You Are Not So Smart

In this live taping of the podcast at Caveat in NYC, Dr. Tessa West, the author of Jerks at Work, conducts quizzes to see what kind of jerk you are and what kind of jerk most-easily persuades you in the workplace. You will also learn how to counteract the behaviors of people who make work suck more than it should. West is a leading expert on interpersonal interaction and communication and will explain how to make work suck less as we return to our offices and figure out how to balance working remotely with working in-person after a year of re-imagining what work even means. West’s new book is an exploration of all the psychological research into how and why gaslighters, bulldozers, neglectors, micromanagers and more do their thing in our workplaces and how to use what we know from decades of psychological research to counteract their Machiavellian machinations.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

Over the course of this audio documentary series, David McRaney explores the history and science of intelligence, IQ, and remarkable talent through interviews with dozens of intelligence experts and actual "geniuses" (a 5-year-old prodigy, the man with the highest IQ ever recorded, etc). McRaney wrestles with the complexity of GENIUS as a cultural construct and considers how we can unlock its positive potential within ourselves. LINK TO GET THE HEAR FIRST EPISODE AND GET TWO-WEEKS OF HIMALAYA FOR FREE What You'll Learn:- The history of the word and concept of genius- How genius gets measured and defined- What life is like for geniuses, in the past, now and in the future From the creator of YANSS, a new 6-part, 7-hour audio documentary exploring the science and history of the idea and word, “genius,” featuring dozens of interviews with experts and those with extraordinary talents and extreme intelligence.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we sit down with eight experts on communication, conversation, and persuasion to discuss the best methods for reaching out to the vaccine hesitant with the intention of nudging them away from hesitancy and toward vaccination. Mentioned in the show, here is the link to a free online class with Misha Glouberman where you will learn how to have better conversations with the vaccine hesitant: LINK Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

Psychologist Jay Van Bavel discusses his book 'The Power of Us' exploring the dynamics of shared social identities, including the influence of group dynamics, social influence, identity on food preferences, and extreme behaviors influenced by online content.

When we talk about conspiracy theories we tend to focus on what people believe instead of why, and, more importantly, why they believe those things and not other things. In this episode, we sit down with two psychologists working to change that, and in addition, change the term itself from conspiracy theory to conspiracy narrative, which more accurately describes what makes any one conspiracy appealing enough to form a community around it and in rare cases result in collective action.- Show notes at youarenotsosmart.comPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Julia Shaw, the author of The Memory Illusion. Julia is famous among psychologists because she was able to implant false memories into a group of subjects and convince 70 percent of them that they were guilty of a crime they did not commit, and she did so by using the sort of sloppy interrogation techniques that some police departments have been truly been guilty of using in the past. From her book’s website: “In The Memory Illusion, Dr Julia Shaw uses the latest research to show the astonishing variety of ways in which our memory can indeed be led astray. Fascinating and unnerving in equal measure, the international bestseller The Memory Illusion has been translated into 20 languages and offers a unique insight into the human brain, challenging you to question how much you can ever truly know about yourself.”Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we sit down with four experts on human behavior to try and understand how wearing masks, during the COVID-19 pandemic, became politicized. In the show, we take a take a deep dive into tribal psychology, which, in essence, says that humans are motivated reasoners who alter their thinking, feeling, and behaving when thinking, feeling, and behaving in certain ways might upset their peers.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

In this episode we sit down with Annie Murphy Paul, the acclaimed science writer, whose new book, The Extended Mind is all about how the brain is part of systems, and it is those systems that constitute the mind. In other words, our minds are not, as she puts it, brainbound, but they extend to our computers, our notebooks, our friends and neighbors and colleagues and partners. The environments in which we move, natural and otherwise, deeply influence how we think, what we think, and what we CAN think, and in addition, everything the brain does becomes a reference for extended thinking, and these feedback loops extend what the mind can do.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

A few weeks ago, Maya Shankar and her team reached out to me noting their new show, A Slight Change of Plans, which explores how various fascinating people have changed their minds, often after something unexpected happened in the story of their lives, overlapped in its interests and goals with You Are Not So Smart. One of her guests, Megan Phelps-Roper, was recently a guest on this show, and Daryl Davis is one of her guests who I’ve long wanted to feature on this podcast. So, as podcasters do from time to time, Maya wondered if she could come on this podcast to promote her podcast, and seeing as our interests and obsessions and work and overall mission aligned so strongly, I said, "Absolutely, I would love that," and this is that episodeShow Notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.comPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

In this episode we explore what narcissism is and what is most-definitely is not. You will learn is that narcissists are not psychopaths, and vice-versa, but there is a form of narcissism which had been, up until now, confused with psychopathy, and vice-versa. According to the research of the two psychologists in this episode, narcissism may even need to be renamed, because it isn't excessive self-love, it's excessive self-loathing. Narcissists like Don Draper in Mad Men cope with their insecurity by donning a mask, and then spend most of their lives protecting that mask out of a fear of what will happen if people ever see what it hides. - Show notes at www.youarenotsosmart.com Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart