Thinking Clearly

Oct 21 2024 99 ep. 57 mins 362

Thinking Clearly Podcast artwork

In this age of fake news, alternative facts and information overload, this podcast offers cognitive self-defense strategies and topics that will help you understand and master critical thinking in forming your claims beliefs and opinions.

Society & Culture Education

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#99-How internet influencers, algorithms and crowds are altering our politics, our society and our very relationship to reality-with guest Renée DiResta.mp3

Oct 21 2024 59 mins

Researcher, author and former Research Manager of the Stanford Internet Observatory, Renée DiResta, discusses how numerous internet-savvy individuals (influencers) are causing a profound shift in power and influence over our politics, beliefs and behavior, as outlined in her recent book: Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality. She also discusses: what can be done

#98-The Nature of Curiosity and it’s implications for Critical Thinking-with guest Jacqueline Gottlieb

Sep 24 2024 59 mins

Professor Jacqueline Gottlieb, Principal Investigator at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute and former head of the Research Cluster on Curiosity at Columbia University’s Center for Science and Society, brings her research experience and deep thinking about the human brain's higher cognitive functions—including decision making, memory, and attention—to discuss that wo

#97-How to Navigate the Challenges of Living in a Divided Nation-with guest Tania Israel

Aug 27 2024 59 mins

Second time Thinking Clearly guest, Tania Israel, Professor of Counseling Psychology at UC Santa Barbara, guides us through how to overcome the toxic effects of consuming politicized news and social media in this current, highly polarized American environment and discusses how to more effectively communicate with people holding opposing views to ours. Professor Israel is the author

#96-Using practices and tools from science while also learning how to weave together facts and values to rebuild trust and cooperation-with guest Robert MacCoun

Jul 23 2024 58 mins

Calling on his experience in evidence-based policy making, teaching a course at UC Berkeley called Sense and Sensibility and Science, and coauthoring the book Third Millennium Thinking-Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense, social scientist and law Professor at Stanford University, Robert MacCoun, discusses: how to avoid failure modes when making decisions; using practices, and too

#95-Critical Thinking and the Nature of Human Consciousness-with guest Anil Seth

Jun 25 2024 59 mins

Research and current theories about the nature of human consciousness are explored with guest Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. Topics include: how human consciousness can be thought of as controlled hallucination, the relationship of human consciousness to critical thinking, how thinking of the brain as a "prediction mach

#94-The Essence of Critical Thinking and Demonstrations of How to Have Civil Dialogues

May 28 2024 56 mins

Thinking Clearly hosts Bob and Julia review their definition of critical thinking, discuss how doing a show about critical thinking has changed them, and do several demonstrations of best practices (using the LAP-EFI method) for having productive, civil dialogues with people who have different views than yours.

#93-Critical Thinking Fundamentals and how to find truth in all the noise-with guest Dr. Seema Yasmin

Apr 23 2024 59 mins

Dr. Seema Yasmin, professor at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, discusses: information disorder and its treatment, common techniques used for pushing lies, the use of narrative in communicating, the history and current state of journalism in America, how to best consume the news and mitigate the negative effects of social media,

#92-Election 2024 Preparation 4-Teaching Critical Thinking to American Military Future Leaders-with Guest Stephen Gerras

Mar 26 2024 59 mins

In this fourth in a series of Thinking Clearly episodes—offered in the hope of fostering critical thinking and civil dialogue as we approach our 2024 Presidential Election in America—we are replaying core episodes with those themes. In this edition, you’ll hear a previous episode that we recorded with Colonel (retired) Steve Gerras, who teaches critical thinking at the Army W

#91-How artificial intelligence can help us understand human cognition-with guest Leslie Valiant

Feb 27 2024 58 mins

The development of artificial intelligence naturally leads us to deeply explore what intelligence, reasoning and knowledge are; the processes required to achieve them; and the implications that has for human thought, belief and decision making—all topics that have been deeply thought about by our guest, Leslie Valiant, Harvard University Professor of Computer Science and Applied

#90-Election 2024 Preparation 3-Hidden Tribes and the Perception Gap-with guest Stephen Hawkins

Jan 22 2024 59 mins

In this third in a series of Thinking Clearly episodes—offered in the hope of fostering critical thinking and civil dialogue as we approach our 2024 presidential election in America—we are replaying core episodes with those themes. In this edition, you’ll hear an episode that we recorded with Stephen Hawkins, director of research at More in Common—a non-profit organization