Podcast
You Are Not So Smart
You Are Not So Smart is a show about psychology that celebrates science and self delusion. In each episode, we explore what we've learned so far about reasoning, biases, judgments, and decision-making.
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Join Madi every Friday for unfiltered, honest content about figuring out life and being a girl in her 20's. You can expect regular guests, solo episodes, and to feel like you're hanging with a friend while listening. Almost …
You Are Not So Smart · Aug 17, 2026
The suffering is real, but the source may not be what you assume. That's the essence of the nocebo effect, the placebo effect's evil twin. As neuroscientist Dr. Helen Pilcher explains, illness is not …
59:30You Are Not So Smart · Aug 3, 2026
MIT professor Thomas Levenson, the author of the book A Pox on Fools, takes us through the same repeating patterns throughout history which have led to antivaxxers and vaccine hesitancy since the very first …
1:06:29You Are Not So Smart · Aug 3, 2026
Can intellectual humility be measured? What influences it and affects it, limits it and enhances it? What even is it, scientifically speaking?
1:07:44You Are Not So Smart · Jul 6, 2026
What is misinformation? How does it differ from disinformation or just plain ‘ole propaganda? How do we protect ourselves from people with nefarious intentions using all of these things to affect our thoughts, feelings, …
1:08:40You Are Not So Smart · Jun 22, 2026
Tim Harford of the podcast Cautionary Tales sits down with David McRaney to hear a story from David's book, How Minds Change, about how (and why) a prominent conspiracy theorist realized he was wrong.
47:15You Are Not So Smart · Jun 8, 2026
Communications professor Heather Barnes teaches us how to truly engage with difficult people through the power of positive rants.
45:20You Are Not So Smart · May 25, 2026
Chess champion Jennifer Shahade tells us how we can borrow from the best chess players' decision-tree approach to avoid considering every possible option and instead "think sideways" to consider the best choices on the …
1:02:50You Are Not So Smart · May 11, 2026
Northwestern University just launched the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement, a real-world institution devoted to "research-backed approaches to cultivating open-mindedness, identifying one’s own cognitive biases, working collaboratively with others despite disagreement and more."
1:28:43You Are Not So Smart · Apr 27, 2026
Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, tells us how to avoid the Ladder of Misinference.
39:41You Are Not So Smart · Apr 13, 2026
How is AI reshaping human reasoning? What is cognitive surrender, and how do we avoid its negative impact? What is system three thinking, and how can we get the most out of it?
59:39You Are Not So Smart · Mar 30, 2026
If you want to create a movement that can change the national status quo, you don't need half the country, you only need 3.5 percent of the population to join – but there are …
1:03:30You Are Not So Smart · Mar 16, 2026
Using parts work, psychologist Britt Frank offers a road map for understanding, befriending, and leading the multiple voices within yourself.
1:12:53You Are Not So Smart · Mar 2, 2026
We explore the long history of the manipulation of our own magical thinking and how studying deception can help us better understand perception, memory, belief, and more.
1:19:13You Are Not So Smart · Feb 16, 2026
How can two people watch the same video yet see two different things? How can two people witness the same event but arrive at two different truths about what they witnessed? How can the …
38:14You Are Not So Smart · Feb 2, 2026
In this episode, we sit down with three disinformation researchers whose new paper found something surprising about both our resistance and our susceptibility to both true news we wish was fake and fake news …
1:08:43You Are Not So Smart · Jan 19, 2026
Dr. Martin Carcasson tells us how he, as the Director of the Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State, trains people how to facilitate deliberation and overcome wicked problems so that they can "spark …
1:07:03You Are Not So Smart · Jan 5, 2026
Warren Berger has made a career out of classifying, categorizing, and making sense of the many varieties of questions that we ask and in this episode he explains how we can ask more beautiful …
1:04:56You Are Not So Smart · Dec 22, 2025
Dr. Steven Franconeri explains the powerful insights and opportunities offered by a game he and his team created for having better disagreements about just about anything, but especially about the sort of topics that …
51:52You Are Not So Smart · Dec 8, 2025
We sit down with Jordan Ellenberg, a world-class geometer, who takes us on a far-ranging exploration of the power of geometry, which turns out to help us think better about practically everything
1:10:55You Are Not So Smart · Nov 24, 2025
Joshua Greene tells us how the brain generates morality, and how his research may have solved the infamous trolley problem and in so doing created a way to encourage people to contribute to charities …
1:19:19You Are Not So Smart · Nov 10, 2025
Biologist Madeleine Beekman, author of The Origin of Language, presents a completely new and fascinating theory for how language emerged in homo sapiens, in human beings, in you and me and the rest of …
46:11You Are Not So Smart · Oct 27, 2025
In this episode we welcome Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano, a political scientist who studies how cognitive dissonance affects all sorts of political behavior.
57:58You Are Not So Smart · Oct 13, 2025
In this episode, the story of a doomsday cult who predicted the exact date and circumstances of the end of the world, and what happened when that date passed and the world did not …
57:57You Are Not So Smart · Sep 29, 2025
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?
55:06You Are Not So Smart · Sep 15, 2025
Can intellectual humility be measured? What influences it and affects it, limits it and enhances it? What even is it, scientifically speaking? We explore all of this and then play an episode of How …
1:07:44You Are Not So Smart · Sep 1, 2025
This episode is about suicide prevention and awareness. Author Kelly Williams Brown tells us about her book, Easy Crafts for the Insane, in which she recounts how, after she gained fame and success as …
1:18:08You Are Not So Smart · Aug 18, 2025
What is misinformation? How does it differ from disinformation or just plain ‘ole propaganda? How do we protect ourselves from people with nefarious intentions using all of these things to affect our thoughts, feelings, …
1:08:55You Are Not So Smart · Aug 4, 2025
Two psychologists who study love, relationships, and human mating behavior pick apart the movie "The Notebook" and tell us what it gets right and what it gets wrong when it comes to portraying how …
1:06:08You Are Not So Smart · Jul 21, 2025
In this episode, we sit down with therapist Britt Frank to discuss the intention action gap, the psychological term for the chasm between what you very much intend to do and what you tend …
1:10:01You Are Not So Smart · Jul 7, 2025
Sarah Stein Lubrano tells us about her new book, Don't Talk About Politics, which urges us not to lose hope or become frozen in frustration when it comes to polarization and faulty discourse because …
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