You Are Not So Smart: Recent Episodes
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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 that you believe is wrong, you will either stop doing that thing or stop believing it is wrong.
And if you come across some information that disconfirms that disconfirms one of your beliefs, you’ll either change your belief, challenge the validity of the challenging information, or go looking for some information that suggests no, in fact, you are totally right.
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When a doomsday cult that predicts the exact date and circumstances of the end of the world. then that date passes and the circumstances do not occur, cults like those usually don’t say, “Oh, I guess we were wrong about that,” and then disband. Instead, they tend to find a way to keep believing that they were right somehow and then regroup in some way, often growing even stronger and more fervent.
This is exactly what happened on December 21, 1954 when The Seekers were not picked up by flying saucers just outside of Chicago, despite their leader telling them she had received word from The Guardians of planet Clarion to prepare to be saved by their spacecraft at midnight so they could escape a world-ending flood at dawn.
In a stunning display of the power of cognitive dissonance, the group became more passionate, more certain, and more devoted to their beliefs after the all important day of doom turned out to be nonsense. Also, thanks to the fact that they had been infiltrated by a group of psychologists, their every action before, during, and after the big was not only observed and recorded for science, taken together it all launched the next 50 years of research into cognitive dissonance itself.
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When Prophecy Fails
A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
The Christmas the Aliens Didn’t Come
Why It’s So Hard to Admit You’re Wrong
Apocalypse Oak Park: Dorothy Martin, the Chicagoan Who Predicted the End of the World and Inspired the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
The Seekers of Cuyler Avenue
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Newsletter
Patreon
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 placed Debunkbot inside the framework of a scientific study and recorded its interactions with thousands of participants.
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TRY DEBUNKBOT HERE
Related Episodes
Conspiratorial Thinking
Do Your Own Research
The Conspiracy Theorist Who Changed His Mind
Good Arguments
Behind the Curve
Uncivil Agreement
Tribal Psychology
Narrative Persuasion
Anti-Masking
Anti-Vaxxers
The Insurrection
On Being Certain
QAnon
COVID-19
Vaccine Hesitancy
The Persuaders
The Truth Wins
I Never Thought of it That Way
Links and Sources
Apple Podcasts – RSS – Simplecast – Amazon Music – Audible – Spotify – Patreon
Debunkbot
Thomas H. Costello
Gordon Pennycook
David G. Rand
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Kitted Shop
The Story of Kitted
Show Notes
Newsletter
Patreon
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 together to solve problems and reach goals to improve our lives, our relationships, and our jobs – and while we are at it, save the world.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
A revelatory, paradigm-shifting work from a renowned Columbia professor and “one of the great social and cultural psychologists” (Amy Cuddy) that demystifies our tribal instincts and shows us how to use them to create positive change.
Tribalism is our most misunderstood buzzword. We’ve all heard pundits bemoan its rise, and it’s been blamed for everything from political polarization to workplace discrimination. But as acclaimed cultural psychologist and Columbia professor Michael Morris argues, our tribal instincts are humanity’s secret weapon.
Ours is the only species that lives in tribes: groups glued together by their distinctive cultures that can grow to a scale far beyond clans and bands. Morris argues that our psychology is wired by evolution in three distinctive ways. First, the peer instinct to conform to what most people do. Second, the hero instinct to give to the group and emulate the most respected. And third, the ancestor instinct to follow the ways of prior generations. These tribal instincts enable us to share knowledge and goals and work as a team to transmit the accumulated pool of cultural knowledge onward to the next generation.
Countries, churches, political parties, and companies are tribes, and tribal instincts explain our loyalties to them and the hidden ways that they affect our thoughts, actions, and identities. Rather than deriding tribal impulses for their irrationality, we can recognize them as powerful levers that elevate performance, heal rifts, and set off shockwaves of cultural change.
Weaving together deep research, current and historical events, and stories from business and politics, Morris cuts across conventional wisdom to completely reframe how we think about our tribes. Bracing and hopeful, Tribal unlocks the deepest secrets of our psychology and gives us the tools to manage our misunderstood superpower.
Michael MorrisMichael Morris works as a cultural psychologist at Columbia University in its graduate Business School and its Department of Psychology. Previously he taught for a decade at Stanford University.
Morris received his PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan after earning undergraduate degrees in cognitive science and English literature at Brown University.
His research has discovered cultural influences on styles of cognition, communication, and collaboration, as well as situational factors that cue them and social experiences that shift them. Outside of academia, Professor Morris advises corporations, government agencies, NGOs, and political campaigns about culture-related issues.
He lives in New York City.
Links and Sources
Apple Podcasts – RSS – Simplecast – Amazon Music – Audible – Spotify – Patreon
Tribal
Notre Dame Researchers
Overimitation Study
CSICon
Forecasting the Future Tournament
Insurrection Episode
Antivaxxer Episode
Antimasking Episode
Partisanship Episode
Uncivil Agreement Episode
Tribal Psychology Episode
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Kitted Shop
The Story of Kitted
Show Notes
Newsletter
Patreon
We sit down with Brian Brushwood to discuss how he put together this most recent season of The World’s Greatest Con, his podcast about incredible scams. This season is all about how two boys 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 to studying the possibility of the existence of psychic phenomena.
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Brian Brushwood“Cons don’t fool us because we’re stupid, they fool us because we’re human.”
In this episode, we sit down with Brushwood, a famed stage magician and infamous instructor of the school of scams whose podcast explores the world’s greatest con artists and con jobs from World War II to modern game shows. In the new season, he tells the story of how two teenagers scammed a group of scientists into believing their subjects were powerful psychics.
BRIAN’S TWITTER
THE WORLD’S GREATEST CON WEBSITE
The World’s Greatest Con Season Three is all about about how, in the 1970s, as teenage boys – as teenage magicians – two people worked their way into a secret psychic soldier program conducted at a hidden laboratory. Then they held a press conference about it, and things got messy.
Links and Sources
Apple Podcasts – RSS – Simplecast – Amazon Music – Audible – Spotify – Patreon
Brian’s Website
Brian’s Twitter
The World’s Greatest Con
New Yorker Article about Spiritualism
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Kitted Shop
The Story of Kitted
Show Notes
Newsletter
Patreon
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 feeling is common, psychologists who study this sort of thing have discovered that our narratives for why we feel this way are often just rationalizations and justifications.
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In fact, it turns out that the way we psychologically evaluate the jobs we think we might not want to do anymore is nearly identical to how we evaluate romantic relationships we feel like we might no longer want to be a part of. The feelings are usually undeniable, but our explanations for why we feel the way we feel can be wildly inaccurate, and because of that, our resulting behavior can be, let’s say, sub-optimal. We sometimes stay far longer than we should or make knee-jerk decisions we later regret or commit to terrible mistakes that could have been avoided.
OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
When we’re unhappy in our jobs, we often attribute our frustration to a bad manager, boring tasks, and stressful workloads. But our dissatisfaction at work usually stems from a deeper psychological need that’s not being met at work, like not getting the recognition you deserve.
In Job Therapy, Dr. Tessa West helps you figure out the real reason you’re unhappy and shows you how to find a new position in which you’ll thrive, whether in a different role, company, or new industry altogether.
Through her research interviewing thousands of people who have recently switched jobs or undergone career changes, she found there are five common sources of career frustration:
- having an identity crisis – does your sense of self no longer match your job?
- you’ve drifted-apart – do you no longer recognize the job you once loved?
- you’re torn between places – are you taking on too many roles at work, switching tasks too often, or stuck between two paths?
- you’re the runner up – do you always feel like you keep coming in second?
- you’re the underappreciated star – are you crushing it at work, but the people around you aren’t recognizing your performance?
Tessa WestTessa West is a Professor of Psychology at New York University and a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. Her work focuses on questions such as, why is it so hard to give honest, critical feedback? and how do class, race, and cultural differences make communication in the workplace so difficult, and what can we do to improve it?
Tessa received her PhD from the University of Connecticut and has published her work in psychology’s most prestigious journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. She has received multiple grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Tessa has also received several career awards, including the early career award from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Theoretical Innovation Prize from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology.
Tessa’s work has been covered by Scientific American, the New York Times, ABC World News, TIME, Harper’s Bazaar, the Financial Times, Forbes, CNBC, CNN, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Bloomberg, Strategy and Business, and the US Supreme Court. She has appeared on the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, CNN, and Good Morning America, and is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal. She is the author of the book “Jerks at Work: Toxic coworkers and what to do about them,” and “Job Therapy: Finding work that works for you.”
Links and Sources
Apple Podcasts – RSS – Simplecast – Amazon Music – Audible – Spotify
Job Therapy
Tessa West’s Website
Tessa West’s Twitter
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Kitted Shop
The Story of Kitted
Show Notes
Newsletter
Patreon
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 bestselling author, her life came apart and how an anti-anxiety-drug-induced manic state nearly ended her life.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
From the New York Times bestselling author of Adulting comes a story about how to make something when you’re capable of nothing.
Kelly Williams Brown had 700 Bad Days. Her marriage collapsed, she broke three limbs in separate and unrelated incidents, her father was diagnosed with cancer, and she fell into a deep depression that ended in what could delicately be referred to as a “rest cure” at an inpatient facility. Before that, she had several very good years: she wrote a bestselling book, spoke at NASA, had a beautiful wedding, and inspired hundreds of thousands of readers to live as grown-ups in an often-screwed-up world, though these accomplishments mostly just made her feel fraudulent.
One of the few things that kept her moving forward was, improbably, crafting. Not Martha Stewart–perfect crafting, either—what could be called “simple,” “accessible” or, perhaps, “rustic” creations were the joy and accomplishments she found in her worst days. To craft is to set things right in the littlest of ways; no matter how disconnected you feel, you can still fold a tiny paper star, and that’s not nothing.
In Easy Crafts for the Insane, crafting tutorials serve as the backdrop of a life dissolved, then glued back together. Surprising, humane, and utterly unforgettable, this is a poignant and hysterical look at the unexpected, messy coping mechanisms we use to find ourselves again.
Kelly Williams BrownKelly Williams Brown is an author and reporter living in Salem, Ore., with a large loud dog named Eleanor.
She is the author of Easy Crafts for the Insane (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2021), Gracious (Rodale, 2017) and Adulting: How to Become a Grown-Up in 535 Easy(ish) Steps (Grand Central, 2013; revised edition, 2018).
She’s also worked as a reporter and columnists for daily newspapers and magazines, an ad copywriter, non-profit communications manager and as a cocktail waitress.
Born in Louisiana, she attended Loyola University New Orleans, and has worked in New Orleans, Hattiesburg, Miss., D.C. and Oregon.
Links and Sources
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988
Suicide Prevention Month
Kelly Williams Brown’s Website
Easy Crafts for the Insane
Kelly’s Twitter
Kelly’s Instagram
Kelly in Vanity Fair
Gratitude Journaling Study
Seneca on Being Wretched
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Show Notes
Newsletter
Patreon
Patreon
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 living for a year following the Constitution’s original meaning as if he were an originalist and then writing a book about it. He soon learned that donning a tricorne hat and marching around Manhattan with a 1700s musket, though fully within one’s constitutional rights, will quickly lead to some difficult encounters and altogether strange circumstances.
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A.J. JacobsA.J. Jacobs is an author, journalist, lecturer and human guinea pig. He has written four New York Times bestsellers that combine memoir, science, humor and a dash of self-help.
He is also editor at large at Esquire magazine, a commentator on NPR and a columnist for Mental Floss magazine.
His first book is called The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (Simon & Schuster, 2004). The memoir — which spent two months on the New York Times bestseller list — chronicles the 18 months Jacobs spent reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a quest to learn everything in the world. It was praised by Time magazine, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, USAToday, Janet Maslin in the New York Times and AJ’s uncle Henry on Amazon.com.
After trying to improve his mind, he turned to his spirit. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (2007) tells of his attempt to follow the hundreds of rules in the Good Book. It spent three months on the NYT bestseller list, and was praised by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and others. It appeared on the cover of the evangelical magazine Relevant, but was also featured in Penthouse. (Jacobs is proud to be a uniter, not a divider).
Links and Sources
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Previous Episodes
The Year of Living Constitutionally
AJ Jacobs’ Website
AJ Jacobs’ Twitter
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Show Notes
Newsletter
Patreon
Sedona Chinn, a researcher who studies how people make sense of competing scientific, environmental, and health-related claims, joins us to discuss her latest research into doing your own research. In her latest paper she 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 episode we explore the origin of the concept, what that phrase really means, and the implications of her study on everything from politics to vaccines to conspiratorial thinking.
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Sedona ChinnSedona Chinn is an Assistant Professor in Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Maidson.
She researches how social media influence perceptions of expertise and accuracy of beliefs surrounding science and health. Her ongoing work explores how empowering messages and aspirational wellness content on social media are associated with perceptions of experts, health beliefs, and political attitudes.
USDA Hatch-funded research is currently investigating how Instagram influencers inform beliefs about nutrition and agriculture. I explore how influential opinion leaders online cultivate credibility and use emotional appeals to spread accurate and inaccurate information about food and agriculture.
She also investigates the prevalence and effects of scientific disagreements in media to better understand how people evaluate uncertain information.
In this research, she has used computational content-analytic methods to measure politicization and polarization in climate change news and COVID-19 news.
She pairs large-scale content analyses with experimental work to investigating effects of civil and uncivil scientific disagreement messages and the efficacy of consensus messages in the context of climate change.
- Mapping digital wellness content
- ‘Doing your own research” associated with misinformation, mistrust
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Previous Episodes
Sedona Chinn’s Website
Sedona Chinn’s Twitter
Sedona Chinn’s Paper
The Other Paper Mentioned
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Show Notes
Newsletter
Patreon
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 our collective conversations about all the major issues facing society and restructure them into something a single person, or a committee, or someone whose job affects millions can understand and then use to make better decisions.
