280 episodes

You Are Not So Smart is a show about psychology that celebrates science and self delusion. In each episode, we explore what we've learned so far about reasoning, biases, judgments, and decision-making.

You Are Not So Smart You Are Not So Smart

    • Science
    • 4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

You Are Not So Smart is a show about psychology that celebrates science and self delusion. In each episode, we explore what we've learned so far about reasoning, biases, judgments, and decision-making.

    283 - Cultures of Growth - Mary C. Murphy

    283 - Cultures of Growth - Mary C. Murphy

    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.

    • 1 hr 5 min
    282 - They Thought We Were Ridiculous - Andy Luttrell

    282 - They Thought We Were Ridiculous - Andy Luttrell

    In 1974, two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, as the New Yorker once put it, "changed the way we think about the way we think." The prevailing wisdom, before their landmark research went viral (in the way things went viral in the 1970s), was that human beings were, for the most part, rational optimizers always making the kinds of 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 they 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.

    • 1 hr 9 min
    281 - More Chat, Less Bot - Jeremy Utley, Kian Gohar, Henrik Werdelin

    281 - More Chat, Less Bot - Jeremy Utley, Kian Gohar, Henrik Werdelin

    Jeremy Utley, Kian Gohar, and Henrik Werdelin sit down 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. Based on their research, Utley and Gohar created a new paradigm for getting the most out of AI-assisted ideation which they call FIXIT.

    • 1 hr 10 min
    280 - Supercommunicators - Charles Duhigg

    280 - Supercommunicators - Charles Duhigg

    Our guest in this episode is Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer for the New Yorker Magazine who is also the New York Times Bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better. His new book is Supercommunicators, a practical and approachable guide to what makes great conversations work. In the episode we discuss the science behind what it takes to form a connection with another human being through dialogue, how to generate or nurture a bond, and how to form, repair, and maintain a conversational pipeline through listening and communicating that guarantees reciprocation and understanding.

    • 1 hr 14 min
    YANSS 279 - Pluralistic Ignorance (rebroadcast)

    YANSS 279 - Pluralistic Ignorance (rebroadcast)

    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. On certain issues, most people people believe that most people believe what, in truth, few people believe. Or put another way, it is the erroneous belief that the majority is acting in a way that matches its internal philosophies, and that you are one of a small number of people who feel differently, when in reality the majority agrees with you on the inside but is afraid to admit it outright or imply such through its behavior. Everyone in a group, at the same time, gets stuck following a norm that no one wants to follow, because everyone is carrying a shared, false belief about everyone else’s unshared true beliefs.

    • 1 hr 25 min
    278 - An Admirable Point - Florence Hazrat

    278 - An Admirable Point - Florence Hazrat

    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 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!

    • 1 hr

Customer Reviews

4.5 out of 5
1.6K Ratings

1.6K Ratings

MWOTR ,

Eye-opening

David McRaney’s podcast has led me to read many books (including his) and introduced me to one of my passions (trying to learn how to listen to and learn from those who disagree with me—Braver Angels). I used to mainly read historical fiction—now I just can’t get enough social psychology and behavior science. And he does it all with humility and humor.

Sonneveldt ,

Thoughtful

This podcast presents in a way that causes me to stop, think… sometimes reframe. I always appreciate it.

@therealhunnterbiden ,

Too bad

Great podcast but I wish there wouldn’t be a political slant with it.

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