Don't follow your heart! But how do you know when your assumptions, your type-1 thinking, is distorted? James hasn't got a clue, so he asks Dan. This week we offer you a work out, comprised of jumping to all sorts of conclusions, stretching the truth until your feelings sound like facts, and running up accounts of value judgments with modal verbs. According to Beverley Knight, 'Shoulda woulda coulda are the last words of a fool', and we have a fool with many last words on the subject.

There's no small talk at the start of this episode, so you might want to spend 20 minutes chatting to your neighbour before pressing play. But for those of you who like brevity, who will finally be satisfied that we get on with it at the start this time, the final third of this podcast more than disappoints. You'll have to wait until next week for a satisfactory climax. For now, there is a strong taste of the absurd as we explore the next cognitive distortions in the series and give you three more reasons why you understand nothing.

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