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Jamie JoyceJamie Joyce is a career nonprofit executive who has dedicated her work towards maximizing the access and utilization of mass amounts of knowledge to find optimal outcomes and policy solutions on complex issues.
Her work spans launching a new department at the Internet Archive, called Democracy’s Library; founding the Society Library, a 501(c)3 collective intelligence organization focused on truth-seeking by modelling the logic of debates about policy issues; and her background in international sustainable development, where she allocated capital towards solving complex issues by working with communities on the ground in places the U.N. deemed furthest from sustainable development.
Currently, her work at the Society Library includes mapping debates about AI, in part by creating AI models which collect and model arguments from different points of view.
The Virtues of The Society Library
Intellectual Honesty
The Truth is the Truth Regardless of Who Says It
We recognize that the truth may come from any source: a conspiratorial website, a harsh rant online, a weaponized piece of content, or even a meme. While the context of the information is important to consider in examination of it, it is never discounted as the possible outlet through which a truth may become known. All pieces of information must be given fair and in-depth examination, as any other.
Intellectual Independence
Be Not In Possession of Ideas That Possess You
We strive to be free from the possession and oppression of opinions and ideas which may cloud or corrupt our judgement, inspire us to anger, upset, frustration, or despair, or move us to dismiss or discount the contribution of another in our work. The desired intellectual context of our work is that of complete open-mindedness and sincere inquiry after truth. Detach yourself from opinions – if you have one, it has you.
Intellectual Inclusion
Let no intellectual stone be left unturned
Beyond being open to the truth coming from any potential source, we have a commitment to actively seek out fringe, isolated, or distant ideas and opinions and include them in our work. Diversity and inclusion are important, so we must also ensure that marginalized communities’ ideas are represented. The Society Library is completely committed to representing all points of view, this commitment is expressed through the actions we take.
Earnest Service
We do not exist to change what people think, we exist to change the context in which people think
As it has been said, the truth may never win, however it will outlive its opponents. We do not work to change the people around us and force them to recognize a truth, we exist to provide a context in which people may discover possible truths on their own, given the tools we have provided and information we present: created in earnest service. Detached from outcomes, we can work humbly in service of generations yet born.
Love of Information and Individuals
Nec Timeo Nec Sperno
We strive to not fear, nor despise any idea, opinion, or argument or the person who holds it. Information is never good or bad, information has the meaning we ascribe to it based on our definitions, classifications, and characteristics. We are never frustrated by nonsensical, grammatically incorrect, or illogical ideas, we see them as ways by which a human expresses a need, even if under many layers of abstraction, distractions, or deceptions. We see our work as an opportunity to connect people with a means of communicating and articulating their world-view; potentially through the expressions of others, which is preserved in our work. We work out of love for this, and out of love for what information can do for others.
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Previous Episodes
The Society Library
Jamie Joyce
Jamie Joyce’s Twitter
The Society Library’s Twitter
The NYT’s Coverage of Plandemic
The Society Library’s Analysis of Plandemic
The Society Library’s Analysis of AI Debates
The Society Library’s Town Hall Experiment
Kitted Shop
The Story of Kitted
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Newsletter
Patreon
Terry Crews, the actor, the athlete, the 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.
Today, Crews embodies the opposite of toxic masculinity, which one my peers in publishing said we should start calling probiotic masculinity, but in the interview you will hear how that wasn’t always the case. His new book is a detailed, transparent, confessional about who he used to be and what he did to change his mind, change his self, and change his life.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
From Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Terry Crews, the deeply personal story of his lifelong obsession with strength—and how, after looking for it in all the wrong places, he finally found it
Terry Crews spent decades cultivating his bodybuilder physique and bravado. On the outside, he seemed invincible: he escaped his abusive father, went pro in the NFL, and broke into the glamorous world of Hollywood. But his fixation with appearing outwardly tough eventually turned into an exhausting performance in which repressing his emotions let them get the better of him—leading him into addiction and threatening the most important relationships in his life.
Now Crews is sharing the raw, never-before-told story of his quest to find the true meaning of toughness. In Tough, he examines arenas of life where he desperately sought control—masculinity, shame, sex, experiences with racism, and relationships—and recounts the setbacks and victories he faced while uprooting deeply ingrained toxic masculinity and finally confronting his insecurities, painful memories, and limiting beliefs. The result is not only the gripping story of a man’s struggle against himself and how he finally got his mind right, but a bold indictment of the cultural norms and taboos that ask men to be outwardly tough while leaving them inwardly weak.
With Tough, Crews’s journey of transformation offers a model for anyone who considers themselves a “tough guy” but feels unfulfilled; anyone struggling with procrastination or self-sabotage; and anyone ready to achieve
Terry Crews is an actor best known for his action and comedy roles, including Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Everybody Hates Chris, Idiocracy, The Expendables, and America’s Got Talent. He is also a former Old Spice model and NFL player.
Crews is also known as a vocal public advocate for women’s rights – and he is an activist against sexism, sexual harassment, violence, and abuse. He has shared stories of his own abuse both as a child and as an adult. He even spoke before Congress about it and was named, along with other silence breakers, as a group, a collective Time Person of the Year in 2017 for helping catalyze the Me Too movement.
Once a self-described “super-driven superstar alpha male,” Terry Crews embodies the manly ideal for millions worldwide. But over the last decade he has been a vocal advocate for re-imagining the concept of manhood and masculine norms.
Terry Crews
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Previous Episodes
Terry Crews Website
Terry Crews Twitter
Tough
Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards
Kitted Shop
The Story of Kitted
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Newsletter
Patreon
n 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 to make in your life – something you wake up intending to finally do or get started doing, but then don’t do while knowing full well you are actively not doing what you ought and wish you had done by now. After we discuss this phenomenon and how to deal with it, we get into procrastination and how to escape all manner of dead-end behavioral loops.
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Official Description of the Book:
Exercises and activities to help you move past what’s holding you back, in work and life
You want to get fit, but you keep putting it off. Your career is stalled out, and you’re not sure how to give it a jump. You fall into the same unhealthy relationship patterns over and over. If you’ve been in any of these scenarios, you know what it means to be stuck—but you don’t have to stay that way.
You’re not lazy and you’re not unmotivated. You just need the right set of tools. And Britt Frank uses her background as a clinician, educator, and trauma specialist to bring you a whole new tool kit with this interactive workbook. Inside you’ll find questionnaires, writing prompts, and other practical, step-by-step exercises to help you:
- break bad habits
- communicate more skillfully
- stop the war in your head
- hold healthy boundaries
- restore your sense of choice
Britt FrankBritt Frank is a therapist, teacher, speaker, and trauma specialist who is committed to dismantling the mental health myths that keep us feeling stuck and sick.
Her work focuses on empowering people to understand the inner mechanisms of their brains and bodies. When we know how things work, the capacity for choice is restored and life can and does change.
Whether she’s leading a workshop, teaching a class, or working individually with private clients, Britt’s goal is to educate, empower, and equip people to transform even their most persistent and long-standing patterns of thinking and doing.
This is a link to her Instagram.
Links and Sources
Apple – RSS – Simplecast – Spotify – Amazon Music – Audible
Previous Episodes
The Getting Unstuck Workbook
The Science of Stuck
Kitted Shop
The Story of Kitted
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Show Notes
Newsletter
Patreon
Marina Nitze is a professional fixer of broken systems – a hacker, not of computers and technology, but of the social phenomena that tend to emerge when people get together and form organizations, institutions, services, businesses, and governments. In short, she hacks bureaucracies and wants to teach you how to do the same. In this episode she sits down to share a variety of the insights from her book Hack Your Bureaucracy.
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— OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK–
Whether you just started your first entry-level job, run the entire company, or just feel trapped by your condo association bylaws, it’s time to learn how to get big things done. From local government to the White House, Harvard to the world of venture capital, Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai have taken on some of the world’s most challenging bureaucracies—and won.
Now, they bring their years of experience to you, teaching you strategies anyone can use to improve your organization through their own stories and those of fellow bureaucracy hackers. Regardless of your industry, role, or team, Hack Your Bureaucracy shows how to get started, take initiative on your own, and transform your ideas into impact.
Marina NitzeMarina Nitze, co-author of the new book Hack Your Bureaucracy, is currently a partner at Layer Aleph, a crisis response firm that specializes in restoring complex software systems to service. Marina is also a fellow at New America’s New Practice Lab, where she works on improving America’s foster care system through the Resource Family Working Group and Child Welfare Playbook. Marina was most recently the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs under President Obama, after serving as a Senior Advisor on technology in the Obama White House and as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the U.S. Department of Education. She serves on the advisory boards of Foster America, Smartsheet, and Think of Us; created TaskTackler, the personal productivity app for Type-A personalities; and previously authored the book Business Efficiency for Dummies. She lives in Seattle, WA.
Apple Podcasts – Simplecast – Amazon Music – Audible – Spotify
Previous Episodes
How Minds Change
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
Hack Your Bureaucracy
Marina Nitze
Marina’s Twitter
Newsletter
Patreon
In this episode we sit down with Brian Klaas, author of Fluke, to 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 how to not fall prey to proportionality bias– the tendency for human brains to assume big, historical, or massively impactful events must have had big causes and/or complex machinations underlying their grand outcomes. It’s one of the cognitive biases that most contributes to conspiratorial thinking and grand conspiracy theories, one that leads to an assumption that there must be something more going on when big, often unlikely, events make the evening news. Yet, as Brian explains, events big and small are often the result of random inputs in complex systems interacting in ways that are difficult to predict.
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Official Description of the Book:
In the perspective-altering tradition of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan comes a provocative challenge to how we think our world works—and why small, chance events can divert our lives and change everything, by social scientist and Atlantic writer Brian Klaas.
In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas deep-dives into the phenomenon of randomness, dismantling our neat and tidy storybook version of events to reveal a reality far wilder and more fascinating than we’ve dared to consider. The bewildering truth is that but for a few incidental changes, our lives – and our societies – would be radically different.
If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same? Or could making an accidental phone call or missing an exit off the highway change not just your life, but history itself? And would you remain blind to the radically different possible world you unknowingly left behind?
Offering an entirely new lens, Fluke explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and apparently random events. How did one couple’s vacation cause 100,000 people to die? Does our decision to hit the snooze button in the morning radically alter the trajectory of our lives? And has the evolution of humans been inevitable, or are we simply the product of a series of freak accidents?
Drawing on social science, chaos theory, history, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Klaas provides a brilliantly fresh look at why things happen—all while providing mind-bending lessons on how we can live smarter, be happier, and lead more fulfilling lives.
Brian KlaasDr. Brian Klaas is an Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London, an affiliate researcher at the University of Oxford, and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. He is also the author five books, including Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters (2024) and Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us (2021). Klaas writes the popular The Garden of Forking Paths Substack and created the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, which has been downloaded roughly three million times.
Klaas is an expert on democracy, authoritarianism, American politics, political violence, elections, and the nature of power. Additionally, his research interests include contingency, chaos theory, evolutionary biology, the philosophy of science and social science, and complex systems. In addition to Fluke and Corruptible, Klaas authored three earlier books: The Despot’s Apprentice: Donald Trump’s Attack on Democracy (Hurst & Co, 2017); The Despot’s Accomplice: How the West is Aiding & Abetting the Decline of Democracy, (Oxford University Press, 2016) and How to Rig an Election (Yale University Press, co-authored with Professor Nic Cheeseman; 2018).
Klaas has advised a variety of governments, US political campaigns, NATO, the European Union, the International Crisis Group, the Carter Center, multi-billion dollar investors, international NGOs, and international politicians.
Klaas has conducted field research, interviewing more than 500 people across the globe, including prime ministers, presidents, ministers, rebels, coup plotters, dissidents, and torture victims in an array of countries, including Madagascar, Thailand, Tunisia, Belarus, Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia, and Latvia.
Prior to becoming an academic, Dr. Klaas worked on US political campaigns—including serving as the Policy Director / Deputy Campaign Manager for Mark Dayton’s successful bid for Governor of Minnesota in 2010.
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In this episode, we are exploring the complexity of the concept of “genius” with two experts on the topic. First you’ll hear from David Krakauer, the president of The Santa Fe Institute, a research institution in New Mexico dedicated to the study of complexity science, and then you’ll hear from professor Dean Keith Simonton, one of the world’s leading researchers into the psychological mechanisms and influences that generate the phenomenon we so often refer to as “genius.”
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David KrakauerDavid Krakauer is the President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. His research explores the evolution of intelligence on Earth. He is also a member of the C4 research group at SFI. He served as the founding Director of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, the Co-Director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation, and Professor of Mathematical Genetics all at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. David has been a visiting fellow at the Genomics Frontiers Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, a Sage Fellow at the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of Santa Barbara, a long-term Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and visiting Professor of Evolution at Princeton University. Krakauer was included in Wired Magazine’s 2012 Smart List as one of fifty people “who will change the world,” and Entrepreneur Magazine’s 2016 list of visionary leaders advancing global research and business.
Dean K, SimontonDean Simonton is a distinguished professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Davis. He is a member of a number of professional organizations, having served as president of the Society for General Psychology, APA Division 1, from 2011-2012 and previously as the president of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, and the Society for Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, APA Division 10. He also serves on a number of editorial committees and is currently associate editor of The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Adulthood and Aging, as well as direct submissions editor for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. At UC Davis, Professor Simonton has served in a number of executive roles, including chair of the faculty for the executive committee and representative assembly, and departmental vice-chair, among others.
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In this episode we sit down with professor Neil Theise, the author of Notes on Complexity, to get an introduction to the science of how complex systems behave – from cells to human beings, 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.”
