You Are Not So Smart

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 same evidence lead people to drastically different realities? In this episode, Dr. Jay Van Bavel at NYU explains.Kitted Executive AcademyThe Power of Us WebsiteThey Saw A GameJay Van Bavel’s TwitterJay Van Bavel’s...

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 we wish was true.Our guests are three of the scientists exploring a newly named cognitive distortion, one that every human being is prone to exhibiting, one that is so common and so easily...

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 processes that are particularly designed to avoid triggering the worst in human nature and tap into the best."Kitted Executive AcademyThe Center for Public DeliberationThe Listen First...

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 questions that can lead to all manner of better outcomes.Warren Berger's WebsiteWarren Berger's TwitterA More Beautiful QuestionCarl Sagan on Asking QuestionsNeil deGrasse Tyson Explains Why The Sky Is...

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 often lead to arguments, fights, and terrible holiday dinners.Kitted Executive AcademyPoint TakenThe Visual Thinking LabSteven FranconeriHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterDavid...

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 everythingHis writing has appeared in Slate, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe, and he is the New York Times bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong – but in...

Philosopher, neuroscientist, and psychologist, 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 that do the most good, and, in addition, play quiz games that can reduce polarization and possibly save democracy.Kitted Executive AcademyPods Fight...

We sit down with Dr. Madeleine Beekman, a professor emerita of evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology at the University of Sydney, Australia, whose new book, 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 us.Madeleine BeekmanHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS...

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 titled Don’t Talk About Politics which is about how to discuss politics without necessarily talking about politics.Sarah Stein Lubrano's WebsiteSarah...

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 end.Also, we explore our drive to remain consistent via our desire to reduce cognitive dissonance. When you notice you’ve done something you believe is wrong, then you will either stop doing that thing or stop believing...