You Are Not So Smart

On this episode, we welcome journalist Kate Leaver to talk about her new book The Friendship Cure in which she explores the crippling, damaging, life-threatening impact of loneliness and the severe mental health impacts of living a life disconnected from a support network of close contacts. But...there is a cure...learning how to connect with others and curate better friendships.In the interview we talk about loneliness, how to make friends, the difference between male and female friendship, platonic friendships, friends with benefits and lots, lots, more.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we sit down with psychologist Julia Shaw, an expert in memory and criminal psychology, to discuss her new book - Evil. In the book, she makes a case for something she calls "evil empathy," seeing people who do heinous things as fellow human beings instead of as monsters. According to Shaw, othering criminals by categorizing them as a separate kind of human allows us to put them out of our minds and disappear them to institutions or prisons. The result is we become less-able to prevent the sort of behavior the harms others from happening again and again. In fact, she says "there's no such thing as evil," and sees the term as an antiquated, magical label that dehumanizes others, preventing us from accumulating the sort of scientific evidence that could lead to a better society.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSponsors:-- • The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart -- • Squarespace: www.squarespace.com CODE: SOSMART-- • One Fix: www.getonefix.com CODE: YANSS||| Show Notes at YouAreNotSoSmart.com |||Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

One of the most effective ways to change people’s minds is to put your argument into a narrative format, a story, but not just any story. The most persuasive narratives are those that transport us. Once departed from normal reality into the imagined world of the story we become highly susceptible to belief and attitude change.In this episode, you’ll learn from psychologist Melanie C. Greene the four secrets to creating the most persuasive narratives possible.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSponsors:-- • The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart -- • Squarespace: www.squarespace.com CODE: SOSMART-- • One Fix: www.getonefix.com CODE: YANSS||| Show Notes at YouAreNotSoSmart.com |||Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode we explore prevalence induced concept change. In a nutshell, when we set out to change the world by reducing examples of something we have deemed problematic, and we succeed, a host of psychological phenomena can mask our progress and make those problems seem intractable -- as if we are only treading water when, in fact, we’ve created the change we set out to make.Sponsors:-- • The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart -- • Squarespace: www.squarespace.com CODE: SOSMART-- • ZipRecruiter: www.ziprecruiter.com/notsosmart||| Show Notes at YouAreNotSoSmart.com |||Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist at University College London, explains our' innate optimism bias.When the brain estimates the outcome of future events, it tends to reduce the probability of negative outcomes for itself, but not so much for other people. In other words, if you are a smoker, everyone else is going to get cancer. The odds of success for a new restaurant change depending on who starts that venture, you or someone else. Sharot explains why and details how we can use our knowledge of this mental quirk to our advantage both personally and institutionally.More about Tali Sharot and her book The Optimism Bias here: theoptimismbias.blogspot.com/Sponsors:-- • The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart ---- • Squarespace: www.squarespace.com CODE: SOSMART-- • ZipRecruiter: www.ziprecruiter.com/notsosmart||| Show Notes at YouAreNotSoSmart.com |||Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode we sit down with psychology legend Richard Petty to discuss the Elaboration Likelihood Model, a theory he developed with psychologist John Cacioppo in the 1980s that unified the study of attitude change and persuasion and has since become one of the most robust models for explaining how and why some messages change people’s minds, some don’t, and what makes some stick and others fade in influence over time.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we welcome Lilliana Mason on the program to discuss her new book, Uncivil Agreement, which focuses on the idea: “Our conflicts are over who we think we are, rather than reasoned differences of opinion.”Personally, I feel like this is just about the most important thing the social sciences are studying right now, and I think Mason is one of the its most brilliant scientists - I promise, the insights you are about to hear will change the way you think about politics, tweeting, elections, and arguing with people on the other side of just about everything.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is it true that all it takes to be an expert is 10,000 hours of practice? What about professional athletes? Do different people get more out of practice than others, and if so, is it nature or nurture? In this episode we ask all these things of David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene, who explains how practice affects the brain and whether or not greatness comes naturally or after lots and lots of effort.-- Show Notes at: youarenotsosmart.com ---- This episode's notes: goo.gl/hDjTVJ ---- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart --SPONSORS• The Great Courses Plus: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: www.squarespace.com Offer code: SOSMART• ZipRecruiter: www.ziprecruiter.com/notsomartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The marshmallow test is one of the most well-known studies in all of psychology, but a new replication suggests we've been learning the wrong lesson from its findings for decades.