into how and why gaslighters, bulldozers, neglectors, micromanagers and more do their thing in our workplaces and how to use what we know from decades of psychological research to counteract their Machiavellian machinations. |
Sep 19, 2021 |
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214 - Exploring Genius
00:35:03
Over the course of this audio documentary series, David McRaney explores the history and science of intelligence, IQ, and remarkable talent through interviews with dozens of intelligence experts and actual "geniuses" (a 5-year-old prodigy, the man with the highest IQ ever recorded, etc). McRaney wrestles with the complexity of GENIUS as a cultural construct and considers how we can unlock its positive potential within ourselves. LINK TO GET THE HEAR FIRST EPISODE AND GET TWO-WEEKS OF HIMALAYA FOR FREE What You'll Learn: From the creator of YANSS, a new 6-part, 7-hour audio documentary exploring the science and history of the idea and word, “genius,” featuring dozens of interviews with experts and those with extraordinary talents and extreme intelligence. |
Sep 03, 2021 |
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213 - Vaccine Hesitancy
02:51:19
In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we sit down with eight experts on communication, conversation, and persuasion to discuss the best methods for reaching out to the vaccine hesitant with the intention of nudging them away from hesitancy and toward vaccination. Mentioned in the show, here is the link to a free online class with Misha Glouberman where you will learn how to have better conversations with the vaccine hesitant: LINK
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Aug 23, 2021 |
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212 - The Power of Us - Jay Van Bavel
01:35:39
In this episode, we sit down with psychologist Jay Van Bavel to discuss his new book, The Power of Us, an exploration of "the dynamics of shared, social identities. What causes people to develop social identities? What happens to people when they define themselves in terms of group memberships? Under what conditions does the human proclivity to divide the world into “us” and “them” produce toxic conflict and devastating discrimination? And how can shared identities instead be harnessed to improve performance, increase cooperation, and promote social harmony?" |
Aug 08, 2021 |
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211 - QAnon and Conspiratorial Narratives
01:22:37
When we talk about conspiracy theories we tend to focus on what people believe instead of why, and, more importantly, why they believe those things and not other things. In this episode, we sit down with two psychologists working to change that, and in addition, change the term itself from conspiracy theory to conspiracy narrative, which more accurately describes what makes any one conspiracy appealing enough to form a community around it and in rare cases result in collective action. |
Jul 25, 2021 |
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210 - Julia Shaw - The Memory Illusion (rebroadcast)
01:11:38
Our guest on this episode is Dr. Julia Shaw, the author of The Memory Illusion. Julia is famous among psychologists because she was able to implant false memories into a group of subjects and convince 70 percent of them that they were guilty of a crime they did not commit, and she did so by using the sort of sloppy interrogation techniques that some police departments have been truly been guilty of using in the past. From her book’s website: “In The Memory Illusion, Dr Julia Shaw uses the latest research to show the astonishing variety of ways in which our memory can indeed be led astray. Fascinating and unnerving in equal measure, the international bestseller The Memory Illusion has been translated into 20 languages and offers a unique insight into the human brain, challenging you to question how much you can ever truly know about yourself.” |
Jul 11, 2021 |
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209 - Masks (rebroadcast)
01:35:48
In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we sit down with four experts on human behavior to try and understand how wearing masks, during the COVID-19 pandemic, became politicized. In the show, we take a take a deep dive into tribal psychology, which, in essence, says that humans are motivated reasoners who alter their thinking, feeling, and behaving when thinking, feeling, and behaving in certain ways might upset their peers. |
Jun 28, 2021 |
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208 - The Extended Mind - Annie Murphy Paul
01:05:44
In this episode we sit down with Annie Murphy Paul, the acclaimed science writer, whose new book, The Extended Mind is all about how the brain is part of systems, and it is those systems that constitute the mind. In other words, our minds are not, as she puts it, brainbound, but they extend to our computers, our notebooks, our friends and neighbors and colleagues and partners. The environments in which we move, natural and otherwise, deeply influence how we think, what we think, and what we CAN think, and in addition, everything the brain does becomes a reference for extended thinking, and these feedback loops extend what the mind can do. |
Jun 13, 2021 |
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207 - A Slight Change of Plans - Maya Shankar
01:16:49
A few weeks ago, Maya Shankar and her team reached out to me noting their new show, A Slight Change of Plans, which explores how various fascinating people have changed their minds, often after something unexpected happened in the story of their lives, overlapped in its interests and goals with You Are Not So Smart. |
May 30, 2021 |
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206 - Narcissism
00:58:06
In this episode we explore what narcissism is and what is most-definitely is not. You will learn is that narcissists are not psychopaths, and vice-versa, but there is a form of narcissism which had been, up until now, confused with psychopathy, and vice-versa. According to the research of the two psychologists in this episode, narcissism may even need to be renamed, because it isn't excessive self-love, it's excessive self-loathing. Narcissists like Don Draper in Mad Men cope with their insecurity by donning a mask, and then spend most of their lives protecting that mask out of a fear of what will happen if people ever see what it hides. - Show notes at www.youarenotsosmart.com |
May 16, 2021 |
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205 - Unfollow - Megan Phelps-Roper
01:50:08
In this episode we sit down with Megan Phelps-Roper, the author of Unfollow, a memoir of her time in Westboro Baptist Church, and an exploration what it took to convince her to leave. I interviewed Megan for my upcoming book, How Minds Change, and in this interview you will learn all about assimilation and accommodation, cult deprogrammers, and the steps Megan says one must take if they want to change someone's mind. - Show notes at www.youarenotsosmart.com |
May 03, 2021 |
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204 - On Being Certain - Robert Burton
00:54:55
In this episode, we sit down with neurologist Robert Burton, author of On Being Certain, a book that fundamentally changed the way I think about what a belief actually is. That’s because the book posits that conclusions are not conscious choices and certainty is not even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing” as he puts it, are "sensations that feel like thoughts, but arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that function independently of reason." |
Apr 18, 2021 |
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203 - Transcend - Scott Barry Kaufman
01:09:35
In this episode we sit down with Scott Barry Kaufman, one of the most-influential and prolific psychologists working today, to discuss his new book, Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization. Business Insider magazine named Kaufman one of the “50 groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world,” and you would agree after hanging out with him. In my experience, you feel seen, heard, respected, challenged, and above all, when you leave a conversation with Scott, you do so feeling either like you must work on your purpose in life from that point on, or you must work to find it. In the show, we discuss our shared desire to bring humanistic psychology back to the forefront and walk through Kaufman’s re-imagining of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and trace Kaufman’s journey through Maslow’s unpublished journals about his unfinished theory of transcendence which Kaufman hopes to complete by picking up where Maslow left off just before his untimely death. |
Apr 04, 2021 |
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202 - Desirability Bias (rebroadcast)
00:28:13
Confirmation bias is our tendency to seek evidence that supports our beliefs and confirms our assumptions when we could just as well seek disconfirmation of those beliefs and assumptions instead. Confirmation is such a prevalent feature of human cognition, that until recently a second bias has been hidden in plain sight. Recent research suggests that something called desirability bias may be just as prevalent in our thinking. When future desires and past beliefs are incongruent, desire wins out. - Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com |
Mar 21, 2021 |
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201 - Good Dog - Kate Leaver
01:21:18
In this episode we sit down with journalist and author Kate Leaver to explore her new book, Good Dog, which covers "the science and history of our extraordinary relationship with dogs and focusing on the role that dogs can play in enriching and improving our mental and emotional health." |
Mar 07, 2021 |
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200 - Socks and Crocs (rebroadcast)
01:36:47
When facing a novel and uncertain situation, the brain secretly disambiguates the ambiguous without letting you know it was ever uncertain in the first place, leading people who disambiguate differently to seem iNsAnE. This episode is about why we so often don't understand why we disagree, which leads us to disagree even more, and we explore that through the science behind The Dress. We look into why some people see it as black and blue, others see it as white and gold, and how the scientific investigation of why that is led to the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs, and how the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs may be, as one researcher explains, the nuclear bomb of cognitive neuroscience. - Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com - Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart |
Feb 22, 2021 |
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199 - Math Without Numbers - Milo Beckman
00:56:25
In this episode we explore the weirdness and wonder of Math Without Numbers with mathematician Milo Beckman who wrote a book about the math behind multiple infinities, strange topologies, and extra dimensions, all without using numbers to explain some of the most fascinating and complex ideas that usually only make sense when scribbled in strange notations on a blackboard. |
Feb 08, 2021 |
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198 - Reflection and Insurrection
00:52:21
In this episode, we explore the psychological mechanisms that led to the the storming of the Capitol, an event that sprang from a widespread belief in a conspiracy theory that, even weeks later, still persists among millions. |
Jan 25, 2021 |
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197 - Conspiratorial Thinking
01:24:11
Over the last few years, this show has devoted many shows to the psychology behind what we saw in the Capitol in January 2021. So, in this episode, we re-listen to three interviews on conspiratorial thinking to gain some perspective. |
Jan 11, 2021 |
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196 - Art (rebroadcast)
01:42:15
Moira Dillon studies how “the physical world in which we live shapes the abstract world in which we think,” and in this episode we travel to her Lab for the Developing Mind at NYU to sit down and ask her a zillion questions about how the brain creates the reality we interact with, and how we attempt to communicate that reality to others through language, art, geometry, and mathematics. |
Dec 27, 2020 |
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195 - Clearer Thinking - Spencer Greenberg
01:19:39
In this episode we sit down with Spencer Greenberg to discuss how to be better critical thinkers using his FIRE method and other insights from his website, ClearerThinking.org |
Dec 14, 2020 |
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194 - Because Internet - Gretchen McCulloch
01:42:03
Our guest in this episode is Gretchen McCulloch, who is a linguist, but also, I’d say a MEME-ologist, evidenced by that the fact that in her New York Times Bestselling book, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, she spends a good portion of the book tracing the history of memes and how we have used them all the way up to right now, which is part of her her overall exploration of how language itself has changed since the advent of text messaging, SnapChat, TikTok, emojis, gifs, memes, and the internet as a whole. If you still put periods at the ends of your texts and refuse to change your ways, you will definitely enjoy this interview, and if you fancy yourself some kind of memelord, this is certainly the episode for you. |
Nov 29, 2020 |
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193 - Gossip
01:11:54
In this episode we sit down with psychologist Robb Willer to discuss the psychology of gossip: how much we do it, why we do it, its major functions, and what life would be be like without it. |
Nov 16, 2020 |
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192 - The Dunning-Kruger Effect (rebroadcast)
00:56:58
In this episode, we explore why we are unaware that we lack the skill to tell how unskilled and unaware we are. |
Nov 01, 2020 |
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191 - Livewired - David Eagleman
01:13:41
In this episode we sit down with neuroscientist David Eagleman to learn how brains turn noise into signal, chaos into order, electrical spikes into meaning, and how new technology can expand subjective reality in ways never before possible. • The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart • BetterHelp -- Offer code: YANSS -- www.betterhelp.com/YANSS
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Oct 18, 2020 |
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190 - Learned Helplessness (rebroadcast)
00:43:05
Stuck in a bad situation, even when the prison doors are left wide open, we sometimes refuse to attempt escape. Why is that? |
Oct 04, 2020 |
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189 - The Vaccine
01:43:32
In this giant episode, experts on vaccines, epidemiology, psychology, and science communication explain how we created so much confusion about COVID-19, and how we can avoid doing it again when a vaccine is ready for widespread, public distribution. We also learn exactly what it will take to make that vaccine and when it will likely arrive. - Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com |
Sep 21, 2020 |
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188 - The Happiness Lab - Laurie Santos (rebroadcast)
01:06:13
In this episode, we welcome Yale psychologist Laurie Santos who discusses her new podcast, The Happiness Lab which explores how wrong and misguided we can be when we pursue the things we think will make us happy or avoid the things that we think will make us sad. Based on the psychology course she teaches at Yale - the most popular class in the university’s 300-year history - The Happiness Lab is a tour of the latest scientific research into what does and does not make us happy. - Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com |
Sep 06, 2020 |
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187 - Bad Habits - Jud Brewer (rebroadcast)
01:13:06
In this episode, Dr. Jud Brewer, a neuroscientist and addiction psychiatrist, discusses bad habits and how to change them. He is the author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love -- Why We Get Hooked and how We Can Break Bad Habits -- and his TED Talk on how to change a bad habit has more than 12 million views. But...we talk about so many other things in this episode. It's a free association smorgasbord of brain stuff that will rattle your head. ::: Show Notes at YouAreNotSoSmart.com ::: |
Aug 24, 2020 |
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186 - Maybe You Should Talk to Someone - Lori Gottlieb (rebroadcast)
00:41:53
In Lori Gottlieb's new book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, she opens with a quote from James Baldwin that reads, "Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch." In this episode, we talk about therapy, how it works, the misconceptions around it, and how people go from resisting change to embracing the behaviors required to alter their own thoughts and feelings when stuck in destructive, unhealthy loops. You'll also learn the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion. -- Show Notes at: youarenotsosmart.com -- -- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart -- |
Aug 10, 2020 |
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185 - Masks
01:31:08
In this episode we explore the psychology behind why some people don't want to wear masks, why they get angry at the idea, and why they sometimes take to the streets and city council meetings to voice that anger. Four guests help us to understand how masks, during a the COVID-19 pandemic, became politicized and what we can learn from this going forward to help prevent a similar reaction when it comes time to convince to public they should get vaccinated. |
Jul 28, 2020 |
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184 - The Blind Spots Between Us - Gleb Tsipursky
01:13:29
Our guest in this episode is Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, a disaster-avoidance expert who has spent more than 20 years training businesses how to de-bias themselves. He is the author for Never Trust Your Gut and he is here to talk about his new book The Blind Spots Between Us. |
Jul 13, 2020 |
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183 - Black Lives Matter
01:12:39
In this episode, members of the Association of Black Psychologists gather in a roundtable discussion to explore Black Lives Matter and the social movement taking place right now in The United States. |
Jun 29, 2020 |
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182 - The A/B Effect (rebroadcast)
01:27:27
So, you might think that, in general, as an idea, as a practice, the A/B test would be beloved, supported, and encouraged as a way to test out policies and practices and drugs and treatments, but new research shows that a significant portion of the public does not feel this way, enough to cause doctors and lawmakers and educators to avoid A/B testing altogether. -- Show Notes at: youarenotsosmart.com -- -- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart -- SPONSORS • The Great Courses Plus: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart |
Jun 15, 2020 |
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181 - Pluralistic Ignorance (rebroadcast)
01:26:16
There are several ways to define pluralistic ignorance, and that’s because it’s kind of a brain twister when you try to put it into words. On certain issues, the majority of the people believe that the majority of the people in a group believe what, in truth, the minority of the members believe. Or put another way, it is the erroneous belief that the majority is acting in a way that matches its internal philosophies, and that you are one of a small number of people who feel differently, when in reality the majority agrees with you on the inside but is afraid to admit it outright or imply such through its behavior. Everyone in a group, at the same time, gets stuck following a norm that no one wants to follow, because everyone is carrying a shared, false belief about everyone else’s unshared true beliefs. -- Show Notes at: youarenotsosmart.com -- -- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart -- SPONSORS • BetterHelp: BetterHelp.com - offer code YANSS |
Jun 01, 2020 |
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180 - Meltdown - Chris Clearfield
01:48:25
In this episode we sit down with Chris Clearfield, author of Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It |
May 18, 2020 |
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179 - The Memory Illusion - Julia Shaw
01:19:12
Our guest on this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast is Dr. Julia Shaw, the author of The Memory Illusion, Julia is famous among psychologists because she was able to implant false memories into a group of subjects and convince 70 percent of them that they were guilty of a crime they did not commit, and she did so by using the sort of sloppy interrogation techniques that some police departments have been truly been guilty of using in the past. |
