You Are Not So Smart

Newsletter

They Thought We Were Ridiculous

David McRaney's Bluesky

YANSS Twitter

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309 - They Thought We Were Ridiculous - Andy Luttrell (rebroadcast) Mar 17, 2025

Show notes

In 1974, two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, as the New Yorker once put it, "changed the way we think about the way we think." The prevailing wisdom, before their landmark research went viral (in the way things went viral in the 1970s), was that human beings were, for the most part, rational optimizers always making the kinds of judgments and decisions that best maximized the potential of the outcomes under their control. This was especially true in economics at the time. The story of how they generated a paradigm shift so powerful that it reached far outside economics and psychology to change the way all of us see ourselves is a fascinating tale, one that required the invention of something this episode is all about: The Psychology of Single Questions.

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308 - Magical Thinking - Matt Tompkins Mar 03, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, the story of Clever Hans, the horse who changed psychology for the better. We also sit down with psychologist and magician Matt Tompkins. Matt is the author of The Spectacle of Illusion, a book about 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.

David McRaney’s BlueSky

The Spectacle of Illusion

YANSS Twitter

Matt Tompkins

Science of Magic Association

Society for Psychical Research

Skeptical Inquirer Magazine

Houdini's Debunking

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307 - Concordance Over Truth Bias Feb 17, 2025

Show notes

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.

Our guests are three of the scientists exploring a newly named cognitive distortion, one that every human being is prone to exhibiting, one that is so common and so easily provoked that nefarious actors depend on it when distributing disinformation and propaganda.

Samuel Woolley, Katie Joseff, and Michael Schwalbe will share their methods, findings, and takeaways. They will also explain the troublesome nature of something they are calling concordance over truth bias – a distortion that most often appears in those who have the most (undeserved) confidence in their own (not-so-objective) objectivity.
- How Minds Change

- Show Notes

- Newsletter

- David McRaney's BlueSky

- David McRaney’s Twitter

- YANSS Twitter

- Why Do We Share Our Feelings With Others?

- Concordance Over Truth Bias

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306 - I Never Thought of it That Way - Mónica Guzmán (rebroadcast) Feb 03, 2025

Show notes

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 beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and values come from. It's also about how to 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

- Show Notes

- Newsletter

- David McRaney's BlueSky

- David McRaney’s Twitter

- YANSS Twitter

- Mónica Guzmán’s Website

- Mónica Guzmán’s Twitter

- I Never Thought of it That Way

- Braver Angels

- My Article on Intellectual Humility

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305 - Supercommunicators - Charles Duhigg (rebroadcast) Jan 20, 2025

Show notes

Our guest in this episode is Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer for the New Yorker Magazine who is also the New York Times Bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better. His new book is Supercommunicators, a practical and approachable guide to what makes great conversations work. In the episode we discuss the science behind what it takes to form a connection with another human being through dialogue, how to generate or nurture a bond, and how to form, repair, and maintain a conversational pipeline through listening and communicating that guarantees reciprocation and understanding.

Charles DuHigg's Website

Charles DuHigg's Twitter

Supercommunicators

Christopher Chabris' Website

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304 - Nobody's Fool - Dan Simons and Christopher Chabris (rebroadcast) Jan 06, 2025

Show notes

In an era in which we have more information available to us than ever before, when claims of “fake news” might themselves be, in fact, fake news, Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, authors of The Invisible Gorilla, are back to offer us a vital tool to not only inoculate ourselves against getting infected by misinformation but prevent us from spreading it to others – a new book titled Nobody's Fool.

Previous Episodes

Dan Simon's Website

Nobody's Fool

Decoder Ring's The Dress Page

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303 - The Dress - Decoder Ring Dec 23, 2024

Show notes

In this episode 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.

Decoder Ring

Willa Paskin's Twitter

CBC Interview with Willa Paskin

A More Beautiful Question

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302 - A More Beautiful Question - Warren Berger Dec 09, 2024

Show notes

In this episode we sit down with Warren Berger, the author of A More Beautiful Question – and a man who has made a career out of classifying, categorizing, and making sense of all the many varieties of questions we ask, when we are likely to ask them, and how that can lead to all manner of outcomes, some positive, some negative.

Warren Berger's Website

Warren Berger's Twitter

Carl Sagan on Asking Questions

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Why The Sky Is Blue

The Real Reason the Sky is Blue

How Does Rayleigh Scattering ACTUALLY Work? (The Blue Sky)

Sarah Stein Lubrano's Website

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301 - Cognitive Dissonance - Part Two Nov 25, 2024

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 that’s coming out in May of 2025 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