Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Spencer Greenberg
Show overview
Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg has been publishing since 2020, and across the 6 years since has built a catalogue of 322 episodes. That works out to roughly 430 hours of audio in total. Releases follow a weekly cadence.
Episodes typically run an hour to ninety minutes — most land between 1h 9m and 1h 26m — and the run-time is fairly consistent across the catalogue. The publisher flags most episodes as explicit, so expect adult themes or strong language throughout. It is catalogued as a EN-language Science show.
The show is actively publishing — the most recent episode landed 5 days ago, with 27 episodes already out so far this year. Published by Spencer Greenberg.
From the publisher
Clearer Thinking is a podcast about ideas that truly matter. If you enjoy learning about powerful, practical concepts and frameworks, wish you had more deep, intellectual conversations in your life, or are looking for non-BS self-improvement, then we think you'll love this podcast! Each week we invite a brilliant guest to bring four important ideas to discuss for an in-depth conversation. Topics include psychology, society, behavior change, philosophy, science, artificial intelligence, math, economics, self-help, mental health, and technology. We focus on ideas that can be applied right now to make your life better or to help you better understand yourself and the world, aiming to teach you the best mental tools to enhance your learning, self-improvement efforts, and decision-making. • We take on important, thorny questions like: • What's the best way to help a friend or loved one going through a difficult time? How can we make our worldviews more accurate? How can we hone the accuracy of our thinking? What are the advantages of using our "gut" to make decisions? And when should we expect careful, analytical reflection to be more effective? Why do societies sometimes collapse? And what can we do to reduce the chance that ours collapses? Why is the world today so much worse than it could be? And what can we do to make it better? What are the good and bad parts of tradition? And are there more meaningful and ethical ways of carrying out important rituals, such as honoring the dead? How can we move beyond zero-sum, adversarial negotiations and create more positive-sum interactions?
Latest Episodes
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The seductiveness of secular gurus (with Christopher Kavanagh)
ERead the full transcript here. What makes broad, all-encompassing worldviews so attractive in periods of institutional distrust? Why do charismatic figures become especially persuasive when they present themselves as suppressed truth tellers? How much of a guru’s appeal comes from insight, and how much from theater? Why do people so often prefer a guide with certainty over an institution with caveats? What happens when specialist expertise is mistaken for authority about everything? Are we living in the best age for learning or the easiest age for self-deception? What is the difference between being informed and merely feeling informed? Why does the performance of education so often outcompete the practice of education? How much false confidence is created by consuming hours of polished commentary without doing any of the underlying work? Why are people so vulnerable to sources that make complexity feel effortless? How should we think about the gap between exposure to ideas and mastery of them? Christopher Kavanagh is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Rikkyo University and a Researcher at the Centre for Studies of Social Cohesion at Oxford University. His research focuses mainly on the psychological and social effects of religious belief and collective rituals and he has a long standing interest in skepticism, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theory communities. He co-hosts Decoding The Gurus, a podcast dedicated to examining the techniques of modern online Gurus. Links: Christopher's podcast: Decoding The Gurus Christopher's Faculty Page at Rikkyo University Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]
What beats intuition when it comes to doing good? (with Marcus Davis)
ERead the full transcript here. If you enjoy our podcast, we have some exciting news – we’ve just launched a new membership called Clearer Thinking Plus. Members get this podcast completely ad-free, as well as two professional coaching sessions every month, access to our advanced cognitive assessment, and seven other exclusive perks. Clearer Thinking Plus is one of the most affordable ways to get access to a high-quality coach - whether you want to improve your habits, find more effective ways to work towards your goals, or get assistance making difficult decisions. It is also a more affordable and convenient way to get all the perks we offer. If you're not interested in coaching, you can still get ad-free access to this podcast and the other perks with our explorer plan. Access www.clearerthinking.org/plus to become a member today. We hope to see you there! Can radically different forms of good really be compared? What makes two charitable outcomes commensurable? When does cost effectiveness become a moral argument rather than just an economic one? Is helping the global poor often cheaper for reasons that are ethically relevant? How should we weigh temporary enrichment