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF NOTES ON COMPLEXITY
Nothing in the universe is more complex than life. Throughout the skies, in oceans, and across lands, life is endlessly on the move. In its myriad forms—from cells to human beings, social structures, and ecosystems—life is open-ended, evolving, unpredictable, yet adaptive and self-sustaining. Complexity theory addresses the mysteries that animate science, philosophy, and metaphysics: how this teeming array of existence, from the infinitesimal to the infinite, is in fact a seamless living whole and what our place, as conscious beings, is within it. Physician, scientist, and philosopher Neil Theise makes accessible this “theory of being,” one of the pillars of modern science, and its holistic view of human existence. He notes the surprising underlying connections within a universe that is itself one vast complex system—between ant colonies and the growth of forests, cancer and economic bubbles, murmurations of starlings and crowds walking down the street.
The implications of complexity theory are profound, providing insight into everything from the permeable boundaries of our bodies to the nature of consciousness. NOTES ON COMPLEXITY is an invitation to trade our limited, individualistic view for the expansive perspective of a universe that is dynamic, cohesive, and alive—a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Theise takes us to the exhilarating frontiers of human knowledge and in the process restores wonder and meaning to our experience of the everyday.
Neil Theise is a professor of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Through his scientific research, he has been a pioneer of adult stem cell plasticity and the anatomy of the human interstitium. Dr. Theise’s studies in complexity theory have led to interdisciplinary collaborations in fields such as integrative medicine, consciousness studies, and science-religion dialogue.
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Is a hotdog a sandwich? Well, that depends on your definition of a sandwich (and a hotdog), and according to the most recent research in cognitive science, the odds that your concept of a sandwich is the same as another person’s concept are shockingly low.
In this episode we explore how understanding why that question became a world-spanning argument in the mid 2010s helps us understand some of the world-spanning arguments vexing us today.
Our guest is psychologist Celeste Kidd who studies how we acquire and conceptualize information, form beliefs around those concepts, and, in general, make sense of the torrent of information blasting our brains each and every second. Her most recent paper examines how conceptual misalignment can lead to semantic disagreements, which can lead us to talk past each other (and get into arguments about things like whether hotdogs are sandwiches).
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Celeste KiddCeleste Kidd is a psychologist at Berkeley. She is a cognitive scientist and developmental psychologist who is well known for her research on human curiosity and certainty how human brains develop knowledge.
Her lab, the Kidd Lab, studies the processes involved in knowledge acquisition, especially in young children, using a combination of computational and behavioral methods.
The Kidd Lab employs a range of methods, including eye-tracking and touchscreen testing with human infants, in order to show how learners sample information from their environment and build knowledge gradually over time.
Celeste Kidd’s work has been published in PNAS, Neuron, Psychological Science, Developmental Science, and elsewhere. Her lab has received funding from NSF, DARPA, Google, the Jacobs Foundation, the Human Frontiers Science Program, and the Templeton Foundation. She is a recipient of the Hellman Fellows award, the American Psychological Science Rising Star designation, the Glushko Dissertation Prize in Cognitive Science, and the Cognitive Science Society Computational Modeling Prize in Perception/Action.
Kidd was also named as one of TIME Magazines 2017 Persons of the Year as one of the “Silence Breakers” for her advocacy for better protections for students against sexual misconduct.
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In this episode we sit down with psychologist Dacher Keltner, one of the world’s leading experts on the science of emotion, the man Pixar hired to help them write Inside Out. In his new book – Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life – he outlines his years of work in this field, the health benefits of awe, the evolutionary origins and likely functions, and how to better pursue more awe and wonder in your own life.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
Awe is mysterious. How do we begin to quantify the goose bumps we feel when we see the Grand Canyon, or the utter amazement when we watch a child walk for the first time? How do you put into words the collective effervescence of standing in a crowd and singing in unison, or the wonder you feel while gazing at centuries-old works of art? Up until fifteen years ago, there was no science of awe, the feeling we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that transcend our understanding of the world. Scientists were studying emotions like fear and disgust, emotions that seemed essential to human survival. Revolutionary thinking, though, has brought into focus how, through the span of evolution, we’ve met our most basic needs socially. We’ve survived thanks to our capacities to cooperate, form communities, and create culture that strengthens our sense of shared identity—actions that are sparked and spurred by awe.
In Awe, Dacher Keltner presents a radical investigation and deeply personal inquiry into this elusive emotion. Revealing new research into how awe transforms our brains and bodies, alongside an examination of awe across history, culture, and within his own life during a period of grief, Keltner shows us how cultivating awe in our everyday life leads us to appreciate what is most humane in our human nature. And during a moment in which our world feels more divided than ever before, and more imperiled by crises of different kinds, we are greatly in need of awe. If we open our minds, it is awe that sharpens our reasoning and orients us toward big ideas and new insights, that cools our immune system’s inflammation response and strengthens our bodies. It is awe that activates our inclination to share and create strong networks, to take actions that are good for the natural and social world around us. It is awe that transforms who we are, that inspires the creation of art, music, and religion. At turns radical and profound, brimming with enlightening and practical insights, Awe is our field guide, from not only one of the leading voices on the subject but a fellow seeker of awe in his own right, for how to place awe as a vital force within our lives.
Dacher KeltnerDacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and the faculty director of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center.
A renowned expert in the biological and evolutionary origins of human emotion, Dr. Keltner studies the science of compassion, awe, love, and beauty, and how emotions shape our moral intuition.
His research interests also span issues of power, status, inequality, and social class. He is the author of the best-selling book Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life and of The Compassionate Instinct.
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In this episode we welcome psychologist Mary C. Murphy, author of Cultures of Growth, who tells us how to create institutions, businesses, and other groups of humans that can better support collaboration, innovation, performance, and wellbeing. We also learn how, even if you know all about the growth mindset, the latest research suggests you not may not be creating a culture of growth despite what feels like your best efforts to do so.
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Official Description of the Book:
Carol Dweck’s multi-million-copy bestseller Mindset has transformed our view of individual success, coining the terms “fixed” and “growth” mindset: in a “fixed” mindset, talent and intelligence are viewed as predetermined traits, while in a “growth” mindset, talent and intelligence can be nurtured through dedication, the right strategies, and resilience.
But we’ve only understood mindset as solely about individuals.
Now Dweck’s protégé, Mary Murphy, social psychologist at both Stanford and Indiana University, presents a groundbreaking take on mindset, showing how to transform any group, team, or classroom to reach breakthroughs while also helping each person achieve their potential.
Discover how Cultures of Growth helped make outdoor retailer Patagonia a leader in its field; how Satya Nadella transformed Microsoft with a singular focus on growth mindset; how winemakers Robin McBride and Andréa McBride John are leading with their mindset to disrupt and diversify an entire industry; and how a New York school superintendent reversed massive inequities for children of color by reshaping the district’s mindset culture.
Drawing on compelling examples from her work with Fortune 500 companies, startups, and schools, Murphy demonstrates that the organization’s mindset culture is the key to success for both individuals and the entire organization, teaching you how to create Cultures of Growth through exercises—no matter your role.
Cultures of Growth are environments that people want to be in because they’re places where people can thrive and achieve their potential, both individually and together. In a world where success seems reserved for a chosen few, Cultures of Growth unveils a radically different approach to creating organizations that inspire learning, growth, and success at all levels.
Mary C. Murphy is Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University. She is Founding Director of the Summer Institute on Diversity at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
She is founder and CEO of the Equity Accelerator, a research and consulting organization that works with schools and companies to create more equitable learning and working environments through social and behavioral science. Mary conducts pioneering research on motivation, performance, and intergroup relations. She was awarded the 2019 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest award bestowed on early career scholars by the U.S. government.
Originally from San Antonio, Texas, she earned her BA from the University of Texas at Austin and her PhD in social psychology from Stanford University in 2007, mentored by Claude Steele and Carol Dweck. She splits her time between Bloomington, Indiana, and Palo Alto, California.
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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.” Before their landmark research went viral (in the way things went viral in the 1970s), the prevailing wisdom was that human beings were, for the most part, rational optimizers always making the kinds of judgments and decisions that best maximized the potential of the outcomes under their control. This was especially true in economics at the time. The story of how they generated a paradigm shift so powerful that it reached far outside economics and psychology to change the way all of us see ourselves is a fascinating tale, one that required the invention of something this episode is all about: The Psychology of Single Questions.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THEY THOUGHT WE WERE RIDICULOUS
In a world where monumental achievements are rare, a riveting narrative emerges that transcends conventional norms. “They Thought We Were Ridiculous” podcast series chronicles the groundbreaking stories of a small band of rebels who defied the status quo and altered the fabric of economic and psychological thought to form the field of behavioral economics.
A collaboration between leading podcasts Opinion Science and Behavioral Grooves, the five-part series highlights the voices of Nobel laureates and unsung academic heroes who dared to challenge established norms, including Danny Kahneman, Richard Thaler, Colin Camerer, Linda Babcock, George Loewenstein, Drazen Prelec, Shlomo Benartzi, and many others.
The series takes us from the rebellious inception of behavioral economics to its integration into governmental agencies, NGOs, non-profits, and corporations worldwide. “They Thought We Were Ridiculous” spotlights real-world impact and uncovers the pivotal moments when behavioral economics found its way into the corridors of political power in the UK, the United States, and beyond. Each episode unveils profound contributions from these mavericks and reveals the uncharted territory they navigated to reshape our understanding of human behavior and decision-making.
“We hope you enjoy all five episodes in this series,” says Andy Luttrell, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychological Science at Ball State University, and host at Opinion Science. “This podcast captures the spirit of those who dared to challenge the norm and explores the future for behavioral economics.”
“Over hundreds of our collective podcast discussions with pioneers in the field, we were inspired to share their stories in podcast form so others can appreciate the magnitude of their contributions,” noted Tim Houlihan, Behavioral Grooves co-host.
Behavioral Grooves co-host Kurt Nelson, PhD, added, “This series offers insights into how a few rebels pursued their curiosities, forged alliances, and spent lots of unstructured time to birth ideas that shape the world we live in.”
“They Thought We Were Ridiculous” promises a captivating narrative beyond the academic realm. It is a testament to the power of curiosities, challenging assumptions, and reshaping our understanding of what it means to be human.
Andy Luttrell is a social psychologist trying to understand how people form strong opinions. He’s an associate professor of psychological science at Ball State University and host of the podcast Opinion Science. His original research on the psychology of moral persuasion, ambivalent attitudes, and opinions that persist over time has been published in top peer-reviewed journals.
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Jeremy Utley, Kian Gohar, and Henrik Werdelin sit down with David McRaney to discuss the surprising results of a new study into what happens when groups of people work together to brainstorm solutions to problems with the help of ChatGPT. It turns out, a common cognitive bias makes it difficult to produce a steady stream of great ideas. Based on their research, Utley and Gohar created a new paradigm for getting the most out of AI-assisted ideation which they call FIXIT, and you’ll hear all about it in the episode.
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Jeremy UtleyJeremy Utley is an adjunct professor at Stanford University, co-author of Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters, a Thinkers50 Top Innovation Leader, and a General Partner at Freespin Capital. He’s the host of Paint & Pipette: The Art & Science of Innovation, and co-host of Beyond the Prompt. He’s had the privilege of teaching nearly a million students of innovation worldwide. His blend of deep experience, sharp thinking and penetrating insight have earned him a reputation as a go-to advisor for CEO’s and start-up founders alike. His current research passion is helping individuals and organizations accelerate their comfort and confidence leveraging generative AI.
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Kian GoharKian Gohar is the founder of Geolab, an innovation research and leadership development firm focused on coaching, strategy, and design. A former executive director of the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University, Kian has coached the leadership teams of dozens of Fortune 500 companies, unicorns and startups on disruptive innovation, exponential technologies, leadership and the future of work. He is the co-author of “Competing in the New World of Work” with Keith Ferrazzi, which was published in 2022 by Harvard Business Review Press. He is a graduate of Northwestern, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Business School.
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Henrick WerdelinHenrick Werdelin is the founder of Barkbox, a dog toy and treat subscription service, and Prehype, a venture building research and development group headquartered in New York. For the past 15 years, Henrik has years been involved in a range of successful startups and corporate incubations as a founder, investor, and advisor. These companies include HotPotato, AndCo, NewSmart, ReadMill, Betabox and Sunrise. Prior to working with startups, Werdelin was an Entrepreneur in Residence with Index Ventures and ran product development for MTV International. Originally from Denmark but now living in the US, Werdelin has been recognized as one of the “Top 100 Most Creative People In Business” by Fast Company and named to the “Silicon Alley 100” by Business Insider.
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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. We discuss the science behind what it takes to form a connection with another human being, how to generate or nurture a bond through dialogue, and how to form, repair, and maintain a conversational pipeline – through listening and communicating –that guarantees reciprocation and understanding.
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Official Description of the Book:
From the bestselling author of The Power of Habit, a fascinating exploration of what makes conversations work—and how we can all learn to be supercommunicators at work and in life
“A winning combination of stories, studies, and guidance that might well transform the worst communicators you know into some of the best.”—Adam Grant, author of Think Again and Hidden Potential
Come inside a jury room as one juror leads a starkly divided room to consensus. Join a young CIA officer as he recruits a reluctant foreign agent. And sit with an accomplished surgeon as he tries, and fails, to convince yet another cancer patient to opt for the less risky course of treatment. In Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg blends deep research and his trademark storytelling skills to show how we can all learn to identify and leverage the hidden layers that lurk beneath every conversation.
Communication is a superpower and the best communicators understand that whenever we speak, we’re actually participating in one of three conversations: practical (What’s this really about?), emotional (How do we feel?), and social (Who are we?). If you don’t know what kind of conversation you’re having, you’re unlikely to connect.
