In this episode, the story of Clever Hans, the horse who changed psychology for the better. We also sit down with psychologist and magician Matt Tompkins. Matt is the author of The Spectacle of Illusion, a book about the long history of the manipulation of our own magical thinking and how studying deception can help us better understand perception, memory, belief, and more.

How Minds Change

David McRaney’s BlueSky

David McRaney’s Twitter

YANSS Twitter

Matt Tompkins

The Spectacle of Illusion

Prisoners of Silence

Clever Hans

Wilhelm von Osten

Carl Sagan Quote

Science of Magic Association

Society for Psychical Research

Skeptical Inquirer Magazine

Houdini's Debunking

In this episode, we sit down with three disinformation researchers whose new paper found something surprising about both our resistance and our susceptibility to both true news we wish was fake and fake news we wish was true.

Our guests are three of the scientists exploring a newly named cognitive distortion, one that every human being is prone to exhibiting, one that is so common and so easily provoked that nefarious actors depend on it when distributing disinformation and propaganda.

Samuel Woolley, Katie Joseff, and Michael Schwalbe will share their methods, findings, and takeaways. They will also explain the troublesome nature of something they are calling concordance over truth bias – a distortion that most often appears in those who have the most (undeserved) confidence in their own (not-so-objective) objectivity. 

- How Minds Change

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- David McRaney's BlueSky

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- Why Do We Share Our Feelings With Others?

- Concordance Over Truth Bias

- Samuel Wooley

- Katie Joseff

- Michael Schwalbe

- Geoffrey Cohen

This episode’s guest is Mónica Guzmán, the author of I Never Thought of It That Way – a book with very practical advice on how to have productive conversations in a polarized political environment via authentic curiosity about where people’s beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and values come from. It's also about how to learn from those with whom we disagree by establishing the sort of dynamic in which they will eagerly learn from us as well.

- How Minds Change

- Show Notes

- Newsletter

- David McRaney's BlueSky

- David McRaney’s Twitter

- YANSS Twitter

- Mónica Guzmán’s Website

- Mónica Guzmán’s Twitter 

- I Never Thought of it That Way

- Braver Angels

- My Article on Intellectual Humility

Our guest in this episode is Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer for the New Yorker Magazine who is also the New York Times Bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better. His new book is Supercommunicators, a practical and approachable guide to what makes great conversations work. In the episode we discuss the science behind what it takes to form a connection with another human being through dialogue, how to generate or nurture a bond, and how to form, repair, and maintain a conversational pipeline through listening and communicating that guarantees reciprocation and understanding.

Charles DuHigg's Website

Charles DuHigg's Twitter

Supercommunicators

How Minds Change

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YANSS Twitter

Show Notes

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In an era in which we have more information available to us than ever before, when claims of “fake news” might themselves be, in fact, fake news, Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, authors of The Invisible Gorilla, are back to offer us a vital tool to not only inoculate ourselves against getting infected by misinformation but prevent us from spreading it to others – a new book titled Nobody's Fool.

Previous Episodes

Dan Simon's Website

Christopher Chabris' Website

Nobody's Fool

Kitted

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In this episode we return to The Dress and the psychological lessons offered by one of the most viral moments in the history of the internet via an episode of Decoder Ring in which David McRaney shares some insights from his book, How Minds Change, with Willa Paskin, the host of Decoder Ring.

Decoder Ring

Decoder Ring's The Dress Page

Willa Paskin's Twitter

CBC Interview with Willa Paskin

Kitted

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In this episode we sit down with Warren Berger, the author of A More Beautiful Question – and a man who has made a career out of classifying, categorizing, and making sense of all the many varieties of questions we ask, when we are likely to ask them, and how that can lead to all manner of outcomes, some positive, some negative.

Warren Berger's Website

Warren Berger's Twitter

A More Beautiful Question

Carl Sagan on Asking Questions

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Why The Sky Is Blue

The Real Reason the Sky is Blue

How Does Rayleigh Scattering ACTUALLY Work? (The Blue Sky)

Kitted

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In this episode we welcome Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano, a political scientist who studies how cognitive dissonance affects all sorts of political behavior. She’s also the co-host of a podcast about activism called "What Do We Want?" and she wrote a book that’s coming out in May of 2025 titled don’t talk about politics which is about how to discuss politics without necessarily talking about politics.

Sarah Stein Lubrano's Website

Sarah Stein Lubrano's Substack

Sarah Stein Lubrano's Twitter

Kitted

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In this episode, the story of a doomsday cult that predicted the exact date and circumstances of the end of the world, and what happened when that date passed and the world did not end.

Also, we explore our drive to remain consistent via our desire to reduce cognitive dissonance. When you notice you’ve done something you believe is wrong, then you will either stop doing that thing or stop believing it is wrong. And if you believe something is true but you come across some information that disconfirms that belief, you’ll either change your belief, challenge the validity of the challenging information, or go looking for confirmation you were right all along.

How Minds Change

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Our guests in this episode are Thomas H. Costello at American University, Gordon Pennycook at Cornell University, and David G. Rand at MIT who created Debunkbot, a GPT-powered, large language model, conspiracy-theory-debunking AI that is highly effective at reducing conspiratorial beliefs. In the show you’ll hear all about what happened when they placed Debunkbot inside the framework of a scientific study and recorded its interactions with thousands of participants.

Debunkbot

Kitted

How Minds Change

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