In this episode we sit down with Jeremy Utley of the Stanford d.school to discuss his new book, Ideaflow, which is all about how to create a practice for producing and trading ideas in massive quantities – whether in an organization or as an individual entrepreneur or content-creator – along with a system for sorting the garbage from the gold. We discuss, among many other things, why it is important to focus on input more than output, how to stop obsessing over quality while generating quantity,...
Nov 13, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Here’s a special bonus episode featuring my recent conversation with Tim Harford, author, economic journalist, and host of the Cautionary Tales podcast. We discussed a story from my new book, How Minds Change, about a conspiracy theorist who was certain 9/11 was an inside job until he actually visited Ground Zero to meet architects, engineers and the relatives of the dead. Tim and I reflect on what he can teach us about those who hold strong beliefs even in the face of damning, contrary evidence...
Oct 28, 2022•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast I recently sat down for a live event and Q&A with the great Annie Duke to discuss her new book, Quit: The power of knowing when to walk away. This episode is the audio from that event. Quit is all about how to develop a very particular skill: how to train your brain to make it easier to know which goals and plans are worth sticking to and which are not. - Toronto Live Event: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/how-minds-change-a-conversation-lab-with-david-mcraney-misha-glouberman-tickets-410047431907 -...
Oct 16, 2022•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode we sit down with NYU psychologist Jay Van Bavel who is very good at Twitter. His feed is always overflowing with the absolute latest and greatest research from psychology with links to papers as they come out – on many of the topics we so often explore on this podcast – and in this episode we discuss ten of those tweets and the research he’s shared. Toronto Live Event: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/how-minds-change-a-conversation-lab-with-david-mcraney-misha-glouberman-tickets-4100...
Oct 03, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode we sit down with Douglas Rushkoff , a media scholar, journalist, and professor of digital economics who has a new fire in his belly when it comes to the world of billionaire preppers, which comes across in his new book Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires – inspired by his invitation to consult a group of the world’s richest people on how to spend their money now to survive an apocalypse they fear is coming within their lifetimes. Live Event at Cavea...
Sep 18, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode we welcome back author Will Storr whose new book, The Status Game , feels like required reading for anyone confused, curious, or worried about how politics, cults, conspiracy theories communities, social media, religious fundamentalism, polarization, and extremism are affecting us - everywhere, on and offline, across cultures, and across the world. What is The Status Game? It’s our primate propensity to perpetually pursue points that will provide a higher level of regard among th...
Sep 04, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast When we talk about conspiracy theories we tend to focus on what people believe instead of why, and, more importantly, why they believe those things and not other things. In this episode, we sit down with two psychologists working to change that, and in addition, change the term itself from conspiracy theory to conspiracy narrative, which more accurately describes what makes any one conspiracy appealing enough to form a community around it and in rare cases result in collective action. How Minds ...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest in this episode is the behavioral scientist Jon Levy who wrote a book titled You’re Invited, the Art and Science of Cultivating influence. The book details how Jon was able to convince groups of Nobel Laureates, Olympians, celebrities, Fortune 500 executives, and even a princess to not only give him advice, but cook him dinner, wash his dishes, sweep his floors, and then thank him for the experience. How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome Contest: https://sites.prh.c...
Aug 07, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode we sit down with Jennifer Shahade, a two-time U.S. Women’s Chess Champion, author, speaker, and professional poker player whose new book, Chess Queens, is the true story of the greatest female players of all time interwoven with her own experiences as a chess champion. How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome Contest: https://sites.prh.com/hmc-giveaway Show Notes: www.youarenotsosmart.com Newsletter: https://davidmcraney.substack.com Jennifer Shahade’s Website: h...
Jul 25, 2022•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast New research suggests people on opposite sides of wedge issues want to listen to each other. We are each eager to hear differing opinions and understand opposing views, and when we do it can change our minds (at least a little), but only when we aren't triggered by the psychological phenomenon of reactance - one of several ideas we explore in this episode. How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome Newsletter: https://davidmcraney.substack.com/subscribe Show Notes: www.youarenotso...
