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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.

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.

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.

Job Therapy

Tessa West's Website

Tessa West's Twitter

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Kitted Shop

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

323 - Job Therapy - Tessa West (rebroadcast)

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 to Be A Better Human featuring psychologist Tenelle Porter telling comedian Chris Duffy how she is researching how to conduct better research into intellectual humility.

Previous Episodes

Transcript at TED

How to Be A Better Human

The Gateway Drugs to Intellectual Humility

Tenelle Porter's Research

Tenelle Porter's Website

The Illusion of Explanatory Depth

Kitted Shop

The Story of Kitted

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s BlueSky

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

Patreon

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

322 - Intellectual Humility - Tenelle Porter

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 a NYT bestselling author, her world came apart. Then an anti-anxiety-drug-induced manic state nearly ended her life.

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

The Story of Kitted

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s BlueSky

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

Patreon

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

321 - Easy Crafts for the Insane - Kelly Williams Brown (rebroadcast)

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, and behavior? That’s what we discuss in this episode with Matthew Facciani, social scientist and author of Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How it Spreads, and What We Can Do About It.

Matthew Facciani's Website

The Misguided Podcast

Misguided

Kitted Shop

The Story of Kitted

How Minds Change

David McRaney's BlueSky

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

Patreon

 

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

320 - Misguided - Matthew Facciani

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 humans actually, truly think, feel, and behave. Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick are the cohosts of the Love Factually podcast, a show that discusses the romantic/scientific accuracy of movies, and on this episode we listen in as they examine one of the most popular romance movies of all time.

Love Factually Website

Love Factually Substack

Eli Finkel's Website

Paul Eastwick's Website

Kitted Shop

The Story of Kitted

How Minds Change

David McRaney's BlueSky

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

Patreon

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

319 - Love Factually - Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick

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 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. 

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

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

318 - The Intention Action Gap - Britt Frank (rebroadcast)

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 the good news is that we don't just know, scientifically, why the marketplace of ideas is currently failing us, we know how, scientifically, we can do better. 

Sarah Stein Lubrano's Website

Don't Talk About Politics

Motivated Numeracy Paper

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

Patreon

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

317 - Don't Talk About Politics - Sarah Stein Lubrano

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. 

Mary Murphy’s Website

Cultures of Growth

Carol Dweck at Google

Paper: A Culture of Genius

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

Patreon

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

316 - Cultures of Growth - Mary C. Murphy (rebroadcast)

Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, tells us how to avoid the Ladder of Misinference by examining how narratives, statistics, and articles can mislead, especially when they align with our preconceived notions and confirm what we believe is true, assume is true, and wish were true.

Alex Edmans 

May Contain Lies

What to Test in a Post Trust World

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s Twitter

David McRaney’s BlueSky

YANSS Twitter

YANSS Facebook

Newsletter

Kitted

Patreon

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

315 - May Contain Lies - Alex Edmans

In this episode we sit down with Brian Klaas, author of Fluke, and 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 not to 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.

Previous Episodes

Brian Klaas

Fluke

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s Twitter

David McRaney’s BlueSky

YANSS Twitter

YANSS Facebook

Newsletter

Kitted

Patreon

 

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

314 - Fluke - Brian Klaas (rebroadcast)

In this episode we welcome Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano, a political scientist who studies how cognitive dissonance affects all sorts of political behavior. She’s also the co-host of a podcast about activism called "What Do We Want?" and she wrote a book that’s coming out in May of 2025 titled don’t talk about politics which is about how to discuss politics without necessarily talking about politics.

Sarah Stein Lubrano's Website

Sarah Stein Lubrano's Substack

Sarah Stein Lubrano's Twitter

Kitted

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

Patreon

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

301 - Cognitive Dissonance - Part Two

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