After almost 10 years of broadcasting and podcasting Thinking Clearly , a series of life events has caused Bob and Julia to say "adieu" to this labor of love. In this final episode they share their thoughts and feelings about what this project has meant to them, as they summarize and discuss some of the main themes that have emerged from their focus on critical thinking. It is their fondest hope that listeners will be inspired to use science and critical thinking to accurately reveal reality as ...
Jan 27, 2026•59 min•Ep. 114
Listen to the explanation at the beginning of this episode to understand why you will be hearing a replay of episode #86. The danger of disinformation to our social fabric, and to our democracy, are the focus of this discussion with philosopher, educator and author, Lee McIntyre. Lee holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and is currently a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. His latest book, "Disinformation-How to fight for Truth and Protect Democracy"...
Dec 23, 2025•59 min•Ep. 113
Bob and Julia interview each other and discuss a number of topics related to critical thinking that have been on their minds for years, including: What does our show's name ("Thinking Clearly") mean to you, and how does that name represent our show? Should beliefs and opinions meet the same standards as logical arguments? Is persuasion appropriate in critical thinking? For you, what are the most frustrating aspects of our current state of information and political environments?
Nov 25, 2025•59 min•Ep. 112
Our discussion with Kyle Falbo—Math and Computer Science Lecturer and Educational Technology Application Expert at Sonoma State University—focuses on how AI-enhanced teaching and learning tools (ChatGPT, Google NotebookLM, Khanmigo and others) are being explored and implemented at SSU. Our discussion also includes: the possible risks and benefits of this new technology, how AI-assisted tools can be used outside of educational institutions by life-long learners and critical thinkers, and how the ...
Oct 28, 2025•59 min•Ep. 111
Emotions are often viewed as interfering with clear, objective, evidence-based reasoning; in fact, "appeal to emotion" is considered to be a logical fallacy. However, our guest, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang—professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Southern California and author of: "Emotions, Learning, and the Brain"—argues that this narrow perspective overlooks a substantial body of research, and, far from being disruptive, emotions are integral to cognition, learn...
Sep 23, 2025•59 min•Ep. 110
Coauthors of the widely acclaimed book, They Say/I Say-The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing , explore how to craft persuasive arguments and communicate them effectively. Topics discussed include: the connection between thinking and writing; the nature of academic writing; the concept of "entering the conversation"; specific templates to improve the content of your writing, speaking, and thinking about issues that matter; the role of artificial intelligence in education; and a variety of oth...
Aug 26, 2025•59 min•Ep. 109
With a Bachelor's Degree in Biology, a Master's Degree in Philosophy, and experience as a teacher, our guest for this episode, Stephanie Simoes, developed Critikid , a website for kids, teens, teachers and others. Critikid offers instruction in: emotional intelligence (Learning to recognize, understand, and manage your emotions), safe and effective use of social media, principles of logic (including logical fallacies) and statistical and data literacy—by blending storytelling with interactive ac...
Jul 22, 2025•59 min•Ep. 108
James Fishkin, Stanford University Professor (and Director of the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab) discusses his extensive research and development focused on the process of "Deliberative Polling" and clarifies its relationship to Deliberative Democracy—a form of democracy in which deliberation is central to decision-making. Professor Fishkin suggests that institutionalizing deliberative processes could lead to reducing political polarization, while also increasing citizens' political involv...
Jun 24, 2025•59 min•Ep. 107
Patrick Hurley, Philosophy Professor Emeritus at University of San Diego and author of the widely acclaimed textbook: A Concise Introduction to Logic, joins us to discuss: the role of logic in acquiring knowledge and forming beliefs; the most important aspects of logic for critical thinkers to master; what can be done to encourage better practices in our thinking, communication and belief formation; using logic to navigate issues which relate to values; and a variety of other topics....
May 26, 2025•59 min•Ep. 106
Early in his career our guest, Bill Adair, worked as a journalist, author, and later founded the fact-checking organization Politifact . And in 2013 he accepted a position at Duke University as the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy, where he now teaches journalism in the Sanford School of Public Policy and directs the Duke Reporters' Lab. We discuss the negative effects of lying in politics, different types of lies, why people fall for lies, how fact-checking works...
