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You Are Not So Smart

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Sedona Chinn, a researcher who studies how people make sense of competing scientific, environmental, and health-related claims, joins us to discuss her latest research into doing your own research. In her latest paper she found that the more a person values the concept of doing your own research, the less likely that person is to actually do their own research. In the episode we explore the origin of the concept, what that phrase really means, and the implications of her study on everything from politics to vaccines to conspiratorial thinking. We sit down with Brian Brushwood to discuss how he put together this most recent season of The World’s Greatest Con, his podcast about incredible scams. This season is all about how two boys pulled off an incredible hoax called Project Alpha, a con job and a publicity stunt meant to improve scientific rigor and methodology when it comes to studying the possibility of the existence of psychic phenomena. In this episode we sit down with Jennifer Sh

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. 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.” Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, tells us how to…

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