You Are Not So Smart

Episod

• 340 - Thinking Sideways - Jennifer Shahade 25.05.2026 1j 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.
• 339 - Enlightened Disagreement 11.05.2026 1j 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."
• 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.
• 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?
• 336 - The 3.5 Percent Rule - Erica Chenoweth (rebroadcast) 30.03.2026 1j 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.
• 335 - Align Your Mind - Britt Frank (rebroadcast) 16.03.2026 1j 12min

  Using parts work, psychologist Britt Frank offers a road map for understanding, befriending, and leading the multiple voices within yourself.
• 334 - Magical Thinking - Matt Tompkins (rebroadcast) 02.03.2026 1j 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.
• 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.
• 332 - Concordance Over Truth Bias (rebroadcast) 02.02.2026 1j 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.
• 331 - Wicked Problems - Martin Carcasson 19.01.2026 1j 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."
• 330 - A More Beautiful Question - Warren Berger (rebroadcast) 05.01.2026 1j 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.
• 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.
• 328 - Shape - Jordan Ellenberg (rebroadcast) 08.12.2025 1j 10min

  We sit down with Jordan Ellenberg, a world-class geometer, who takes us on a far-ranging exploration of the power of geometry, which turns out to help us think better about practically everything
• 327 - The Trolley Solution - Joshua Greene 24.11.2025 1j 19min

  Joshua Greene tells us how the brain generates morality, and how his research may have solved the infamous trolley problem and in so doing created a way to encourage people to contribute to charities that do the most good.
• 326 - The Origin of Language - Madeleine Beekman 10.11.2025 46min

  Biologist Madeleine Beekman, author of The Origin of Language, presents a completely new and fascinating theory for how language emerged in homo sapiens, in human beings, in you and me and the rest of us.
• 325 - Cognitive Dissonance - Part Two (rebroadcast) 27.10.2025 57min

  In this episode we welcome Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano, a political scientist who studies how cognitive dissonance affects all sorts of political behavior.
• 324 - Cognitive Dissonance - Part One (rebroadcast) 13.10.2025 57min

  In this episode, the story of a doomsday cult who predicted the exact date and circumstances of the end of the world, and what happened when that date passed and the world did not end.
• 323 - Job Therapy - Tessa West (rebroadcast) 29.09.2025 55min

  Are you unhappy at your job? Are you starting to consider a change of career because of how your current work makes you feel? Do you know why?
• 322 - Intellectual Humility - Tenelle Porter 15.09.2025 1j 7min

  Can intellectual humility be measured? What influences it and affects it, limits it and enhances it? What even is it, scientifically speaking? We explore all of this and then play an episode of How to Be A Better Human featuring psychologist Tenelle Porter telling comedian Chris Duffy how she is researching how to conduct better research into intellectual humility.
• 321 - Easy Crafts for the Insane - Kelly Williams Brown (rebroadcast) 01.09.2025 1j 18min

  This episode is about suicide prevention and awareness. Author Kelly Williams Brown tells us about her book, Easy Crafts for the Insane, in which she recounts how, after she gained fame and success as a NYT bestselling author, her world came apart. Then an anti-anxiety-drug-induced manic state nearly ended her life.