I recently sat down with the great Tim Harford for an interview on his wonderful podcast, Cautionary Tales, and Tim asked me to tell a story from my new book, How Minds Change. In this episode, I play that episode in its entirety.

Communications professor Heather Barnes teaches us how to use what she learned teaching at Second City, managing the Museum of Science and Industry, and taking classes at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science to truly engage with difficult people through the power of positive rants.

Chess champion Jennifer Shahade tells us how we can borrow from the best chess players’ decision-tree approach to avoid considering every possible option and instead “think sideways” to consider the best choices on the board.

Northwestern University just launched the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement, a real-world institution devoted to “research-backed approaches to cultivating open-mindedness, identifying one’s own cognitive biases, working collaboratively with others despite disagreement and more.”

Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, tells us how to avoid the Ladder of Misinference by examining how narratives, statistics, and articles can mislead, especially when they align with our preconceived notions and confirm what we believe is true, assume is true, and wish were true.

How is AI reshaping human reasoning? What is cognitive surrender, and how do we avoid its negative impact? What is system three thinking, and how can we get the most out of it? Artificial intelligence researchers Gideon Nave and Steven D. Shaw have some answers, some questions, and some suggestions.