Cognitive Biases
195 episodes
#6346: Why Toddlers Say No Before They Can Explain Why
Negation arrives early because a single refusal stops adults instantly, even before a child can articulate a reason or manage disappointment.
#6321: How Interpreters Speak While Listening
Eye-tracking studies show professional interpreters look at likely items on a screen before a speaker even utters the predictable word.
#6249: Why Caused Choices Can Still Count as Free Will
In the 2020 PhilPapers Survey, over 62 percent of professional philosophers endorsed or leaned toward compatibilism between free will and determinism.
#6116: Why Noise Makes You Snap at Your Kid
The drill stops, but the anger doesn't. What Glass and Singer found about noise, control, and the tantrum two hours later.
#6020: What Buildings Do to Your Body
Measured cortisol, pupil dilation, and fractal dimensions reveal how traditional and modernist buildings shape your nervous system.
#5999: Who Teaches Actors Those Accents?
Dialect coaches break accents into six moves, not forty — and the science says imitation ability is a bell curve, not a gift.
#5985: Meccano at 125: What Kids Actually Learn From Bolts
Meccano just relaunched for its 125th year — but does childhood tinkering actually build lasting engineering intuition?
#5928: Believing Without Belonging: The Religion of One
A growing crowd believes in God but belongs to no tradition. The research has a name for them — and the numbers are messier than you'd think.
#5913: Why the Sterile Cockpit Rule Took 7 Years
One crash, one morning, one city — and seven years before the FAA wrote the rule down. What Eastern 212 still teaches us about attention.
#5879: Why Experts Don't Follow Their Own Advice
Doctors eat worse, dentists drink more soda, and physicians skip the screenings they prescribe. The data behind the "do as I say" gap.
#5835: What Do You Call the Urge to Know Obscure Things?
There's no single name for the pull toward transporter bridges, strange borders, and overlooked infrastructure. The vocabulary exists — it's just s...
#5785: The Worst Mascots Ever Made
From a clown selling sugar cereal to a blue blob Atlanta couldn't name, we count down the mascots that should never have left the sketch.
#5763: 500 Days in a Cave: How We Lose Track of Time
Beatriz Flamini spent 500 days underground and thought less time had passed. What isolation science reveals about how we perceive time.
#5742: What Neuroarchitecture Says About Your Desk
A technologist and his architect wife disagree about rooms. Turns out neuroscience has a lot to say about who's right.
#5689: What Actually Makes People Stick With Things
The science of perseverance is stranger than the posters — and it's not about willpower.
#5682: Boredom, the DMN, and the Shower Thought
Boredom doesn't make you creative — but the idle mind does. What the research actually says about rest, busyness, and ideas.
#5672: Flow or Hyperfocus? What Daniel's Busker Problem Reveals
A 15-month-old, a street busker, and the ADHD brain science that separates flow from hyperfocus — and why the switch costs so much.
#5667: Can Your Kid Inherit the Way You Sleep?
A dad noticed his toddler sleeps with one arm raised — just like him. Is that genes, imitation, or a story we tell ourselves?
#5618: When Quitting TV Isn't a Decision
Daniel never chose to give up TV — the move did it for him. What happens when habits break by accident instead of willpower?
#5616: What Your Window View Does to Your Brain
A 1984 Science study, cortisol in cord blood, and why trees beat sky and grass — the research on what your window view actually does to you.
#5600: Alien Abductions: 4 Million Claims, Zero Evidence
Nearly four million Americans say they've been abducted. Not one has produced a lab-verifiable artifact. What's going on?
#5597: Protein, ADHD, and the Breakfast You Skip
A protein breakfast has a clean dopamine story and costs a dollar. Fish oil outsells it anyway. Here's what the evidence actually says.
#5593: Faulty Extrapolation: When One Person Rewires How You See Everyone
A listener's question about a chronically hostile person reveals how one worldview can quietly become your own — and how to get your faith in peopl...
#5578: Resilience Isn't a Muscle — What the Research Actually Shows
Two-thirds of people bounce back from major trauma by default. So why does "build resilience like a muscle" miss the point?