against preventing severe suffering? At what point does refusing comparison become morally evasive? Are some value systems too implausible to treat as equally serious? How much should location matter when the same intervention works in multiple places? Does the ability to compare causes require a single theory of value? What do we lose by pretending all forms of good are incomparable? Marcus A. Davis is the co-founder and CEO of Rethink Priorities, a think-and-do tank that uses rigorous empirical research to help philanthropists, policymakers, and cause-focused organizations direct resources where they'll do the most good. Marcus writes about effective charity, EA culture, and arguments around doing good at his Substack, Charity for All, and you can also follow him on Bluesky: amarcusdavis.bsky.social. Links: Rethink Priorities Website Marcus' Substack: Charity for All Marcus' Bluesky Profile Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]
Can averages explain a human life? (with Steven C. Hayes)
ERead the full transcript here. If you enjoy our podcast, we have some exciting news – we’ve just launched a new membership called Clearer Thinking Plus. Members get this podcast completely ad-free, as well as two professional coaching sessions every month, access to our advanced cognitive assessment, and seven other exclusive perks. Clearer Thinking Plus is one of the most affordable ways to get access to a high-quality coach - whether you want to improve your habits, find more effective ways to work towards your goals, or get assistance making difficult decisions. It is also a more affordable and convenient way to get all the perks we offer. If you're not interested in coaching, you can still get ad-free access to this podcast and the other perks with our explorer plan. Access www.clearerthinking.org/plus to become a member today. We hope to see you there! How much of psychology is built on a statistical illusion? What happens when we mistake population averages for truths about individual lives? Can a person ever really be understood through traits measured at a few isolated moments? Why do simplified categories feel so authoritative even when they fail to capture lived experience? What does it mean for a science of mind to ignore time, context, and development? How much of what we call personality is just a byproduct of how we choose to measure people? If most of what matters is situational, what kind of science would we need instead? Why are average-based explanations so intuitively appealing even when they may mislead us? What gets lost when human beings are treated as snapshots rather than processes? Could clearer thinking begin by questioning the categories we rely on most? Dr. Steven C. Hayes is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno and President of the Institute for Better Health, a 45-year old charitable organization dedicated to better mental and behavioral health. Links: Steven's website Hayes et al.: Evolving an idionomic approach to processes of change: Towards a unified personalized science of human improvement Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]
Should science stop worshiping statistical significance? (with Andrew Gelman)
ERead the full transcript here. If you enjoy our podcast, we have some exciting news – we’ve just launched a new membership called Clearer Thinking Plus. Members get this podcast completely ad-free, as well as two professional coaching sessions every month, access to our advanced cognitive assessment, and seven other exclusive perks. Clearer Thinking Plus is one of the most affordable ways to get access to a high-quality coach - whether you want to improve your habits, find more effective ways to work towards your goals, or get assistance making difficult decisions. It is also a more affordable and convenient way to get all the perks we offer. If you're not interested in coaching, you can still get ad-free access to this podcast and the other perks with our explorer plan. Access www.clearerthinking.org/plus to become a member today. We hope to see you there! What makes a piece of research “public property,” and what ethical obligations does that create for critics and authors alike? When a result feels wrong but you can’t locate the “smoking gun,” how should skepticism be calibrated without sliding into cynicism? How can a field avoid mistaking the absence of obvious errors for evidence that a claim is sound? What incentives cause entire literatures to form around fragile findings, and why do they persist for so long? Why do some researchers experience replication attempts as hostility, while others experience them as a gift? What norms would make constructive public criticism more common and less personally costly? How should we weigh a paper’s contribution when its analysis is flawed but its question is valuable? When is it rational to trust “the literature,” and when is the literature itself likely to be trapped in self-reinforcing error? What would it take for scientific communities to treat uncertainty as an honest output rather than a professional liability? Can a culture of open critique exist without amplifying bad-faith attacks or anti-science narratives? Andrew Gelman, Ph.D., is Higgins Professor of Statistics, Professor of Political Science, and director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University. Links: Andrew's Substack Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]