May 03, 2020 |
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178 - Behind the Curve (rebroadcast)
01:21:40
In this episode, we sit down with the director and producers of the documentary film, Behind the Curve, an exploration of motivated reasoning and conspiratorial thinking told through the lives of people who have formed a community around the belief that the Earth is flat. |
Apr 19, 2020 |
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177 - COVID - 19
02:02:08
Flatten the curve. |
Apr 05, 2020 |
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176 - Socks and Crocs - Part Two
01:07:15
Priors are what neuroscientists and philosophers call the years of experience and regularity leading up to the present. All the ways a ball has bounced, all the ways a pancake has tasted, the way the dogs in your life have barks, or bitten, or hugged you when you were sad -- these all shape the brain, literally. They form and prune our neural networks, so in situations that are uncertain, unfamiliar or ambiguous, we depend on those priors to help us disambiguate the new information coming into the brain via our senses. |
Mar 26, 2020 |
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175 - Socks And Crocs - Part One
00:36:55
Back in 2015, before Brexit, before Clinton vs. Trump, before weaponized Macedonian internet trolls, one NPR affiliate called The Dress, “The debate that broke the internet,” and The Washington Post referred to it as “The drama that divided the planet.” |
Mar 08, 2020 |
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174 - Bad Advice - Paul Offit (rebroadcast)
01:07:19
In this episode, we sit down with vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit to discuss his new book, Bad Advice or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren't Your Best Source of Health Information. |
Feb 24, 2020 |
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173 - Rule Makers, Rule Breakers - Michele Gelfand
01:13:22
In this episode, we sit down with psychologist Michele Gelfand and discuss her new book: Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. |
Feb 10, 2020 |
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172 - Team Human - Douglas Rushkoff (rebroadcast)
01:11:01
In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast we sit down with one of the original cyberpunks, the famed journalist, documentarian, media theorist, all-around technology superstar and weirdo, Douglas Rushkoff. |
Jan 27, 2020 |
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171 - Partisan Brains
01:27:46
Jay Van Bavel studies “from neurons to social networks...how collective concerns -- group identities, moral values, and political beliefs -- shape the mind and brain,” and in this episode we travel to his office at NYU to sit down and ask him a zillion questions about how the brain uses motivated reasoning to create the separate realities we argue over on a daily basis. |
Jan 13, 2020 |
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170 - Mark Sargent
01:02:10
In October of 2019 I sat down with prominent Flat Earther Mark Sargent in Stockholm, Sweden at the Gather Festival to try and understand the reasoning behind his beliefs, and non-beliefs, that run counter to the scientific consensus that the Earth is a globe. |
Dec 30, 2019 |
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169 - Art
01:44:00
Moira Dillon studies how “the physical world in which we live shapes the abstract world in which we think,” and in this episode we travel to her Lab for the Developing Mind at NYU to sit down and ask her a zillion questions about how the brain creates the reality we interact with, and how we attempt to communicate that reality to others through language, art, geometry, and mathematics. |
Dec 15, 2019 |
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168 - Not a Scientist (rebroadcast)
00:41:19
Our guest in this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast is Dave Levitan, a science journalist with a new book titled: Not a Scientist: how politicians mistake, misrepresent, and utterly mangle science. |
Dec 02, 2019 |
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167 - How to Talk to People About Things (rebroadcast)
01:42:19
In this episode, we sit down with negotiation expert Misha Glouberman who explains how to talk to people about things -- that is, how to avoid the pitfalls associated with debate when two or more people attempt to come to an agreement that will be mutually beneficial. |
Nov 18, 2019 |
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166 - Prevalence Induced Concept Change (rebroadcast)
00:27:13
In this episode we explore prevalence induced concept change. In a nutshell, when we set out to change the world by reducing examples of something we have deemed problematic, and we succeed, a host of psychological phenomena can mask our progress and make those problems seem intractable -- as if we are only treading water when, in fact, we’ve created the change we set out to make. |
Nov 04, 2019 |
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165 - The Friendship Cure (rebroadcast)
01:23:17
On this episode, we welcome journalist Kate Leaver to talk about her new book The Friendship Cure in which she explores the crippling, damaging, life-threatening impact of loneliness and the severe mental health impacts of living a life disconnected from a support network of close contacts. But...there is a cure...learning how to connect with others and curate better friendships. |
Oct 21, 2019 |
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164 - Meetings - Steven Rogelberg
00:51:10
You probably hate meetings -- most people do -- and much of their awfulness feels inevitable which makes meetings seem unnecessary, but psychologist and organizational scientist Steven Rogelberg says that neither of these conclusions are true. Meetings are only bad if we make them bad, and since they are crucial to the cohesion of any institution, he wrote a book about how to use his research and the research of others to improve the meetings that must take place within any organization. |
Oct 07, 2019 |
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163 - The Happiness Lab
01:06:13
In this episode we welcome Yale psychologist Laurie Santos who discusses her new podcast, The Happiness Lab which explores how wrong and misguided we can be when we pursue the things we think will make us happy or avoid the things that we think will make us sad. |
Sep 23, 2019 |
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162 - The Elaboration Likelihood Model (rebroadcast)
00:45:29
In this episode we sit down with psychology legend Richard Petty to discuss the Elaboration Likelihood Model, a theory he developed with psychologist John Cacioppo in the 1980s that unified the study of attitude change and persuasion and has since become one of the most robust models for explaining how and why some messages change people’s minds, some don’t, and what makes some stick and others fade in influence over time. |
Sep 09, 2019 |
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161 - Bad Habits
01:13:06
In this episode, Dr. Jud Brewer, a neuroscientist and addiction psychiatrist, discusses bad habits and how to change them. |
Aug 25, 2019 |
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160 - Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
00:44:17
In Lori Gottlieb's new book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, she opens with a quote from James Baldwin that reads, "Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch." |
Aug 12, 2019 |
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159 - Uncivil Agreement (rebroadcast)
01:17:26
In this episode, we welcome Lilliana Mason on the program to discuss her new book, Uncivil Agreement, which focuses on the idea: “Our conflicts are over who we think we are, rather than reasoned differences of opinion.” |
Jul 28, 2019 |
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158 - The AB Effect
01:19:06
So, you might think that, in general, as an idea, as a practice, the A/B test would be beloved, supported, and encouraged as a way to test out policies and practices and drugs and treatments, but new research shows that a significant portion of the public does not feel this way, enough to cause doctors and lawmakers and educators to avoid A/B testing altogether. |
Jul 15, 2019 |
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157 - Pluralistic Ignorance
01:26:33
There are several ways to define pluralistic ignorance, and that’s because it’s kind of a brain twister when you try to put it into words. On certain issues, the majority of the people believe that the majority of the people in a group believe what, in truth, the minority of the members believe. Or put another way, it is the erroneous belief that the majority is acting in a way that matches its internal philosophies, and that you are one of a small number of people who feel differently, when in reality the majority agrees with you on the inside but is afraid to admit it outright or imply such through its behavior. Everyone in a group, at the same time, gets stuck following a norm that no one wants to follow, because everyone is carrying a shared, false belief about everyone else’s unshared true beliefs. |
Jul 01, 2019 |
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156 - Selfie (rebroadcast)
01:24:04
In this episode, we sit down with author Will Storr to talk about his new book -- Selfie: How We Became so Self-Obsessed, and What it is Doing to Us. |
Jun 16, 2019 |
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155 - Live in New York - Post Truth
02:03:47
You Are Not So Smart, live in New York, at The Bell House, in Brooklyn -- David McRaney and three experts and a bunch of YANSS fans got together for a deep dive into how we turn perception into reality, how that reality can differ from brain to brain, and what happens when we dangerously disagree on the truth. |
Jun 03, 2019 |
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154 - The Marshmallow Replication (rebroadcast)
00:51:41
The marshmallow test is one of the most well-known studies in all of psychology, but a new replication suggests we've been learning the wrong lesson from its findings for decades. |
May 20, 2019 |
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153 - Happy Brain (rebroadcast)
01:29:28
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May 06, 2019 |