-- Show Notes at: http://youarenotsosmart.com ---- This episode's notes: https://goo.gl/hDjTVJ ---- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart -- SPONSORS• The Great Courses Plus: https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: https://www.squarespace.com Offer code: SOSMART• Lightstream: http://lightstream.com/notsosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In medical school they tell you half of what you are about to learn won't be true when you graduate - they just don't know which half. In every field of knowledge, half of what is true today will overturned, replaced, or refined at some point, and it turns out that we actually know when that will be for many things. In this episode, listen as author and scientist Sam Arbesman explains how understanding the half life of facts can lead to better lives, institutions, and, of course, better science.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS- • - Squarespace: www.squarespace.com || Code: sosmart- • - The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart- • - Zip Recruiter: www.ziprecruiter.com/notsosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Confirmation bias is our tendency to seek evidence that supports our beliefs and confirms our assumptions when we could just as well seek disconfirmation of those beliefs and assumptions instead.This is such a prevalent feature of human cognition, that until recently a second bias has been hidden in plain sight. Our past beliefs and future desires usually match up. Desirability is often twisted into confirmation like a single psychological braid - but recent research suggests that something called desirability bias may be just as prevalent in our thinking. When future desires and past beliefs are incongruent, desire wins out.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What makes you happy? As in, what generates happiness inside the squishy bits that reside inside your skull? That's what author and neuroscientist Dean Burnett set out to answer in his new book, Happy Brain, which explores both the environmental and situational factors that lead to and away from happiness, and the neurological underpinnings of joy, bliss, comfort, love, and connection. In the episode you'll hear all that and more as we talk about what we know so far about the biological nature of happiness itself.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we sit down with author Will Storr to talk about his new book -- Selfie: How We Became so Self-Obsessed, and What it is Doing to Us.The book explores what he calls “the age of perfectionism” -- our modern struggle to meet newly emerging ideals and standards that tell us we are falling short of the person we ought to be. As he says in the book, "Perfectionism is the idea that kills," and you’ll hear him explain what he means by that in the interview.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Despite their relative invisibility, a norm, even a dying one, can sometimes be harnessed and wielded like a weapon by conjuring up old fears from a bygone era. It’s a great way to slow down social change if you fear that change. When a social change threatens your ideology, fear is the simplest, easiest way to keep more minds from changing.In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we explore how the separate spheres ideology is still affecting us today, and how some people are using it to scare people into voting down anti-discrimination legislation.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When faced with an inescapable and unwanted situation, we often rationalize our predicament so as to make it seem less awful and more bearable, but what if that situation is a new law or a new administration? The latest research suggests that groups, nations, and cultures sometimes rationalize the new normal in much the same way, altering public opinion on a large scale.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When was the last time you changed your mind? Are you sure?In this episode we explore new research that suggests for the majority of the mind change we experience, after we update our priors, we delete what we used to believe and then simply forget that we ever thought otherwise.In the show, psychologists Michael Wolfe and Todd Williams, take us though their new research which suggests that because brains so value consistency, and are so determined to avoid the threat of decoherence, we hide the evidence of our belief change. That way, the story we tell ourselves about who we are can remain more or less heroic, with a stable, steadfast protagonist whose convictions rarely waver -- or, at least, they don’t waver as much as those of shifty, flip-flopping politicians.This can lead to a skewed perception of the world, one that leads to the assumption that mind change is rare and difficult-to-come-by. And that can lead to our avoiding information that might expand our understanding of the world, because we assume it will have no impact.The truth, say Wolfe and Williams, is that mind change is so prevalent and constant, that the more you expose yourself to counterevidence, the more your worldview will erode, replaced by a better, more accurate one -- it's just that you probably won't realize it until you look back at old posts on social media and cringe.