logo
episode-header-image
Sep 2022
1h 28m

David McRaney on How Minds Change

RUSS ROBERTS
About this episode

To the Founding Fathers it was free libraries. To the 19th century rationalist philosophers it was a system of public schools. Today it's access to the internet. Since its beginnings, Americans have believed that if facts and information were available to all, a democratic utopia would prevail. But missing from these well-intentioned efforts, says author and journalist David McRaney, is the awareness that people's opinions are unrelated to their knowledge and intelligence. In fact, he explains, the better educated we become, the better we are at rationalizing what we already believe. Listen as the author of How Minds Change speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about why it's so hard to change someone's mind, the best way to make it happen (if you absolutely must), and why teens are hard-wired not to take good advice from older people even if they are actually wiser.

Up next
Yesterday
Hemingway, Love, and War (with David Wyatt)
What can Ernest Hemingway teach us today about the morality of war, the eternal and transient nature of love, and how to write a masterpiece? Listen as author and teacher David Wyatt talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about Hemingway's epic For Whom the Bell Tolls. Topics include ... Show More
1h 6m
Aug 18
Tim Ferriss on Tim Ferriss (and much much more)
Cold plunges. Exogenous ketones. Pu-erh tea--but hold the breakfast: it's all par for the morning routine, at least if you're entrepreneur, self-experimenter, and king of the lifehacks, Tim Ferriss. From how he manages the challenges of his celebrity to how he manages to stay in ... Show More
2h 6m
Aug 11
Learning to Think Like Someone Else (with David Marquet)
Former submarine commander David Marquet joins EconTalk's Russ Roberts to explore how distancing--thinking like someone else, somewhere else, or sometime else--can unlock better choices in business and life. They talk about leadership without giving orders, how to empower teams, ... Show More
1h 3m
Recommended Episodes
Dec 2022
David McRaney || How Minds Change
Today we welcome David McRaney. He is a science journalist fascinated with brains, minds, and culture. In 2012, he created the podcast You Are Not So Smart based on his 2009 internationally bestselling book of the same name and its follow-up, You Are Now Less Dumb. David is also ... Show More
1h 5m
Apr 2021
Why Adults Lose the ‘Beginner’s Mind’
Here’s a sobering thought: The older we get, the harder it is for us to learn, to question, to reimagine. This isn’t just habit hardening into dogma. It’s encoded into the way our brains change as we age. And it’s worsened by an intellectual and economic culture that prizes effic ... Show More
1h 1m
May 2024
#368 — Freedom & Censorship
Sam Harris speaks with Greg Lukianoff about free speech and cancel culture. They discuss the origins of political correctness, free speech and its boundaries, the bedrock principle of the First Amendment, technology and the marketplace of ideas, epistemic anarchy, social media an ... Show More
42m 47s
Nov 2022
#285 Knowledge vs Skills Debate with Daniel Buck (pt.1)
Hello everyone! It has never been the goal of this podcast to push one side of the current issues education is facing. I value the complexities of what we do in schools, and as a consequence, value wide ranging opinions from people who care about education's future.  Today is a d ... Show More
32m 32s
Feb 2024
Lisa Herzog, "Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
For better or worse, democracy and epistemology are intertwined. For one thing, politics is partly a matter of gathering, assessing, and applying information. And this can be done responsibly or incompetently. At least since Plato, a leading critique of democracy has focused on t ... Show More
1h 7m
Sep 2023
#334 — The Low-Trust Society
Sam Harris speaks with David Brooks about the state of American democracy and the liberal world order. They discuss the weakness of moral individualism, the loss of social trust, the dangers of identity politics, what happened to the Republican Party, the hatred of elites, the 20 ... Show More
49m 32s
Jun 2023
#137 — Safe Space
Sam Harris speaks with Jonathan Haidt about his book The Coddling of the American Mind. They discuss the hostility to free speech that has grown more common among young adults, recent moral panics on campus, the role of intentions in ethical life, the economy of prestige in “call ... Show More
39m 50s
Jan 2022
Best Of: This Conversation Will Change How You Think About Thinking
For decades, our society’s dominant metaphor for the mind has been a computer. A machine that operates the exact same way whether it’s in a dark room or next to a sunny window, whether it’s been working for 30 seconds or three hours, whether it’s near other computers or completel ... Show More
1h 8m
Jul 2023
What Politics Can Learn From Philosophy
Philosopher Julian Baggini shares the insights of his new book How to Think Like a Philosopher: Essential Principles for Clearer Thinking. In conversation with government minister Jesse Norman, who was himself once an academic philosopher, Baggini set out the techniques, methods ... Show More
47m 22s