No Stupid Questions

Why does your horoscope seem so accurate? Is it possible to believe and not believe in something at the same time? And is Mike a classic Gemini?

• SOURCES:
  • P. T. Barnum, 19th-century American showman and businessman.
  • David Brooks, New York Times Opinion columnist.
  • Bertram Forer, 20th-century American psychologist.
  • Daniel Kahneman, professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University.
  • Irving Kirsch, associate director of the Program in Placebo Studies and lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School.
  • Sten Odenwald, Director of STEM Resource Development at NASA.
  • Sydney Page, staff reporter for The Washington Post.
  • Jane L. Risen, professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

• RESOURCES:
  • "Young People Are Flocking to Astrology. But It Comes With Risks," by Sydney Page (The Washington Post, 2023).
  • "The Age of Aquarius, All Over Again!" by David Brooks (The New York Times, 2019).
  • "Response Expectancy and the Placebo Effect," by Irving Kirsch (International Review of Neurobiology, 2018).
  • "Believing What We Do Not Believe: Acquiescence to Superstitious Beliefs and Other Powerful Intuitions," by Jane L. Risen (Psychological Review, 2016).
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (2011).
  • "Effects of Stress and Tolerance of Ambiguity on Magical Thinking," by Giora Keinan (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1994).
  • Changing Expectations: A Key to Effective Psychotherapy, by Irving Kirsch (1990).
  • "The Fallacy of Personal Validation: A Classroom Demonstration of Gullibility," by Bertram Forer (The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1949).
  • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

• EXTRAS:
  • "What Do Broken-Hearted Knitters, Urinating Goalkeepers, and the C.I.A. Have in Common?" by Freakonomics Radio (2022).
  • "Sam Harris: 'Spirituality Is a Loaded Term,'" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).

Are gifted and talented programs discriminatory? Why do so many adults still remember their SAT scores? And how did Angela transform from a party girl to an Ivy League psychologist?

• SOURCES:
  • Alfred Binet, 19th-century French psychologist.
  • Stefan Dombrowski, professor of psychology and director of the School Psychology Program at Rider University.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 18th- to 19th-century German author.
  • Travis Kelce, tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs in the N.F.L.
  • Robert O'Connell, writer and reporter.
  • Robert Rosenthal, professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside.
  • Amy Tan, author.

• RESOURCES:
  • "What’s the Best Way to Find a Gifted 4-Year-Old?" by Ginia Bellafante (The New York Times, 2022).
  • "Without the Wonderlic, the N.F.L. Finds Other Ways to Test Football I.Q.," by Robert O’Connell (The New York Times, 2022).
  • "The Dark History of I.Q. Tests," by Stefan Dombrowski (TED-Ed, 2020).
  • Grinnell College 2019 Commencement Address, by Amy Tan (2019).
  • "Universal Screening Increases the Representation of Low-Income and Minority Students in Gifted Education," by David Card and Laura Giuliano (PNAS, 2016).
  • "The Supreme Court Ruling That Led To 70,000 Forced Sterilizations," by Terry Gross (Fresh Air, 2016).
  • "Intelligence Is Not Enough: Non-IQ Predictors of Achievement," by Angela Lee Duckworth (Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 2006).
  • "Pygmalion in the Classroom," by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (The Urban Review, 1968).

• EXTRAS:
  • "Are Humans Smarter or Stupider Than We Used to Be?" by No Stupid Questions (2021).
  • "America’s Math Curriculum Doesn’t Add Up," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
  • The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan (1995).
  • The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan (1989).

What happens when three psychologists walk into a magic show? What’s Angela’s problem with the word “talent”? And why does LeBron James refer to himself in the third person?

SOURCES:

• John Bargh, professor of psychology at Yale University.
• Derren Brown, mentalist.
• Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University.
• Daniel Kahneman, professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University.
• Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.
• Barbara Mellers, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
• Daniel Southwick, visiting professor of psychology at Brigham Young University and former N.F.L. quarterback.
• Lior Suchard, mentalist.

