265 - Chess Queens - Jennifer Shahade (rebroadcast)

In 1974, two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, as the New Yorker once put it, "changed the way we think about the way we think." The prevailing wisdom, before their landmark research went viral (in the way things went viral in the 1970s), was that human beings were, for the most part, rational optimizers always making the kinds of judgments and decisions that best maximized the potential of the outcomes under their control. This was especially true in economics at the time. The story of how they generated a paradigm shift so powerful that it reached far outside economics and psychology to change they way all of us see ourselves is a fascinating tale, one that required the invention of something this episode is all about: The Psychology of Single Questions.

They Thought We Were Ridiculous

Opinion Science

Behavioral Grooves

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

Patreon

Jeremy Utley, Kian Gohar, and Henrik Werdelin sit down to discuss the surprising results of a new study into what happens when groups of people work together to brainstorm solutions to problems with the help of ChatGPT. Based on their research, Utley and Gohar created a new paradigm for getting the most out of AI-assisted ideation which they call FIXIT.

FIXIT

Beyond the Prompt

D-School

Jeremy Utley's Website

Kian Gohar's Website

Henrik Werdelin's Website

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

Patreon

Our guest in this episode is Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer for the New Yorker Magazine who is also the New York Times Bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better. His new book is Supercommunicators, a practical and approachable guide to what makes great conversations work. In the episode we discuss the science behind what it takes to form a connection with another human being through dialogue, how to generate or nurture a bond, and how to form, repair, and maintain a conversational pipeline through listening and communicating that guarantees reciprocation and understanding.

Charles DuHigg's Website

Charles DuHigg's Twitter

Supercommunicators

The Artemis Mission

The Goddard Spaceflight Center

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

Patreon

There are several ways to define pluralistic ignorance, and that’s because it’s kind of a brain twister when you try to put it into words. On certain issues, most people people believe that most people believe what, in truth, few people believe. Or put another way, it is the erroneous belief that the majority is acting in a way that matches its internal philosophies, and that you are one of a small number of people who feel differently, when in reality the majority agrees with you on the inside but is afraid to admit it outright or imply such through its behavior. Everyone in a group, at the same time, gets stuck following a norm that no one wants to follow, because everyone is carrying a shared, false belief about everyone else’s unshared true beliefs.

Deborah Prentice’s Website

Robb Willer’s Website

Robb Willer’s Twitter

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

On this episode we learn about the history of the exclamation point, the question mark, and the semicolon (among many other aspects of language) with Florence Hazrat, a scholar of punctuation, who, to my great surprise, informed me that while a lot of language is the result of a slow evolution, a gradual ever-changing process, punctuation in the English language is often an exception to this – for instance, a single person invented the semicolon; they woke up and the semicolon didn’t exist, and then went to bed that night, and it did!

Florence Hazrat's Website

An Admirable Point

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

Newsletter

Temple Grandin didn’t develop speech until much later than most children, and she might have led a much different life if it hadn’t been for people who worked very hard to open up a space for her to thrive. In this episode we discuss all that as well as her latest book, Visual Thinking, about three distinct ways that human brains create human minds to make sense of the world outside of their skulls.

Temple Grandin

Visual Thinking

Temple Grandin’s Twitter

• How Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehome
• David McRaney’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmcraney
• YANSS Twitter: https://twitter.com/notsmartblog
• Show Notes: www.youarenotsosmart.com
• Newsletter: https://davidmcraney.substack.com

In this episode David McRaney is interviewed by Andrea Chalupa about the psychological research covered in How Minds Change that could help if you expect to spend time with a family member this holiday who can't wait to pull you into an argument about politics, a wedge issue, or something else buzzing in the zeitgeist over which they'd love to start a fight. But, also, this is good stuff to know before ANY contentious conversation you might have in the future with someone who is quick to aggression and ready to get angry over how your opinion isn't their opinion.

• Gaslit Nation

• Transcript

• Andrea Chalupa’s Twitter

• Sarah Kendzior’s Twitter

• The Critical Thinking Alliance

• The Conspiracy Test

• Newsletter

• How Minds Change

• David McRaney’s Twitter

• YANSS Twitter

How likely is the fungal infection in The Last of Us? The one that takes over human brains and brings humanity to the brink of extinction, could something like that really happen?

In this episode we sit down with Emily Monosson, an expert on deadly fungal infections, and discuss the handful of fungi (we know of) that are today, right now, causing catastrophic declines in wildlife, eradicating trees, destroying crops, and increasingly impacting humans.

Monsoon explains that many in the field worry that fungi are an underestimated threat and that our actions are causing an increase in invasive and deadly fungal epidemics. We explore what is at stake, why this is happening now, and what we can do to prevent future outbreaks.

• Emily Monosson's Website

• Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic

• 2013 Trailer for The Last of Us

• Newsletter

• How Minds Change

• David McRaney’s Twitter

• YANSS Twitter

• Show Notes

In this episode we sit down with Greg Satell, a communication expert whose book, Cascades, details how rapid, widespread change can sweep across groups of people big and small, and how understanding the psychological mechanisms at play in such moments can help anyone looking to create change in a family, institution, or even nation, prepare for the inevitable resistance they will face.

• Special Offer From Greg Satell

• Greg Satell's Website

• Greg Satell's Blog

• Greg Satell's Twitter

• Newsletter

• How Minds Change

• David McRaney’s Twitter

• YANSS Twitter

• Show Notes

In this episode Jesse Richardson tells us all about ConspiracyTest.org, a new project designed to be a weird, fun, and cleverly educational way to explore just how skeptical you are (and could be) about a variety of conspiracy theories. The whole thing is designed to be very sharable and very viral, and it's launching right before Thanksgiving 2023 so that you can share it with your conspiracy-theory-entertaining friends and family over the holidays, in person or over social media (but you should definitely try it out on yourself first).

• Newsletter

• School of Thought

• The Conspiracy Test

• Metaconspiracy

• How Minds Change

• David McRaney’s Twitter

• YANSS Twitter

• Jesse Richardson's Website

• Jesse Richardson's Twitter

• Your Bias Is

• Your Fallacy Is

• Free Learning List

• The Rules of Civil Conversation

• Show Notes

(thanks for listening, share with abandon)