You Are Not So Smart
346 episodes listed below
David McRaney interviews researchers on cognitive bias, motivated reasoning, and why minds change.
You Are Not So Smart is a measured psychology show about the mind’s unreliable machinery. Recent episodes move from GPS obedience and fake news to protest movements, parts work, magical thinking, and the ways people can watch the same evidence and see different truths.
PRESS PLAY
You Are Not So Smart is a long-running interview podcast (333 episodes) about cognitive bias, self-delusion, and the reasoning behind human judgment and decision-making. Host David McRaney, author of How Minds Change, typically opens with a short framing bit — a pop-culture clip, a personal anecdote, or a topical news hook — before bringing in a guest to unpack the episode's core idea. Guests are largely academics, researchers, and nonfiction authors: political theorist Sarah Stein-Lubrano discussing the marketplace-of-ideas metaphor and motivated reasoning, political scientist Erica Chenoweth on nonviolent resistance research, and memoirist Kelly Williams Brown on depression, a suicide attempt, and recovery. Recurring subject areas include political psychology and motivated reasoning, misinformation and fake-news sharing, cognitive biases around trusting machines and institutions, and the mechanics of nonviolent social movements. The show frequently revisits older interviews as rebroadcasts, with the host adding new framing that ties the original material to current events, such as connecting a Chenoweth interview to ongoing protest movements. Episodes lean educational and research-grounded, citing named studies (motivated numeracy, the veil of ignorance, cognitive dissonance) rather than offering casual conversation. Sponsor reads for Kitted Thinking Tools and School of Thought recur across episodes. Episode lengths generally run 60 to 80 minutes. The show suits listeners who want research-backed explanations of belief and decision-making rather than general self-help framing, and at least one entry in the sample includes a detailed first-person account of a mental health crisis within a recovery narrative.
Made for: Listeners interested in psychology, behavioral science, and political cognition who want research-grounded explanations of bias and belief change rather than casual chat.
What sets it apart: Pairs each cognitive-bias topic with an academic or research-author guest and grounds discussion in named studies rather than general psychology commentary.
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.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
David McRaney tests psychological ideas against politics, technology, therapy, and personal experience, making the machinery of belief easier to recognize.
You Are Not So Smart turns difficult questions about belief into searching conversations between David McRaney and guests. The host keeps asking how an idea works in practice, then presses on the tidy explanation.
This is where your proudest certainty gets cross-examined before psychology calls the next witness.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear, timely discussion of the 3.5 percent rule that keeps the promise of mass protest tied to the harder work behind it.
David McRaney reairs his conversation with Erica Chenoweth at a moment when protest feels newly urgent, asking whether mass, nonviolent participation can exert real political pressure. The episode is strongest when it resists turning Chenoweth's 3.5 percent rule into folklore.
A clear, science-friendly case for treating the mind as parts to train, not enemies to silence.
Psychological stuckness is framed as a systems problem: the mind has parts with different jobs, not a single hostile force that must be silenced.
A horse story that turns into a clear look at projection, deception, and policy.
Episode 334 opens with Clever Hans, the horse sold as a mathematical wonder, and uses that story to frame a wider look at how people read meaning into performance.
Kelly Williams Brown turns divorce, dating, and a suicide attempt into a frank, humane study of agency under pressure.
Kelly Williams Brown's return to You Are Not So Smart is candid, uneven in the way grief and recovery often are, and grounded in the messy aftermath of a divorce she believed would open a chosen life.
A sharp social science conversation about how old biases become faster and easier to reinforce online.
Misguided works best when it treats misinformation as a problem of social psychology, not just bad media. Matthew Facciani starts from a useful paradox: the person most certain they are unbiased may be the one least willing to notice when they are wrong.
A clear psychology check on why better political ideas do not simply win by being heard.
Politics, in this episode, is less a debate stage than a psychology problem. Sarah Stein Lubrano takes apart the comfortable "marketplace of ideas" story: the claim that good arguments will win if people are simply allowed to hear them.
Manoush Zomorodi turns TED Talks into themed, multi-guest explorations of science and society.
