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

In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we sit down with nine 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

In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we sit down with psychologist Jay Van Bavel to discuss his new book, The Power of Us, an exploration of “the dynamics of shared, social identities. What causes people to develop social identities? What happens to people when they define themselves in terms of group memberships? Under what conditions does the human proclivity to divide the world into “us” and “them” produce toxic conflict and devastating discrimination? And how can shared identities instead be harnessed to improve performance, increase cooperation, and promote social harmony?”

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.

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.

At times, since belonging goals are so vital to our survival, we value signaling that we are good members of our tribes much more than we value being correct, and in those circumstances we will choose to be wrong — if signaling we believe wrong things seems like it will keep us in good standing with our peers.