You Are Not So Smart
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.
- 1 hour 19 minutes327 - The Trolley Solution - Joshua Greene
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.
The Trolley Problem in Real Life
A Buddhist Monk Faces The Trolley Problem
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24 November 2025, 5:59 am - 46 minutes 11 seconds326 - The Origin of Language - Madeleine Beekman
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.
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10 November 2025, 5:59 am - 57 minutes 58 seconds325 - Cognitive Dissonance - Part Two (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 titled Don’t Talk About Politics which is about how to discuss politics without necessarily talking about politics.
Sarah Stein Lubrano's Substack
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27 October 2025, 4:59 am - 57 minutes 57 seconds324 - Cognitive Dissonance - Part One (rebroadcast)
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 it is wrong. And if you believe something is true but you come across some information that disconfirms that belief, you’ll either change your belief, challenge the validity of the challenging information, or go looking for confirmation you were right all along.
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13 October 2025, 4:59 am - 55 minutes 6 seconds323 - Job Therapy - Tessa West (rebroadcast)
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.
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29 September 2025, 4:59 am - 1 hour 7 minutes322 - Intellectual Humility - Tenelle Porter
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.
The Gateway Drugs to Intellectual Humility
The Illusion of Explanatory Depth
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15 September 2025, 4:59 am - 1 hour 18 minutes321 - Easy Crafts for the Insane - Kelly Williams Brown (rebroadcast)
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.
Kelly Williams Brown's Website
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1 September 2025, 4:59 am - 1 hour 8 minutes320 - Misguided - Matthew Facciani
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.
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18 August 2025, 4:59 am - 1 hour 6 minutes319 - Love Factually - Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick
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.
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4 August 2025, 4:59 am - 1 hour 10 minutes318 - The Intention Action Gap - Britt Frank (rebroadcast)
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.
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21 July 2025, 4:59 am - 1 hour 10 minutes317 - Don't Talk About Politics - Sarah Stein Lubrano
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.
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7 July 2025, 4:59 am - More Episodes? Get the App