RESOURCES:

• "4 Ways to Get Into the Magic Castle," by Stephanie Breijo (TimeOut, 2023).
• "The Trouble With Talent: Semantic Ambiguity in the Workplace," by Daniel A. Southwick, Zhaoying V. Liu, Chayce Baldwin, Abigail L. Quirk, Lyle H. Ungar, Chia-Jung Tsay, and Angela L. Duckworth (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2023).
• "A Decade of Power Posing: Where Do We Stand?" by Tom Loncar (The Psychologist, 2021).
• "Influencing Choices With Conversational Primes: How a Magic Trick Unconsciously Influences Card Choices," by Alice Pailhès and Gustav Kuhn (PNAS, 2020).
• "If You Want Your Marketing Campaign To Succeed, Choose Your Words Carefully," by Allan Hug (Forbes, 2019).
• "What's Next for Psychology's Embattled Field of Social Priming," by Tom Chivers (Nature, 2019).
• "Silent Third Person Self-Talk Facilitates Emotion Regulation," by Christopher Bergland (Psychology Today, 2017).
• "Disputed Results a Fresh Blow for Social Psychology," by Alison Abbott (Scientific American, 2013).
• "A Proposal to Deal With Questions About Priming Effects," email by Daniel Kahneman (2012).
• "Behavioral Priming: It's All in the Mind, but Whose Mind?" by Stéphane Doyen, Olivier Klein, Cora-Lise Pichon, and Axel Cleeremans (PLoS One, 2012).
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (2011).

How do friendships change as we get older? Should you join a bowling league? And also: how does a cook become a chef?

RESOURCES:

• “Social Support From Weak Ties: Insight From the Literature on Minimal Social Interactions,” by Joshua Moreton, Caitlin S. Kelly, and Gillian Sandstrom (Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2023).
• Join or Die, documentary (2023).
• “I Tried Bumble BFF for 30 Days — Here’s What Happened,” by Beth Gillette (The Everygirl, 2022).
• Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make — and Keep — Friends, by Marisa Franco (2022).
• “Grocery Store Opens ‘Chat Registers’ for Lonely Customers,” by Gabriel Geiger (Vice, 2021).
• “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss,” by Daniel A. Cox (Survey Center on American Life, 2021).
• “Number of Close Friends Had by Adults in the United States in 1990 and 2021,” by Michele Majidi (Survey Center on American Life, 2021).
• “You’re Not Uncool. Making Friends as an Adult Is Just Hard,” by Peter O’Dowd and Kalyani Saxena (WBUR, 2021).
• "My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore?" by Gabrielle Hamilton (The New York Times Magazine, 2020).
• “Why You Miss Those Casual Friends So Much,” by Gillian Sandstrom and Ashley Whillans (Harvard Business Review, 2020).
• “The Bros Who Met Their BFFs on Bumble,” by Rebecca Nelson (GQ, 2016).
• “Sex Differences in Social Focus Across the Life Cycle in Humans,” by Kunal Bhattacharya, Asim Ghosh, Daniel Monsivais, Robin I. M. Dunbar, and Kimmo Kaski (Royal Society Open Science, 2016).
• Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, by Gabrielle Hamilton (2011).
• “Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review,” by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy B. Smith, and J. Bradley Layton (PLoS Medicine, 2010).
• Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert Putnam (2000).
• The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, by Ray Oldenburg (1999).
• Character Lab.

EXTRAS:

• “How Much Are the Right Friends Worth?” by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
• “Is It Weird for Adults to Have Imaginary Friends?” by No Stupid Questions (2022).
• “How Much Do Your Friends Affect Your Future?” by No Stupid Questions (2020).
• “Is There Really a ‘Loneliness Epidemic’?” by Freakonomics Radio (2020).
• Tell Me Something I Don’t Know (2017).

SOURCES:

• Daniel Boulud, chef and restaurateur.
• Pete Davis, co-founder of the Democracy Policy Network.
• Wylie Dufresne, chef and restaurateur.
• Marisa Franco, assistant clinical professor at The University of Maryland.
• Beth Gillette, beauty editor at Cosmopolitan.
• Gabrielle Hamilton, chef, restauranteur, and writer.
• Daniel Humm, chef and restaurateur.
• Ray Oldenburg, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of West Florida.
• Robert Putnam, author and professor of public policy at Harvard University.
• René Redzepi, chef and restaurateur.
• Gillian Sandstrom, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Sussex.
• Dieter Uchtdorf, Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and former Senior Vice President Flight Operations at Lufthansa Airlines.
• Lyle Ungar, professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Can long-term relationships do more harm than good? Where is the line between intimacy and codependence? And should we all try to be more like Mike’s parents?

