096 - Progress
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...
25 Feb 20171h 5min
095 - The Backfire Effect - Part Three
If dumping evidence into people’s laps often just makes their beliefs stronger, would we just be better off trying some other tactic, or does the truth ever win? Do people ever come around, or are we ...
11 Feb 20171h 3min
094 - The Backfire Effect - Part Two
If you try to correct someone who you know is wrong, you run the risk of alarming their brains to a sort-of existential, epistemic threat, and if you do that, when that person expends effortful thinki...
29 Jan 201747min
093 - The Backfire Effect - Part One
We don’t treat all of our beliefs the same. The research shows that when a strong-yet-erroneous, belief is challenged, yes, you might experience some temporary weakening of your convictions, some soft...
13 Jan 201740min
091 - Learned Helplessness (rebroadcast)
Even when the prison doors are left wide open, we sometimes refuse to attempt escape. Why is that? In this rebroadcast of one of our most popular episodes we learn all about the strange phenomenon of ...
15 Dec 201647min
090 - Reality - Donald Hoffman
Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? For our guest in this episode, cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman, that's his day job.Hoffman has developed a new theory of consciousness that, ...
2 Dec 20161h 6min
089 - Connections - James Burke
Legendary science historian James Burke returns to explain his newest project, a Connections app that will allow anyone to "think connectively" about the webs of knowledge available on Wikipedia.Burke...
17 Nov 20161h 10min
088 - Moral Arguments
In this divisive and polarized era how do you bridge the political divide between left and right? You do you persuade the people on the other side to see things your way?New research by sociologist Ro...
4 Nov 201656min