Supercommunicators know the importance of recognizing—and then matching—each kind of conversation, and how to hear the complex emotions, subtle negotiations, and deeply held beliefs that color so much of what we say and how we listen. Our experiences, our values, our emotional lives—and how we see ourselves, and others—shape every discussion, from who will pick up the kids to how we want to be treated at work. In this book, you will learn why some people are able to make themselves heard, and to hear others, so clearly.
With his storytelling that takes us from the writers’ room of The Big Bang Theory to the couches of leading marriage counselors, Duhigg shows readers how to recognize these three conversations—and teaches us the tips and skills we need to navigate them more successfully.
In the end, he delivers a simple but powerful lesson: With the right tools, we can connect with anyone.
Charles Duhigg is graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, Charles has been a frequent contributor to This American Life, NPR, The Colbert Report, PBS’s NewsHour, and Frontline.
Charles led the team that won the 2013 Pulitzer prize in explanatory journalism for “The iEconomy,” a series that examined the global economy through the lens of Apple. That series included examinations of such topics as the factories in China where iPhones and iPads are manufactured.
Charles has also received The George Polk award, the Gerald Loeb award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the Scripps Howard National Journalism award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and other honors.
While a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, Charles reported from Iraq about American military operations.
Before becoming a full-time journalist in 2003, Charles worked as an analyst for American Property Global Partners, a private equity firm and co-founded SWPA Education Management Group, L.L.C., which developed education programs for medically underserved areas.
He was also, for one terrifying day in 1999, a bike messenger in San Francisco.
Charles lives in Santa Cruz with his wife and two children.
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Have you ever been in a classroom or a business meeting or a conference and had a question or been confused by the presentation, and when the person running the show asked, “Does anyone have any questions?” or, “Does anyone not understand?” or, “Is anyone confused?” you looked around, saw no one else raising their hands, and then chose to pass on the opportunity to clear up your confusion?
If so, then, first of all, you are a normal, fully functioning human being with a normal, fully functioning brain, because not only is this common and predictable, there’s a psychological term for why most people don’t speak up in situations like these. It’s called pluralistic ignorance.
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In a “Does anyone have any questions?” scenario like this, each confused individual waits to see if anyone else raises their hands, not wanting to be singled out as the only person falling behind. When no one does, each then assumes they must be the only person who has no idea what is going on and decides to remain silent. After a few seconds, the speaker moves on, and the result is a shared, inaccurate view of reality in which everyone thinks that everyone else has no questions. The speaker thinks the room is following along just fine, and everyone begins living a lie.
There are several ways to define pluralistic ignorance, and that’s because it’s kind of a brain twister when you try to put it into words. Psychologist Deborah Prentice says, it’s “a phenomenon in which you feel like you’re different from everyone else, but in fact you are exactly the same. It’s a kind of illusory deviance, a sense that you are not with the majority that everyone in the majority can have simultaneously.”
And this phenomenon scales up to the level of norms. When people are unhappy with a norm, but aren’t sure if they are alone in that thinking, when they don’t know what the majority opinion truly is, they play it safe and adhere to the norms of the day, but since we can’t read each other’s minds, we assume that others are following norms because they actually believe in them. Everyone in the group, at the same time, gets stuck following a norm that no one wants to follow.
The false belief that the majority supports an unpopular norm slows down the process of ending it and sways policy makers, employers, advertisers, and the rest of society to act as though they live in a world that isn’t really there. And When change is on the horizon, pluralistic ignorance keeps people on the fringe, the sort of people whose beliefs and attitudes will be phased out by that change, clinging to their outdated worldviews for longer than they would otherwise. It also keeps their opponents feeling less supported than they truly are while pushing people in the middle to favor the status quo. In the end, a make-believe status quo changes the way everyone acts and thinks. As sociologists Hubert J. O’Gorman and Stephen L. Garry once put it, in situations like these, people often “unintentionally serve as cultural carriers of cognitive error.”
Pluralistic ignorance has been blamed for everything from excessive drinking on college campuses to the persistence of racial segregation well into the 1970s. So, how do you deal with such a strange and mind-twisting phenomenon? Well, for some norms, the solution is simple, though it can take a lot of organization and effort. You must ask everyone what they really think and feel, and then you broadcast that to everyone in some way. You must make the private public. You must make it safe to say what is really on your mind — or you simply reveal that it was safe to do so all along.
Many scientists bring up the parable of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” In the story by Hans Christian Andersen, a vain emperor hires two tailors who tell him they’ve made a suit of clothes so fine that it appears invisible to people who are unfit for their job or are very dumb. The trick, of course, is that the tailors haven’t made anything at all. All the emperor’s lackeys and subjects act as if his clothes were beautiful and amazing out of fear of appearing stupid or unfit, until finally a child points out that the emperor is walking around naked. At that point, everyone sighs in relief and feels safe to say what they were thinking all along. Stories with similar plots go back to antiquity, so the idea has been with us for a long time. The takeaway is usually: if someone has the courage to speak up, then the spell will be broken.
But there is an exception. A dark, terrible exception. When almost everyone in a group privately disagrees with a norm, or a decision, or an idea, or a practice, or a plan…but everyone also thinks they are alone in that disagreement, they may go along with what they think is the consensus, which leads a group of people to prepare to act in a way that no one actually wants to act. When one person speaks up, instead of breaking the spell, the crowd will sometimes shout that person down.
That’s what happened in 1978 at Jonestown, when Jim Jones asked 700 people to kill 300 of their children and then themselves. One person, Christine Miller, stood up and plead for everyone to choose another option. She defied her leader, and her community. Instead of joining her in revolt, the people around her engaged in what psychologists call false enforcement. By shouting at her, they signaled they were willing to die to show their loyalty to the group, even though in so doing they destroyed the very group to which they were signaling their allegiance.
False enforcement is one of our most twisted predilections, a sort of algorithmic mental malfunction that can cause pluralistic ignorance to turn deadly, and in this episode, you will learn how prevalent it is out here among our everyday lives, and what we can do about it.
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Deborah Prentice is a professor of psychology and provost at Princeton University. Her work focuses on “how people are guided by norms and constrained by norms; how they respond when they feel out of step,” and how they determine what the norms of their groups and communities are; and how they react… to those who violate social norms.”
Robb Willer is a professor of sociology, psychology, and organizational behavior and the director of the Polarization and Social Change Laboratory at Stanford University. He studies the social forces that bring people together, divide them, and shape their political attitudes.
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Pluralistic Ignorance and Alcohol Use on Campus: Some Consequences of Misperceiving the Social Norm
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IMAGE CREDIT: Emperor’s New Clothes: Vilhelm Pedersen (1820 – 1859)
IMAGE CREDIT: Christine Miller: San Diego State University
IMAGE CREDIT: Jonestown: NBC News Archives
MUSIC CREDIT: Mogwai, Drew Garraway, Snabish
On this episode we learn about the history of the exclamation point, the question mark, and the semicolon (among many other aspects of language) with Florence Hazrat, a scholar of punctuation, who, to my great surprise, informed me that while a lot of language is the result of a slow evolution, a gradual ever-changing process, punctuation in the English language is often an exception to this – for instance, a single person invented the semicolon; they woke up and the semicolon didn’t exist, and then went to bed that night, and it did!
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Official Description of the Book:
Ever been annoyed at one too many !!!!! on a social media post? Ever wondered whether that extra ! is too forceful, and should make way for a modest full stop ? Then An Admirable Point is for you.
The book traces the roots of ! in the manuscript culture of the late Middle Ages following its vagaries across centuries, oceans, and text media right up to its current flights of fancy in the digital soup of electric impulses we call the internet. Along the way, An Admirable Point examines how our prim and pristine Miss Jane Austen actually started as a wild exclamation marker and other ! in literature, why a well-placed ! sells for millions of dollars in art auctions, what happens in our head when we see a !, how ! helps us surf the internet, and what the promises and pitfalls of ! can be when it dips its stroke-dotted toes into politics and public life.
An Admirable Point: A Brief History of the Exclamation Mark is an unapologetic manifesto for exclaiming — exclaiming in surprise, wonder, and admiration at the world and ourselves.
Florence Hazrat is a scholar of punctuation in early modern literature. She studied at Cambridge and St. Andrews and is a BBC New Generation Thinker, a folk fiddler, and the host of Standing on
Points, a podcast about dots and dashes. She loves all
things punctuation and Shakespeare. Hazrat is based in Germany, working on punctuation in language and culture, and on Renaissance literature. Before she discovered her secret passion for the exclamation point, she was a fellow at the University of Sheffield studying brackets in early modern literature, and at the University of Geneva, working on Shakespearean translations.
“Words, words, words. I live for words, especially the unruly ones that sneak into unexpected (and uncomfortable) places. Turncoat words that mean one thing, and then another, and then again another, depending which way you turn them. Words that are inside out, themselves and one another.”
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Temple Grandin was born at a time when words like neurodivergent and neurotypical had yet to enter the lexicon and autism was not well understood. Since she didn’t develop speech until much later than most children, she might have led a much different life if it hadn’t been for people around her who worked very hard to open up a space for her to thrive and explore her talents and abilities. In this episode we discuss all that as well as her latest book, Visual Thinking, all about three distinct ways that human brains create human minds to make sense of the world outside of their skulls.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION FROM THE BOOK WEBSITE
A quarter of a century after her memoir, Thinking in Pictures, forever changed how the world understood autism, Temple Grandin—the “anthropologist on Mars,” as Oliver Sacks dubbed her—transforms our awareness of the different ways our brains are wired. Do you have a keen sense of direction, a love of puzzles, the ability to assemble furniture without crying? You are likely a visual thinker.
With her genius for demystifying science, Grandin draws on cutting-edge research to take us inside visual thinking. Visual thinkers constitute a far greater proportion of the population than previously believed, she reveals, and a more varied one, from the photo-realistic object visualizers like Grandin herself, with their intuitive knack for design and problem solving, to the abstract, mathematically inclined “visual spatial” thinkers who excel in pattern recognition and systemic thinking. She also makes us understand how a world increasingly geared to the verbal tends to sideline visual thinkers, screening them out at school and passing over them in the workplace. Rather than continuing to waste their singular gifts, driving a collective loss in productivity and innovation, Grandin proposes new approaches to educating, parenting, employing, and collaborating with visual thinkers. In a highly competitive world, this important book helps us see, we need every mind on board.
Temple Grandin and David McRaneyTemple Grandin is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Animals in Translation, Animals Make Us Human, The Autistic Brain, and Thinking in Pictures, which became an HBO movie starring Claire Danes. Dr. Grandin has been a pioneer in improving the welfare of farm animals as well as an outspoken advocate for the autism community. She resides in Fort Collins, Colorado.
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In this episode David McRaney is interviewed by Andrea Chalupa about the psychological research covered in How Minds Change that could help if you expect to spend time with a family member this holiday who can’t wait to pull you into an argument about politics, a wedge issue, or something else buzzing in the zeitgeist over which they’d love to start a fight. But, also, this is good stuff to know before ANY contentious conversation you might have in the future with someone who is quick to aggression and ready to get angry over how your opinion isn’t their opinion.
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Gaslit Nation, co-founded and previously co-hosted by writers Sarah Kendziorand Andrea Chalupa, experts on authoritarian states who warned America about election hacking before the 2016 election, is now hosted by Andrea Chalupa.
The show takes a deep dive on the news, skipping outrage to deliver analysis, history, context, and sharp insight on global affairs. Subscribe today to catch up on previous episodes and get new ones! (also available on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, and PocketCasts).
You can find episodes and transcripts here.
Andrea Chalupa graduated from the University of California, at Davis with High Honors in History, with a focus on Soviet History, she studied Ukrainian at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and the International School of Ukrainian Studies in L’viv, Ukraine. As a journalist, she cut her teeth in the newsrooms of Conde Nast Portfolio and AOL Money & Finance, and has written articles and columns for The Daily Beast, Forbes, TIME, and The Atlantic. Since 2004, while finishing her History thesis on the role of religion in Ukraine’s independence movement at the fall of the Soviet Union, she began dreaming up a screenplay that would take her fifteen years to research, write, and produce. That screenplay became MR. JONES, directed by three-time Academy Award-nominee Agnieszka Holland and starring James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, Peter Sarsgaard, and Joseph Mawle as George Orwell. Much of the research for the film was compiled into her book Orwell and The Refugees: The Untold Story of Animal Farm, which has been taught in classrooms in Canada and Ukraine through the genocide education program Orwell Art.
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How likely is the fungal infection in The Last of Us? The one that takes over human brains and brings humanity to the brink of extinction, could something like that really happen?
In this episode we sit down with Emily Monosson, an expert on deadly fungal infections, and discuss the handful of fungi (we know of) that are today, right now, causing catastrophic declines in wildlife, eradicating trees, destroying crops, and increasingly impacting humans.
Monsoon explains that many in the field worry that fungi are an underestimated threat and that our actions are causing an increase in invasive and deadly fungal epidemics. We explore what is at stake, why this is happening now, and what we can do to prevent future outbreaks.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
A prescient warning about the mysterious and deadly world of fungi—and how to avert further loss across species, including our own.
Fungi are everywhere. Most are harmless; some are helpful. A few are killers. Collectively, infectious fungi are the most devastating agents of disease on earth, and a fungus that can persist in the environment without its host is here to stay. In Blight, Emily Monosson documents how trade, travel, and a changing climate are making us all more vulnerable to invasion. Populations of bats, frogs, and salamanders face extinction. In the Northwest, America’s beloved national parks are covered with the spindly corpses of whitebark pines. Food crops are under siege, threatening our coffee, bananas, and wheat—and, more broadly, our global food security. Candida auris, drug-resistant and resilient, infects hospital patients and those with weakened immune systems. Coccidioides, which lives in drier dusty regions, may cause infection in apparently healthy people. The horrors go on.