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Little did the champions of the Enlightenment know that once we had access to all the facts…well, reason and rationality wouldn’t just immediately wash across the land in a giant wave of enlightenment thinking. While that may be happening in some ways, the new media ecosystem has also unshackled some of our deepest psychological tendencies, things that enlightenment thinkers didn’t know about, weren’t worried about, or couldn’t have predicted. Many of which we’ve discussed in previous episodes like confirmation bias, selective skepticism, filter bubbles and so on. These things have always been with us, but modern technology has provided them with the perfect environment to flourish.In this episode, we explore another such invasive psychological species called active information avoidance, the act of keeping our senses away from information that might be useful, that we know is out there, that would cost us nothing to obtain, but that we’d still rather not learn. From choosing not to open open bills, visit the doctor, check your bank account, or read the nutrition information on the back of that box of Girl Scout Cookies, we each choose to remain ignorant when we’d rather not feel the anguish of illumination, but that same tendency can also cause great harm both to individuals and whole cultures when it spreads through politics, science, markets, and medicine. In this show, you’ll learn how.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The evidence is clear that humans value being good members of their tribes much more than they value being correct. We will choose to be wrong if it keeps us in good standing with our peers.In this episode, we explore how that affects politics and science communication, and how it is driving our growing partisan divide.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Do we have the power to change the outcome of history? Is progress inevitable? Is it natural? Are we headed somewhere definite, or is change just chaos that seems organized in hindsight? In this episode we explore these questions with University of Chicago historian Ada Palmer.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• Squarespace: www.squarespace.com - offer code SOSMART• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Last year on this show, we did three episodes about the backfire effect, and by far, those episodes were the most popular we’ve ever done.In fact, the famous web comic The Oatmeal turned them into a sort of special feature, and that comic of those episodes was shared on Facebook a gazillion times, which lead to a stories about the comic in popular media, and then more people listened to the shows, on and on it went. You can go see it at The Oatmeal right now at the top of their page. It’s titled, you are not going to believe what I am about to tell you.The popularity of the backfire effect extends into academia. The original paper has been cited hundreds of times, and there have been more than 300 articles written about it since it first came out.The backfire effect has his special allure to it, because, on the surface, it seems to explain something we’ve all experienced -- when we argue with people who believe differently than us, who see the world through a different ideological lens -- they often resist our views, refuse to accept our way of seeing things, and it often seems like we do more harm than good, because they walk away seemingly more entrenched in their beliefs than before the argument began.But…since those shows last year, researchers have produced a series new studies into the backfire effect that complicate things. Yes, we are observing something here, and yes we are calling it the backfire effect, but everything is not exactly as it seems, and so I thought we should invite these new researchers on the show and add a fourth episode to the backfire effect series based on what they’ve found. And this is that episode.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: Free month at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: Use the offer code SOSMART at www.squarespace.com for 10 percent off your first purchase.• BeachBody on Demand: Get a free trial membership, access to the entire platform, when you text SMART to 303030.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our guest for this episode, Will Storr, wrote a book called The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science. In that book, Storr spends time with Holocaust deniers, young Earth creationists, people who believe they’ve lived past lives as famous figures, people who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens, people who stake their lives on the power of homeopathy, and many more – people who believe things that most of us do not. Storr explains in the book that after spending so much time with these people it started to become clear to him that it all goes back to that model of reality we all are forced to generate and then interact with. We are all forced to believe what that model tells us, and it is no different for people who are convinced that dinosaurs and human beings used to live together, or that you can be cured of an illness by an incantation delivered over the telephone. For some people, that lines up with their models of reality in a way that’s good enough. It’s a best guess.Storr proposes you try this thought experiment. First, answer this question: Are you right about everything you believe? Now, if you are like most people, the answer is no. Of course not. As he says, that would mean you are a godlike and perfect human being. You’ve been wrong enough times to know it can’t be true. You are wrong about some things, maybe many things. That leads to a second question – what are you are wrong about? Storr says when he asked himself this second question, he started listing all the things he believed and checked them off one at a time as being true, he couldn’t think of anything about which he was wrong.