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PODCAST

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

Spencer Greenberg

Clearer Thinking is a podcast about ideas that truly matter. If you enjoy learning about powerful, practical concepts and frameworks, wish you had more deep, intellectual conversations in your life, or are looking for non-BS self-improvement, then we think you"ll love this podcast! Each week we invite a brilliant guest to bring four important ideas to discuss for an in-depth conversation. Topics include psychology, society, behavior change, philosophy, science, artificial intelligence, math,

science social sciences

All Episodes

01:10:46

A story can change the world (with Elizabeth Cox)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/04/02

Read the full transcript here. How important is story-telling for changing the world? What counts as a story? How closely should persuasive stories conform to the formula of "the hero's journey"? How much time do we spend on average thinking about stories? How can raw data be shaped into a story that's both true and compelling? What are some good examples of stories that have changed the world for the better? When, if ever, do scare tactics work? Can a bad guy with a story only be stopped by a good

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01:37:28

The heavy price you'll have to pay to have a healthy...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/03/28

Read the full transcript here. What are the main causes of problems in romantic relationships? What are the behaviors and patterns that lead to healthy relationships? What is the price of a good relationship? Are dark triad traits (i.e., psychopathy / sociopathy, Narcissism, and Machiavellianism) treatable? What is outcome resistance? What is process resistance? How can a person overcome their own resistance to healthy change? When are labels useful? Do thoughts lead to emotions? Or do emotions lead

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01:22:04

The skills every adult human should have (with Raffi...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/03/19

Read the full transcript here. What life skills do most people fail to learn before adulthood? Why does this failure occur? What should constructive disagreement look like? When might it be impossible to overcome a disagreement? How can you appease your (or someone else's) "elephant"? What do many people get wrong about dating? How much exploration is necessary to figure out what kind of person is compatible with you romantically? Which basic financial skills do many adults lack? What are the best

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01:07:24

Rethinking our assumptions about happiness (with...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/03/13

Read the full transcript here. What do most people get wrong about happiness? Why doesn't the happiness resulting from success last longer? Is it easier to "get ahead" today than it was 100 years ago? How are we trapped by our ideas of happiness? Does individualism help or hurt happiness? Where do hyper-individualistic messages come from (especially in the US)? How have those messages changed over the past several decades? How can people better open themselves up to help from friends and family

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01:15:12

Evidence-Based Medicine and its discontents (with...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/03/05

Read the full transcript here. How were decisions made about which treatments to trust before the advent of "evidence-based" medicine? How strong are biological arguments for or against various treatments? When did the Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) movement begin? How did the EBM movement overcome initial resistance among medical professionals? What resources do doctors have at their disposals to find up-to-date information about treatment efficacies? Why is the pharmaceutical industry allowed such

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01:21:57

AI, US-China relations, and lessons from the OpenAI...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/02/26

Read the full transcript here. Is it useful to vote against a majority when you might lose political or social capital for doing so? What are the various perspectives on the US / China AI race? How close is the competition? How has AI been used in Ukraine? Should we work towards a global ban of autonomous weapons? And if so, how should we define "autonomous"? Is there any potential for the US and China to cooperate on AI? To what extent do government officials — especially senior policymakers —

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01:23:29

Getting a handle on your goals and big life changes...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/02/19

Read the full transcript here. What are the best things to do to help someone achieve their goals? What kind of person should see a personal coach? And when should they do so? What makes for a good personal coach? How do you know which coaches are legit given that they aren't certified like counselors? Can everyone benefit from meeting with a coach? How can you harness modernity to live the kind of life you want? In what ways do people treat themselves as resources? What are the most common causes

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01:19:25

Avoiding major investment mistakes (with Jim...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/02/12

Read the full transcript here. What are the biggest mistakes people make when investing? What's the best thing to do with extra savings? How can we overcome emotional biases that might negatively impact our investment strategies? What is "hyperbolic discounting"? How can you know when to pull your money out of an investment? How can journaling help with investing? Is it irrational to invest only in companies based in your country? What's the optimal mix of stocks and bonds? Are short-term bonds

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01:23:07

Creating a new city from scratch (with Erick Brimen)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/02/05

Read the full transcript here. What does it take to start a new city, especially one designed to be a special economic zone (SEZ)? What are the advantages and disadvantages to having a private company as manager of a city? Should governments be profit-maximizing? Can people choose to live in one of the Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo Económico (ZEDE) cities in Honduras while also opting out of its specific government services? What are some legitimate reasons governments should regulate businesses? Are

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01:32:06

What's the most effective type of therapy? (with...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/01/29

Read the full transcript here. What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)? What are the "cognitive" and "behavioral" parts of CBT? What are some of its most common techniques? What are "negative core beliefs"? What does CBT have to say about situations in which problems come from a person's environment rather than from within the person's mind? What makes a particular belief or behavior "good"? How do we know how effective various psychotherapeutic treatments are? How much can we rely on