Yet prevention is not impossible. Tracing the history of fungal spread and the most recent discoveries in the field, Monosson meets scientists who are working tirelessly to protect species under threat, and whose innovative approaches to fungal invasion have the potential to save human lives. Delving into case studies at once fascinating, sobering, and hopeful, Blight serves as a wake-up call, a reminder of the delicate interconnectedness of the natural world, and a lesson in seeing life on our planet with renewed humility and awe.
Emily Monosson is the author of Natural Defense, Unnatural Selection, and Evolution in a Toxic World. She is a member of the Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She lives in Montague, Massachusetts.
“I was trained, and worked as a toxicologist for the first part of my career. Now I write books about problems in the natural world and when there are some, hopeful solutions. When I am not at my computer I am often somewhere on Mount Toby, or trying to control chaos in the garden.”
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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 inevitable resistance they will face.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
If you could make a change—any change you wanted—what would it be? Would it be something in your organization or your industry? Maybe something in your community or throughout society as a whole? If you had a magic wand that would allow you to instantly change anything you wanted, what would that change look like?
In Cascades, one of today’s top innovation experts delivers a guide for driving transformation change based on the new science of networks and research into dozens of people and organizations that have created truly historic impact. This book will show that to truly change the world or even just your little corner of it, you don’t need a charismatic leader or a catchy slogan. What you need are small groups, loosely connected, but united by a common purpose.
Perhaps most of all, Cascades points to a new role for leaders, who can no longer rule by fiat or merely plan and direct action, but must inspire and empower belief. “Power no longer sits at the top of hierarchies,” he writes, “but emanates from the center of networks.”
Click here to download a FREE excerpt (Preface & Introduction)
Greg SatellGreg Satell is Co-Founder of ChangeOS, and bestselling author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change, whose work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Barron’s, Forbes, Inc., and Fast Company. His earlier book, Mapping Innovation, was selected as one of the best business titles of 2017.
A Lecturer at Wharton, Greg helps organizations overcome resistance to change and build a better future.
Greg was formerly a senior executive for the Publicis Groupe, one of the world’s largest marketing services companies. Before that, Co-CEO of KP Media, which was sold to Ukraine Media Holding in 2010.
A global citizen, Greg spent 15 years living and working in Eastern Europe where, among other things, he managed a news organization during Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.
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In this episode Jesse Richardson tells us all about ConspiracyTest.org, a new project designed to be a weird, fun, and cleverly educational way to explore just how skeptical you are (and could be) about a variety of conspiracy theories. The whole thing is designed to be very sharable and very viral, and it’s launching right before Thanksgiving 2023 so that you can share it with your conspiracy-theory-entertaining friends and family over the holidays, in person or over social media (but you should definitely try it out on yourself first).
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE TEST:
The Conspiracy Test is a gamified interactive platform to help increase healthy skepticism for conspiracy theories.
Users can select a theory they think might be true then set a baseline of skepticism and challenge themselves through a series of self-directed steps to increase their Critical Thinking Score
Features include:
- Fostering probabilistic thinking by using a percentage scale
- A gamified Critical Thinking Score which rewards increased skepticism
- Instead of attacking beliefs, giving people agency to conduct their own ‘critical thinking investigation’
- A thoughtful focus on user experience and user interface design
- An iterative approach which split-tests different ways to increase skepticism and belief mobility so as to improve the platform, and outcomes, over time
- A formal research study which will seek to empirically validate the findings such that they can be used by other platforms and media channels to increase informational integrity, as well as decrease the effectiveness of disinformation campaigns
Initial results indicate a significant effect with participants increasing their average skepticism for conspiracy theories by 30%
Unfettered conspiracy thinking can lead to dangerously extremist beliefs and actions, increase political polarization, and give cover to actual conspiracies.
This project aims to learn and implement what works best to increase healthy skepticism and mitigate uncritical conspiracy thinking.
We aim to test and demonstrate effectiveness such that these learnings can be implemented at scale on other platforms and channels.
The School of Thought’s mission more broadly is to help us question all schools of thought by popularizing critical thinking, reason, and understanding.
The Conspiracy Test is an initiative of the School of Thought, a 501c3 non profit organization, in collaboration with the University of Queensland’s Critical Thinking Project.
It was funded through The School of Thought’s own merchandise sales (also available as free Creative Commons downloads) and philanthropic donations from Gabriel Weinberg from DuckDuckGo, and Pskydin, Founder of Metal Warrior. It has not received funding from any governments, pharmaceutical companies, nor deepstate illuminati alien lizards.
Jesse Richardson is an internationally award-winning advertising creative director, and the founder of The School of Thought International.
Years ago, he decided to apply what he knew about design and advertising to create an online school providing free creative and critical thinking resources in an attempt to answer: What if we made learning how to think truly fun and engaging?
Those resources have reached an estimated 30 million students, teachers, parents, leaders, managers and everyday people around the world in more than 7 languages
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I recently sat down for a live event and Q&A with the great Annie Duke to discuss her new book, 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.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK:
Business leaders, with millions of dollars down the drain, struggle to abandon a new app or product that just isn’t working. Governments, caught in a hopeless conflict, believe that the next tactic will finally be the one that wins the war. And in our own lives, we persist in relationships or careers that no longer serve us. Why? According to Annie Duke, in the face of tough decisions, we’re terrible quitters. And that is significantly holding us back.
Annie DukeIn Quit, Duke teaches you how to get good at quitting. Drawing on stories from elite athletes like Mount Everest climbers, founders of leading companies like Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, and top entertainers like Dave Chappelle, Duke explains why quitting is integral to success, as well as strategies for determining when to hold em, and when to fold em, that will save you time, energy, and money.
You’ll learn:
- How the paradox of quitting influences decision making: If you quit on time, you will feel you quit early
- What forces work against good quitting behavior, such as escalation commitment, desire for certainty, and status quo bias
- How to think in expected value in order to make better decisions, as well as other best practices, such as increasing flexibility in goal-setting, establishing “quitting contracts,” anticipating optionality, and conducting premortems and backcasts
Whether you’re facing a make-or-break business decision or life-altering personal choice, mastering the skill of quitting will help you make the best next move.
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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.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK:
Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the “Event”: the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making—as long as they have enough money and the right technology.
Douglas RushkoffIn Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters—master programmers who want to remake the world from scratch as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced that incentivized capitalism is the solution to environmental disasters—Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so. And he shows how recent forms of anti-mainstream rebellion—QAnon, for example, or meme stocks—reinforce the same destructive order.
Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is a professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at the City University of New York, he is one of the original cyberpunks, a friend of Timothy Leary’s and a titan of technology journalism who coined the terms viral media, digital native, and social currency. His bestsellers include Coercion, Present Shock, Throwing Rocks and the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus, and his famed PBS Frontline documentaries include Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. He is also the host of the Team Human podcast.
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In this show, you’ll hear the first episode of a documentary series I made for Himalaya, an audio service devoted to inspirational and educational content, that asked me if I had any ideas for a book that I had yet to pursue, and sure enough, I did. Over the course of this audio documentary series, I explore the history and science of intelligence, IQ, and remarkable talent through interviews with dozens of intelligence experts and actual “geniuses.” By the end we get a much better picture of genius as a cultural construct and consider how we can unlock its positive potential within ourselves.
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With that documentary as my foundation, I’m currently writing a new book with what, at first, seems like a simple thesis: “What does the word ‘genius’ really mean, and how come it is so hard to get an answer to that question?”
I hit the road immediately after I finished how How Minds Change and began work on answering those two questions, and it turned out to be the most complex project I’ve ever undergone. I have since spent time with the man with the highest IQ ever recorded, the youngest person with the highest-known IQ, visited MENSA headquarters, and interviewed the world’s leading experts on intelligence, creativity, and the various “gifted” programs around the world. I’ve also embedded myself with modern eugenicists and visited schools whose missions, for better or worse, is to create geniuses.
Currently, I’m spending time with cognitive linguists and other experts who study meaning-making itself and how we attempt to articulate the ineffable through language, literature, poetry, art, math, and more. I can’t wait to show you what I’ve found.
LINK TO GET THE HEAR FIRST EPISODE AND GET TWO-WEEKS OF HIMALAYA FOR FREE
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In celebration of How Minds Change, my new book, turning one-year-old, in this episode Michael Taft interviews David McRaney about how minds do and do not change, the process behind writing a book about that, and what he has learned since writing and promoting it.
Michael is a meditation teacher, bestselling author, and a mindfulness coach – and he specializes in secular, science-based mindfulness training. If you are interested in a science-based, secular book about meditation and and mindfulness, I highly recommend his book,The Mindful Geek, snd I recommend guided meditation with him. He offers that at The Alembic in Berkeley. You can join them virtually, over the internet. Links below.
I also recommend his podcast, Deconstructing Yourself. It is all about entheogens and neurofeedback and brain hacking. If you are a Carl Sagan loving, science endorsing, evidence based sort of person – a nerd, geek, or skeptic or humanist who wants to know more about meditation and deep dive into what we do and do not know about it – that’s what his podcast is about. Sam Harris will be a guest on there soon, and I think many of you will love that episode.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
A brain-bending investigation of why some people never change their minds—and others do in an instant—by the bestselling author of You Are Not So Smart
What made a prominent conspiracy-theorist YouTuber finally see that 9/11 was not a hoax? How do voter opinions shift from neutral to resolute? Can widespread social change only take place when a generation dies out? From one of our greatest thinkers on reasoning, HOW MINDS CHANGE is a book about the science, and the experience, of transformation.
When self-delusion expert and psychology nerd David McRaney began a book about how to change someone’s mind in one conversation, he never expected to change his own. But then a diehard 9/11 Truther’s conversion blew up his theories—inspiring him to ask not just how to persuade, but why we believe, from the eye of the beholder.
Delving into the latest research of psychologists and neuroscientists, HOW MINDS CHANGE explores the limits of reasoning, the power of groupthink, and the effects of deep canvassing.
Told with McRaney’s trademark sense of humor, compassion, and scientific curiosity, it’s an eye-opening journey among cult members, conspiracy theorists, and political activists, from Westboro Baptist Church picketers to LGBTQ campaigners in California – that ultimately challenges us to question our own motives and beliefs. In an age of dangerous conspiratorial thinking, can we rise to the occasion with empathy?
An expansive, big-hearted journalistic narrative, HOW MINDS CHANGE reaches surprising and thought-provoking conclusions, to demonstrate the rare but transformative circumstances under which minds can change.
READ A SAMPLE CHAPTER
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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 the people who can (if we provoked such a response) take those points away. And deeper still, it’s the propensity to, once we find a group of people who regularly give us those points, care about what they think more than just about anything else.
In the interview, we discuss our inescapable obsession with reputation and why we are deeply motivated to avoid losing this game through the fear of shame, ostracism, embarrassment, and humiliation while also deeply motivated to win this game by earning what will provide pride, fame, adoration, respect, and status.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
For centuries, philosophers and scholars have described human behaviour in terms of sex, power and money. In The Status Game, bestselling author Will Storr radically turns this thinking on its head by arguing that it is our irrepressible craving for status that ultimately defines who we are.
From the era of the hunter-gatherer to today, when we exist as workers in the globalised economy and citizens of online worlds, the need for status has always been wired into us. A wealth of research shows that how much of it we possess dramatically affects not only our happiness and wellbeing but also our physical health – and without sufficient status, we become more ill, and live shorter lives. It’s an unconscious obsession that drives the best and worst of us: our innovation, arts and civilisation as well as our murders, wars and genocides. But why is status such an all-consuming prize? What happens if it’s taken away from us? And how can our unquenchable thirst for it explain cults, moral panics, conspiracy theories, the rise of social media and the ‘culture wars’ of today?
On a breathtaking journey through time and culture, The Status Game offers a sweeping rethink of human psychology that will change how you see others – and how you see yourself.
Will StorrWill Storr is an award-winning writer. He’s the author of six critically acclaimed books, including the novel The Hunger and The Howling of Killian Lone and the Sunday Times bestseller The Science of Storytelling. His journalism has appeared in titles such as The Guardian, The Sunday Times, *The New Yorker and The New York Times. His prizes include a National Press Club award for excellence and the AFM award for Best Investigative Journalism. His work on sexual violence against men earned the Amnesty International Award and a One World Press Award. He’s also been presented with the AIB Award*** for Best Investigative Documentary for his BBC radio series.
He teaches popular storytelling classes in London and has been invited to present his Science of Storytelling workshop all over the world. He’s an in-demand ghostwriter whose books have spent months at the top of the Sunday Times bestseller chart and have sold more than two million copies.
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Sedona Chinn, a researcher who studies how people make sense of competing scientific, environmental, and health-related claims, joins […]
We sit down with Brian Brushwood to discuss how he put together this most recent season of The […]
In this episode we sit down with Jennifer Shahade, a two-time U.S. Women’s Chess Champion, author, speaker, and […]
In an era in which we have more information available to us than ever before, when claims of […]
Deliberation. Debate. Conversation. Though it can feel like that’s what we are doing online as we trade arguments […]
At the peak of COVID-19, Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling set out to write a book about the widespread pushback against […]
Marina Nitze is a professional fixer of broken systems – a hacker, not of computers and technology, but […]
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 unique and powerful techniques and approaches which help clients to get out of the feeling of being stuck.
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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 Science of Stuck: Breaking Through Inertia to Find your Path Forward” – at least of half of this interview turned out to be was wide-ranging conversation chasing down many nested tangents about everything from procrastination to somatic markers to trauma to the multitudes of the self and more.
— OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK–
A research-based tool kit for moving past what’s holding you back—in life, in love, and in work.
We all experience stuckness in our lives. We feel stuck in our relationships, career paths, body struggles, addiction issues, and more. Many of us know what we need to do to move forward—but find ourselves unable to take the leap to make it happen. And then we blame and shame ourselves, and stay in a loop of self-doubt that goes nowhere.