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of the YANSS Podcast, we sit down with legendary science historian James Burke.For much of his career, Burke has been creating documentaries and writing books aimed at helping us to make better sense of the enormous amount of information that he predicted would one day be at our fingertips.In Connections, he offered an “alternate view of history” in which great insights took place because of anomalies and mistakes, because people were pursuing one thing, but it lead somewhere surprising or was combined with some other object or idea they could never have imagined by themselves. Innovation took place in the spaces between disciplines, when people outside of intellectual and professional silos, unrestrained by categorical and linear views, synthesized the work of people still trapped in those institutions, who, because of those institutions, had no idea what each other was up to and therefore couldn’t predict the trajectory of even their own disciplines, much less history itself.In The Day the Universe Changed, Burke explored the sequential impact of discovery, innovation, and invention on how people defined reality itself. “You are what we know,” he wrote “and when the body of knowledge changes, so do we.” In this view of change, knowledge is invented as much as it is discovered, and new ideas “nibble at the edges” of common knowledge until values considered permanent and fixed fade into antiquity just like any other obsolete tool. Burke said that our system of knowledge and discovery has never been able, until recently, to handle more than one or two ways of seeing things at a time. In response we have long demanded conformity with the dominant worldview or with similarly homogenous ideological binaries.My favorite line from the book has to do with imagining a group of scientists who live in a society that believes the universe is made of omelettes and goes about designing instruments to detect traces of interstellar egg residue. When they observe evidence of galaxies and black holes, to them it all just seems like noise. Their model of nature cannot yet accommodate what they are seeing, so they don’t see it. “All that can accurately be said about a man who thinks he is a poached egg,” joked Burke, “is that he is in the minority.”- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: Free month at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: Use the offer code SOSMART at www.squarespace.com for 10 percent off your first purchase.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode we interview Dean Burnett, author of "Idiot Brain: What Your Brain is Really Up To." Burnett's book is a guide to the neuroscience behind the things that our amazing brains do poorly.In the interview we discuss motion sickness, the pain of breakups, why criticisms are more powerful than compliments, the imposter syndrome, anti-intellectualism, irrational fears, and more. Burnett also explains how the brain is kinda sorta like a computer, but a really bad one that messes with your files, rewrites your documents, and edits your photos when you aren't around.Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist who lectures at Cardiff University and writes about brain stuff over at his blog, Brain Flapping hosted by The Guardian.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: Free month at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: Use the offer code SOSMART at www.squarespace.com for 10 percent off your first purchase.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? For our guest in this episode, cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman, that's his day job.Hoffman has developed a new theory of consciousness that, should it prove true, may rearrange our understanding of reality itself.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: Free month at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: Use the offer code SOSMART at www.squarespace.com for 10 percent off your first purchase.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We've transferred our biases to artificial intelligence, and now those machine minds are creating the futures they predict. But there's a way to stop it.In this episode we explore how machine learning is biased, sexist, racist, and prejudiced all around, and we meet the people who can explain why, and are going to try and fix it.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this divisive and polarized era how do you bridge the political divide between left and right? How do you persuade the people on the other side to see things your way?New research by sociologist Robb Willer and psychologist Matthew Feinberg suggests that the answer is in learning how to cross something they call the empathy gap.When we produce arguments, we do so from within our own moral framework and in the language of our moral values. Those values rest on top of a set of psychological tendencies influenced by our genetic predispositions and shaped by our cultural exposure that blind us to alternate viewpoints. Because of this, we find it very difficult to construct an argument with the same facts, but framed in a different morality. Willer’s work suggests that if we did that, we would find it a much more successful route to persuading people we usually think of as unreachable.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: Free month at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart* Squarespace: 10 percent off at www.squarespace.com with the offer code SOSMARTPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

