Brains Byte Back

We live busy lives in a hectic world, so to take in every piece of information available in order to make a decision would be a long and laborious task.

That is why our brains use heuristics, a mental shortcut that allows individuals to solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently. While these shortcuts allow us to save time, they can often trip us up, causing us to misinterpret information.

In this episode, we are joined by Jillene G. Seiver, a Senior Lecturer of Psychology at Eastern Washington University and active Youtuber, to explore five heuristics that we face in our daily lives.

Seiver breakdown Representativeness (and its relative, the base rate fallacy), availability, framing, anchoring, and the sunk cost fallacy.

You will learn how AI may be impacted by the heuristics used by humans, why Seiver likes to demonstrate the Anchoring bias with her students by asking how long the Mississippi River is, and why a 95% effective rate for condoms tricks our brain into thinking they are more effective than they really are.

It is the season for gift giving! For many of our closest friends and relatives, knowing what to buy them can be a nightmare, so imagine trying to give a gift to someone you don't know but desperately need to impress.

That is the situation for many sales representatives looking to sign large deals with prospects. This was an issue faced by Ebere Anosike, a sales veteran turned founder of ThankYouKindly, a service that uses machine learning to send gifts to professional contacts and prospects.

Anosike joins us on today's show to discuss how she founded the business and how this AI-based gift-giving process works. We also learn how customers of ThankYouKindly have, on average, reported receiving 40 times the ROI on sales prospects that receive gifts, why Anosike believes gift-giving is so impactful and how they measure the ROI for gift giving.

In addition to this Anosike explains what the book Influence, by psychology and marketing professor Dr.Robert Cialdini, taught her about persuasion and reciprocity.

According to data from the UN, in 2018 55% of the world's population lived in urban areas, and that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. With an increasing number of people living in densely populated, urban areas, our cities will be forced to adapt. From transportation to sustainability, cities will need to harness technology to tackle these challenges that come with a larger population.

In this episode of Brains Byte Back, we explore what these smart cities might look like, how they will function, and how they stand to change our quality of life.

To discuss this, we are joined by Jonathan Reichental, the CEO of Human Future, a global business and technology education, advisory, and investment firm. He is also the former Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the City of Palo Alto and the author of Smart Cities for Dummies.

Alongside Reichental, we are also joined by Sumeet Puri, the Chief Technology and Solutions Officer of Solace, a company that specializes in the smart movement of data.

We discuss what transportation will look like in an ideal smart city, how smart cities will be better equipped to deal with accidents and emergencies, and how smart cities will be better equipped to handle and monitor crime.

In addition to the above, we will also look at how drones will facilitate deliveries, how cities can be redesigned based on AI observations, and what an increased number of sensors and cameras means for our privacy.

Social media has become such a deeply entrenched part of our lives, that abandoning it all together seems like an almost impossible task for many of us. Therefore, in this episode, we will explore how we can have a better and healthier relationship with social media.

To do this we are joined by Scott Gazzoli, host of Causing The Effect, a podcast exploring how to effectively connect the mind and body through psychology and physiology.

On the show, Gazzoli discusses what motivated him to start his podcast, why he is concerned about social media influencers, and how social media is impacting our ability to delay gratification.

We also discuss how Youtube's homepage is designed to keep us watching content, often promoting extreme videos regardless of whether or not this information is good or bad.

In addition to the above, we also pick apart the idea that every generation is fearful of something new, negatively impacting a younger generation, such as video games or rap/heavy metal music. In light of this, Gazzoli shares why he believes that social media is different from the fears of previous generations.

In today's world of fake news and misleading politicians, critical thinking is arguably more important than ever, as it is critical thinking that allows us to sift through misleading statements or fabricated news articles to get to the truth.

To understand what it takes to become a critical thinker and how anyone can improve their critical thinking abilities, we spoke with Jonathan Haber, an educational researcher, consultant, and writer, who specializes in critical-thinking education. Haber is also the author of MIT press books MOOCS, The Critical Voter, and Critical Thinking which is part of The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series.

In this episode, we discuss what is critical thinking, what it takes to be a critical thinker, and how our biases can impact our ability to think critically.

Haber highlights examples of biases taken from Daniel Kahneman's Noble prize-winning book "Thinking Fast and Slow" to demonstrate how we are unknowingly influenced by different types of information presented to us.

In addition to this, we also pick apart the behavior and words used by Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the recent debates leading up to the election, to understand how they tried to appeal to voters.

According to Psychology Today, there are numerous reasons why younger generations are having less sex than previous generations. Dating apps and porn have been labeled as contributing factors for this problem, but according to sex neuroscientist Dr. Nan Wise, there is a larger issue at play here.

