You Are Not So Smart

Jaksot

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  348 - The Dress - Decoder Ring 14.09.2026 43min

  We return to The Dress and the psychological lessons offered by one of the most viral moments in the history of the internet via an episode of Decoder Ring in which David McRaney shares some insights from his book, How Minds Change, with Willa Paskin, the host of Decoder Ring.
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  347 - Under Alien Skies - Phil Plait 31.08.2026 1t 10min

  Astronomer Phil Plait joins us to discuss his book, Under Alien Skies, in which he describes what it would actually be like to travel to Saturn, Mars, asteroids, and distant stars.
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  346 - No Nocebo Effect - Helen Pilcher 17.08.2026 59min

  The suffering is real, but the source may not be what you assume. That's the essence of the nocebo effect, the placebo effect's evil twin. As neuroscientist Dr. Helen Pilcher explains, illness is not simply a matter of biology. Our thoughts, conscious or otherwise, can make lead to symptoms in unexpected ways.
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  345 - A Pox on Fools - Thomas Levenson 03.08.2026 1t 6min

  MIT professor Thomas Levenson, the author of the book A Pox on Fools, takes us through the same repeating patterns throughout history which have led to antivaxxers and vaccine hesitancy since the very first vaccines.
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  344 - Intellectual Humility - Tenelle Porter 03.08.2026 1t 7min

  Can intellectual humility be measured? What influences it and affects it, limits it and enhances it? What even is it, scientifically speaking?
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  343 - Misguided - Matthew Facciani 06.07.2026 1t 8min

  What is misinformation? How does it differ from disinformation or just plain ‘ole propaganda? How do we protect ourselves from people with nefarious intentions using all of these things to affect our thoughts, feelings, and behavior?
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  342 - The Conspiracy Theorist Who Changed His Mind 22.06.2026 47min

  Tim Harford of the podcast Cautionary Tales sits down with David McRaney to hear a story from David's book, How Minds Change, about how (and why) a prominent conspiracy theorist realized he was wrong.
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  341 - Positive Rants - Heather Barnes 08.06.2026 45min

  Communications professor Heather Barnes teaches us how to truly engage with difficult people through the power of positive rants.
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  340 - Thinking Sideways - Jennifer Shahade 25.05.2026 1t 2min

  Chess champion Jennifer Shahade tells us how we can borrow from the best chess players' decision-tree approach to avoid considering every possible option and instead "think sideways" to consider the best choices on the board.
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  339 - Enlightened Disagreement 11.05.2026 1t 28min

  Northwestern University just launched the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement, a real-world institution devoted to "research-backed approaches to cultivating open-mindedness, identifying one’s own cognitive biases, working collaboratively with others despite disagreement and more."
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  338 - May Contain Lies - Alex Edmans (rebroadcast) 27.04.2026 39min

  Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, tells us how to avoid the Ladder of Misinference.
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  337 - Cognitive Surrender - Gideon Nave and Steven D. Shaw 13.04.2026 59min

  How is AI reshaping human reasoning? What is cognitive surrender, and how do we avoid its negative impact? What is system three thinking, and how can we get the most out of it?
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  336 - The 3.5 Percent Rule - Erica Chenoweth (rebroadcast) 30.03.2026 1t 3min

  If you want to create a movement that can change the national status quo, you don't need half the country, you only need 3.5 percent of the population to join – but there are some caveats.
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  335 - Align Your Mind - Britt Frank (rebroadcast) 16.03.2026 1t 12min

  Using parts work, psychologist Britt Frank offers a road map for understanding, befriending, and leading the multiple voices within yourself.
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  334 - Magical Thinking - Matt Tompkins (rebroadcast) 02.03.2026 1t 19min

  We explore the long history of the manipulation of our own magical thinking and how studying deception can help us better understand perception, memory, belief, and more.
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  YANSS 333 - Selective Perception - Jay Van Bavel 16.02.2026 38min

  How can two people watch the same video yet see two different things? How can two people witness the same event but arrive at two different truths about what they witnessed? How can the same evidence lead people to drastically different realities? In this episode, Dr. Jay Van Bavel at NYU explains.
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  332 - Concordance Over Truth Bias (rebroadcast) 02.02.2026 1t 8min

  In this episode, we sit down with three disinformation researchers whose new paper found something surprising about both our resistance and our susceptibility to both true news we wish was fake and fake news we wish was true.
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  331 - Wicked Problems - Martin Carcasson 19.01.2026 1t 7min

  Dr. Martin Carcasson tells us how he, as the Director of the Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State, trains people how to facilitate deliberation and overcome wicked problems so that they can "spark processes that are particularly designed to avoid triggering the worst in human nature and tap into the best."
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  330 - A More Beautiful Question - Warren Berger (rebroadcast) 05.01.2026 1t 4min

  Warren Berger has made a career out of classifying, categorizing, and making sense of the many varieties of questions that we ask and in this episode he explains how we can ask more beautiful questions that can lead to all manner of better outcomes.
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  329 - Point Taken - Steven Franconeri 22.12.2025 51min

  Dr. Steven Franconeri explains the powerful insights and opportunities offered by a game he and his team created for having better disagreements about just about anything, but especially about the sort of topics that often lead to arguments, fights, and terrible holiday dinners.