One of the most effective ways to change people’s minds is to put your argument into a narrative format, a story, but not just any story. The most persuasive narratives are those that transport us. Once departed from normal reality into the imagined world of the story we become highly susceptible to belief and attitude change.In this episode, you’ll learn from psychologist Melanie C. Greene the four secrets to creating the most persuasive narratives possible.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: Free month at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Casper Mattresses: $50 off at www.Casper.com/SOSMART offer code: SOMARTPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For computer scientist Chenhao Tan and his team, the internet community called Change My View offered something amazing, a ready-made natural experiment that had been running for years.All they had to do was feed it into the programs they had designed to understand the back-and-forth between human beings and then analyze the patterns the emerged. When they did that, they discovered two things: what kind of arguments are most likely to change people’s minds, and what kinds of minds are most likely to be changed.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you wanted to build a team in such a way that you maximized its overall intelligence, how would you do it? Would you stack it with high-IQ brainiacs? Would you populate it with natural leaders? Would you find experts on a wide range of topics? Well, those all sound like great ideas, but the latest research into collective intelligence suggests that none of them would work.To create a team that is collectively intelligent, you likely need to focus on three specific factors that psychologist Christopher Chabris and his colleagues recently identified in their research, and in this episode of the You Are Not So Smart podcast, he will tell you all about them and why they seem to matter more than anything else.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: Free month at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Bombfell: $25 off at www.bombfell.com/yanssPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you could compare the person you were before you became sleep deprived to the person after, you’d find you’ve definitely become...lesser than. When it comes to sleep deprivation, you can’t trust yourself to know just how much it is affecting you. You feel fine, maybe a bit drowsy, but your body is stressed in ways that diminish your health and slow your mind. In this episode, we sit down with two researchers whose latest work suggests sleep deprivation also affects how you see other people. In tests of implicit bias, negative associations with certain religious and cultural categories emerged after people started falling behind on rest.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: Free month at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: 10 percent off with the code SOSMARTPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What effect does Google have on your brain? Here's an even weirder question: what effect does knowing that you have access to Google have on your brain?In this episode we explore what happens when a human mind becomes aware that it can instantly, on-command, at any time, search for the answer to any question, and then, most of time, find it.According to researcher Matthew Fisher, one of the strange side effects is an inflated sense of internal knowledge. In other words, as we use search engines, over time we grow to mistakenly believe we know more than we actually do even when we no longer have access to the internet.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: Free month at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Casper: $50 off at www.casper.com/sosmart and use offer codesosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The facts don't speak for themselves. Someone always speaks for them. From the opioid crisis to the widespread use of lobotomies to quiet problem patients, celebrity scientists and charismatic doctors have made tremendous mistakes, but thanks to their fame, they escaped the corrective mechanisms of science itself. Science always corrects the problem, but before it does, many people can be harmed, and society can suffer. In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Paul Offit to discuss how we can get better at catching those mistakes before they happen and mitigating the harm once Pandora's Lab has been opened.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Blue Apron: www.blueapron.com/yanssPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In late 2014 and early 2015, the city of Starkville, Mississippi, passed an anti-discrimination measure that lead to a series of public debates about an issue that people there had never discussed openly.In this episode, we spend time in Starkville exploring the value of argumentation and debate in the process of change, progress, and understanding our basic humanity.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: www.squarespace.com/sosmart• ZipRecruiter: www.ziprecruiter.com/notsosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, psychologist Per Espen Stoknes discusses his book: What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming.Stoknes has developed a strategy for science communicators who find themselves confronted with climate change deniers who aren’t swayed by facts and charts. His book presents a series of psychology-based steps designed to painlessly change people’s minds and avoid the common mistakes scientists tend to make when explaining climate change to laypeople.Sponsors:-- The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart --||| Show Notes at YouAreNotSoSmart.com |||Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist at University College London, explains our' innate optimism bias. When the brain estimates the outcome of future events, it tends to reduce the probability of negative outcomes for itself, but not so much for other people. In other words, if you are a smoker, everyone else is going to get cancer. The odds of success for a new restaurant change depending on who starts that venture, you or someone else. Sharot explains why and details how we can use our knowledge of this mental quirk to our advantage both personally and institutionally.More about Tali Sharot and her book The Optimism Bias here: http://theoptimismbias.blogspot.com/Sponsors:-- • The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart ---- • Dignity Health: www.dignityhealth.org/taketwomins ---- • Blue Apron: www.blueapron.com/yanss --||| Show Notes at YouAreNotSoSmart.com |||Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We are each born labeled. In moments of ambiguity, those labels can change the way people make decisions about us. As a cognitive process, it is invisible, involuntary, and unconscious – and that’s why psychology is working so hard to understand it.Our guest for this episode is Adam Alter, a psychologist who studies marketing and communication, and his New York Times bestselling book is titled Drunk Tank Pink after the color used to paint the walls of police holding cells after research suggested it lessened the urge to fight.