You Are Not So Smart

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329 - Point Taken - Steven Franconeri Dec 22, 2025

Show notes

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.

Kitted Executive Academy

Point Taken

The Visual Thinking Lab

Steven Franconeri

Jordan Ellenberg’s Website

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328 - Shape - Jordan Ellenberg (rebroadcast) Dec 08, 2025

Show notes

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

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.

Kitted Executive Academy

Jordan Ellenberg’s Academic Website

Jordan Ellenberg’s Twitter

Shape

The Trolley Problem in Real Life

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327 - The Trolley Solution - Joshua Greene Nov 24, 2025

Show notes

Philosopher, neuroscientist, and psychologist, 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, and, in addition, play quiz games that can reduce polarization and possibly save democracy.

Kitted Executive Academy

Pods Fight Poverty

Give Directly

Giving Multiplier

Joshua Greene's Website

Moral Tribes

A Buddhist Monk Faces The Trolley Problem

Alief vs Belief

Tango

Tango Quiz Game Research

Charitable Giving Research

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326 - The Origin of Language - Madeleine Beekman Nov 10, 2025

Show notes

We sit down with Dr. Madeleine Beekman, a professor emerita of evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology at the University of Sydney, Australia, whose new book, 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.

Madeleine Beekman

Sarah Stein Lubrano's Website

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325 - Cognitive Dissonance - Part Two (rebroadcast) Oct 27, 2025

Show notes

In this episode we welcome Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano, a political scientist who studies how cognitive dissonance affects all sorts of political behavior. She’s also the co-host of a podcast about activism called "What Do We Want?" and she wrote a book titled Don’t Talk About Politics which is about how to discuss politics without necessarily talking about politics.

Sarah Stein Lubrano's Substack

Sarah Stein Lubrano's Twitter

Kitted

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324 - Cognitive Dissonance - Part One (rebroadcast) Oct 13, 2025

Show notes

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.
Also, we explore our drive to remain consistent via our desire to reduce cognitive dissonance. When you notice you’ve done something you believe is wrong, then you will either stop doing that thing or stop believing it is wrong. And if you believe something is true but you come across some information that disconfirms that belief, you’ll either change your belief, challenge the validity of the challenging information, or go looking for confirmation you were right all along.

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323 - Job Therapy - Tessa West (rebroadcast) Sep 29, 2025

Show notes

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?

According to our guest in this episode, Dr. Tessa West, a psychologist at NYU, if you are currently contemplating whether you want to do the work that you do everyday you should know that although this feeling is common, psychologists who study this sort of thing have discovered that our narratives for why we feel this way are often just rationalizations and justifications.

In fact, it turns out that the way we psychologically evaluate the jobs we think we might not want to do anymore is nearly identical to how we evaluate romantic relationships we feel like we might no longer want to be a part of. The feelings are usually undeniable, but our explanations for why we feel the way we feel can be wildly inaccurate, and because of that, our resulting behavior can be, let’s say, sub-optimal. We sometimes stay far longer than we should or make knee-jerk decisions we later regret or commit to terrible mistakes that could have been avoided.

The Gateway Drugs to Intellectual Humility

YANSS Twitter

Kitted Shop

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322 - Intellectual Humility - Tenelle Porter Sep 15, 2025

Show notes

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.

Previous Episodes

Transcript at TED

How to Be A Better Human

Tenelle Porter's Research

Tenelle Porter's Website

The Illusion of Explanatory Depth

Kitted Shop

The Story of Kitted

Kelly Williams Brown's Website

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321 - Easy Crafts for the Insane - Kelly Williams Brown (rebroadcast) Sep 01, 2025

Show notes

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.

988

Suicide Prevention Month

Easy Crafts for the Insane

Kelly's Twitter

Kelly's Instagram

Kelly in Vanity Fair

Gratitude Journaling Study

Seneca on Being Wretched

The Story of Kitted