RESOURCES:

• "A Record-High Share of 40-Year-Olds in the U.S. Have Never Been Married," by Richard Fry (Pew Research Center, 2023).
• "Divorce Skyrocketing Among Aging Boomers," by Sharon Jayson (AARP, 2023).
• "Don’t Let Love Take Over Your Life," by Faith Hill (The Atlantic, 2023).
• "Marriage Provides Health Benefits – and Here’s Why," by Libby Richards, Melissa Franks, and Rosie Shrout (The Conversation, 2023).
• "The Benefits of Diversifying Your Social Portfolio," by Samantha Boardman (Psychology Today, 2023).
• "Satisfying Singlehood as a Function of Age and Cohort: Satisfaction With Being Single Increases With Age After Midlife," by Yoobin Park, Elizabeth Page-Gould, and Geoff MacDonald (Psychology and Aging, 2022).
• "Pathology in Relationships," by Susan C. South (Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 2021).
• "Behind 'the Collateral Heartbreak' and Intense Devotion of the Reagans' Decades-Long Romance," by Virginia Chamlee (People, 2021).
• "U.S. Marriage Rate Plunges to Lowest Level on Record," by Janet Adamy (The Wall Street Journal, 2020).
• "The Suffocation Model: Why Marriage in America Is Becoming an All-or-Nothing Institution," by Eli J. Finkel, Elaine O. Cheung, Lydia F. Emery, Kathleen L. Carswell, and Grace M. Larson (Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2015).

EXTRAS:

• "Are We Getting Lonelier?" by No Stupid Questions (2023).
• "The Facts Are In: Two Parents Are Better Than One," by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
• “Why Did You Marry That Person? (Replay),” by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
• “The Fracking Boom, a Baby Boom, and the Retreat From Marriage,” by Freakonomics Radio (2017).

SOURCES:

• Eli Finkel, professor of psychology and of management and organizations at Northwestern University.
• Katie Genadek, economist at the U.S. Census Bureau and faculty research associate at the Institute for Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
• Faith Hill, senior associate editor of culture at The Atlantic.
• Abraham Maslow, 20th-century psychologist.
• Katherine K. Merseth, senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Why do we use “literally” figuratively? Does conveying an "emotional truth" justify making things up? And are Angela’s kids really starving or just hungry?

RESOURCES:

• "My Response to The New Yorker Article," by Hasan Minhaj (YouTube video, 2023).
• "Hasan Minhaj’s 'Emotional Truths,'" by Clare Malone (The New Yorker, 2023).
• "Lying to Spice up Life," by Holly Cole (Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 2019).
• Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally), by John McWhorter (2016).
• "Literally," entry by Deathmatch1127 (Urban Dictionary, 2015).
• "Does Living in California Make People Happy? A Focusing Illusion in Judgments of Life Satisfaction," by David A. Schkade and Daniel Kahneman (Psychological Science, 1998).
• The Giver, by Lois Lowry (1993).

EXTRAS:

• "Swearing Is More Important Than You Think," by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
• "The Ugly Truth of Fast Fashion," S5.E3 of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj (2019).

How can you be lonely when so many people showed up at your birthday party? Can you fight loneliness by managing expectations? And where can you find company while enjoying the best garlic cheeseburger in the greater Salt Lake City metro area?

RESOURCES:

• "Surgeon General: We Have Become a Lonely Nation. It’s Time to Fix That," by Vivek H. Murthy (The New York Times, 2023).
• "Home Alone: More Than A Quarter of All Households Have One Person," by Lydia Anderson, Chanell Washington, Rose M. Kreider, and Thomas Gryn (United States Census Bureau, 2023).
• "Loneliness Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis," by Mareike Ernst, Daniel Niederer, Antonia M. Werner, Sara J. Czaja, Christopher Mikton, Anthony D. Ong, Tony Rosen, Elmar Brähler, and Manfred E. Beutel (American Psychologist, 2022).
• "Loneliness Across Time and Space," by Maike Luhmann, Susanne Buecker, and Marilena Rüsberg (Nature Reviews Psychology, 2022).
• Will, by Will Smith with Mark Manson (2021).
• "Loneliness and Social Isolation in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan: An International Survey," by Bianca DiJulio, Liz Hamel, Cailey Muñana, and Mollyann Brodie (KFF, 2018).
• "Work and the Loneliness Epidemic," by Vivek Murthy (Harvard Business Review, 2017).
• "The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone," by Maria Popova (The Marginalian, 2016).

EXTRAS:

• "Is It Harder to Make Friends as an Adult?" by No Stupid Questions (2023).
• "The Side Effects of Social Distancing," by Freakonomics Radio (2020).
• "Is There Really a 'Loneliness Epidemic'?" by Freakonomics Radio (2020).

Do you suffer from the sin of certainty? How did Angela react when a grad student challenged her research? And can a Heineken commercial strengthen our democracy?