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Dignity Health: www.dignityhealth.org/taketwomins• ZipRecruiter: www.ziprecruiter.com/notsosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Confirmation bias is our tendency to seek evidence that supports our beliefs and confirms our assumptions when we could just as well seek disconfirmation of those beliefs and assumptions instead.This is such a prevalent feature of human cognition, that until recently a second bias has been hidden in plain sight. Our past beliefs and future desires usually match up. Desirability is often twisted into confirmation like a single psychological braid - but recent research suggests that something called desirability bias may be just as prevalent in our thinking. When future desires and past beliefs are incongruent, desire wins out.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is psychology too WEIRD? That's what this episode's guest, psychologist Steven J. Heine suggested when he and his colleagues published a paper suggesting that psychology wasn't the study of the human mind, but the study of one kind of human mind, the sort generated by the kinds of brains that happen to be conveniently located near the places where research is usually conducted - North American college undergraduates. They called them the WEIRDest people in the world, short for Western, Education, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic - the kind of people who make up less than 15 percent of the world's population. In this episode, you'll learn why it took so long to figure out it was studying outliers, and what it means for the future of psychology.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: www.squarespace.com | Offer Code = sosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In psychology, they call it naive realism, the tendency to believe that the other side is wrong because they are misinformed, that if they knew what you knew, they would change their minds to match yours.According to Lee Ross, co-author of the new book, The Wisest One in the Room, this is the default position most humans take when processing a political opinion. When confronted with people who disagree, you tend to assume there must be a rational explanation. What we don't think, however, is maybe WE are the ones who are wrong. We never go into the debate hoping to be enlightened, only to crush our opponents.Listen in this episode as legendary psychologist Lee Ross explains how to identify, avoid, and combat this most pernicious of cognitive mistakes.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Casper www.casper.com/sosmart - offer code is SOSMARTPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"Science is wrong about everything, but you can trust it more than anything."That's the assertion of psychologist Brian Nosek, director of the Center for Open Science, who is working to correct what he sees as the temporarily wayward path of psychology. Currently, psychology is facing what some are calling a replication crisis. Much of the most headline-producing research in the last 20 years isn't standing up to attempts to reproduce its findings. Nosek wants to clean up the processes that have lead to this situation, and in this episode, you'll learn how.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: www.squarespace.com | Offer Code = sosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In medical school they tell you half of what you are about to learn won't be true when you graduate - they just don't know which half. In every field of knowledge, half of what is true today will overturned, replaced, or refined at some point, and it turns out that we actually know when that will be for many things. In this episode, listen as author and scientist Sam Arbesman explains how understanding the half life of facts can lead to better lives, institutions, and, of course, better science.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS- • - The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart- • - Zip Recruiter: www.ziprecruiter.com/notsosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The cyberpunks, the Founding Fathers, 19th Century philosophers, and the Enlightenment thinkers - they all looked forward to the world in which we now live, a multimedia psychedelic freakout in which information is free, decentralized, democratized, and easy to access. What they didn't count on though, was that we would choose to keep a whole lot of it out of our heads.In this episode, we explore a psychological phenomenon called active information avoidance, the act of keeping our senses away from information that might be useful, and that we know is out there, but that we'd rather not learn.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: www.squarespace.com | Offer Code = sosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Before we had names for them or a science to study them, the people who could claim the most expertise on biases, fallacies, heuristics and all the other quirks of human reasoning and perception were scam artists, con artists, and magicians. On this episode, magician and scam expert Brian Brushwood explains why people fall for scams of all sizes, how to avoid them, and why most magicians can spot a fraudster a mile away. Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Blue Apron: www.casper.com/sosmart - offer code is SOSMARTPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Do we have the power to change the outcome of history? Is progress inevitable? Is it natural? Are we headed somewhere definite, or is change just chaos that seems organized in hindsight? In this episode we explore these questions with University of Chicago historian Ada Palmer.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• Playing with Science: www.startalkradio.net/show/welcome-playing-science• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Blue Apron: www.blueapron.com/yanssPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If dumping evidence into people’s laps often just makes their beliefs stronger, would we just be better off trying some other tactic, or does the truth ever win? Do people ever come around, or are we causing more harm than good by leaning on facts instead of some other technique?In this episode we learn from two scientists how to combat the backfire effect. One used an ingenious research method to identify the breaking point at which people stop resisting and begin accepting the fact that they might be wrong. The other literally wrote the instruction manual for avoiding the backfire effect and debunking myths using the latest psychological research into effective persuasive techniques.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: www.squarespace.com | Offer Code = sosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you try to correct someone who you know is wrong, you run the risk of alarming their brains to a sort-of existential, epistemic threat, and if you do that, when that person expends effortful thinking to escape, that effort can strengthen their beliefs instead of weakening them.In this episode you'll hear from three experts who explain why trying to correct misinformation can end up causing more harm than good.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: www.squarespace.com | Offer Code = sosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We don’t treat all of our beliefs the same. The research shows that when a strong-yet-erroneous, belief is challenged, yes, you might experience some temporary weakening of your convictions, some softening of your certainty, but most people rebound from that and not only reassert their original belief at its original strength, but go beyond that and dig in their heels, deepening their resolve over the long run.Psychologists call this the backfire effect, and this episode is the first of three shows exploring this well-documented and much-studied psychological phenomenon, one that you’ve likely encountered quite a bit lately.In this episode, we explore its neurological underpinning as two neuroscientists at the University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute explain how their latest research sheds new light on how the brain reacts when its deepest beliefs are challenged.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Casper Mattresses: www.casper.com/sosmart | Offer Code = sosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Even when the prison doors are left wide open, we sometimes refuse to attempt escape. Why is that? In this rebroadcast of one of our most popular episodes we learn all about the strange phenomenon of learned helplessness and how it keeps people in bad jobs, poor health, terrible relationships, and awful circumstances despite how easy it might be to escape any one of those scenarios with just one more effort. You'll learn how to defeat this psychological trap with advice from psychologists Jennifer Welbourne, who studies attributional styles in the workplace, and Kym Bennett who studies the effects of pessimism on health.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmartSPONSORS• Exo Protein: exoprotein.com/sosmart• The Great Courses Plus: thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: squarespace.com/ Offer Code = sosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? For our guest in this episode, cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman, that's his day job.Hoffman has developed a new theory of consciousness that, should it prove true, may rearrange our understanding of reality itself.Listen as Hoffman talks about the bicameral mind, the umwelt, and the hard problem of consciousness in this mindbending episode about how we make sense of our world, our existence, and ourselves.- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.comSPONSORS• Exo Protein: exoprotein.com/sosmart• The Great Courses Plus: thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: squarespace.com/ Offer Code = sosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Legendary science historian James Burke returns to explain his newest project, a Connections app that will allow anyone to "think connectively" about the webs of knowledge available on Wikipedia.Burke predicted back in 1978 that we’d one day need better tools than just search alone if we were to avoid the pitfalls of siloed information and confirmation bias, and this month he launched a Kickstarter campaign to help create just such a tool - an app that searches connectivity and produces something Google and social media often don’t - surprises, anomalies, unexpected results, and connections, in the same style as his documentary series, books, and other projects. In the interview, Burke shares his latest insights on change, technology, the future, social media, models of reality, and more.To support the Kickstarter campaign for the Connections app, here are some links:• http://jbconnectionsapp.com• http://knowledgediscoveries.com• http://kck.st/2eIg21R- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.comSPONSORS• Exo Protein: http://exoprotein.com/sosmart• The Great Courses Plus: http://thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart• Squarespace: http://squarespace.com/ Offer Code = sosmartPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.