Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

Spencer Greenberg
  • 4.7 (139)
  • SOCIAL SCIENCES
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

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, economics, self-help, mental health, and technology. We focus on ideas that can be applied right now to make your life better or to help you better understand yourself and the world, aiming to teach you the best mental tools to enhance your learning, self-improvement efforts, and decision-making. • We take on important, thorny questions like: • What's the best way to help a friend or loved one going through a difficult time? How can we make our worldviews more accurate? How can we hone the accuracy of our thinking? What are the advantages of using our "gut" to make decisions? And when should we expect careful, analytical reflection to be more effective? Why do societies sometimes collapse? And what can we do to reduce the chance that ours collapses? Why is the world today so much worse than it could be? And what can we do to make it better? What are the good and bad parts of tradition? And are there more meaningful and ethical ways of carrying out important rituals, such as honoring the dead? How can we move beyond zero-sum, adversarial negotiations and create more positive-sum interactions?

  1. 14H AGO

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

    Read the full transcript here. Could AI trigger an economic break as large as the Industrial Revolution, or even larger? What changes when labor stops being the main bottleneck in production? If intelligence becomes reproducible like software, what happens to the structure of an economy? How should we think about a world where capital captures what labor once did? Does faster growth necessarily mean better lives, or only more output? How should economists model an economy when software begins to substitute for minds? Are current production functions adequate for a world of autonomous systems and robotics? Why do small shifts in annual productivity matter so much once compounding takes over? How much of AI’s impact depends on cognitive automation alone versus full physical automation? When does automation reduce labor demand, and when does it make human work more valuable? If AI does part of a job better, does that destroy the profession or increase demand for it? Under what conditions do humans remain complements rather than substitutes? Could an AI boom create a recession before it creates abundance? What happens to aggregate demand if white collar workers lose income before productivity gains diffuse widely? If the economy can produce more than ordinary people can afford, who is it really producing for? How quickly can consumption patterns shift in a world of extreme concentration of wealth? Anton is a Professor at the University of Virginia, Department of Economics and Darden School of Business as well as the Faculty Director of the Economics of Transformative AI (EconTAI) Initiative. He was named to the 2025 TIME100 AI list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings and the Peterson Institute, a Research Associate at the NBER, a Research Fellow at the CEPR, and serves on Anthropic's Economic Advisory Council. His research analyzes how to prepare for a world of transformative AI systems. He investigates the implications of advanced AI for economic growth, labor markets, inequality, and the future of our society. Links: Anton's Website When Does Automating AI Research Produce Explosive Growth? Economic Growth under Transformative AI Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]

    1h 20m

  2. 6D AGO

    The seductiveness of secular gurus (with Christopher Kavanagh)

    Read the full transcript here. What makes broad, all-encompassing worldviews so attractive in periods of institutional distrust? Why do charismatic figures become especially persuasive when they present themselves as suppressed truth tellers? How much of a guru’s appeal comes from insight, and how much from theater? Why do people so often prefer a guide with certainty over an institution with caveats? What happens when specialist expertise is mistaken for authority about everything? Are we living in the best age for learning or the easiest age for self-deception? What is the difference between being informed and merely feeling informed? Why does the performance of education so often outcompete the practice of education? How much false confidence is created by consuming hours of polished commentary without doing any of the underlying work? Why are people so vulnerable to sources that make complexity feel effortless? How should we think about the gap between exposure to ideas and mastery of them? Christopher Kavanagh is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Rikkyo University and a Researcher at the Centre for Studies of Social Cohesion at Oxford University. His research focuses mainly on the psychological and social effects of religious belief and collective rituals and he has a long standing interest in skepticism, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theory communities. He co-hosts Decoding The Gurus, a podcast dedicated to examining the techniques of modern online Gurus. Links: Christopher's podcast: Decoding The Gurus Christopher's Faculty Page at Rikkyo University Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]

    2h 1m

  3. MAR 27

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

    Read the full transcript here. If you enjoy our podcast, we have some exciting news – we’ve just launched a new membership called Clearer Thinking Plus. Members get this podcast completely ad-free, as well as two professional coaching sessions every month, access to our advanced cognitive assessment, and seven other exclusive perks. Clearer Thinking Plus is one of the most affordable ways to get access to a high-quality coach - whether you want to improve your habits, find more effective ways to work towards your goals, or get assistance making difficult decisions. It is also a more affordable and convenient way to get all the perks we offer. If you're not interested in coaching, you can still get ad-free access to this podcast and the other perks with our explorer plan. Access www.clearerthinking.org/plus to become a member today. We hope to see you there! Can radically different forms of good really be compared? What makes two charitable outcomes commensurable? When does cost effectiveness become a moral argument rather than just an economic one? Is helping the global poor often cheaper for reasons that are ethically relevant? How should we weigh temporary enrichment against preventing severe suffering? At what point does refusing comparison become morally evasive? Are some value systems too implausible to treat as equally serious? How much should location matter when the same intervention works in multiple places? Does the ability to compare causes require a single theory of value? What do we lose by pretending all forms of good are incomparable? Marcus A. Davis is the co-founder and CEO of Rethink Priorities, a think-and-do tank that uses rigorous empirical research to help philanthropists, policymakers, and cause-focused organizations direct resources where they'll do the most good. Marcus writes about effective charity, EA culture, and arguments around doing good at his Substack, Charity for All, and you can also follow him on Bluesky: amarcusdavis.bsky.social. Links: Rethink Priorities Website Marcus' Substack: Charity for All Marcus' Bluesky Profile Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]