Ira Glass frames weekly theme-driven segments spanning family secrets to Portland's protest conflict.
Shankar Vedantam unpacks the psychology behind relationships, careers, and money through researcher interviews.
Ryan Holiday pairs daily Stoic lessons with long-form guest conversations at his Texas bookstore.
NHPR's Jason Moon investigates the Bear Brook barrel murders and a New Hampshire wrongful-conviction case.
You Are Not So Smart episode 346 examines why neuroscientist and science journalist Helen Pilcher hesitated to search for information after receiving a cancer diagnosis.
You Are Not So Smart episode 337 opens with a scene from the U.S.
David McRaney has a bad cold, so he pulls an earlier episode back into view and connects it to the No Kings demonstrations: can peaceful mass protest actually move power?
The mind is not one empire.
David McCraney opens with Clever Hans, the horse that seemed to solve math.
This episode explores how selective perception influences people's interpretations of video evidence from controversial shootings during immigration protests, featuring insights from Jay Van Bavel.
David McGraney opens You Are Not So Smart episode 332 by asking whether listeners have ever shared an article, post, or link that later turned out to be fake news.
This episode introduces a workshop exercise where listeners rank values like community and freedom, setting up a discussion on complex societal issues with guest Martin Carcasson.
This episode explores the importance of asking questions as a critical thinking tool, with a focus on intellectual humility and media literacy.
The host introduces the show's theme of exploring reasoning and biases, then discusses how people often hold opinions without thinking them through.
The host discusses the concept of mathematics as giving the same name to different things, leading into a conversation about the book's central question of 'how many'.
This episode explores how our intuitions about right and wrong can be distorted, and the psychological processes behind moral reasoning.
An interview with Madeline Beekman discussing her new hypothesis on the origin of language in Homo sapiens.
This episode explores the concept of cognitive dissonance, a 70-year-old psychological theory, as part of a two-part series.
This episode explores the origins of cognitive dissonance theory through psychologist Leon Festinger's work at the University of Minnesota in 1954.
This episode explores job dissatisfaction and the psychological aspects of considering career changes, featuring insights from Tessa West.
This episode explores intellectual humility as a way of thinking that involves skeptically interrogating the universe while understanding human fallibility.
Kelly Williams Brown looks back from the far side of a divorce.
Bias can hide inside certainty.
This episode features Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick discussing the science of love and relationships, including topics like attraction, compatibility, and conflict.
This episode explores the psychological concept of the intention-action gap, where people fail to follow through on their goals despite good intentions, and discusses strategies to overcome this common barrier to personal improvement.
Ideas do not wait politely.
Mary C.
This episode explores cognitive biases and decision-making, featuring economist Alex Edmonds discussing how to trust information in a post-truth world.
The episode begins with a historical anecdote about an American couple visiting Japan in 1926, likely used as a narrative hook to explore psychological concepts.
This episode explores how small minorities can shift societal norms and power balances through incremental change.
The episode uses the 30th anniversary of Jurassic Park to explore psychological concepts like reasoning and self-delusion.
The episode uses the 30th anniversary of Jurassic Park to discuss psychological concepts like reasoning and biases.
Host David McRaney interviews psychologist Celeste Kidd about how humans form beliefs and make sense of information, touching on the hot dog sandwich debate as an example.
Host David McRaney asks listeners to recall a song that made them feel connected to something bigger, introducing psychologist Dacher Keltner to discuss the science of emotion.
This episode explores social psychologist Mary C.
This episode explores the landmark research of psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, which changed how we think about human reasoning and decision-making.
This episode features an interview with Jeremy Utley, a Stanford professor, discussing creativity and entrepreneurship, framed by the show's theme of cognitive biases and self-delusion.
The host interviews NASA scientists about the upcoming Artemis missions to return humans to the moon.
Host David McCraney revisits a classic episode about cognitive biases and reasoning, with a warning about distressing audio from a historical event.
This episode explores the myth of the lone inventor, arguing that most human culture and artifacts evolve gradually through collective contributions.