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You Are Not So Smart is a show about psychology that celebrates science and self delusion. In each episode, we explore what we've learned so far about reasoning, biases, judgments, and decision-making.
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What this podcast is *not*: a rule guide on proper punctuation. We'll only conjure the ghost of grammar in order to put it to rest. What this podcast *is*: a journey through the weird behaviour of punctuation in the wild. Be prepared to amble on the placid path of the comma, get lost on the winding road of brackets, and arrive at the well-deserved rest of the full stop. Along the way, we'll explore the past & future of punctuation, why a comma sparked the Russian Revolution, how to earn mill ...
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In this episode we sit down with Brian Klaas, author of Fluke, and get into the existential lessons and grander meaning for a life well-lived (once one finally accepts the power and influence of randomness, chaos, and chance). In addition, we learn not to fall prey to proportionality bias - the tendency for human brains to assume big, historical, o…
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313 - The 3.5 Percent Rule - Erica Chenoweth
59:25
59:25
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59:25
If you want to overthrow a dictator, resist an authoritarian regime, or create a movement that can change the national status quo, you don't need half the country, you only need 3.5 percent of the population to join – but there are some caveats, and Erica Chenoweth whose research led to the discovery of the 3.5 Percent Rule, explains them to us in …
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312 - Chaos and Complexity - Neil Theise (rebroadcast)
59:34
59:34
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Professor Neil Theise, the author of Notes on Complexity, provides an introduction to the science of how complex systems behave – from cells to human beings, to ecosystems, the known universe, and beyond – and we explore if Ian Malcolm was right when he told us in Jurassic Park that "Life, um, finds a way." Previous Episodes Neil Theise's Website N…
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311 - Cascades of Change - Greg Satell (rebroadcast)
1:06:52
1:06:52
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1:06:52
In this episode we sit down with Greg Satell, a communication expert whose book, Cascades, details how rapid, widespread change can sweep across groups of people big and small, and how understanding the psychological mechanisms at play in such moments can help anyone looking to create change in a family, institution, or even nation, prepare for the…
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310 - Align Your Mind - Britt Frank
1:12:55
1:12:55
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Therapist, teacher, speaker, and trauma specialist Britt Frank tells us all about her new book, Align Your Mind, an all-access pass to understanding, befriending, and leading the multiple voices within yourself. Grounded in the latest research on Parts Work and Internal Family Systems, and offering proven techniques from Frank’s clinical practice a…
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309 - They Thought We Were Ridiculous - Andy Luttrell (rebroadcast)
1:12:38
1:12:38
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1:12:38
In 1974, two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, as the New Yorker once put it, "changed the way we think about the way we think." The prevailing wisdom, before their landmark research went viral (in the way things went viral in the 1970s), was that human beings were, for the most part, rational optimizers always making the kinds of ju…
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308 - Magical Thinking - Matt Tompkins
1:19:14
1:19:14
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In this episode, the story of Clever Hans, the horse who changed psychology for the better. We also sit down with psychologist and magician Matt Tompkins. Matt is the author of The Spectacle of Illusion, a book about the long history of the manipulation of our own magical thinking and how studying deception can help us better understand perception,…
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In this episode, we sit down with three disinformation researchers whose new paper found something surprising about both our resistance and our susceptibility to both true news we wish was fake and fake news we wish was true. Our guests are three of the scientists exploring a newly named cognitive distortion, one that every human being is prone to …
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306 - I Never Thought of it That Way - Mónica Guzmán (rebroadcast)
52:11
52:11
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This episode’s guest is Mónica Guzmán, the author of I Never Thought of It That Way – a book with very practical advice on how to have productive conversations in a polarized political environment via authentic curiosity about where people’s beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and values come from. It's also about how to learn from those with whom we dis…
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305 - Supercommunicators - Charles Duhigg (rebroadcast)
1:16:54
1:16:54
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Our guest in this episode is Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer for the New Yorker Magazine who is also the New York Times Bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better. His new book is Supercommunicators, a practical and approachable guide to what makes great conversations work. In the episode we di…
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304 - Nobody's Fool - Dan Simons and Christopher Chabris (rebroadcast)
51:01
51:01
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51:01
In an era in which we have more information available to us than ever before, when claims of “fake news” might themselves be, in fact, fake news, Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, authors of The Invisible Gorilla, are back to offer us a vital tool to not only inoculate ourselves against getting infected by misinformation but prevent us from sp…