Dr. Wise, who is also an experienced sex therapist and author of the book Why Good Sex Matters, joins us on the show to discuss why she believes that our reward systems have been hijacked by our phones, impacting our mental health and our sex lives.

In this episode, we discuss how social media is engineered to pull us in and capture our attention, why Dr. Wise refers to dopamine as "The slutty neurotransmitter" in her behavioral neuroscience classes, and how to self assess if your relationship with your phone is healthy.

Dr. Wise also explains how technology impacts our seven core emotional functions, and why she believes the Netflix movie "The Sociable Dilemma" is so important for everyone to watch.

Humans are social creatures, so for many of us, self-isolation and living in quarantine can have a very negative impact on our mental health. Therefore we may turn to substances such as cannabis or alcohol to cope. To put it lightly, a Tweet by comedy writer Emily Murnane summed this up at the start of the quarantine stating "Days are now divided by coffee hours and alcohol hours."

But jokes aside, we could see serious implications in society for our immediate and long-term health, both physically and mentally as a result of this new COVID-19 drinking culture.

To better understand and observe this change in drinking culture, Rose Marie Ward, a psychology professor at Miami University, set out to analyze the prevalence of publicly available tweets in the USA referencing alcohol‐induced blackouts prior to and during the COVID‐19 outbreak.

We invited her on the show to discuss how this study was conducted, what the research indicated, and the wider applications of this study. In this episode, you will learn how the quarantine could form alcoholic tendencies, which parts of the US drink the most, and the impact of alcohol use among healthcare works during previous SARS outbreaks.

According to a poll taken earlier this year, 1 in 8 Australians believe that Bill Gates and 5G are responsible for COVID-19. While this might sound ludicrous to 7 out of 8 of us, conspiracy theories can have a genuine impact in the real world. For example, according to Business Insider, 77 5G towers across the UK have been set on fire due to a conspiracy theory that links 5G technology to COVID-19. Additionally, 5G workers have been subject to abuse as a result of these beliefs.

To understand why these conspiracy theories receive such strong support from groups of people across the world, we are joined by Dr. Jessica Micono and Dr. David Morelos, hosts of "Psychology After Dark," a podcast examining the dark side of psychology and the human experience, including criminal behavior, psychopaths, and cults, to name a few.

In this episode, we dissect the psychology of conspiracy theories advocates. Based on the article "Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories" by Kendra Cherry, we break down the three main psychological motivations for beliefs in conspiracy theories; a need for understanding and consistency (epistemic), a need for control (existential), a need to belong or feel special (social).

We also discuss how confirmation bias impacts our belief systems, the legal implications of sovereign citizens' beliefs, and MK Ultra, the conspiracy theory turned real-life story.

Randon Heim is the host of "Don't worry, We'll talk it out," a podcast exploring the fundamental concepts that drive how we perceive the world. "The Psychology of a Riot," "The Black Death: Coronavirus and Race Relations," and "Ignorance is Bliss: How Anti-Intellectualism Ruined America," are just a few examples of subjects Heim has covered on his show, but today he joins us to discuss Cancel Culture.

If you are unfamiliar with the term Cancel Culture... well, you are in the right place, but to give you a brief description now, Cancel Culture refers to the act of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies that have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive.

In this episode, we discuss the positive and negative use case of Cancel Culture, how innocent citizens have been impacted by this, and beloved historical figure who could have been impacted by Cancel Culture due to skeletons in their closets.

In addition to the above, since it is impossible to future proof what we say or post against the moral standard of tomorrow, we explore how society's perception of past comments, pictures, or posts will evolve in time, and what it will take for us to find a healthy relationship with Cancel Culture.

This week we are joined by our editor here at The Sociable, Tim Hinchliffe, to discuss his work focusing on UFOs, also referred to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). For years Tim has reported on government technology and has published a number of articles on The Sociable relating to UFO news, insights, and theories from government bodies and UFO communities.

In this episode, Hinchliffe picks apart his recent article "Origins of UFO technology theories: secret space programs, ETs & time traveling humans," and elaborates on what he believes to be the top three most likely theories relating to the existence of UFO technology

Hinchliffe also explains how he first became interested in UFOs, what it is like to report on such a mysterious subject from a strong journalistic standpoint, and bizarre theories such as the grandfather complex and why it could be important for UFO technology.

Additionally, we also discuss ancient civilizations and their world-famous structures. During this part of the show, you will find out why Hinchliffe doesn't believe the Pyramids are tombs but instead served another greater purpose for the living, what Christopher Dunn's geyser power plant theory could mean for ancient civilizations, and an interesting feature that can be experienced in Mexico's Chichén Itzá.