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01:36:44

A conversation about Borderline Personality Disorder...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/01/22

Read the full transcript here. What is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)? Why is it so stigmatized relative to other mental health issues? What does it mean to be the "favorite person" of someone with BPD? Can people with BPD have multiple favorite persons, or no favorite person at all? What is "splitting"? Why are people with BPD more prone to engage in risky, reckless, or impulsive behaviors? How might BPD overlap with the "dark triad" personality traits (i.e., machiavellianism, narcissism,

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01:27:15

Could the placebo effect be bullshit? (with Literal...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/01/15

Read the full transcript here. Is the placebo effect bullshit? Are "open-label" placebos just as effective as "closed-label" placebos? How do placebos differ from dummies? Is the placebo effect just a kind of scientific-sounding "woo"? How does social priming differ from word priming? Why is it important in research to have both placebo and no-treatment groups? What is the Hawthorne effect? What is the John Henry effect? When is it useful to express effect sizes using Cohen's d? If there's not a

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01:07:27

Making better decisions by thinking like an artist...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/01/08

Read the full transcript here. What kinds of things really distort our ability to think clearly when making decisions? What is "psychological distance"? What is construal level theory? How can we intentionally increase or decrease psychological distance for ourselves or others who are making decisions? What are "decisionscapes"? When giving toddlers choices, we often artificially limit the number of available options to help smooth out the decision process and avoid decision paralysis. When might

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01:28:13

Are the culture wars harming science? (with Cremieux)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2025/01/06

Read the full transcript here. Which of the world's hardest problems can be solved merely by gathering more data? Why are social problems harder to solve than biological problems? How should power between business owners and unions be balanced? Why do people so often misinterpret research results — sometimes even to the point of concluding exactly the opposite of what the results show? What heuristics should people use when reading research papers? How are culture wars affecting the reliability of

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01:18:33

How can you learn more efficiently? (with Scott Young)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/12/25

Read the full transcript here. What do schools do well and not so well? In what contexts is memorization most effective? What's the value in teaching something that will probably be forgotten by most students after graduation? How should educators balance time spent on building skills versus acquiring knowledge? Why do students so often fail to apply the skills learned in school (e.g., fractions, solving for unknown quantities, etc.) to problems encountered in everyday life? What is "transfer of

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01:31:11

A conversation with a narcissist (with Jacob Skidmore)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/12/18

Read the full transcript here. Are narcissists born with narcissism? What are the core components of narcissism? To what extent do narcissists have their own personality that isn't shaped by what others think of them? Are narcissists overly confident or overly insecure? How are grandiosity and vulnerability related? Why might narcissists be offended by compliments? Would narcissists relinquish their narcissism if given the opportunity? Do most narcissists know that they suffer from Narcissistic

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01:11:40

What effects does guaranteed income have on U.S....

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/12/11

Read the full transcript here. What have we learned about UBI from recent, large-scale studies? What factors contribute to differential attrition in (especially long-term) studies? How much does it cost to run large UBI studies? Where else in the world have major UBI studies been run? What's the difference between "guaranteed income" and UBI? How do people in cash transfer studies tend to spend their money? Should restrictions be placed on what people can spend their study money on? How long does it

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01:04:08

Human evolution and AI evolution (with Dwarkesh Patel)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/12/04

Read the full transcript here. What interesting things can we learn by studying pre-humans? How many different species of pre-humans were there? Why is there only a single species of human now? If pre-human species wiped each other out for various reasons, why might the ancestors of chimps and bonobos (who are very closely related to humans) have been spared? What roles did language, racism / speciesism, and disease likely play in the shaping of the human evolutionary tree? How is AI development

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01:20:50

Should sex work be a crime? (with Kaytlin Bailey)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/11/27

Read the full transcript here. Why are sex workers treated so badly in the US? What effects do licensing requirements have on sex workers and their customers? How do sex worker rights connect with privacy rights more broadly? In what philosophical principles ought sex worker rights (and their customers' rights) to be grounded? How do sex work laws affect people who aren't sex workers? Is "whore-phobia" the root of all misogyny? Is misogyny built into human nature, or is it learned? How does testicle

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01:00:21

When does productivity become toxic? (with Israa Nasir)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/11/20

Read the full transcript here. When does productivity become toxic? To which part(s) of ourselves or our lives should we anchor our self-worth? How can we connect our productivity to our values? How does self-esteem intersect with productivity? When should we listen to our bodies and intuitions, and when should we ignore them and perhaps even do the opposite? How should achievements affect our sense of self-worth? What are some techniques for emotional regulation? What is the "narrator mind" useful

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296 results

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