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152 - Status Quo Rationalization (rebroadcast)
00:42:22
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Apr 21, 2019 |
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151 - Behind the Curve
01:14:56
In this episode we sit down with the director and producers of the documentary film, Behind the Curve, an exploration of motivated reasoning and conspiratorial thinking told through the lives of people who have formed a community around the belief that the Earth is flat. |
Apr 08, 2019 |
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150 - Belief Change Blindness (rebroadcast)
00:38:45
When was the last time you changed your mind? Are you sure? |
Mar 25, 2019 |
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149 - Bad Advice
01:07:58
In this episode, we sit down with vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit to discuss his new book, Bad Advice or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren't Your Best Source of Health Information. |
Mar 11, 2019 |
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148 - Rule Makers, Rule Breakers
01:13:27
In this episode, we sit down with psychologist Michele Gelfand and discuss her new book: Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. |
Feb 25, 2019 |
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147 - The Replication Crisis (rebroadcast)
00:45:10
"Science is wrong about everything, but you can trust it more than anything." |
Feb 10, 2019 |
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146 - Tribal Psychology (rebroadcast)
01:05:15
The evidence is clear that humans value being good members of their tribes much more than they value being correct. We will choose to be wrong if it keeps us in good standing with our peers. |
Jan 28, 2019 |
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145 - Team Human
01:10:31
In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast we sit down with one of the original cyberpunks, the famed journalist, documentarian, media theorist, all-around technology superstar and weirdo, Douglas Rushkoff. |
Jan 14, 2019 |
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144 - The Backfire Effect - Part Four (rebroadcast)
01:13:56
In 2017, YANSS did three episodes about the backfire effect, and by far, those episodes were the most popular that year. Then, in 2018, part four was the most popular. |
Dec 31, 2018 |
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143 - How to Talk to People About Things
01:42:19
In this episode, we sit down with negotiation expert Misha Glouberman who explains how to talk to people about things -- that is, how to avoid the pitfalls associated with debate when two or more people attempt to come to an agreement that will be mutually beneficial. |
Dec 17, 2018 |
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142 - Debate (rebroadcast)
00:54:49
In late 2014 and early 2015, the city of Starkville, Mississippi, passed an anti-discrimination measure that lead to a series of public debates about an issue that people there had never discussed openly. |
Dec 03, 2018 |
|
141 - Not A Scientist
00:43:35
Our guest in this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast is Dave Levitan, a science journalist with a new book titled: Not a Scientist: how politicians mistake, misrepresent, and utterly mangle science. |
Nov 19, 2018 |
|
140 - Machine Bias (rebroadcast)
00:53:20
We've transferred our biases to artificial intelligence, and now those machine minds are creating the futures they predict. But there's a way to stop it. |
Nov 05, 2018 |
|
139 - The Friendship Cure
01:15:55
On this episode, we welcome journalist Kate Leaver to talk about her new book The Friendship Cure in which she explores the crippling, damaging, life-threatening impact of loneliness and the severe mental health impacts of living a life disconnected from a support network of close contacts. But...there is a cure...learning how to connect with others and curate better friendships. |
Oct 21, 2018 |
|
138 - Evil
00:53:50
In this episode, we sit down with psychologist Julia Shaw, an expert in memory and criminal psychology, to discuss her new book - Evil. In the book, she makes a case for something she calls "evil empathy," seeing people who do heinous things as fellow human beings instead of as monsters. According to Shaw, othering criminals by categorizing them as a separate kind of human allows us to put them out of our minds and disappear them to institutions or prisons. The result is we become less-able to prevent the sort of behavior the harms others from happening again and again. In fact, she says "there's no such thing as evil," and sees the term as an antiquated, magical label that dehumanizes others, preventing us from accumulating the sort of scientific evidence that could lead to a better society. |
Oct 08, 2018 |
|
137 - Narrative Persuasion (rebroadcast)
00:38:34
One of the most effective ways to change people’s minds is to put your argument into a narrative format, a story, but not just any story. The most persuasive narratives are those that transport us. Once departed from normal reality into the imagined world of the story we become highly susceptible to belief and attitude change. |
Sep 24, 2018 |
|
136 - Prevalence Induced Concept Change
00:32:20
In this episode we explore prevalence induced concept change. In a nutshell, when we set out to change the world by reducing examples of something we have deemed problematic, and we succeed, a host of psychological phenomena can mask our progress and make those problems seem intractable -- as if we are only treading water when, in fact, we’ve created the change we set out to make. |
Sep 10, 2018 |
|
135 - Optimism Bias (rebroadcast)
00:39:54
In this episode, Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist at University College London, explains our' innate optimism bias. |
Aug 26, 2018 |
|
134 - The Elaboration Likelihood Model
00:53:58
In this episode we sit down with psychology legend Richard Petty to discuss the Elaboration Likelihood Model, a theory he developed with psychologist John Cacioppo in the 1980s that unified the study of attitude change and persuasion and has since become one of the most robust models for explaining how and why some messages change people’s minds, some don’t, and what makes some stick and others fade in influence over time. |
Aug 16, 2018 |
|
133 - Uncivil Agreement
01:17:26
In this episode, we welcome Lilliana Mason on the program to discuss her new book, Uncivil Agreement, which focuses on the idea: “Our conflicts are over who we think we are, rather than reasoned differences of opinion.” |
Jul 30, 2018 |
|
132 - Practice (rebroadcast)
00:43:19
Is it true that all it takes to be an expert is 10,000 hours of practice? What about professional athletes? Do different people get more out of practice than others, and if so, is it nature or nurture? In this episode we ask all these things of David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene, who explains how practice affects the brain and whether or not greatness comes naturally or after lots and lots of effort. |
Jul 16, 2018 |
|
131 - The Marshmallow Replication
00:50:34
The marshmallow test is one of the most well-known studies in all of psychology, but a new replication suggests we've been learning the wrong lesson from its findings for decades. |
Jul 02, 2018 |
|
130 - The Half LIfe of Facts (rebroadcast)
00:30:39
In medical school they tell you half of what you are about to learn won't be true when you graduate - they just don't know which half. In every field of knowledge, half of what is true today will overturned, replaced, or refined at some point, and it turns out that we actually know when that will be for many things. In this episode, listen as author and scientist Sam Arbesman explains how understanding the half life of facts can lead to better lives, institutions, and, of course, better science. |
Jun 18, 2018 |
|
129 - Desirability Bias (rebroadcast)
00:28:26
Confirmation bias is our tendency to seek evidence that supports our beliefs and confirms our assumptions when we could just as well seek disconfirmation of those beliefs and assumptions instead. |
Jun 04, 2018 |
|
128 - Happy Brain
01:28:17
What makes you happy? As in, what generates happiness inside the squishy bits that reside inside your skull? That's what author and neuroscientist Dean Burnett set out to answer in his new book, Happy Brain, which explores both the environmental and situational factors that lead to and away from happiness, and the neurological underpinnings of joy, bliss, comfort, love, and connection. In the episode you'll hear all that and more as we talk about what we know so far about the biological nature of happiness itself. |
May 21, 2018 |
|
127 - Selfie
01:23:35
In this episode, we sit down with author Will Storr to talk about his new book -- Selfie: How We Became so Self-Obsessed, and What it is Doing to Us. |
May 07, 2018 |
|
126 - Separate Spheres (rebroadcast)
00:35:04
Despite their relative invisibility, a norm, even a dying one, can sometimes be harnessed and wielded like a weapon by conjuring up old fears from a bygone era. It’s a great way to slow down social change if you fear that change. When a social change threatens your ideology, fear is the simplest, easiest way to keep more minds from changing. |
Apr 22, 2018 |
|
125 - Status Quo Rationalization
00:45:10
When faced with an inescapable and unwanted situation, we often rationalize our predicament so as to make it seem less awful and more bearable, but what if that situation is a new law or a new administration? The latest research suggests that groups, nations, and cultures sometimes rationalize the new normal in much the same way, altering public opinion on a large scale. |
Apr 09, 2018 |
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124 - Belief Change Blindness
00:40:16
When was the last time you changed your mind? Are you sure? |
Mar 26, 2018 |
|
123 - Active Information Avoidance (rebroadcast)
00:28:19
Little did the champions of the Enlightenment know that once we had access to all the facts…well, reason and rationality wouldn’t just immediately wash across the land in a giant wave of enlightenment thinking. While that may be happening in some ways, the new media ecosystem has also unshackled some of our deepest psychological tendencies, things that enlightenment thinkers didn’t know about, weren’t worried about, or couldn’t have predicted. Many of which we’ve discussed in previous episodes like confirmation bias, selective skepticism, filter bubbles and so on. These things have always been with us, but modern technology has provided them with the perfect environment to flourish. |
