Rationally Speaking

What if our biases are actually a sign of rationality? Tom Griffiths, professor of cognitive science at University of California, Berkeley, makes the case for why our built-in reasoning strategies might be optimal after all.

This episode features Dr. Vinay Prasad, author of "Ending Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives," who talks with Julia about why medical research is so often fatally flawed, and what we can do about it.

Julia and philosopher and blogger Dan Fincke discuss civility in public discourse. Do atheists and skeptics have a responsibility to be civil when expressing disagreement, and does that responsibility vary depending on who their target is?

Julia interviews Maria Konnikova, science journalist and author of "The Confidence Game: Why we fall for it... Every time," who explains why con artists are so effective that even the best of us are vulnerable.

Julia interviews psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, whose pioneering work on human memory revealed that our memories can be contaminated by the questions people ask us, or by misinformation we encounter after the fact.

In this episode, psychologist Susan Gelman describes her work on the psychological trait of essentialism: the innate human urge to categorize reality and to assume that those categories reflect meaningful, invisible differences.

Julia interviews philosophy professor David Kyle Johnson, the author of "The Myths that Stole Christmas." Kyle explains the little-known origin story of Santa Claus and then Kyle and Julia debate the ethics of lying to children about Santa Claus.

Professor of statistics and political science Andrew Gelman shines some clarifying light on the intersection between politics and class in America, explaining what the numbers really show. He and Julia also ask "Is it rational to vote?"

Rationally Speaking #146 - Jesse Richardson on "The pros and cons of making fallacies famous"

Professor Phil Tetlock discusses his team’s landslide wins in forecasting tournaments sponsored by the US government. Also, the problem of meta-uncertainty and how much we should expect prediction skill in one domain to carry over to other domains.

Economist Bryan Caplan argues that, despite our intuition that parenting choices affect children's life outcomes, there's strong evidence to the contrary. They also explore what that means for how people should parent and how many kids they should have.

Scott Aaronson. professor of computer science at MIT, discusses a theorem which implies that two people cannot rationally disagree after they've shared their opinions and information. Also, why should you favor your own beliefs just because they're yours?

Psychologist Paul Bloom and Julia discuss what empathy is, why Paul is concerned that it's a terrible guide to moral decision making, and what the alternatives are.

Julia talks with guest Dan Sperber, professor of cognitive and social sciences and famous for advancing an alternate view of reason: that it evolved to help us argue with our fellow humans and convince them that we're right.

Philosopher Kenny Easwaran delves into the Newcomb's Paradox and how it is related to other puzzles in decision theory, like the Prisoners' Dilemma. Also, its implications for free will and what Kenny calls the "deep tragedy" at the heart of rationality.