The good news is you’re not lazy, crazy, or unmotivated. In this empowering and action-oriented guide, you’ll discover why we can’t think our way forward—and how to break through what’s holding us back. Using an eclectic approach and a customizable plan that’s as direct or as deep as you want, this life-changing guide empowers you to:
• break old habits and patterns
• gain perspective on pain and trauma from the past
• free yourself from the torturous “why” questions
• take control of your choices to create the life you want
Bringing together research-backed solutions that range from shadow work to reparenting, embodied healing, and other clinical practices, along with empowering personal stories, this book is a hands-on road map for moving forward with purpose, confidence, and the freedom to become who you’re truly meant to be.
Britt FrankBritt Frank is a therapist, teacher, speaker, and trauma specialist who is committed to dismantling the mental health myths that keep us feeling stuck and sick.
Her work focuses on empowering people to understand the inner mechanisms of their brains and bodies. When we know how things work, the capacity for choice is restored and life can and does change.
Whether she’s leading a workshop, teaching a class, or working individually with private clients, Britt’s goal is to educate, empower, and equip people to transform even their most persistent and long-standing patterns of thinking and doing.
This is a link to her Instagram.
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How Minds Change
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The Science of Stuck Website
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.
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In the show, we discuss both his new book – Think Again: The Power of Knowing What you Don’t Know – and his TED Original Podcast, WorkLife, in which he interviewed Margaret Atwood, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, to learn how she deals with the constant allure of social media and streaming videos in a future where giving in to procrastination is easier than it has ever been.
In the show, you’ll hear portions of that interview followed by a lengthy interview with Grant about his new book in this all-over-the-place, extensive exploration of how to rethink your own thinking.
— OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK–
“Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.
In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: there’s evidence that being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become.
Bringing together research-backed solutions that range from shadow work to reparenting, embodied healing, and other clinical practices, along with empowering personal stories, this book is a hands-on road map for moving forward with purpose, confidence, and the freedom to become who you’re truly meant to be.”
Adam GrantAdam Grant is an organizational psychologist who has been recognized as one of the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers and was named one of Fortune’s 40 under 40.
He is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 5 books that have sold millions of copies and been translated into 45 languages: Think Again, Give and Take, Originals, Option B, and Power Moves. His books have been named among the year’s best by Amazon, Apple, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal. His viral piece on languishing was the most-read New York Times article of 2021 and the most-saved article across all platforms.
Adam hosts WorkLife, a chart-topping TED original podcast. His TED talks on languishing, original thinkers, and givers and takers have been viewed more than 30 million times. He has received a standing ovation at TED and was voted the audience’s favorite speaker at The Nantucket Project. His speaking and consulting clients include Google, the NBA, Bridgewater, and the Gates Foundation. He writes on work and psychology for the New York Times, has served on the Defense Innovation Board at the Pentagon, has been honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and has appeared on Billions. He has more than 6 million followers on social media and features new insights in his free monthly newsletter, GRANTED.
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Think Again
In this episode, astronomer and world-famous science communicator Phil Plait joins us to discuss his new book, Under Alien Skies, in which he describes what it would be like (through human eyes and real physical experiences) to actually travel to Saturn, Mars, asteroids, and distant stars. Also, we discuss the recent surge in UFO sighting as well as his famous talk at The Amazing Meeting more than a decade ago in which he asked all science communicators and critical thinkers to approach those who believe in pseudoscience with empathy and respect instead of scorn and vitriol. And, we run through the history of James Randi’s popularization of the big-S Skeptic movement.
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— OFFICIAL PREVIEW OF THE BOOK–
A rip-roaring tour of the cosmos with the Bad Astronomer, bringing you up close and personal with the universe like never before.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel the universe? How would Saturn’s rings look from a spaceship sailing just above them? If you were falling into a black hole, what’s the last thing you’d see before getting spaghettified? While traveling in person to most of these amazing worlds may not be possible—yet—the would-be space traveler need not despair: you can still take the scenic route through the galaxy with renowned astronomer and science communicator Philip Plait.
On this lively, immersive adventure through the cosmos, Plait draws ingeniously on both the latest scientific research and his prodigious imagination to transport you to ten of the most spectacular sights outer space has to offer. In vivid, inventive scenes informed by rigorous science—injected with a dose of Plait’s trademark humor—Under Alien Skies places you on the surface of alien worlds, from our own familiar Moon to the far reaches of our solar system and beyond. Try launching yourself onto a two-hundred-meter asteroid, or stargazing from the rim of an ancient volcano on a planet where, from the place you stand, it is eternally late afternoon. Experience the sudden onset of lunar nightfall, the disorientation of walking—or, rather, shuffling—when you weigh almost nothing, the irritation of jagged regolith dust. Glimpse the frigid mountains and plains of Pluto and the cake-like exterior of a comet called 67P. On a planet trillions of miles from Earth, glance down to see the strange, beautiful shadows cast by a hundred thousand stars.
For the aspiring extraterrestrial citizen, casual space tourist, or curious armchair traveler, Plait is an illuminating, always-entertaining guide to the most otherworldly views in our universe.
Phil PlaitPhilip Plait, PhD, is an astronomer, sci-fi dork, TV documentary talking head, and all-around science enthusiast. The author of Under Alien Skies, Bad Astronomy, and Death from the Skies!, he writes the Bad Astronomy newsletter and lives in Colorado.
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Is a hotdog a sandwich? Well, that depends on your definition of a sandwich (and a hotdog), and according to the most recent research in cognitive science, the odds that your concept of a sandwich is the same as another person’s concept are shockingly low.
In this episode we explore how understanding why that question became a world-spanning argument in the mid 2010s helps us understand some of the world-spanning arguments vexing us today.
Our guest is psychologist Celeste Kidd who studies how we acquire and conceptualize information, form beliefs around those concepts, and, in general, make sense of the torrent of information blasting our brains each and every second. Her most recent paper examines how conceptual misalignment can lead to semantic disagreements, which can lead us to talk past each other (and get into arguments about things like whether hotdogs are sandwiches).
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Celeste KiddCeleste Kidd is a psychologist at Berkeley. She is a cognitive scientist and developmental psychologist who is well known for her research on human curiosity and certainty how human brains develop knowledge.
Her lab, the Kidd Lab, studies the processes involved in knowledge acquisition, especially in young children, using a combination of computational and behavioral methods.
The Kidd Lab employs a range of methods, including eye-tracking and touchscreen testing with human infants, in order to show how learners sample information from their environment and build knowledge gradually over time.
Celeste Kidd’s work has been published in PNAS, Neuron, Psychological Science, Developmental Science, and elsewhere. Her lab has received funding from NSF, DARPA, Google, the Jacobs Foundation, the Human Frontiers Science Program, and the Templeton Foundation. She is a recipient of the Hellman Fellows award, the American Psychological Science Rising Star designation, the Glushko Dissertation Prize in Cognitive Science, and the Cognitive Science Society Computational Modeling Prize in Perception/Action.
Kidd was also named as one of TIME Magazines 2017 Persons of the Year as one of the “Silence Breakers” for her advocacy for better protections for students against sexual misconduct.
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Latent Diversity in Human Concepts
This is the third episode in a three-part series about how to have difficult conversations with people who see the world differently, how to have better debates about contentious issues, and how to ethically and scientifically persuade one another about things that matter – in short, this is a three-part series about How Minds Change (which is also the title of my new book).
There seems to be a movement afoot, a new wave of nonfiction about how to reduce all this argumentative madness and epistemic chaos. I want to boost everyone’s signal on this issue, so I thought it would be nice to collaborate instead of compete, since that’s part of what we are all proselytizing with these books.
So this episode’s guest is Anand Giridharadas, the author of The Persuaders – a book about activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens who are on the ground working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy.
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— OFFICIAL PREVIEW OF THE BOOK–
The Persuaders is a stunning insider account of activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens who are on the ground working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy.
Many Americans have grown alienated from an idea at the heart of democratic theory: that you change things by changing minds—by persuading.
This challenge to persuasion has taken myriad forms. Social movements that need to grow to win have often seemed to devote more energy to keeping people out than pulling people in. Political campaigns frequently receive advice to focus on mobilizing sympathetic voters more than winning over skeptics. People have watched as tens of millions of their loved ones mentally disappear into online rabbit holes and cults, but little organized effort is made to bring them back or protect future victims. Leaders who attempt outreach have been attacked by their own as sellouts, chided for centering those who would never ally with them anyway over those who have long had their back, if not their attention.
The tendency to write off is rooted in the assumption that differences of identity are unbridgeable, that people are too invested in their privileges and interests to change, that the failure to achieve change in the past predicts failure in the future, that people and their opinions are monolithic and strong rather than complicated and fragile, and therefore the purpose of politics is to protect yourself from Others and galvanize your own instead of trying to reach across.
In the change-making circles I had begun to follow, the political culture of the write-off had made itself strongly felt. It had helped to open an ever-widening, seemingly unsustainable gap between the ambitions for structural, material change and the utter pessimism about individual people changing. How could social transformation come to pass when so many, even those most thirsting to change things, had written off the very possibility of changing people’s minds?
The stakes of this writing off were high: some of the most dangerous and antidemocratic movements of our time had managed, in spite of those features, to make their causes appear welcoming and make newcomers feel at home, whereas some of the most righteous, inclusive, and just movements gave many the feeling of being inaccessible, intractable, and alienating.
I became drawn to a group of activists, organizers, politicians, educators, and others in these change-making circles who dissented from the great write-off and were seeking another way.
Anand GiridharadasAnand Giridharadas is a writer. He is the author of Winners Take All, The True American, India Calling, and now The Persuaders. A former foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for more than a decade, he has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time, and he is the publisher of the newsletter The.Ink. He has spoken on stages around the world and taught narrative journalism at New York University. He is a regular on-air political analyst for MSNBC.
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The Persuaders
This is the second episode in a three-part series about how to have difficult conversations with people who see the world differently, how to have better debates about contentious issues, and how to ethically and scientifically persuade one another about things that matter – in short, this is a three-part series about How Minds Change (which is also the title of my new book).
There seems to be a movement afoot, a new wave of nonfiction about how to reduce all this argumentative madness and epistemic chaos. I want to boost everyone’s signal on this issue, so I thought it would be nice to collaborate instead of compete, since that’s part of what we are all proselytizing with these books.
So this episode’s guest is Bo Seo, the author of Good Arguments – a book about how he became a world debate champion in which he not only teaches us how to apply what he has learned to everyday life, but imagines communities built around, not despite, constant arguing and disagreement.
Seo says that a political life without constant disagreement would be impoverished. As he puts it, quote, “Nations are, at their best, evolving arguments. As he writes, “In a liberal democracy, good arguments are not what societies should do but also what they should be.” See believes that on well curated, well moderated platforms, ones that value good faith interactions, arguing and disagreement would flip from being catalysts for polarization to the very engine of depolarization and change. In the interview, he not only tells us how to defend ourselves against bad arguments, but explains how in his mind a great democracy isn’t a place where everyone agrees and sees eye-to-eye, but one where we work to have better quality disagreements.
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— OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK–
Two-time world champion debater and former coach of the Harvard debate team, Bo Seo tells the inspiring story of his life in competitive debating and reveals the timeless secrets of effective communication and persuasion
When Bo Seo was 8 years old, he and his family migrated from Korea to Australia. At the time, he did not speak English, and, unsurprisingly, struggled at school. But, then, in fifth grade, something happened to change his life: he discovered competitive debate. Immediately, he was hooked. It turned out, perhaps counterintuitively, that debating was the perfect activity for someone shy and unsure of himself. It became a way for Bo not only to find his voice, but to excel socially and academically. And he’s not the only one. Far from it: presidents, Supreme Court justices, and CEOs are all disproportionally debaters. This is hardly a coincidence. By tracing his own journey from immigrant kid to world champion, Seo shows how the skills of debating—information gathering, truth finding, lucidity, organization, and persuasion—are often the cornerstone of successful careers and happy lives.
Drawing insights from its strategies, structure, and history, Seo teaches readers the skills of competitive debate, and in doing so shows how they can improve their communication with friends, family, and colleagues alike. He takes readers on a thrilling intellectual adventure into the eccentric and brilliant subculture of competitive debate, touching on everything from the radical politics of Malcom X to Artificial Intelligence. Seo proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that, far from being a source of conflict, good-faith debate can enrich our daily lives. Indeed, these good arguments are essential to a flourishing democracy, and are more important than ever at time when bad faith is all around, and our democracy seems so imperiled.
Bo SeoBo Seo is a two-time world champion debater and a former coach of the Australian national debating team and the Harvard College Debating Union. One of the most recognized figures in the global debate community, he has won both the World Schools Debating Championship and the World Universities Debating Championship.
Bo has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN, and many other publications. He has worked as a national reporter for the Australian Financial Review and has been a regular panelist on the prime time Australian debate program, The Drum.
Bo graduated from Harvard University and received a master’s degree in public policy from Tsinghua University. He is currently a Juris Doctor candidate at Harvard Law School.
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This is the first episode in a three-part series about how to have difficult conversations with people who see the world differently, how to have better debates about contentious issues, and how to ethically and scientifically persuade one another about things that matter – in short, this is a three-part series about How Minds Change (which is also the title of my new book).
There seems to be a movement afoot, a new wave of nonfiction about how to reduce all this argumentative madness and epistemic chaos. I want to boost everyone’s signal on this issue, so I thought it would be nice to collaborate instead of compete, since that’s part of what we are all proselytizing with these books.
So 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 opinions, attitudes, and values come from. In short, it’s about how to reduce polarization and learn from those with whom we disagree by establishing the sort of dynamic in which they will eagerly learn from us as well.
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— OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK–
We think we have the answers, but we need to be asking a lot more questions. Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Mónica set out to find what was blinding us and discovered the most eye-opening tool we’re not using: our own built-in curiosity.
