On this episode we learn about the history of the exclamation point, the question mark, and the semicolon (among many other aspects of language) with Florence Hazrat, a scholar of punctuation, who, to my great surprise, informed that while a lot of language is the result of a slow evolution, a gradual ever-changing process, punctuation in the English language is often an exception to this – for instance, a single person invented the semicolon; they woke up and the semicolon didn’t exist, and then went to bed that night, and it did!

278 - An Admirable Point - Florence Hazrat

You Are Not So Smart is a show about psychology that celebrates science and self delusion. In each episode, we explore what we've learned so far about reasoning, biases, judgments, and decision-making.

Science

In this episode we sit down with professor of Neil Theise, the author of Notes on Complexity,  to get an introduction to complexity theory, the science of how complex systems behave – from cells to human beings, ecosystems, the known universe, and beyond – and we explore if Ian Malcolm was right when he told us in Jurassic Park that "Life, um, finds a way."

286 - Notes on Complexity - Neil Theise

Is a hotdog a sandwich? Well, that depends on your definition of a sandwich (and a hotdog), and according to the most recent research in cognitive science, the odds that your concept of a sandwich is the same as another person's concept are shockingly low. In this episode we explore how understanding why that question became a world-spanning argument in the mid 2010s helps us understand some of the world-spanning arguments vexing us today.

285 - What Do You Mean? - Celeste Kidd (rebroadcast)

In this episode we sit down with psychologist Dacher Keltner, one of the world’s leading experts on the science of emotion, the man Pixar hired to help them write Inside Out. In his new book – Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life – he outlines his years of work in this field, the health benefits of awe, the evolutionary origins and likely functions, and how to better pursue more awe and wonder in your own life.

284 - Awe - Dacher Keltner (rebroadcast)

In this episode we welcome psychologist Mary C. Murphy, author of Cultures of Growth, who tells us how to create institutions, businesses, and other groups of humans that can better support collaboration, innovation, performance, and wellbeing. We also learn how, even if you know all about the growth mindset, the latest research suggests you not may not be creating a culture of growth despite what feels like your best efforts to do so.

283 - Cultures of Growth - Mary C. Murphy

In 1974, two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, as the New Yorker once put it, "changed the way we think about the way we think." The prevailing wisdom, before their landmark research went viral (in the way things went viral in the 1970s), was that human beings were, for the most part, rational optimizers always making the kinds of judgments and decisions that best maximized the potential of the outcomes under their control. This was especially true in economics at the time. The story of how they generated a paradigm shift so powerful that it reached far outside economics and psychology to change the way all of us see ourselves is a fascinating tale, one that required the invention of something this episode is all about: The Psychology of Single Questions.

278 - An Admirable Point - Florence Hazrat

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