How to Communicate Complex Ideas to Someone Other Than You

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Oxford has done for a thousand years is educate young people by spending a lot of time with them in a room and talking to them deeply about the things that they're interested in. It's only at the graduate level where they dispense with all of that. Now you're not really going to have a deep personal relationship with someone who has more knowledge about this than you do. You're kind of going to get that on your own supposedly. I don't actually know a better way of communicating complicated ideas to someone else other than doing that.

Psychologist and writer Adam Mastroianni says our minds are like the keep of a castle protecting our deepest held values and beliefs from even the most skilled attacks. The only problem with this design for self-preservation is that it also can keep out wisdom that might be both useful and true. Mastroianni's summary of the problem is "you can't reach the brain through the ears." Listen as Mastroianni talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the implication of this view of mind for teaching, learning, and our daily interactions with the people around us.