In this episode, we sit down with neurologist Robert Burton, author of On Being Certain, a book that fundamentally changed the way I think about what a belief actually is. That’s because the book posits that conclusions are not conscious choices and certainty is not even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing,” as he puts it, are “sensations that feel like thoughts, but arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that function independently of reason.”

Feeling stuck? Can’t build momentum to escape all the loops keeping you from moving forward? Our guest in this episode is professor, author, therapist, and speaker Britt Frank, a trauma specialist who treats people with a unique and powerful set of techniques and approaches which, taken together, helps clients to get out of the feeling of being stuck.

In this episode, Jacob Goldstein, the longtime host of NPR’s Planet Money, talks about his new podcast, a show all about technology and business called What’s Your Problem?

Goldstein spent more than a decade reporting stories that make economic journalism approachable. He’s also the author of the book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, which the New York Times called “a history of currency full of astonishing tales you might tell a friend in the pub.”

Our guest in this episode is Daniel Pink, the five-time NYT Bestselling author of When and To Sell is Human and Drive and A Whole New Mind – and the host of a podcast called The Pinkcast – and he joins us to discuss his latest book, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, an exploration of the benefits of regret and how to harness them.

Jane McGonigal’s new book, Imaginable, details how she creates alternate reality games in which people take part in virtual worlds, and, in so doing, gain a sensitively to the cues (and a familiarity with the conditions) that could lead to certain outcomes, making it possible to both prevent those outcomes and create the futures they’d rather live in instead.

In this episode, we sit down with famed stage magician, infamous instructor of the school of scams, Brian Brushwood, whose new podcast explores the world’s greatest con artists and con jobs from World War II to modern game shows.