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

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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

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In this episode we sit down with renowned cultural psychologist Michael Morris to discuss his new book, Tribal, in which he makes the case for seeing humans as an "us" species, not a "them" species. Morris says that since we genetically predisposed to collaborate, coordinate, and cooperate. He believes we can leverage our innate desire to work together to solve problems and reach goals to improve our lives, our relationships, and our jobs – and while we are at it, save the world. 

Tribal

Notre Dame Researchers

Overimitation Study

CSICon

Forecasting the Future Tournament

Insurrection Episode

Antivaxxer Episode

Antimasking Episode

Partisanship Episode

Uncivil Agreement Episode

Tribal Psychology Episode

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Brian Brushwood tells us how he put together the most recent season of The World's Greatest Con, his podcast about incredible scams and over the top chicanery. This season is all about how two teenagers pulled off an incredible hoax called Project Alpha, a con job and a publicity stunt meant to improve scientific rigor and methodology when it comes to studying the possibility of the existence of psychic phenomena.

Brian's Website

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The World's Greatest Con

New Yorker Article about Spiritualism

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Are you unhappy at your job? Are you starting to consider a change of career because of how your current work makes you feel? Do you know why? 

According to our guest in this episode, Dr. Tessa West, a psychologist at NYU, if you are currently contemplating whether you want to do the work that you do everyday you should know that although this feeling is common, psychologists who study this sort of thing have discovered that our narratives for why we feel this way are often just rationalizations and justifications.

In fact, it turns out that the way we psychologically evaluate the jobs we think we might not want to do anymore is nearly identical to how we evaluate romantic relationships we feel like we might no longer want to be a part of. The feelings are usually undeniable, but our explanations for why we feel the way we feel can be wildly inaccurate, and because of that, our resulting behavior can be, let’s say, sub-optimal. We sometimes stay far longer than we should or make knee-jerk decisions we later regret or commit to terrible mistakes that could have been avoided.

Job Therapy

Tessa West's Website

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In this episode we sit down with author Kelly Williams Brown, an old friend who (I recently learned) had attempted suicide, which is the subject of this episode – suicide prevention and awareness. In the show we learn about Kelly's latest book, Easy Crafts for the Insane, in which she recounts how, after she gained fame and success as a NYT bestselling author, her life came apart and how an anti-anxiety-drug-induced manic state nearly ended her life.

988

Suicide Prevention Month

Kelly Williams Brown's Website

Easy Crafts for the Insane

Kelly's Twitter

Kelly's Instagram

Kelly in Vanity Fair

Gratitude Journaling Study

Seneca on Being Wretched

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In this episode we sit down with A.J. Jacobs, a journalist who noticed some striking similarities between Biblical fundamentalism and constitutional originalism, and since he once wrote a NYT bestselling book about titled The Year of Living Biblically in which he tried to live for a year as a fundamentalist, he tried to do something similar by living for a year following the Constitution's original meaning as if he were an originalist and then writing a book about it. He soon learned that donning a tricorne hat and marching around Manhattan with a 1700s musket, though fully within one's constitutional rights, will quickly lead to some difficult encounters and altogether strange circumstances.

The Year of Living Constitutionally

AJ Jacobs' Website

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Sedona Chinn, who studies how people make sense of competing claims – scientific, environmental, health-related – joins us to discuss her latest research into doing your own research. Her research has found that the more a person values the concept of doing your own research, the less likely that person is to actually do their own research. In the episode we explore the origin of the concept, what that phrase really means, and the implications of her study on everything from politics to vaccines to conspiratorial thinking.

Sedona Chinn's Website

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Sedona Chinn's Paper

The Other Paper Mentioned

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Our guest in this episode is Jamie Joyce who is the president and executive director of The Society Library, an organization that extracts arguments, claims, and evidence from various forms of media to compile databases that map all the bickering and debating taking place across our species. They take all our conversations about all the major issues facing society and restructure them into something a single person, or a committee, or someone whose job affects millions can understand and then use to make better decisions.

The Society Library

Jamie Joyce

Jamie Joyce's Twitter

The Society Library's Twitter

The NYT's Coverage of Plandemic

The Society Library's Analysis of Plandemic

The Society Library's Analysis of AI Debates

The Society Library's Town Hall Experiment

Kitted Shop

The Story of Kitted

How Minds Change

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