Jul 10, 2022•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode I read an excerpt from my new book How Minds Change, a portion concerning how to change minds about abortion rights, and Chris Clearfield interviews me about that very same book - which is out now and available everywhere. Link to learn more about How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome Link to learn more about Deep Canvassing: www.newconvo.org Link to my new newsletter: davidmcraney.substack.com/subscribe Link to Chris Clearfield’s handout: www.chrisclearfield....
Jun 27, 2022•2 hr 44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Terry Crews, actor, athlete, artist, President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho, star of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, host of America’s Got Talent - that Terry Crews joins us to discuss his new book, Tough. In the book, Terry shares the raw story of his quest to find the true meaning of toughness and in so doing fundamentally change his concept of himself by uprooting a deeply ingrained toxic masculinity and finally confronting his insecurities, painful memories, and limiting beliefs. Previous Episod...
Jun 13, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Link to preorder How Minds Change and get your preorder bonuses: https://www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome Deliberation. Debate. Conversation. Though it can feel like that’s what we are doing online as we trade arguments back and forth, most of the places where we currently gather make it much easier to produce arguments in isolation rather than evaluate them together in groups. The latest research suggests we will need much more of the latter if we hope to create a new, modern, functionin...
May 29, 2022•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Link to preorder How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome Our guest in this episode is A.J. Jacobs, the the four-time New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically, Thanks A Thousand, It’s All Relative, and The Know It All. His new book, The Puzzler, is a fun, weird, refreshingly scientific book all about the human brain's fascination with puzzles. Seriously, there’s all sorts of explorations in the book about neural pathways, behavioral routines, how we lea...
May 16, 2022•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast How to manage procrastination according to Margaret Atwood, how to work around your first-instinct fallacy, the upsides of imposter syndrome, the best way to avoid falling prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect, how to avoid thinking like a preacher, prosecutor, or politician so you can think like a scientist instead – and that’s just the beginning of the conversation in this episode with psychologist, podcast host, and author Adam Grant. In the show, we discuss both his new book – Think Again: The P...
May 01, 2022•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we sit down with neurologist Robert Burton, author of On Being Certain, a book that fundamentally changed the way I think about what a belief actually is. That’s because the book posits conclusions are not conscious choices, and certainty is not even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing,” as he puts it, are "sensations that feel like thoughts, but arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that function independently of reason." Patreon: http://patreon.com/...
Apr 17, 2022•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Feeling stuck? Can't build momentum to escape all the loops keeping you from moving forward? Our guest in this episode is professor, author, therapist, and speaker Britt Frank, a trauma specialist who treats people with a unique and powerful set of techniques and approaches which, taken together, helps clients to get out of the feeling of being STUCK. In the show, we nerd out with Britt about how hard it is to be a person, and though this interview is supposed to be about her new book - "The Sci...
Apr 03, 2022•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Jacob Goldstein , the longtime host of NPR’s Planet Money , talks about his new podcast about technology and business called What’s Your Problem? with Jacob Goldstein . Goldstein spent more than a decade as co-host of Planet Money reporting stories that make economic journalism approachable. In his new weekly show, What’s Your Problem? , Goldstein’s curiosity leads him into conversations with top global entrepreneurs and engineers about the cutting-edge problems they’re trying t...
Mar 27, 2022•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast NO REGRETS - Our guest in this episode of the You Are Not So Smart podcast is Daniel Pink, the five-time NYT Bestselling author of When and To Sell is Human and Drive and A Whole New Mind. His new book is The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, a rebuke of the concept of "no regrets" and exploration of the benefits of regret and how to harness them. Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart
Mar 19, 2022•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jane McGonigal's new books details how she creates alternate reality games in which people take part in virtual worlds, and, in so doing, gain a sensitively to the cues (and a familiarity with the conditions) that could lead to certain outcomes, making it possible to both prevent those outcomes and create the futures they'd rather live in instead.LINK TO LINK TO THE FREE CONVERSATION LAB WORKSHOP: https://www.mishaglouberman.com/free-convolab-march14 Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart...
