You Are Not So Smart

Tim Harford of the podcast Cautionary Tales sits down with David McRaney to hear a story from David's book, How Minds Change, about how (and why) a prominent conspiracy theorist realized he was wrong.

Communications professor Heather Barnes teaches us how to truly engage with difficult people through the power of positive rants.

Chess champion Jennifer Shahade tells us how we can borrow from the best chess players' decision-tree approach to avoid considering every possible option and instead "think sideways" to consider the best choices on the board.

Northwestern University just launched the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement, a real-world institution devoted to "research-backed approaches to cultivating open-mindedness, identifying one’s own cognitive biases, working collaboratively with others despite disagreement and more."

Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, tells us how to avoid the Ladder of Misinference.