Professor Steven Pinker has spent his life thinking about thinking. Now he wants us to join him. For this series Professor Pinker has created a critical thinking toolkit which he hopes will help all of us make better decisions about - well, everything. Steven will be joined by some big thinkers, and people who have to deal with the consequences of irrationality, as he sets out to steer us away from common fallacies and logical traps set by our own animal brains.

Through conversations with expert guests from psychology, business, medicine, sports, government, journalism, and law, Professor Pinker will explore how we make judgements and decisions, and how they lead us to sound predictions or crazy conspiracy theories. And perhaps we’ll learn how to make better decisions.

Episode details:

Welcome to Think with Pinker: Listen here.
Think Twice: Human intuition vs. statistical formulas. With Ellen Peters, journalism. Listen here.
professor, and Sig Mejdal, sabremetrician.
Sentence First, Verdict Afterwards: Signal Detection Theory (trading off misses
and false alarms) and courtroom decisions. With Elizabeth Loftus, memory expert,
and Nancy Gertner, retired judge.
Don’t Expect a Zebra: Baysean reasoning and medicine. With Talithia Williams,
statistics professor, and Siddartha Mukherjee, physician and writer.
Methinks it is a Weasel: Patterns in randomness. With Tim Harford, economics
writer, and Charlie Munger, investor.
Rational Soothsaying: Forecasting the future. With Barbara Mellers, cognitive
psychologist, and Tom Friedman, columnist.
Future You: Discounting the future and delay of gratification. With Maria Konnikova,
psychologist and poker player, and Bina Venkataraman, editorial page editor.
The Climate Game: Game theory and the climate crisis. With Hannah Fry,
mathematician, and Bill Gates, philanthropist and technologist.
Nudges and Noise: Evidence-based policy and administration. With Daniel
Kahneman, cognitive psychologist, and Robyn Scott, governance expert.
In Touch with Reality: Fringe beliefs versus truth-seeking institutions. With
Jonathan Rauch, journalist, and Ellen Cushing, editor.
Headlines and Trendlines: The availability bias, journalism, and data. With Anna
Rosling-Rönnlund, data designer, and James Harding, editor.
You can’t think that: The psychology of taboo (example: organ donor
compensation). With Philip Tetlock, cognitive psychologist, and Sally Satel,
psychiatrist.
Being Right or Getting it Right: The habits of critical thinking. With Daniel
Willingham, cognitive psychologist, and Julia Galef, rationality activist.

Reviews

Radio Times: Second Thoughts
Daily Telegraph: Why your gut instincts are often wrong