Mar 11, 2018 |
|
122 - Tribal Psychology
01:05:15
The evidence is clear that humans value being good members of their tribes much more than they value being correct. We will choose to be wrong if it keeps us in good standing with our peers. |
Feb 26, 2018 |
|
121 - Progress (rebroadcast)
01:00:27
Do we have the power to change the outcome of history? Is progress inevitable? Is it natural? Are we headed somewhere definite, or is change just chaos that seems organized in hindsight? In this episode we explore these questions with University of Chicago historian Ada Palmer. |
Feb 12, 2018 |
|
120 - The Backfire Effect - Part Four
01:10:59
Last year on this show, we did three episodes about the backfire effect, and by far, those episodes were the most popular we’ve ever done. |
Jan 29, 2018 |
|
119 - The Unpersuadables
00:39:35
Our guest for this episode, Will Storr, wrote a book called The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science. |
Jan 15, 2018 |
|
118 - Connections (rebroadcast)
00:57:34
In this episode of the YANSS Podcast, we sit down with legendary science historian James Burke. |
Jan 01, 2018 |
|
117 - Idiot Brain (rebroadcast)
00:47:58
In this episode we interview Dean Burnett, author of "Idiot Brain: What Your Brain is Really Up To." Burnett's book is a guide to the neuroscience behind the things that our amazing brains do poorly. |
Dec 18, 2017 |
|
116 - Reality (rebroadcast)
01:00:49
Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? For our guest in this episode, cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman, that's his day job. |
Dec 04, 2017 |
|
115 - Machine Bias
00:54:02
We've transferred our biases to artificial intelligence, and now those machine minds are creating the futures they predict. But there's a way to stop it. |
Nov 20, 2017 |
|
114 - Moral Arguments (rebroadcast)
00:52:49
In this divisive and polarized era how do you bridge the political divide between left and right? How do you persuade the people on the other side to see things your way? |
Nov 05, 2017 |
|
113 - Narrative Persuasion
00:36:49
One of the most effective ways to change people’s minds is to put your argument into a narrative format, a story, but not just any story. The most persuasive narratives are those that transport us. Once departed from normal reality into the imagined world of the story we become highly susceptible to belief and attitude change. |
Oct 23, 2017 |
|
112 - Change My View (rebroadcast)
01:11:19
For computer scientist Chenhao Tan and his team, the internet community called Change My View offered something amazing, a ready-made natural experiment that had been running for years. |
Oct 08, 2017 |
|
111 - Collective Intelligence
00:41:54
If you wanted to build a team in such a way that you maximized its overall intelligence, how would you do it? Would you stack it with high-IQ brainiacs? Would you populate it with natural leaders? Would you find experts on a wide range of topics? Well, those all sound like great ideas, but the latest research into collective intelligence suggests that none of them would work. |
Sep 25, 2017 |
|
110 - Sleep Deprivation and Bias
00:32:49
If you could compare the person you were before you became sleep deprived to the person after, you’d find you’ve definitely become...lesser than. |
Sep 10, 2017 |
|
109 - The Search Effect (rebroadcast)
00:50:37
What effect does Google have on your brain? Here's an even weirder question: what effect does knowing that you have access to Google have on your brain? |
Aug 27, 2017 |
|
108 - Pandora's Lab
00:55:11
The facts don't speak for themselves. Someone always speaks for them. |
Aug 14, 2017 |
|
107 - Debate
00:56:38
In late 2014 and early 2015, the city of Starkville, Mississippi, passed an anti-discrimination measure that lead to a series of public debates about an issue that people there had never discussed openly. |
Jul 31, 2017 |
|
106 - The Climate Paradox (rebroadcast)
00:57:08
In this episode, psychologist Per Espen Stoknes discusses his book: What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming. |
Jul 16, 2017 |
|
105 - Optimism Bias
00:42:36
In this episode, Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist at University College London, explains our' innate optimism bias. |
Jul 11, 2017 |
|
104 - Labels (rebroadcast)
00:43:36
We are each born labeled. In moments of ambiguity, those labels can change the way people make decisions about us. As a cognitive process, it is invisible, involuntary, and unconscious – and that’s why psychology is working so hard to understand it. |
Jun 19, 2017 |
|
103 - Desirability Bias
00:28:26
Confirmation bias is our tendency to seek evidence that supports our beliefs and confirms our assumptions when we could just as well seek disconfirmation of those beliefs and assumptions instead. |
Jun 06, 2017 |
|
102 - WEIRD Science (rebroadcast)
00:30:42
Is psychology too WEIRD? That's what this episode's guest, psychologist Steven J. Heine suggested when he and his colleagues published a paper suggesting that psychology wasn't the study of the human mind, but the study of one kind of human mind, the sort generated by the kinds of brains that happen to be conveniently located near the places where research is usually conducted - North American college undergraduates. They called them the WEIRDest people in the world, short for Western, Education, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic - the kind of people who make up less than 15 percent of the world's population. In this episode, you'll learn why it took so long to figure out it was studying outliers, and what it means for the future of psychology. |
May 22, 2017 |
|
101 - Naive Realism (rebroadcast)
00:53:59
In psychology, they call it naive realism, the tendency to believe that the other side is wrong because they are misinformed, that if they knew what you knew, they would change their minds to match yours. |
May 09, 2017 |
|
100 - The Replication Crisis
00:49:52
"Science is wrong about everything, but you can trust it more than anything." |
Apr 20, 2017 |
|
099 - The Half Life of Facts
00:30:04
In medical school they tell you half of what you are about to learn won't be true when you graduate - they just don't know which half. In every field of knowledge, half of what is true today will overturned, replaced, or refined at some point, and it turns out that we actually know when that will be for many things. In this episode, listen as author and scientist Sam Arbesman explains how understanding the half life of facts can lead to better lives, institutions, and, of course, better science. |
Apr 10, 2017 |
|
098 - Active Information Avoidance
00:39:16
The cyberpunks, the Founding Fathers, 19th Century philosophers, and the Enlightenment thinkers - they all looked forward to the world in which we now live, a multimedia psychedelic freakout in which information is free, decentralized, democratized, and easy to access. What they didn't count on though, was that we would choose to keep a whole lot of it out of our heads. |
Mar 27, 2017 |
|
097 - Scams (rebroadcast)
01:01:56
Before we had names for them or a science to study them, the people who could claim the most expertise on biases, fallacies, heuristics and all the other quirks of human reasoning and perception were scam artists, con artists, and magicians. On this episode, magician and scam expert Brian Brushwood explains why people fall for scams of all sizes, how to avoid them, and why most magicians can spot a fraudster a mile away. |
Mar 11, 2017 |
|
096 - Progress
01:05:54
Do we have the power to change the outcome of history? Is progress inevitable? Is it natural? Are we headed somewhere definite, or is change just chaos that seems organized in hindsight? In this episode we explore these questions with University of Chicago historian Ada Palmer. |
Feb 25, 2017 |
|
095 - The Backfire Effect - Part Three
01:03:27
If dumping evidence into people’s laps often just makes their beliefs stronger, would we just be better off trying some other tactic, or does the truth ever win? |
Feb 11, 2017 |
|
094 - The Backfire Effect - Part Two
00:47:10
If you try to correct someone who you know is wrong, you run the risk of alarming their brains to a sort-of existential, epistemic threat, and if you do that, when that person expends effortful thinking to escape, that effort can strengthen their beliefs instead of weakening them. |
Jan 29, 2017 |
|
093 - The Backfire Effect - Part One
00:40:59
We don’t treat all of our beliefs the same. |
Jan 13, 2017 |
|
091 - Learned Helplessness (rebroadcast)
00:47:02
Even when the prison doors are left wide open, we sometimes refuse to attempt escape. Why is that? |
Dec 15, 2016 |
|
090 - Reality - Donald Hoffman
01:06:11
Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? For our guest in this episode, cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman, that's his day job. |
Dec 02, 2016 |
|
089 - Connections - James Burke
01:10:44
Legendary science historian James Burke returns to explain his newest project, a Connections app that will allow anyone to "think connectively" about the webs of knowledge available on Wikipedia. |
Nov 17, 2016 |
|
088 - Moral Arguments
00:56:13
In this divisive and polarized era how do you bridge the political divide between left and right? You do you persuade the people on the other side to see things your way? |
Nov 04, 2016 |
|
087 - Paranoia
00:31:01
Jesse Walker is the author of The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory, a book that explores the history of American conspiracy theories going all the way back to the first colonies. |
Oct 20, 2016 |
|
086 - Change My View
01:16:24
For computer scientist Chenhao Tan and his team, the internet community called Change My View offered something amazing, a ready-made natural experiment that had been running for years. |
Oct 09, 2016 |
|
085 - Misremembering - Julia Shaw (rebroadcast)
00:41:09
Julia Shaw's research demonstrates the fact that there is no reason to believe a memory is more accurate just because it is vivid or detailed. Actually, that’s a potentially dangerous belief. |
Sep 21, 2016 |
|
084 - Getting Gamers - Jamie Madigan
00:56:44
Why do people cheat? Why are our online worlds often so toxic? What motivates us to "catch 'em all" in Pokemon, grinding away for hours to hatch eggs? |
Sep 08, 2016 |
|
083 - Idiot Brain - Dean Burnett
00:53:01