RESOURCES:

• "Disagree Better," National Governors Association initiative led by Spencer Cox (2023-2024).
• "Cooling Heated Discourse: Conversational Receptiveness Boosts Interpersonal Evaluations and Willingness to Talk," by Julia Minson, David Hagmann, and Kara Luo (Preprint, 2023).
• "Megastudy Identifying Effective Interventions to Strengthen Americans’ Democratic Attitudes," by Jan G. Voelkel, Robb Willer, et al. (Working Paper, 2023).
• Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together, by Ian Leslie (2021).
• "How to Disagree Productively and Find Common Ground," by Julia Dhar (TED, 2018).
• "From the Fundamental Attribution Error to the Truly Fundamental Attribution Error and Beyond: My Research Journey," by Lee Ross (Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2018).
• "The Humanizing Voice: Speech Reveals, and Text Conceals, a More Thoughtful Mind in the Midst of Disagreement," by Juliana Schroeder, Michael Kardas, and Nicholas Epley (Psychological Science, 2017).
• "Worlds Apart," ad by Heineken (2017).
• "Gritty Educations," by Anindya Kundu (Virginia Policy Review, 2014).
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (2011).
• "Experiences of Collaborative Research," by Daniel Kahneman (American Psychologist, 2003).

EXTRAS:

• TikTok with advice from Apple Store employee (2023).
• "Can You Change Your Mind Without Losing Face?" by No Stupid Questions (2022).
• 12 Angry Men, film (1957).

Should you become an artist or an accountant? Did Sylvia Plath have to be depressed to write The Bell Jar? And what can Napoleon Dynamite teach us about the creative life?

RESOURCES:

• "The Science of Why You Have Great Ideas in the Shower," by Stacey Colino (National Geographic, 2022).
• "So, You Think You’re Not Creative?" by Duncan Wardle (Harvard Business Review, 2021).
• "The Correlation Between Arts and Crafts and a Nobel Prize," by Rosie Cima (Priceonomics, 2015).
• "Report: State of the American Workplace," by Gallup (2014).
• "Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function," by Anandi Mani, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, and Jiaying Zhao (Science, 2013).
• "Forks in the Road: The Many Paths of Arts Alumni," by the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (2011).
• "A Meta-Analysis of 25 Years of Mood-Creativity Research: Hedonic Tone, Activation, or Regulatory Focus?" by Matthijs Baas, Carsten K. W. De Dreu, and Bernard A. Nijstad (Psychological Bulletin, 2008).
• "The Relationship Between Creativity and Mood Disorders," by Nancy C. Andreasen (Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 2008).
• "The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions," by Barbara Fredrickson (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2004).
• "Happiness and Creativity: Going With the Flow," by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (The Futurist, 1997).

EXTRAS:

• "Why Are Rich Countries So Unhappy?" by No Stupid Questions (2022).
• "Do You Really Need a Muse to Be Creative?" by No Stupid Questions (2021).
• "Does All Creativity Come From Pain?" by No Stupid Questions (2020).
• "How To Be Creative," series by Freakonomics Radio (2018-2019).
• "How to Be Happy," by Freakonomics Radio (2018).
• Napoleon Dynamite, film by Jared Hess (2004).
• The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath (1963).
• Connections, game by The New York Times.

Is it better to be an egocentric navigator or an allocentric navigator? Was the New York City Department of Education wrong to ban ChatGPT? And did Mike get ripped off by Michael Jackson’s cousin?

RESOURCES

• "Don’t Ban Chatbots in Classrooms — Use Them to Change How We Teach," by Angela Duckworth and Lyle Ungar (Los Angeles Times, 2023).
• "How GPS Weakens Memory — and What We Can Do about It," by Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Gregory Dane Clemenson, and Amos Miller (Scientific American, 2021).
• "Habitual Use of GPS Negatively Impacts Spatial Memory During Self-Guided Navigation," by Louisa Dahmani and Véronique Bohbot (Nature Scientific Reports, 2020).
• "Navigational Strategy May Be More a Matter of Environment and Experience Than Gender," by Sharon A. Livingstone-Lee, Philip M. Zeman, Susan T. Gillingham, and Ronald W. Skelton (Learning and Motivation, 2014).
• "Acquiring 'the Knowledge' of London's Layout Drives Structural Brain Changes," by Katherine Woollett and Eleanor Maguire (Current Biology, 2011).
• "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr (The Atlantic, 2008).

EXTRAS

• "Dunder Mifflin Infinity," S4.E2 of The Office (2007).