Clearer Thinking Podcast - What's the Difference?

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Chris: I think the tendency is to just cling to what we've thought because we've invested in it. Spencer: How do you balance exploration like learning and reading and browsing versus exploitation? Chris: Do you think that people are self deceiving or that they're sort of exaggerating?"Spencer: You have to leave room for that and you have to be open to that. We always love to hear from our listeners.

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Why should we not optimize some things in life? Should some things (e.g., interpersonal relationships) be "off-limits" for optimization? How much time spent being unproductive is good for us? What can we learn by paying attention to our moods? Does science make progress and produce knowledge too slowly? Why is research methodology applied so inconsistently, especially in the social sciences?

Christie Aschwanden is author of Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery, and co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast about the creative process. She's the former lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight and was previously a health columnist for The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including Wired, Scientific American, Slate, Smithsonian, Popular Science, New Scientist, Discover, Science, and NPR.org. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Times. She was a National Magazine Award finalist in 2011 and has received journalism fellowships from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, the Carter Center, the Santa Fe Institute, and the Greater Good Science Center. Learn more about her at christieaschwanden.com or follow her on Instagram at @cragcrest or on Mastodon at @cragscrest.

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