In this episode we interview Dean Burnett, author of "Idiot Brain: What Your Brain is Really Up To." Burnett's book is a guide to the neuroscience behind the things that our amazing brains do poorly. |
Aug 25, 2016 |
|
082 - Crowds (rebroadcast)
00:50:52
This episode’s guest, Michael Bond, is the author of The Power of Others, and reading his book I was surprised to learn that despite several decades of research into crowd psychology, the answers to most questions concerning crowds can still be traced back to a book printed in 1895. |
Aug 11, 2016 |
|
081 - The Climate Paradox
00:57:16
In this episode, psychologist Per Espen Stoknes discusses his book: What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming. |
Jul 28, 2016 |
|
080 - Deep Canvassing
00:58:45
Oddly enough, we don’t actually know very much about how to change people’s minds, not scientifically, that's why the work of the a group of LGBT activists in Los Angeles is offering something valuable to psychology and political science - uncharted scientific territory. |
Jul 13, 2016 |
|
079 - Separate Spheres
00:42:03
Common sense used to dictate that men and women should only come together for breakfast and dinner. |
Jun 29, 2016 |
|
078 - The Existential Fallacy
00:34:33
Hypothetical situations involving dragons, robots, spaceships, and vampires have all been used to prove and disprove arguments. |
Jun 16, 2016 |
|
077 - The Conjunction Fallacy
00:34:00
Here is a logic puzzle created by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. |
Jun 02, 2016 |
|
076 - The Genetic Fallacy
00:39:12
We often overestimate and overstate just how much we can learn about a claim based on where that claim originated, and that's the crux of the genetic fallacy, according to the experts in this episode. |
May 19, 2016 |
|
075 - Special Pleading / Moving the Goalposts
00:38:01
Sometimes you apply a double standard to the things you love, the things you believe, and the things crucial to your identity, and often you do so without realizing it. |
May 05, 2016 |
|
074 - Begging The Question
00:35:14
If you believe something is bad because it is...bad, or that something is good because, well, it's good, you probably wouldn't use that kind of reasoning in an argument, yet, sometimes, without realizing it, that's exactly what you do. |
Apr 21, 2016 |
|
073 - Bayes' Theorem
01:28:16
We don’t treat all of our beliefs equally. |
Apr 08, 2016 |
|
072 - The Dunning-Kruger Effect (Rebroadcast)
01:05:20
In this episode, we explore why we are unaware that we lack the skill to tell how unskilled and unaware we are. |
Mar 24, 2016 |
|
071 - The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy
00:44:13
When you desire meaning, when you want things to line up, when looking for something specific, you tend to notice patterns everywhere, which leads you to ask the question, “What are the odds?” Usually, the odds are actually pretty good. |
Mar 09, 2016 |
|
070 - The No True Scotsman Fallacy
00:35:38
When your identity becomes intertwined with your definitions, you can easily fall victim to something called The No true Scotsman Fallacy. |
Feb 25, 2016 |
|
069 - The Black And White Fallacy
00:29:50
Obviously, the world isn't black and white, so why do we try to drain it of color when backed into a rhetorical corner? |
Feb 11, 2016 |
|
068 - The Strawman Fallacy
00:28:34
When confronted with dogma-threatening, worldview-menacing ideas, your knee-jerk response is usually to lash out and try to bat them away, but thanks to a nearly unavoidable mistake in reasoning, you often end up doing battle with arguments of your own creation. |
Jan 28, 2016 |
|
067 - The Fallacy Fallacy
00:41:17
If you have ever been in an argument, you've likely committed a logical fallacy, and if you know how logical fallacies work, you've likely committed the fallacy fallacy. |
Jan 14, 2016 |
|
065 - Survivorship Bias (rebroadcast)
00:31:07
The problem with sorting out failures and successes is that failures are often muted, destroyed, or somehow removed from sight while successes are left behind, weighting your decisions and perceptions, tilting your view of the world. |
Dec 17, 2015 |
|
064 - Monkey Marketplace - Laurie Santos (rebroadcast)
00:48:29
Our guest in this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast is psychologist Laurie Santos who heads the Comparative Cognition Laboratory at Yale University. In that lab, she and her colleagues are exploring the fact that when two species share a relative on the evolutionary family tree, not only do they share similar physical features, but they also share similar behaviors. Psychologists and other scientists have used animals to study humans for a very long time, but Santos and her colleagues have taken it a step further by choosing to focus on a closer relation, the capuchin monkey; that way they could investigate subtler, more complex aspects of human decision making – like cognitive biases. |
Dec 03, 2015 |
|
063 - The Search Effect - Matthew Fisher
00:53:13
What effect does Google have on your brain? Here's an even weirder question: what effect does knowing that you have access to Google have on your brain? |
Nov 19, 2015 |
|
062 - Naive Realism - Lee Ross
01:00:58
In psychology, they call it naive realism, the tendency to believe that the other side is wrong simply because they are misinformed. |
Nov 05, 2015 |
|
061 - Mindfulness - Michael Taft
01:22:25
You have the power to wield neuroplasticity to your advantage. |
Oct 22, 2015 |
|
060 - Reframing - Robert R. Morris
01:10:05
Reframing is one of those psychological tools that just plain works. It’s practical, simple, and with practice and repetition it often leads to real change in people with a variety of thinking problems. |
Oct 07, 2015 |
|
059 - The Illusion Of Control - Michael And Sarah Bennett
01:05:17
In the show, you'll hear Michael elaborate on why that is. In this episode, our guests are Harvard-trained psychiatrist Michael I. Bennett and his comedy writer daughter Sarah Bennett whose new book, Fuck Feelings, makes the case for accepting the illusion of control as a guiding principle for living a better life. |
Sep 23, 2015 |
|
058 - Technology - Clive Thompson (Rebroadcast)
01:10:31
Is all this new technology improving our thinking or dampening it? Are all these new communication tools turning us into navel-gazing human/brand hybrids, or are we developing a new set of senses that allow us to benefit from never severing contact with the people most important to us? |
Sep 10, 2015 |
|
057 - PTSD - Robert D. Laird
01:07:37
10 years after Katrina the residents of New Orleans and portions of Mississippi are still experiencing PTSD. In this episode we explore what causes this disorder, why it happens, what triggers the symptoms, and how to combat the effects with University of New Orlean psychologist Robert D. Laird. |
Aug 27, 2015 |
|
056 - Magicians And Scams - Brian Brushwood
01:11:48
Before we had names for them or a science to study them, the people who could claim the most expertise on biases, fallacies, heuristics and all the other quirks of human reasoning and perception were scam artists, con artists, and magicians. On this episode, magician and scam expert Brian Brushwood explains why people fall for scams of all sizes, how to avoid them, and why most magicians can spot a fraudster a mile away. |
Aug 12, 2015 |
|
055 - WEIRD People - Steven J. Heine
00:48:14
Is psychology too WEIRD? That's what this episode's guest, psychologist Steven J. Heine suggested when he and his colleagues published a paper suggesting that psychology wasn't the study of the human mind, but the study of one kind of human mind, the sort generated by the kinds of brains that happen to be conveniently located near the places where research is usually conducted - North American college undergraduates. They called them the WEIRDest people in the world, short for Western, Education, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic - the kind of people who make up less than 15 percent of the world's population. In this episode, you'll learn why it took so long to figure out it was studying outliers, and what it means for the future of psychology. |
Aug 01, 2015 |
|
054 - The Self - Bruce Hood (rebroadcast)
00:51:29
Is the person you believe to be the protagonist of your life story real or a fictional character? In other words, is your very self real or is it an illusion? According to psychologist Bruce Hood, the person at the center of your life isn't really there; it's all neurological smoke and mirrors. Sure, you have the sensation that you have a self, and that sensation is real, but the beliefs and ideas that spring from it are not. Learn all about it in this episode in which you'll hear some new material mixed with a rebroadcast of episode four's interview with the author of The Self Illusion, Bruce Hood. |
Jul 16, 2015 |
|
053 - Adaptive Learning - Ulrik Christensen
00:48:59
Can new computer programs rid us of the cognitive errors that lead to learned helplessness in the classroom? In this episode Ulrik Christensen, senior fellow of digital learning at McGraw-Hill Education, explains how adaptive learning tools are changing the way teachers approach students, empowering educators to provide the kind of attention required to pass along mastery in areas where traditional approaches don't seem to work. |
Jul 02, 2015 |
|
052 - Learned Helplessness
00:45:44
Stuck in a bad situation, even when the prison doors are left wide open, we sometimes refuse to attempt escape. Why is that? In this episode learn all about the strange phenomenon of learned helplessness and how it keeps people in bad jobs, poor health, terrible relationships, and awful circumstances despite how easy it might be to escape any one of those scenarios with just one more effort. In the episode, you'll learn how to defeat this psychological trap with advice from psychologists Jennifer Welbourne, who studies attributional styles in the workplace, and Kym Bennett who studies the effects of pessimism on health. |
Jun 23, 2015 |
|
051 - Work - Laszlo Bock
01:10:46
Work often sucks, but it doesn't have to. In this episode we interview Lazlo Bock, head of People Operations at Google, who helped his company make work suck less, way less, by introducing new policies and procedures based on knowledge gained by psychology and neuroscience concerning biases, fallacies, and other weird human behavior quirks. In addition, Google has advanced our knowledge of such phenomena by conducting its own internal experiments and collecting mountains of data. The result has been a workplace where people are happier, more productive, and better able to pursue that which fulfills their ambitions. Learn all about Google's approach as Lazlo describes his new book, Work Rules, a collection of insights from Google's evidence-based, data-driven human relations juggernaut. |