Mar 06, 2022•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we sit down with famed stage magician, infamous instructor of the school of scams, Brian Brushwood, whose new podcast explores the world's greatest con artists and con jobs from World War II to modern game shows. We cover everything in this episode from why you can't con an honest person to the power of shame and fame to folk psychology to how the British conned Hitler using one of the oldest tricks in the book to how one man broke the code for Press Your Luck earning him the mo...
Feb 20, 2022•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, neuromarketing experts Prince Ghuman and Matt Johnson discuss the many strange examples from their book, Blindsight, in an effort to make us all smarter consumers, empowered to make better decisions after touring a showcase of all the less-obvious ways marketing, advertising, venues, restaurants, shopping malls, casinos, social media companies, and more, knowingly use neuroscience and psychology to affect our behavior. Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart...
Feb 06, 2022•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast , we sit down once again with Misha Glouberman , an expert on conflict and conversation, to discuss how best to improve your communication skills and turn what you suspect will be a difficult interaction into something marvelous and fruitful - the sort of talk that strengthens your relationship with the other person and leaves you both feeling like you gained and learned something – the kind you'd like to have again. Mentioned in the show, here...
Jan 23, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast This episode, featuring Andy Luttrell of the Opinion Science Podcast, is all about a machine, built by IBM, that can debate human beings on any issue, which leads to the question: is persuasion, with language, using arguments, and the ability to alter another person’s attitudes, beliefs, values, opinions, and behavior a uniquely human phenomenon, or could you be persuaded to change your mind by an artificial intelligence designed to do just that? If so, what does that say about opinions, our arg...
Jan 09, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Not all surprises trigger change, but almost all change is triggered by surprise. In this episode, Micheal Rousell, author of The Power of Surprise, explains the science of surprise at the level of neurons and brain structures, and then talk about how surprises often lead to the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, the different personal narratives that guide our behaviors and motivations and goals, and, perhaps most importantly, our willingness to be surprised again so that we can change ...
Dec 27, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode we sit down with Joey Rodman (@ okiespacequeen ), a science educator in Oklahoma whose recent Twitter thread about using a portable planetarium to reach out to flat earthers went viral thanks to their counterintuitive advice about how to discuss science denial and conspiracy theories with people who may have never interacted with a scientist before. After years of on-the-ground, one-on-one conversations, Joey has developed a technique similar to those we've discussed on the show,...
Dec 12, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we sit down with Henry Ernest Gee, the paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and senior editor of the scientific journal Nature. I was honored to get the opportunity chat with one of the absolute titans of science journalism and science communication about his new book: A Very Short History of Life on Earth, 4.6 billion years in 12 chapters. Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart
Nov 28, 2021•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode we sit down with expert in behavioral economics Evelyn Gosnell, who is also the managing director of Irrational Labs, an organization that uses social science to help other organizations make big decisions, fight misinformation, and design better products and services. In a new information ecosystems where our primate brains, which evolved to spread gossip and argue and debate and deliberate and play status games and manage our reputations among trusted peers and signal our attit...
Nov 14, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Dr. Jud Brewer , a neuroscientist and addiction psychiatrist, discusses the biological origins of anxiety and how to unwind our feedback loops using techniques derived from his lab’s research . Since his last appearance on the show, Dr. Jud has written and published a book which is now a NYT bestseller titled Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind which he describes as, “a clinically proven step-by-step plan to break the ...
Oct 31, 2021•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode we sit down with neuroscientist David Eagleman to learn how brains turn noise into signal, chaos into order, electrical spikes into meaning, and how new technology can expand subjective reality in ways never before possible. In his new book, Livewired, Eagleman explores how brains come into the world "half baked" so they can create reality itself out of the inputs and experiences available. And now, thanks to that plug-and-play plasticity, with the latest tools, not only can we r...
Oct 17, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
