You Are Not So Smart

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 ch...

22 Huhti 201835min

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 adminis...

9 Huhti 201845min

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 delet...

26 Maalis 201840min

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...

11 Maalis 201828min

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 ep...

26 Helmi 20181h 5min

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 episo...

12 Helmi 20181h

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 s...

29 Tammi 20181h 10min

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...

15 Tammi 201839min