Jun 05, 2015 |
|
050 - Happy Money - Elizabeth Dunn (rebroadcast)
00:45:12
It’s peculiar, your inability to predict what will make you happy, and that inability leads you to do stupid things with your money. Once you get a decent job that allows you to buy new shoes on a whim, you start accumulating stuff, and the psychological research into happiness says that stuff is a crappy source of lasting joy. In this rebroadcast, listen as psychologist Elizabeth Dunn explains how to get more happiness out of your money...with science! |
May 22, 2015 |
|
049 - Rejection - Jia Jiang
00:54:10
What if you could give yourself a superpower? That's what Jia Jiang wondered when he began a quest to remove the fear of rejection from his brain and become the risk-taking, adventurous person he always wanted to be. Hear how he forced himself to feel the pain of rejection 100 times in 100 days in an effort to desensitize himself, and how he recorded every moment on his way to making himself a better person. |
May 08, 2015 |
|
048 - Contact
01:01:41
Can you change a person's mind on a divisive social issue? The latest science says...yes. But it will require two things: contact and disclosure. In this episode you'll travel to Mississippi to see how professional mind changers are working to shift attitudes on LGBT rights, and you'll learn how a man in Los Angeles conducted 12,000 conversations until he was able to perfect the most powerful version of contact possible. In one 22-minute chat, Dave Fleischer can change people's minds on issues they've felt strongly about for decades, and change them forever. |
Apr 25, 2015 |
|
047 - Public Shaming - Jon Ronson
00:58:51
Public shaming is back. Once done in town squares, the subjects of our ridicule locked in pillories and unable to avoid the rotten fruit and insults we hurled at them, now the shaming takes place on the internet. No longer our neighbors, the new targets are strangers and celebrities, and instead of courts meting out justice, it is the aggregate outrage of well-meaning people on Twitter just like you. Listen as author Jon Ronson describes his new book, “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” in which he spends time with people who have had their lives ruined by modern, web-based public shamings in an attempt to reveal to each of us what can happen when, alone but together, we obliterate people for unpopular opinions, off-color jokes, offensive language, and professional faux pas. |
Apr 08, 2015 |
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046 - Inbetweenisode 11 - Steven Novella
01:01:45
In this inbetweenisode you will hear an excerpt from a lecture I gave at DragonCon2014 and an interview with neurologist and host of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe Steven Novella who discusses the psychology and neuroscience behind conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. |
Mar 26, 2015 |
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045 - Doctors - Danielle Ofri
00:56:09
In this episode, we talk to Danielle Ofri, a physician and author of "What Doctors Feel" - a book about the emotional lives of doctors and how compassion fatigue, biases, and other mental phenomena affect their decisions, their motivations, and their relationships with patients. |
Mar 12, 2015 |
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044 - Inbetweenisode - James Burke And Matt Novak (Rebroadcast)
00:43:41
This episode is a rebroadcast of two interviews from episode 20 all about how we are very, very bad at predicting the future both in our personal lives and as as a species. |
Feb 25, 2015 |
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043 - Misremembering - Julia Shaw and Dan Simons
01:09:04
Did Brian Williams lie, exaggerate, or misremember? How certain are you that your most vivid memories are real? How easily could someone implant a false memory into your mind? In this episode you'll learn why psychologists say that your memory is mostly fiction as psychologist Daniel Simons explains how Brian Williams could have easily believed in a detailed war coverage memory that wasn't real, and you'll hear psychologist Julia Shaw explain how she was recently able to easily implant memories into college so that those students would admit to felony crimes that they did not commit. |
Feb 11, 2015 |
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042 - Bodily Resonance - Lara Maister
00:50:15
Scientists are using rubber hands and virtual reality to transfer people's minds into avatars designed to look like members of groups and subcultures to which the subjects do not belong, and the results have been - well, trippy. Can changing your body, even just for a few minutes, change your mind. Can a psychological body transfer melt away long-held opinions and unconscious prejudices? Learn what cognitive neuroscientist Lara Maister has discovered in her unconventional experiments. |
Jan 28, 2015 |
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041 - Inbetweenisode - The Game/Ceiling Crasher
00:32:45
In this episode, two stories, one about a football game that split reality in two for the people who witnessed it, and another about what happened when a naked man literally appeared out of thin air inside a couple's apartment while they were getting ready for work. |
Jan 15, 2015 |
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040 - Monkey Marketplace - Laurie Santos
01:09:01
How far back can we trace our irrational behaviors and cognitive biases? Evolutionarily speaking, why do we even do these things? Can we blame our faulty logic on our cultures and institutions, or should we blame it on our biology and our genetic inheritance? Our guest on this episode is psychologist Laurie Santos who has created a novel approach to solving these questions - a marketplace where monkeys learn how to use money just like humans, and where they tend to make the same kind of mistakes as well. |
Jan 06, 2015 |
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039 - Blind Insight - Ryan Scott
01:07:58
Is it possible to for different parts of your mind to learn how the world works at different rates? Is it possible that the unconscious part of you can know something long before the conscious you realizes it? Learn more about the weirdness of the unconscious mind as we interview Ryan Scott, a cognitive psychologist who has discovered a new phenomenon that suggests you can have unconscious knowledge about something and fail to realize it until it is too late - something he calls blind insight. |
Dec 17, 2014 |
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038 - Inbetweenisode - The Halo Effect
02:43:42
One salient trait can cause you to misjudge every other trait when evaluating a new hire, a love interest, a colleague, or even a potential purchase. Learn more about the power of the halo effect in this episode, and as a bonus, hear all the previous excerpts from You Are Now Less Dumb in this special extended episode lasting 2 hours and 43 minutes! |
Dec 09, 2014 |
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037 - Motivation - Daniel Pink
01:14:13
What motivates you to keep going, to reach for your dreams, to persist and endure? Psychology has, over the last 40 years, learned a great deal about human motivation and drive. In this episode we ask Daniel Pink, author of Drive, how we can better put that knowledge to use in our lives, and in our workplaces and institutions. |
Nov 23, 2014 |
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036 - The Dunning-Kruger Effect
01:31:22
Have you ever been confronted with the fact that you were in over your head, or that you had no idea what you were doing, or that you thought you were more skilled at something than you actually were? At its most extreme, this is called the Dunning-Kruger effect - the fact that it is very easy to be both unskilled and unaware, and in this episode we explore how it works and where you might expect to see it your own life. |
Nov 10, 2014 |
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035 - Inbetweenisode - The Sunk Cost Fallacy
00:40:50
Are you throwing good money after bad? Are you stuck in a job, a relationship, a degree, or some other situation that you know you should abandon but fear you'll have wasted years of time and effort? Are you in pain because of your fear of having done something in vain? This episode, learn all about the sunk cost fallacy and how you sometimes get stuck in a wasteful loop of behavior because of your fear of loss. |
Nov 02, 2014 |
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034 - The Post Hoc Fallacy
00:40:15
Do you believe in magical amulets? Apparently, in 2011, enough people did to allow one company to earn $34 million making and selling them to professional athletes, celebrities, and even a former president...all thanks to the post hoc fallacy. In this episode you'll learn more about how this fallacy led to the rise and fall of the Power Balance bracelet, and whether or not you might believe in a little magic yourself. |
Oct 14, 2014 |
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033 - Belief - Will Storr
01:38:32
Do you think that everything you believe is true? If not, then what are you wrong about? It is a difficult question to answer, and it leads to many others. Where do our beliefs come from, and how do we know where we should place our doubt? Why don't facts seem to work on people? In this episode we explore the psychology of belief through interviews with Margaret Maitland, an Egyptologist, Jim Alcock, a psychologist who studies belief, and Will Storr, a journalist who wrote about his adventures with people who believe in things most people don't in his book, The Unpersuadables. |
Sep 30, 2014 |
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032 - Ego Depletion
00:54:14
Many see willpower as something you develop like a muscle, something you can strengthen through practice and mental exercise, but the latest research suggests willpower runs on an internal battery, one that can be drained after heavy use, but recharges after rest and reward. Once you've used it up, you much recharge it or else you'll be unable to keep your hand out of the cookie jar. Speaking of cookies...we also explore in this episode how psychologists have used cookies in novel ways to uncover the secrets of our minds. |
Sep 13, 2014 |
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031 - Extinction Burst
