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. -- Show Notes at: ...
Jun 16, 2019•1 hr 24 min•Transcript available on Metacast You Are Not So Smart, live in New York, at The Bell House, in Brooklyn -- David McRaney and three experts and a bunch of YANSS fans got together for a deep dive into how we turn perception into reality, how that reality can differ from brain to brain, and what happens when we dangerously disagree on the truth. -- Video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=277HGgqrrUM -- Show Notes at: youarenotsosmart.com -- -- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart -- SPONSORS • The Great C...
Jun 03, 2019•2 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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: youarenotsosmart.com -- -- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart -- SPONSORS • The Great Courses Plus: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart • Squarespace: www.squarespace.com Offer code: SOSMART Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart...
May 20, 2019•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Live Show Tickets: www.eventbrite.com/e/you-are-not-s…ets-58457802862 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 m...
May 06, 2019•1 hr 29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Live Show Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/you-are-not-so-smart-with-david-mcraney-tickets-58457802862 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. - Show notes at: w...
Apr 21, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode we sit down with the director and producers of the documentary film, Behind the Curve, an exploration of motivated reasoning and conspiratorial thinking told through the lives of people who have formed a community around the belief that the Earth is flat. - Live Show Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/you-are-not-so-smart-with-david-mcraney-tickets-58457802862 - Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com - Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart SPONSORS • The Great ...
Apr 08, 2019•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 t...
Mar 25, 2019•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we sit down with vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit to discuss his new book, Bad Advice or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren't Your Best Source of Health Information. Offit has been fighting for years to promote vaccines, educate the public, and oppose the efforts of anti-vaxxers, and in his new book he offers advice for science consumers and communicators on how to deal with what he calls the opaque window of modern media which gives equal time to non-experts when it ...
Mar 11, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we sit down with psychologist Michele Gelfand and discuss her new book: Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. In the book, Gelfand presents her research into norms, and a fascinating new idea. It isn’t norms themselves that predict how cultures will react, evolve, innovate, and clash -- but how different cultures value those and sanction people who violate them. She categorizes all human cultures into two -- kinds, tight and loose -- and argues...
Feb 25, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast "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 processe...
Feb 10, 2019•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. - Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com - Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart...
Jan 28, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast we sit down with one of the original cyberpunks, the famed journalist, documentarian, media theorist, all-around technology superstar and weirdo, Douglas Rushkoff. MIT considers Rushkoff one of the "world's ten most influential thinkers," and in the episode we talk about his latest (and 20th) book, Team Human. The book is a bit of a manifesto in which he imagines a new counterculture that would revolt against the algorithms that are s...
Jan 14, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 2017, YANSS did three episodes about the backfire effect, and by far, those episodes were the most popular that year. Then, in 2018, part four was the most popular. 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 ...
Dec 31, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we sit down with negotiation expert Misha Glouberman who explains how to talk to people about things -- that is, how to avoid the pitfalls associated with debate when two or more people attempt to come to an agreement that will be mutually beneficial. - Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com - Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart SPONSORS • The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart • Squarespace: www.squarespace.com/sosmart Patreon: http://patreon.com...
Dec 17, 2018•2 hr 42 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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/youarenotsosmart SPONSORS • The Great Courses: w...
Dec 03, 2018•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest in this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast is Dave Levitan, a science journalist with a new book titled: Not a Scientist: how politicians mistake, misrepresent, and utterly mangle science. In the book, Levitan takes us through 12 repeating patterns that politicians fall into when they mistake, misrepresent, and mangle science. Some are nefarious and intentional, some are based on ignorance, and some are just part of the normal business of politicians managing their public imag...
Nov 19, 2018•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. --- • Show Notes: www.youarenotsosmart.com -- • The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart -- • Squarespace: www.squarespace.com CODE: SOSMART -- • ZipRecrui...
Nov 05, 2018•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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, pl...
Oct 21, 2018•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Oct 08, 2018•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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.youarenotsosma...
Sep 24, 2018•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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: SOSM...
Sep 10, 2018•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 a...
Aug 26, 2018•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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.patre...
Aug 16, 2018•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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, el...
Jul 30, 2018•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 -- -- Bec...
Jul 16, 2018•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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://...
Jul 02, 2018•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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....
Jun 18, 2018•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 cal...
Jun 04, 2018•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 o...
May 21, 2018•1 hr 28 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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://pa...
May 07, 2018•1 hr 24 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