Apr 22, 2025•59 min•Ep. 105
Untrue information is called misinformation, and intentionally spread misinformation is known as disinformation. When one uses disinformation to further one's own agenda, especially in the political realm, then the information has been weaponized . And the continued acceleration of weaponized information further erodes our trust in experts, media, and other institutional sources of accurate information, and severely damages the social trust required for a healthy democracy. The "code red" condit...
Mar 25, 2025•59 min•Ep. 104
This episode looks back to the previous episode: # 22- Worldview-The Elephant in the Room of Critical Thinking , and updates it from the perspective of 2025.
Feb 25, 2025•59 min•Ep. 103
This episode takes a deep dive into the concept of "worldview", based on the research and work done by Annick de Witt: researcher, writer, teacher, and founder of the organization Worldview Journeys. Topics discussed include: conceptualizing the idea of worldview; how our worldview might affect our beliefs and behaviors; examples of types of worldviews; methods of uncovering our own worldview and the worldviews of others we communicate with; how an awareness of worldviews can help us examine our...
Jan 28, 2025•59 min•Ep. 102
Even though they affect all of our lives, most of us know almost nothing about how policies are made, especially policy made by our state and federal governments. So, Julia and Bob learned a lot from this conversation with guest: Robert MacCoun, Law Professor at Stanford University. With a Bachelor's, Master's and PhD degree in Psychology, professor MacCoun has long worked at the nexus between law and psychology and specialized in bringing evidence-based policy making into policy decisions, incl...
Dec 25, 2024•59 min•Ep. 101
This discussion with philosopher, former tenured professor at Iowa State University, and now independent critical thinking educator and consultant, Kevin deLaplante, revisits the importance and benefits of critical thinking in today's post-truth world, reviews the basic skills involved with critical thinking and understanding of human cognitive vulnerabilities, while also introducing more recent ideas about human cognition like the Predictive Processing Model and Extended Mind Theory . The resou...
Nov 26, 2024•59 min•Ep. 100
Researcher, author and former Research Manager of the Stanford Internet Observatory, Renée DiResta, discusses how numerous internet-savvy individuals (influencers) are causing a profound shift in power and influence over our politics, beliefs and behavior, as outlined in her recent book: Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality . She also discusses: what can be done to mitigate the negative effects of this influence while harnessing the power of the internet to bring us together t...
Oct 21, 2024•59 min•Ep. 99
Professor Jacqueline Gottlieb, Principal Investigator at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute and former head of the Research Cluster on Curiosity at Columbia University's Center for Science and Society, brings her research experience and deep thinking about the human brain's higher cognitive functions—including decision making, memory, and attention—to discuss that wonderful and invaluable human capability that we call curiosity.
Sep 24, 2024•59 min•Ep. 98
Second time Thinking Clearly guest, Tania Israel, Professor of Counseling Psychology at UC Santa Barbara, guides us through how to overcome the toxic effects of consuming politicized news and social media in this current, highly polarized American environment and discusses how to more effectively communicate with people holding opposing views to ours. Professor Israel is the author of the recently published book: Facing the Fracture: How to Navigate the Challenges of Living in a Divided Nation ....
Aug 27, 2024•59 min•Ep. 97
Calling on his experience in evidence-based policy making, teaching a course at UC Berkeley called Sense and Sensibility and Science , and coauthoring the book Third Millennium Thinking-Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense, social scientist and law Professor at Stanford University, Robert MacCoun, discusses: how to avoid failure modes when making decisions; using practices, and tools of science to make better decisions in our every-day-lives; the value of probabilistic thinking; how to weave fa...
Jul 23, 2024•59 min•Ep. 96
Research and current theories about the nature of human consciousness are explored with guest Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. Topics include: how human consciousness can be thought of as controlled hallucination , the relationship of human consciousness to critical thinking, how thinking of the brain as a "prediction machine" affects how we form beliefs, and a number of other topics from Professor Seth's international best selling boo...