00:32:39
Why do you so often fail at removing bad habits from your life? |
Aug 27, 2014 |
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030 - Practice - David Epstein
01:06:20
Is it true that all it takes to be an expert is 10,000 hours of practice? What about professional athletes? Do different people get more out of practice than others, and if so, is it nature or nurture? In this episode we ask all these things of David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene, who explains how practice affects the brain and whether or not greatness comes naturally or after lots and lots of effort. |
Aug 14, 2014 |
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029 - Labels - Adam Alter
00:54:19
I did something this week that I’m sure many people secretly do every day. I stopped, talked to myself for a moment, and checked to see how much slack was in the leash I keep on my tongue. |
Aug 01, 2014 |
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028 - Crowds - Michael Bond
01:06:30
It is a human tendency that’s impossible not to notice during wars and revolutions – and a dangerous one to forget when resting between them. |
Jul 18, 2014 |
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027 - Science Communication - Joe Hanson
01:09:53
I recently collaborated with Joe Hanson of the YouTube channel It’s Okay to be Smart and helped him write an episode about pattern recognition. I thought it would be great to bring him on the show and interview him in an episode all about the new science communicators. |
Jul 09, 2014 |
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026 - Maslow's Hammer
00:15:27
“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” You’ve heard the expression before. You’ve may have, like myself, smugly used it a few times to feel like you made an intelligent point in an office conversation. It’s one of those great comebacks that we’ve decided is ok to use in professional settings like congressional debates and televised political arguments about everything from gun control to foreign policy. But, it might surprise you to learn who wrote it, how young the above quote is, and why it was written in the first place. |
Jun 20, 2014 |
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025 - Enclothed Cognition - Hajo Adam
01:05:18
The clothes you wear have powers...over your mind. Your wardrobe doesn't just affect the way others see you, but it affects the way you see yourself. That results in changes in perception, attention, behavior, and more. Learn what researcher Hajo Adam has to say about the phenomenon he discovered, enclothed cognition, and how you can use it to your advantage. |
Jun 06, 2014 |
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024 - Sleep - Richard Wiseman
01:06:51
Why do we sleep and why do we dream? Despite the fact that every human being spends roughly 1/3 of his or her life asleep, science has yet to crack the mystery of the phenomenon. Why do we sleep and dream? The answer for now is...we don't know. To learn more, we interview psychologist Richard Wiseman who has written a new book on sleep and dreaming that promises to help you get the most out of both based on what science has learned so far. |
May 24, 2014 |
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023 - Inbetweenisode 4 - The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight
00:26:39
In the 1950s, in an effort to better understand group conflict, a team of psychologists nearly turned a summer camp into Lord of The Flies. |
May 07, 2014 |
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022 - Survivorship Bias - Megan Price
01:16:55
The problem with sorting out failures and successes is that failures are often muted, destroyed, or somehow removed from view while successes are left behind, weighting your decisions and perceptions, tilting your view of the world. That means to be successful you must learn how to seek out what is missing. You must learn what not to do. Unfortunately, survivorship bias stands between you and the epiphanies you seek. |
Apr 24, 2014 |
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021 - Inbetweenisode 3 - Christina Draganich
00:35:28
In this inbetweenisode, Christina Draganich explains how she came up with the idea to research placebo sleep, and she tells us how anyone with the right guidance can use science to expand our understanding of the natural world. We also learn about the continuity field generated by the human brain. |
Apr 03, 2014 |
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020 - The Future - James Burke and Matt Novak
01:14:48
If you love educational entertainment – programs about science, nature, history, technology and everything in between – it is a safe bet that the creators of those shows were heavily influenced by the founding fathers of science communication: Carl Sagan, David Attenborough, and James Burke. |
Mar 17, 2014 |
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019 - The Placebo Effect - Kristi Erdal
01:10:07
How powerful is the placebo effect? After a good night’s sleep could a scientist convince you that you had tossed and turned, and if so, how would that affect your perceptions and behavior? What if a doctor told you that you had slept like a baby when in reality you had barely slept at all? Would hearing those words improve your performance on a difficult test? |
Mar 01, 2014 |
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018 - Inbetweenisode - The Benjamin Franklin Effect
00:28:52
Benjamin Franklin knew how to deal with haters, and in this episode we learn how he turned his haters into fans with what is now called The Benjamin Franklin Effect. |
Feb 19, 2014 |
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016 - Conspiracy Theories - Steven Novella and Jesse Walker
00:58:55
Who is pulling the strings? Who is behind the coverup? Who holds the real power, and what do they want? How deep does the conspiracy to control your mind go? |
Jan 16, 2014 |
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015 - Inbetweenisode - Narrative Bias
00:17:41
In this inbetweenisode I read an excerpt from my book, You Are Now Less Dumb, about a strange experiment in Michigan that tested the bounds of the self by throwing three very unusual men into a situation that won't likely be repeated ever again by science. |
Jan 08, 2014 |
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014 - Narratives - Melanie C. Green
01:02:29
In this episode we discuss the power of narratives to affect our beliefs and behaviors with Melanie C. Green, a psychologist who studies the persuasive power of fiction. |
Dec 24, 2013 |
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013 - Technology - Clive Thompson
01:11:24
The very fact that you are reading this sentence, contemplating whether you want to listen to this podcast, means that you are living out a fantasy from a previous generation's cyberpunk novel. |
Dec 04, 2013 |
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012 - Jealousy
01:01:25
Why do human beings experience jealousy, what is its function, and what are the warning signs that signal this powerful emotion may lead to violence? |
Nov 21, 2013 |
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011 - Culture
00:31:27
Is your state of mind from one situation to the next drastically altered by the state in which you live? According to cultural psychologists, yes it is. |
Nov 06, 2013 |
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010 - Perversion
00:55:42
In this episode we discuss sexual deviancy and perversion with Jesse Bering, author of "Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us." Also, at the end, we eat a cinnamon cardamom snickerdoodle and discuss popcorn's effect on advertising. |
Oct 16, 2013 |
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009 - Arguing
01:10:44
On this episode we discuss the psychology of arguing and interview both Jeremy Shermer and Hugo Mercier. Afterward, I eat an orange chocolate chip cookie and read a news story about reading your partner's mood in old age. |
Sep 27, 2013 |
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008 - Video Games
00:58:49
In this episode, we discuss the how video games can help us understand our delusions and speak with Jamie Madigan, the curator of psychologyofgames.com. Also, at the end, we eat a white chocolate oatmeal cookie and discuss a misconception about poverty. |
Aug 30, 2013 |
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007 - Common Sense
00:53:10
In this episode we discuss eyebeams and superseded scientific theories with Kevin Lyon, and at the end, we discuss vitamins and eat a fudgy oatmeal cookie. |
Jul 22, 2013 |
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004 - Money
00:43:55
In this episode we speak with Elizabeth Dunn about better spending money to increase happiness. Later, we eat an apple toffee cookie and explore novelty in old churches. |
Jul 07, 2013 |
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005 - Selling Out
00:57:39
In this episode, we discuss selling out, countercultures, and authenticity with Andrew Potter, the author of "The Authenticity Hoax." Afterward, I eat a Chewie Chewbacca Chocolate Chip vegan cookie and read a study about the sugar high and hyperactivity. |
Oct 06, 2012 |
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004 - The Self
00:50:49
In this episode we discuss the self and interview Bruce Hood, author of "The Self Illusion." Also, at the end, we eat a chewy chocolate chip cookie and discuss therapeutic touch. |
Jul 01, 2012 |
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003 - Confabulation
00:28:38
In this episode, we discuss confabulation with neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, and at the end of the episode we taste a cranberry chocolate chip cookie while contemplating positive affirmations. |
May 28, 2012 |
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002 - The Illusion of Knowledge
00:47:04
In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast we discuss the illusion of knowledge with Christopher Chabris, co-author of "The Invisible Gorilla." After that, we eat a triple-ginger molasses cookie while discussing non-believed false memories. |
May 08, 2012 |
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001 - Attention
00:40:17
In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast we discuss attention and interview co-author of "The Invisible Gorilla" Daniel Simons. Also, at the end, we eat an Oreo fudge cookie brownie and discuss the foreign language effect. |
Apr 22, 2012 |