Partisanship is up, trust is down, and our social media feeds make us sure we’re right and everyone else is ignorant (or worse). But avoiding one another is hurting our relationships and our society. In this timely, personal guide, Mónica, the chief storyteller for the national cross-partisan depolarization organization Braver Angels, takes you to the real front lines of a crisis that threatens to grind America to a halt—broken conversations among confounded people.
She shows you how to overcome the fear and certainty that surround us to finally do what only seems impossible: understand and even learn from people in your life whose whole worldview is different from or even opposed to yours.
Drawing from cross-partisan conversations she’s had, organized, or witnessed everywhere from the echo chambers on social media to the wheat fields in Oregon to raw, unfiltered fights with her own family on election night, Mónica shows how you can put your natural sense of wonder to work for you immediately, finding the answers you need by talking with people—rather than about them—and asking the questions you want, curiously.
Whether you’re left, right, center, or not a fan of labels: If you’re ready to fight back against the confusion, heartbreak, and madness of our dangerously divided times—in your own life, at least—Mónica’s got the tools and fresh, surprising insights to prove that seeing where people are coming from isn’t just possible. It’s easier than you think.
Mónica Guzmán Mónica Guzmán is Senior Fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels, a nonprofit working to depolarize America, founder and CEO of Reclaim Curiosity, an organization working to build a more curious world; and author of I Never Thought Of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.
Moni was a 2019 fellow at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, where she studied social and political division, and a 2016 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she studied how journalists can better meet the needs of a participatory public. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, the Glenn Beck Podcast, Reader’s Digest, BookTV, and EconTalk, and she is an advisor for Starts With Us and the Generations Over Dinner project.
Before committing to the project of helping people understand each other across the political divide, Mónica cofounded the award-winning Seattle newsletter The Evergrey and led a national network of groundbreaking local newsletters as VP of Local for WhereBy.Us.
She was named one of the 50 most influential women in Seattle, served twice as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes, and plays a barbarian named Shadrack in her besties’ Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
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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.
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Brian Brushwood“Cons don’t fool us because we’re stupid, they fool us because we’re human.”
In this episode, we sit down with Brushwood, a famed stage magician and infamous instructor of the school of scams whose new podcast explores the world’s greatest con artists and con jobs from World War II to modern game shows.
BRIAN’S TWITTER
THE WORLD’S GREATEST CON WEBSITE
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 most money ever awarded in a single day on any program in the history of game shows.
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It’s February. It’s that time of year when we start to wonder if we might not follow through with our New Year’s resolutions. It’s that time of the year when procrastination becomes a centerpiece of our psychological concerns.
If you only just now started working and answering emails and eating properly, that this just means you are a normal human living in really weird times, and everyone else is also slowly, and begrudgingly, starting to accept the fact that it is 2023 as well
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, help clients to get out of the feeling of being STUCK. Author of The Science of Stuck, she says, “Procrastination is not a character flaw. Nor is it a sign of weakness. Nor is it a sign of laziness. Procrastination is an indicator that internal consent has not been given. When our inner parts are distressed, afraid, sad, angry, grief-stricken or anxious, it is important to listen to their concerns, not to shame them or coerce them into action.”
In the show you’ll learn about the physiological origins of procrastination – the inner brake pedal and gas pedal – and what to do to escape the two different versions of this universal challenge to getting unstuck and getting things done.
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— OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK–
A research-based tool kit for moving past what’s holding you back—in life, in love, and in work.
We all experience stuckness in our lives. We feel stuck in our relationships, career paths, body struggles, addiction issues, and more. Many of us know what we need to do to move forward—but find ourselves unable to take the leap to make it happen. And then we blame and shame ourselves, and stay in a loop of self-doubt that goes nowhere.
The good news is you’re not lazy, crazy, or unmotivated. In this empowering and action-oriented guide, you’ll discover why we can’t think our way forward—and how to break through what’s holding us back. Using an eclectic approach and a customizable plan that’s as direct or as deep as you want, this life-changing guide empowers you to:
• break old habits and patterns
• gain perspective on pain and trauma from the past
• free yourself from the torturous “why” questions
• take control of your choices to create the life you want
Bringing together research-backed solutions that range from shadow work to reparenting, embodied healing, and other clinical practices, along with empowering personal stories, this book is a hands-on road map for moving forward with purpose, confidence, and the freedom to become who you’re truly meant to be.
Britt FrankBritt Frank is a therapist, teacher, speaker, and trauma specialist who is committed to dismantling the mental health myths that keep us feeling stuck and sick.
Her work focuses on empowering people to understand the inner mechanisms of their brains and bodies. When we know how things work, the capacity for choice is restored and life can and does change.
Whether she’s leading a workshop, teaching a class, or working individually with private clients, Britt’s goal is to educate, empower, and equip people to transform even their most persistent and long-standing patterns of thinking and doing.
This is a link to her Instagram.
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Quotes About Procrastination
Nick Sonnenberg doesn’t believe there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done.
That’s because when his business was in crisis mode, he developed a framework for eliminating inefficiencies and preventing the sort of metawork – working on working – that leads to scavenger hunts and meetings that could be emails, and for that matter, email runarounds that get everyone ever farther from inbox zero. He turned that framework into a consultancy business, and put it all together in a new book for people who feel underwater titled Come up For Air.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
“Forget the old concepts of time management and the hustle culture of working until you burn out. With the right blueprint, you and your entire team can get more done in far fewer hours. Come Up For Air is that blueprint.
Through years of building leading efficiency consulting business, Nick Sonnenberg has discovered the primary reason why so many teams are overwhelmed. It’s not because they don’t have enough time, managers expect too much of their employees, or there aren’t enough people. The problem is that everyone is drowning in unnecessary work and inefficiencies that prevent them from focusing on the work that drives results.
In Come Up For Air, you’ll discover the CPR Business Efficiency Membership, a proven system for leaders, managers, and teams to maximize their performance and reduce overwhelm by using the right tools in the right way at the right time. The end result? More output, less stress, happier employees, and the potential to gain an extra full day per week in productivity to use however you’d like.
You’ll learn the proven empirical strategies from someone who not only turned his company around when it was on the verge of bankruptcy but has also helped thousands of organizations worldwide become more efficient, leverage the right productivity tools and prepare for explosive growth.”
Nick SonnenbergNick Sonnenberg is an entrepreneur, columnist, and guest lecturer at Columbia University. He is the founder and CEO of Leverage, an operational efficiency consultancy that helps companies with time management, efficiency, and automation.
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Temple Grandin was born at a time when words like neurodivergent and neurotypical had yet to enter the lexicon and autism was not well understood. Since she didn’t develop speech until much later than most children, she might have led a much different life if it hadn’t been for people around her who worked very hard to open up a space for her to thrive and explore her talents and abilities. In this episode we discuss all that as well as her latest book, Visual Thinking, all about three distinct ways that human brains create human minds to make sense of the world outside of their skulls.
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In this episode we sit down with psychologist Dacher Keltner, one of the world’s leading experts on the science of emotion, the man Pixar hired to help them write Inside Out. In his new book – Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life – he outlines his years of work in this field, the health benefits of awe, the evolutionary origins and likely functions, and how to better pursue more awe and wonder in your own life.
OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
Awe is mysterious. How do we begin to quantify the goose bumps we feel when we see the Grand Canyon, or the utter amazement when we watch a child walk for the first time? How do you put into words the collective effervescence of standing in a crowd and singing in unison, or the wonder you feel while gazing at centuries-old works of art? Up until fifteen years ago, there was no science of awe, the feeling we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that transcend our understanding of the world. Scientists were studying emotions like fear and disgust, emotions that seemed essential to human survival. Revolutionary thinking, though, has brought into focus how, through the span of evolution, we’ve met our most basic needs socially. We’ve survived thanks to our capacities to cooperate, form communities, and create culture that strengthens our sense of shared identity—actions that are sparked and spurred by awe.
In Awe, Dacher Keltner presents a radical investigation and deeply personal inquiry into this elusive emotion. Revealing new research into how awe transforms our brains and bodies, alongside an examination of awe across history, culture, and within his own life during a period of grief, Keltner shows us how cultivating awe in our everyday life leads us to appreciate what is most humane in our human nature. And during a moment in which our world feels more divided than ever before, and more imperiled by crises of different kinds, we are greatly in need of awe. If we open our minds, it is awe that sharpens our reasoning and orients us toward big ideas and new insights, that cools our immune system’s inflammation response and strengthens our bodies. It is awe that activates our inclination to share and create strong networks, to take actions that are good for the natural and social world around us. It is awe that transforms who we are, that inspires the creation of art, music, and religion. At turns radical and profound, brimming with enlightening and practical insights, Awe is our field guide, from not only one of the leading voices on the subject but a fellow seeker of awe in his own right, for how to place awe as a vital force within our lives.
Dacher KeltnerDacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and the faculty director of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center.
A renowned expert in the biological and evolutionary origins of human emotion, Dr. Keltner studies the science of compassion, awe, love, and beauty, and how emotions shape our moral intuition.
His research interests also span issues of power, status, inequality, and social class. He is the author of the best-selling book Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life and of The Compassionate Instinct.
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Previous Episodes
Dacher Kelter
Greater Good
How Minds Change
Newsletter
David McRaney’s Twitter
YANSS Twitter
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 and grow.
In the show, you will how we can use the current understanding of how surprise leads to learning, and how learning depends on interpretation, to improve our lives, and the lives of others
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Here is the official description of his new book:
“Michael Rousell examines the rich and complex nuances of the science of surprise and shows us how we can use it strategically to enrich lives.
Random events transform us. After studying formative events, moments that define us, for over three decades, Michael Rousell discovered that most of them took place during a spark of surprise. This breakthrough launched a fascinating journey from neuroscience to stand-up comedy. Rousell draws on research from a wide variety of brain science disciplines (cognition, motivation, neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence, persuasion, evolution, and learning), then examines those who already use surprise strategically (comedians, film directors, entertainers, magicians, and novelists). This examination illustrates the hidden, yet critical features inherent in surprise, while demystifying the complexities.
Surprise evolved as a mechanism to instantly change our beliefs. Rousell shows how surprising events produce invisible influence because they open a window to spontaneous belief change with no warning or conscious awareness. You’ll see how seemingly minor features of surprise create profound differences and can be used to strategically enrich lives, create positive mindsets, and maximize influence.”
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Previous Episodes
Michael Rousell’s Website
Michael Rousell’s Twitter
Crimes Against Dopamine
Temple Grandin was born at a time when words like neurodivergent and neurotypical had yet to enter the lexicon and autism was not well understood. Since she didn’t develop speech until much later than most children, she might have led a much different life if it hadn’t been for people around her who worked very hard to open up a space for her to thrive and explore her talents and abilities. In this episode we discuss all that as well as her latest book, Visual Thinking, all about three distinct ways that human brains create human minds to make sense of the world outside of their skulls.
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OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION FROM THE BOOK WEBSITE
A quarter of a century after her memoir, Thinking in Pictures, forever changed how the world understood autism, Temple Grandin—the “anthropologist on Mars,” as Oliver Sacks dubbed her—transforms our awareness of the different ways our brains are wired. Do you have a keen sense of direction, a love of puzzles, the ability to assemble furniture without crying? You are likely a visual thinker.
With her genius for demystifying science, Grandin draws on cutting-edge research to take us inside visual thinking. Visual thinkers constitute a far greater proportion of the population than previously believed, she reveals, and a more varied one, from the photo-realistic object visualizers like Grandin herself, with their intuitive knack for design and problem solving, to the abstract, mathematically inclined “visual spatial” thinkers who excel in pattern recognition and systemic thinking. She also makes us understand how a world increasingly geared to the verbal tends to sideline visual thinkers, screening them out at school and passing over them in the workplace. Rather than continuing to waste their singular gifts, driving a collective loss in productivity and innovation, Grandin proposes new approaches to educating, parenting, employing, and collaborating with visual thinkers. In a highly competitive world, this important book helps us see, we need every mind on board.
Temple Grandin and David McRaneyTemple Grandin is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Animals in Translation, Animals Make Us Human, The Autistic Brain, and Thinking in Pictures, which became an HBO movie starring Claire Danes. Dr. Grandin has been a pioneer in improving the welfare of farm animals as well as an outspoken advocate for the autism community. She resides in Fort Collins, Colorado.
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Previous Episodes
Temple Grandin
Visual Thinking
Temple Grandin’s Twitter
In this episode we explore what narcissism is (and what is most-definitely is not). iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud – Simplecast […]
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In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we sit down with psychologist Jay Van Bavel to discuss his new book, The Power of Us, an exploration of “the dynamics of shared, social identities. What causes people to develop social identities? What happens to people when they define themselves in terms of group memberships? Under what conditions does the human proclivity to divide the world into “us” and “them” produce toxic conflict and devastating discrimination? And how can shared identities instead be harnessed to improve performance, increase cooperation, and promote social harmony?”
Dr. Jay Van Bavel Dr. Jay Van Bavel is an Associate Professorof Psychology and Neural Science with an affiliation at the Stern School of Business in Management and Organizations at New York University. Prior to coming to NYU, Jay completed his PhD at the University of Toronto. He is the author of “The Power of Us: Harnessing our social identities to improve performance, increase cooperation, and promote social harmony” (with Dominic Packer).
Jay’s is the Director of the NYU Social Identity & Morality Lab and has won several awards for his research on how collective concerns shape the brain and behavior. From neurons to social networks, he has published over 100 academic papers on the psychology and neuroscience of implicit bias, diversity and inclusion, group identity, team performance, cooperation, decision-making, and public health. His research has been cited in the US Supreme Court and Senate, and United Nations.