Jun 25, 2024•59 min•Ep. 95
Thinking Clearly hosts Bob and Julia review their definition of critical thinking, discuss how doing a show about critical thinking has changed them, and do several demonstrations of best practices (using the LAP-EFI method) for having productive, civil dialogues with people who have different views than yours.
May 28, 2024•57 min•Ep. 94
Dr. Seema Yasmin, professor at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, discusses: information disorder and its treatment, common techniques used for pushing lies, the use of narrative in communicating, the history and current state of journalism in America, how to best consume the news and mitigate the negative effects of social media, and a wide variety of other topics. Dr. Yasmin has investigated disease outbreaks for the CDC, worked as a CNN medic...
Apr 23, 2024•59 min•Ep. 93
In this fourth in a series of Thinking Clearly episodes—offered in the hope of fostering critical thinking and civil dialogue as we approach our 2024 Presidential Election in America—we are replaying core episodes with those themes. In this edition, you'll hear a previous episode that we recorded with Colonel (retired) Steve Gerras, who teaches critical thinking at the Army War College, sharing his advocacy and passion for critical thinking, and his experiences of teaching it to future military ...
Mar 26, 2024•59 min•Ep. 92
The development of artificial intelligence naturally leads us to deeply explore what intelligence, reasoning and knowledge are; the processes required to achieve them; and the implications that has for human thought, belief and decision making—all topics that have been deeply thought about by our guest, Leslie Valiant, Harvard University Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. Professor Valiant is the winner of the 2010 A.M. Turing Award and author of three books, including his re...
Feb 27, 2024•59 min•Ep. 91
In this third in a series of Thinking Clearly episodes—offered in the hope of fostering critical thinking and civil dialogue as we approach our 2024 presidential election in America—we are replaying core episodes with those themes. In this edition, you'll hear an episode that we recorded with Stephen Hawkins, director of research at More in Common—a non-profit organization focused on understanding the forces driving us apart and working to bring us together to tackle our shared challenges....
Jan 23, 2024•59 min•Ep. 90
As we head into the US 2024 Presidential Election with the knowledge that America is now as polarized as it has been since the civil war and that this amount of polarization drastically impairs our democratic process, we revisit the organization Braver Angels , which was founded "to bring Americans together to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic." From his experience as head of marketing, digital, and communications strategy for Braver Angels, Ciaran O'Connor, discu...
Dec 26, 2023•59 min•Ep. 89
Second time guest, Professor Melanie Trecek-King, updates us on what's new in teaching critical thinking and new on her website resources at: Thinking Is Power . She also discusses Inoculation Theory as a foundation for recent work being done to combat mis- and disinformation by the Mental Immunity Project
Nov 28, 2023•59 min•Ep. 88
In the spirit of promoting citizenship in our democracy, during this time as the 2024 presidential election begins to ramp up, every once in a while Julia and I will replay one of our previous episodes—an episode that reminds us of how important critical thinking is to our democracy. So, here's the first of those: Thinking Clearly episode #79: How critical thinking can make us better citizens and cure our ailing democracy-with guest Timothy Redmond .
Oct 24, 2023•59 min•Ep. 87
Disinformation and its danger to our social fabric and democracy are the focus of this discussion with philosopher, educator and author, Lee McIntyre. Lee holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and is currently a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. His latest book: Disinformation-How to fight for Truth and Protect Democracy is hot off the press.
Sep 26, 2023•59 min•Ep. 86
Jonathan Howard, MD joins hosts Bob and Julia to discuss the role of critical thinking in health and medicine and how critical thinking is especially important in crisis management such as the COVID pandemic. Dr. Howard is currently an associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at New York University, Langone Health and the Chief of Neurology at Bellevue Hospital. And two of his books, Cognitive Errors and Diagnostic Mistakes and We Want Them Infected: How the failed quest for herd immunity...
Aug 22, 2023•59 min•Ep. 85
