326 Episodes

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg explores powerful, practical ideas across science, psychology, and technology. Guests discuss concepts to improve decision-making, self-understanding, and life.

Episodes

The Race to Replace Us With AI (with Garrison Lovely)

Why we procrastinate, and what actually helps (with Itamar Shatz)

Neurodiversity, Autism, Awe, and Religious Experience (with Jonathan Machnee)

Can We End Factory Farming Without Giving Up Meat? (with Bruce Friedrich)

Our relationship to chatbots (with Claire Boine)

The good advice you least want (with Cate Hall)

Why housing costs so much and what can be done about it (with Alex Armlovich)

How To Pursue Goals without Striving (with Stephen Zerfas)

Bicameral Minds and Leaderless Tribes (with Tor Parsons)

How Small Actions Rewrite Identity (with Eric Zimmer)

The Twelve Levers for a better life (with Jeremy Stevenson)

The Hidden History of Evidence-Based Everything (with Helen Pearson)

Is cash a better form of charitable aid? (with Nick Allardice)

When painful thoughts feel true but aren't (with Christine Padesky)

Could an international agreement protect us from dangerous AI? (with Malo Bourgon)

Is patriarchy gone or hiding in plain sight? (with Kate Manne)

Is string theory BS or the most promising theory in physics? (with Christian Ferko)

What's true and what's myth about trauma? (with George Bonnano)

Are we in an honesty crisis? (with Christian B. Miller)

What impact will AI have on jobs and the economy? (with Anton Korinek)

The seductiveness of secular gurus (with Christopher Kavanagh)

What beats intuition when it comes to doing good? (with Marcus Davis)

Can averages explain a human life? (with Steven C. Hayes)

Should science stop worshiping statistical significance? (with Andrew Gelman)

What happens when your co-workers are AIs? (with Evan Ratliff)

Long COVID: what are the scientific facts? (with Carmen Scheibenbogen)

Our 300th episode! - How to have better intellectual conversations (with Uri Bram)

How to use your career to help the world (with Devon Fritz)

Are personality types a statistical mirage? (with Colin DeYoung)

Ambitious goals for reducing animal suffering (with Jeff Sebo)

Live at EA Global - The future of U.S. foreign aid (with Dean Karlan)

Improving your skill of emotional regulation (with Shireen Rizvi)

When voting fails (with Nicholas Gruen)

Why aren't we relying on nuclear power? (with Isabelle Boemeke)

A conversation with a person with OCD (with David Adam)

What, if anything, will save the environment? (with Dan Stein)

Are markets rational or is sentiment contagious? (with Alex Imas)

Can you do 100x more good? (with Sjir Hoeijmakers)

What is psychosomatic illness? (with Suzanne O'Sullivan)

What causes mass shootings? (with Ragy Girgis)

Contempt-free public discourse (with Robert Rosenkranz)

Beyond the assumption that humans are rational (with Barry Schwartz)

Will AI superintelligence kill us all? (with Nate Soares)

Do facts have an expiration date? (with Samuel Arbesman)

From prisoner to escaping inner prisons (with Shaka Senghor)

A new paradigm for psychology research (with Slime Mold Time Mold)

Beyond saving lives: happiness and doing good (with Michael Plant)

Darwinian Demons: Climate Change and the AI Arms Race (with Kristian Rönn)

Seeing through cognitive traps (with Alex Edmans)

The most important century (with Holden Karnofsky)

Should we try to live forever? (with Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston)

Trying to convince Spencer to be a utilitarian (with Tyler John)

A conversation with an autistic person (with Megan Neff)

AI: Autonomous or controllable? Pick one (with Anthony Aguirre)

How much does global population decline matter? (with Dean Spears)

Is AI going to ruin everything? (with Gabriel Alfour)

What listeners think Spencer's wrong about: steel-manning critiques

What do we know about psychology that matters? (with Paul Bloom)

Bringing your "A-game" to your relationships (with Annie Lalla)

The rival philosophies to Stoicism that you've never heard about (with Greg Lopez)

What can we all agree on? (with Bradley Tusk)

Shamanism, witchcraft, and the power of narrative (with Manvir Singh)

Which Spencer is real? Spencer vs. his AI clone

Too many mental health challenges and not enough psychiatrists (with Jacob Appel)

Misinformation from all sides (with Brian Dunning)

A conversation with a rigid perfectionist who has OCPD (with Darryl Rossignol)

Simple and effective methods for helping people that nonprofits often ignore (with Kanika Bahl)

How to unleash student potential in education (with Jack Despain Zhou)

How f***ed is psychology? (with Adam Mastroianni)

A conversation with a multiple-time survivor of sexual abuse

A story can change the world (with Elizabeth Cox)

The heavy price you'll have to pay to have a healthy relationship (with David Burns)

The skills every adult human should have (with Raffi Grinberg)

Rethinking our assumptions about happiness (with Stephanie Harrison)

Evidence-Based Medicine and its discontents (with Gordon Guyatt)

AI, US-China relations, and lessons from the OpenAI board (with Helen Toner)

Getting a handle on your goals and big life changes (with Tee Barnett)

Avoiding major investment mistakes (with Jim O'Shaughnessy)

Creating a new city from scratch (with Erick Brimen)

How can AIs know what we want if we don't even know? (with Geoffrey Irving)