Jay has written about his research for the public in the BBC, Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Scientific American. He has appeared on Through the Wormhole (with Morgan Freeman), Why We Hate (by Stephen Spielberg), CBC News, MSNBC, and NBC News, been interviewed on NPR, WNYC, and Bloomberg News, and had his research featured in international media. He also writes a career advice column for Science Magazine.
Jay teaches one the largest courses at NYU and recently received the Golden DozenTeaching Award. He has given invited talks and keynotes at many of the top psychology departments and business schools (e.g., Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Oxford), international conferences (e.g., TEDx, World Health Organization, World Science Festival).
TWITTER: @jayvanbavel
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Previous Episodes
The Power of Us Website
Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response
Jay Van Bavel
Transcript – Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Soundcloud – Omny – Spotify
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.
Joseph Uscinski is an associate professor of political science at the University of Miami. He studies public opinion and mass media, with a focus on conspiracy theories and related misinformation. His recent article for The Guardian argues that QAnon is not growing, nor is is a right-wing conspiracy theory. He is the coauthor of American Conspiracy Theories and editor of Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them.
Twitter: @joeuscinski
Anni Sternisko is a doctoral candidate at New York University studying conspiracy theory beliefs, social identity and moral judgment. Her recent paper titled: The dark side of social movements: Social identity, non-conformity, and the lure of conspiracy theories, opens with, “Research has linked conspiracy theory beliefs to anti-democratic attitudes, prejudice and non-normative political behavior. We propose a framework to understand the motivational processes behind conspiracy theories and associated social identities and collective action.”
Twitter: @annisternisko
Links and Sources
Transcript – Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Soundcloud – Omny – Spotify
Who Supports QAnon? A Case Study in Political Extremism
QAnon is not growing
QAnon and sex trafficking beliefs
The dark side of social movements: Social identity, non-conformity, and the lure of conspiracy theories
QAnon: a timeline of violence linked to the conspiracy theory
‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theorist gets four years in prison
I’m a Parkland Shooting Survivor. QAnon Convinced My Dad It Was All a Hoax.
CSIS Threat Assessment of QAnon
Frontline: The United States of Conspiracy
Q: Into the Storm
Man pleads guilty to terrorism after Hoover Dam barricade
The Atlantic: The Prophecies of Q
The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe
The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory
Joseph Uscinski’s Website
Behind The Curve Website
The Study of Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracy Theories Can’t Be Stopped
Meta-Analysis of Psychological Research on Conspiracy Beliefs
American Conspiracy Theories
YANSS Episode on Conspiratorial Thinking
Wikipedia’s Giant List of Conspiracies
Our guest on this episode is Dr. Julia Shaw, the author of The Memory Illusion.
Julia is famous among psychologists because she was able to implant false memories into a group of subjects and convince 70 percent of them that they were guilty of a crime they did not commit, and she did so by using the sort of sloppy interrogation techniques that some police departments have been truly been guilty of using in the past.
From her book’s website: “In The Memory Illusion, Dr Julia Shaw uses the latest research to show the astonishing variety of ways in which our memory can indeed be led astray. Fascinating and unnerving in equal measure, the international bestseller The Memory Illusion has been translated into 20 languages and offers a unique insight into the human brain, challenging you to question how much you can ever truly know about yourself.”
Omny – Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud – Spotify
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Dr. Julia Shaw is a psychologist best known for her work in the areas of memory and criminal psychology. In 2017 Dr. Shaw co-founded the memory science and artificial intelligence start-up Spot. Spot helps employees report workplace harassment and discrimination, and empowers organizations to build a more inclusive and respectful work environment. In 2016 she published her bestselling debut book The Memory Illusion, which has appeared in 20 languages. In 2019 she published her second international bestseller Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side. TWITTER: @drjuliashaw
Links and Sources
Omny – Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Patreon – Soundcloud – Spotify
Julia Shaw’s Website
Julia Shaw’s Twitter
The Memory Illusion
In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we sit down with four experts on human behavior to try and understand how wearing masks, during the COVID-19 pandemic, became politicized.
In the show, we take a take a deep dive into tribal psychology, which, in essence, says that humans are motivated reasoners who alter their thinking, feeling, and behaving when thinking, feeling, and behaving in certain ways might upset their peers.
At times, since belonging goals are so vital to our survival, we value signaling that we are good members of our tribes much more than we value being correct, and in those circumstances we will choose to be wrong — if signaling we believe wrong things seems like it will keep us in good standing with our peers.
This is not entirely irrational. A human alone in this world faces a lot of difficulty, but being alone in the world before modern times was almost certainly a death sentence. So, we carry with us an innate drive to form groups, join groups, remain in those groups, and oppose other groups. To do that effectively, we must signal who is US and who is THEM.
We’ve covered that before on the show with two episodes on tribal psychology:
How does all this apply to masks? Well, as you will hear, we sometimes act as if we disagree on certain fact-based issues, and we produce reasons for why we disagree, but it is just an act, and the reasons are justification and rationalizations produced for public consumption. In other words, it’s performative, but it doesn’t feel performative.
With masks, like many modern wedge issues, we only disagree because the issue has become political, which means feeling one way or the other carries social rewards and social costs. Masks have unfortunately entered that domain, moving out of the realm of facts and scientific evidence and into the realm of tribal signaling. They have become an overt symbol of who you trust, and so wearing one or not has become a badge of loyalty or a symbol of shame, depending on who you consider US and who you consider THEM.
Dr. Shana Gadarian Dr. Shana Gadarian is a political psychologist and professor of political science at Syracuse University. In 2015, she co-authored a book titled Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World. Her research focuses on how citizens learn and form attitudes when politics is threatening, whether threats come from terrorism, public health outbreaks, or media and elite rhetoric.
TWITTER: @sgadarian
Dr. Liliana Mason Dr. Lilliana Mason is a professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland where she researches partisan identity, partisan bias, social sorting, and American social polarization. She is the author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and National Public Radio.
TWITTER: @lilymasonphd
Dr. Dan Kahan Dr. Dan Kahan is a professor of law and psychology at Yale Law School were he studies risk perception, criminal law, science communication, and the application of decision science to law and policymaking. Today he is a member of the Cultural Cognition Project, an team of scholars “who use empirical methods to examine the impact of group values on perceptions of risk and related facts.”
TWITTER: cult_cognition
Dr. Joe Hanson Dr. Joe Hanson, is a science writer, biologist, and YouTube educator. He is the creator and host of It’s Okay To Be Smart, an award-winning science education show from PBS Digital Studios that celebrates curiosity and the pleasure of finding things out. His science writing has been published by WIRED, Nautilus, Scientific American and Texas Monthly.
TWITTER: @DrJoeHanson
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Links and Sources
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Previous Episodes
Tribal Psychology
Uncivil Agreement
Shana Gadaraian
Lilliana Mason
Dan Kahan
Joe Hanson
The Minimal Group Paradigm
Cultural Cognition Project
Behavioral economist Peter Atwater discusses tribal moods
Kahan paper on politically motivated reasoning
Political Polarization in the American Public
Related Papers:
- Party Over Policy: The Dominating Impact of Group Influence on Political Beliefs
- Social Categorization and Similarity in Intergroup Behaviour
- About the impact of automaticity in the Minimal Group Paradigm: evidence from affective priming tasks
- Seeing “us vs. them”: Minimal group effects on the neural encoding of faces
- Cultural Variation in the Minimal Group Effect
- Science Curiosity and Political Information Processing
- ‘Ordinary science intelligence’: a science-comprehension measure for study of risk and science communication, with notes on evolution and climate change
- Climate-Science Communication and the Measurement Problem
- Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government
- Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection
- Cultural Variation in the Minimal Group Effect
- The Politically Motivated Reasoning Paradigm
- Rationality and Belief in Human Evolution
Music: Mogwai and Caravan Palace
In this episode we sit down with Annie Murphy Paul, the acclaimed science writer, whose new book, The Extended Mind is all about how the brain is part of systems, and it is those systems that constitute the mind.
In other words, our minds are not, as she puts it, brainbound, but they extend to our computers, our notebooks, our friends and neighbors and colleagues and partners. The environments in which we move, natural and otherwise, deeply influence how we think, what we think, and what we CAN think, and in addition, everything the brain does becomes a reference for extended thinking, and these feedback loops extend what minds can do.
An excerpt from The Extended Mind:
“Our culture insists that the brain is the sole locus of thinking, a cordoned-off space where cognition happens. This book argues otherwise: it holds that the mind constructs our thought processes from the resources available outside the brain. These resources include the feelings and movements of our bodies; the physical spaces in which we learn and work; and the other minds with which we interact—our classmates, colleagues, teachers, supervisors, friends. Sometimes, all three elements come together in especially felicitous fashion, as they did for the brilliant intellectual team of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. The two psychologists carried out much of their groundbreaking work on heuristics and biases—the human mind’s habitual shortcuts and distortions—by talking and walking together, through the bustling streets of Jerusalem or along the rolling hills of the California coast. “I did the best thinking of my life on leisurely walks with Amos,” Kahneman has said.
From The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul
Annie Murphy Paul From her official bio:
Annie Murphy Paul’s work has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Scientific American, Slate, Time magazine, and The Best American Science Writing, among many other publications. She is the author of Origins, reviewed on the cover of The New York Times Book Review and selected by that publication as a “Notable Book,” and The Cult of Personality, hailed by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker as a “fascinating new book.” Paul has spoken to audiences around the world about learning and cognition; her TED Talk has been viewed by more than 2.6 million people. A graduate of Yale University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has served as a lecturer at Yale University and as a senior advisor at the Yale University Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning.
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Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.
Links and Sources
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Previous Episodes
Annie Murphy Paul’s Website
Annie Murphy Paul’s Twitter
Maya Shankar and her team recently reached out, noting that their new show, A Slight Change of Plans, which explores how various, fascinating people have changed their minds, often after something unexpected, shared the same interests and goals as You Are Not So Smart.
A Slight Change of Plans is hosted by Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist “who studies how our minds work and how we change.”
Here’s the official description of the show: “There are few things in life that are as complex and messy—and potentially magical—as change. On A Slight Change of Plans, you’ll hear intimate conversations that give an unvarnished look into how people navigate changes of all kinds and use that change to ultimately grow. Maya uncovers little-known personal stories and reflections from familiar names like Hillary Clinton, Tiffany Haddish and Kacey Musgraves, and extraordinary stories from real-life inspirations, like a young cancer researcher in the throes of a stage 4 diagnosis and a Black jazz musician who convinced hundreds of KKK members to leave the Klan. Their stories and circumstances couldn’t be more different, but they all share one thing in common: life threw them a (slight) change of plans.
One of her guests, Megan Phelps-Roper, was recently a guest on this show, and Daryl Davis is one of her guests who You Are Not So Smart has long-wanted to feature. So, as podcasters do from time-to-time, Maya wondered if she could come on this podcast to promote her podcast, and seeing as our interests and obsessions and work and overall mission aligned so strongly, the answer was, “Absolutely!,” and this is that episode.
Maya Shankar Maya Shankar is currently the Senior Director of Behavioral Economics at Google and is the creator, host, and executive producer of A Slight Change of Plans. Maya previously served as a senior advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and served as chair of the White House’s Behavioral Science Team — a team of scientists charged with improving public policy using research insights about human behavior. In 2016, Maya served as the first behavioral science advisor to the United Nations under Ban Ki-moon.
Maya completed a post-doctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at Stanford, after receiving a Ph.D. from Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and a B.A. from Yale in cognitive science. She has been profiled by the New Yorker and has been featured in the New York Times, Scientific American, Forbes, and on NPR’s All Things Considered, Freakonomics, and Hidden Brain. Maya is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music’s pre-college division and is a former private violin student of Itzhak Perlman.
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Support the show directly by becoming a patron! Get episodes one-day-early and ad-free. Head over to the YANSS Patreon Page for more details.
Links and Sources
Download – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Spotify – Patreon – Soundcloud – Omny
Previous Episodes
Maya Shankar’s Website
A Slight Change of Plans Website
Daryl Davis’ Website
In this episode we explore what narcissism is and what is most-definitely is not.
According to new research, there is a form of narcissism which has been, up until now, confused with psychopathy. But a new paper, the result of years of experiments, suggests narcissists are not psychopaths, and psychopaths are not narcissists.
In the psychological literature, narcissism comes in two varieties. Grandiose narcissists tend to really love themselves and heavily manipulate their social environment for personal gain. Vulnerable narcissists don’t love themselves, not their true selves. Vulnerable narcissists love their image, and they are highly aware of the fact that it is an image and work very hard to prevent anyone else realizing that. According to the research explored in this episode, there is no such thing as a grandiose narcissist -– that’s just another way to describe a psychopath.
All narcissism is what we traditionally classify as vulnerable narcissism, and though it took until 2021 to quantify this, to provide evidence, this is something that was predicted and explored in depth for years by a television show called Mad Men, whose main character is, easily, the greatest portrayal in fiction, ever, according this research, of what true narcissism really looks like, and we will explore that in this episode as well.
In fact, narcissism may even need to be renamed, because it isn’t excessive self-love, it’s excessive self-loathing. Narcissists like Don Draper in Mad Men cope with their insecurity by donning a mask, and then spend most of their lives protecting that mask out of a fear of what will happen if people ever see what it hides.
Mary Kowalchyk Mary Kowalchyk is a Clinical Research Coordinator in the Department of Psychiatry at ISMMS. Her research interests include prodromal psychosis, self-image and world view in psychosis populations, and innovative treatment modalities. Twitter: @marykowalchyk
Pascal Wallisch “How do people construct the subjective reality they inhabit?” That’s the question at the center of the work of Pascal Wallisch, who studies how human beings differ in the their interpretations of the objective truth. He is a Clinical Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology at New York University. Twitter: @pascallisch
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Previous Episodes
Narcissism through the lens of performative self-elevation