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In this episode we return to The Dress and the psychological lessons offered by one of the most viral moments in the history of the internet via an episode of Decoder Ring in which David McRaney shares some insights from his book, How Minds Change, with Willa Paskin, the host of Decoder Ring. Decoder Ring Decoder Ring's The Dress Page Willa Paskin'…
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302 - A More Beautiful Question - Warren Berger
1:02:00
1:02:00
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In this episode we sit down with Warren Berger, the author of A More Beautiful Question – and a man who has made a career out of classifying, categorizing, and making sense of all the many varieties of questions we ask, when we are likely to ask them, and how that can lead to all manner of outcomes, some positive, some negative. Warren Berger's Web…
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In this episode we welcome Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano, a political scientist who studies how cognitive dissonance affects all sorts of political behavior. She’s also the co-host of a podcast about activism called "What Do We Want?" and she wrote a book that’s coming out in May of 2025 titled don’t talk about politics which is about how to discuss poli…
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In this episode, the story of a doomsday cult that predicted the exact date and circumstances of the end of the world, and what happened when that date passed and the world did not end. Also, we explore our drive to remain consistent via our desire to reduce cognitive dissonance. When you notice you’ve done something you believe is wrong, then you …
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Our guests in this episode are Thomas H. Costello at American University, Gordon Pennycook at Cornell University, and David G. Rand at MIT who created Debunkbot, a GPT-powered, large language model, conspiracy-theory-debunking AI that is highly effective at reducing conspiratorial beliefs. In the show you’ll hear all about what happened when they p…
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In this episode we sit down with renowned cultural psychologist Michael Morris to discuss his new book, Tribal, in which he makes the case for seeing humans as an "us" species, not a "them" species. Morris says that since we genetically predisposed to collaborate, coordinate, and cooperate. He believes we can leverage our innate desire to work toge…
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297 - Project Alpha - Brian Brushwood (rebroadcast)
1:10:06
1:10:06
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Brian Brushwood tells us how he put together the most recent season of The World's Greatest Con, his podcast about incredible scams and over the top chicanery. This season is all about how two teenagers pulled off an incredible hoax called Project Alpha, a con job and a publicity stunt meant to improve scientific rigor and methodology when it comes…
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Are you unhappy at your job? Are you starting to consider a change of career because of how your current work makes you feel? Do you know why? According to our guest in this episode, Dr. Tessa West, a psychologist at NYU, if you are currently contemplating whether you want to do the work that you do everyday you should know that although this feeli…
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295 - Easy Crafts for the Insane - Kelly Williams Brown
1:15:17
1:15:17
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1:15:17
In this episode we sit down with author Kelly Williams Brown, an old friend who (I recently learned) had attempted suicide, which is the subject of this episode – suicide prevention and awareness. In the show we learn about Kelly's latest book, Easy Crafts for the Insane, in which she recounts how, after she gained fame and success as a NYT bestsel…
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294 - Living Constitutionally - A.J. Jacobs
1:28:25
1:28:25
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In this episode we sit down with A.J. Jacobs, a journalist who noticed some striking similarities between Biblical fundamentalism and constitutional originalism, and since he once wrote a NYT bestselling book about titled The Year of Living Biblically in which he tried to live for a year as a fundamentalist, he tried to do something similar by livi…
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293 - Do Your Own Research - Sedona Chinn (rebroadcast)
45:00
45:00
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Sedona Chinn, who studies how people make sense of competing claims – scientific, environmental, health-related – joins us to discuss her latest research into doing your own research. Her research has found that the more a person values the concept of doing your own research, the less likely that person is to actually do their own research. In the …
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292 - The Society Library - Jamie Joyce
1:23:36
1:23:36
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Our guest in this episode is Jamie Joyce who is the president and executive director of The Society Library, an organization that extracts arguments, claims, and evidence from various forms of media to compile databases that map all the bickering and debating taking place across our species. They take all our conversations about all the major issue…
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291 - Tough - Terry Crews (rebroadcast)
1:11:09
1:11:09
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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 himse…
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290 - The Intention Action Gap - Britt Frank
1:11:05
1:11:05
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In this episode, we sit down with therapist Britt Frank to discuss the intention action gap, the psychological term for the chasm between what you very much intend to do and what you tend to do instead. It turns out, there's a well-researched psychological framework that includes a term for when you have a stated, known goal – a change you'd like t…
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