Podcast · Tech & Science
by You Are Not So Smart · English · Tech & Science
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.
28 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 13 min
Jesse Richardson wants to improve our critical thinking about AI risk through the gamification of our rampant speculation. In this episode he explains AI safety isn't just one thing, there are a bunch of different risk profiles and each needs to be considered critically.
14 Sep 2026 · 44 min
We return to The Dress and the psychological lessons offered by one of the most viral moments in the history of the internet via an episode of Decoder Ring in which David McRaney shares some insights from his book, How Minds Change, with Willa Paskin, the host of Decoder Ring.
31 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 10 min
Astronomer Phil Plait joins us to discuss his book, Under Alien Skies, in which he describes what it would actually be like to travel to Saturn, Mars, asteroids, and distant stars.
17 Aug 2026 · 1 hr
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 simply a matter of biology. Our thoughts, conscious or otherwise, can make lead to symptoms in unexpected ways.
3 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
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 vaccines.
3 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 8 min
Can intellectual humility be measured? What influences it and affects it, limits it and enhances it? What even is it, scientifically speaking?
6 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 9 min
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?
22 Jun 2026 · 47 min
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.
8 Jun 2026 · 45 min
Communications professor Heather Barnes teaches us how to truly engage with difficult people through the power of positive rants.
25 May 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
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 board.
11 May 2026 · 1 hr 29 min
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."
27 Apr 2026 · 40 min
Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, tells us how to avoid the Ladder of Misinference.
13 Apr 2026 · 1 hr
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?
30 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
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 some caveats.
16 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 13 min
Using parts work, psychologist Britt Frank offers a road map for understanding, befriending, and leading the multiple voices within yourself.
2 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 19 min
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.
16 Feb 2026 · 38 min
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.
2 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 9 min
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.
19 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 7 min
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."
5 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 5 min
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.
22 Dec 2025 · 52 min
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.
8 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 11 min
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
24 Nov 2025 · 1 hr 19 min
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.
10 Nov 2025 · 46 min
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 us.
27 Oct 2025 · 58 min
In this episode we welcome Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano, a political scientist who studies how cognitive dissonance affects all sorts of political behavior.
13 Oct 2025 · 58 min
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.
29 Sep 2025 · 55 min
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?
15 Sep 2025 · 1 hr 8 min
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.
1 Sep 2025 · 1 hr 18 min
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.
18 Aug 2025 · 1 hr 9 min
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.
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 is a English tech & science podcast from You Are Not So Smart. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.
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