    1h 17m

  4. MAR 19

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

    Read the full transcript here. If you enjoy our podcast, we have some exciting news – we’ve just launched a new membership called Clearer Thinking Plus. Members get this podcast completely ad-free, as well as two professional coaching sessions every month, access to our advanced cognitive assessment, and seven other exclusive perks. Clearer Thinking Plus is one of the most affordable ways to get access to a high-quality coach - whether you want to improve your habits, find more effective ways to work towards your goals, or get assistance making difficult decisions. It is also a more affordable and convenient way to get all the perks we offer. If you're not interested in coaching, you can still get ad-free access to this podcast and the other perks with our explorer plan. Access www.clearerthinking.org/plus to become a member today. We hope to see you there! How much of psychology is built on a statistical illusion? What happens when we mistake population averages for truths about individual lives? Can a person ever really be understood through traits measured at a few isolated moments? Why do simplified categories feel so authoritative even when they fail to capture lived experience? What does it mean for a science of mind to ignore time, context, and development? How much of what we call personality is just a byproduct of how we choose to measure people? If most of what matters is situational, what kind of science would we need instead? Why are average-based explanations so intuitively appealing even when they may mislead us? What gets lost when human beings are treated as snapshots rather than processes? Could clearer thinking begin by questioning the categories we rely on most? Dr. Steven C. Hayes is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno and President of the Institute for Better Health, a 45-year old charitable organization dedicated to better mental and behavioral health. Links: Steven's website Hayes et al.: Evolving an idionomic approach to processes of change: Towards a unified personalized science of human improvement Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]

    1h 21m

  5. MAR 5

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

    Read the full transcript here. If you enjoy our podcast, we have some exciting news – we’ve just launched a new membership called Clearer Thinking Plus. Members get this podcast completely ad-free, as well as two professional coaching sessions every month, access to our advanced cognitive assessment, and seven other exclusive perks. Clearer Thinking Plus is one of the most affordable ways to get access to a high-quality coach - whether you want to improve your habits, find more effective ways to work towards your goals, or get assistance making difficult decisions. It is also a more affordable and convenient way to get all the perks we offer. If you're not interested in coaching, you can still get ad-free access to this podcast and the other perks with our explorer plan. Access www.clearerthinking.org/plus to become a member today. We hope to see you there! What makes a piece of research “public property,” and what ethical obligations does that create for critics and authors alike? When a result feels wrong but you can’t locate the “smoking gun,” how should skepticism be calibrated without sliding into cynicism? How can a field avoid mistaking the absence of obvious errors for evidence that a claim is sound? What incentives cause entire literatures to form around fragile findings, and why do they persist for so long? Why do some researchers experience replication attempts as hostility, while others experience them as a gift? What norms would make constructive public criticism more common and less personally costly? How should we weigh a paper’s contribution when its analysis is flawed but its question is valuable? When is it rational to trust “the literature,” and when is the literature itself likely to be trapped in self-reinforcing error? What would it take for scientific communities to treat uncertainty as an honest output rather than a professional liability? Can a culture of open critique exist without amplifying bad-faith attacks or anti-science narratives? Andrew Gelman, Ph.D., is Higgins Professor of Statistics, Professor of Political Science, and director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University. Links: Andrew's Substack Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]

    1h 20m

  6. FEB 27

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

    Read the full transcript here. If you enjoy our podcast, we have some exciting news – we’ve just launched a new membership called Clearer Thinking Plus. Members get this podcast completely ad-free, as well as two professional coaching sessions every month, access to our advanced cognitive assessment, and seven other exclusive perks. Clearer Thinking Plus is one of the most affordable ways to get access to a high-quality coach - whether you want to improve your habits, find more effective ways to work towards your goals, or get assistance making difficult decisions. It is also a more affordable and convenient way to get all the perks we offer. If you're not interested in coaching, you can still get ad-free access to this podcast and the other perks with our explorer plan. Access www.clearerthinking.org/plus to become a member today. We hope to see you there! What changes when anyone can clone your voice from a minute of audio? If voice ID can be spoofed, what replaces it for everyday security? Why are phone scams evolving faster than our intuition for trust? What new “attack surfaces” appear when every service talks to you digitally? How much paranoia is rational before security becomes a tax on living? Could AI that talks to scammers become a tool for studying persuasion tactics at scale? What’s the most reliable habit for verifying calls, texts, and links? Are we entering a world where identity is probabilistic rather than certain? What do “AI employees” reveal about where agents shine and fail? Why do autonomous agents need triggers and stop conditions to behave? If an agent’s “memory” is a growing log, what kinds of false selves can it accidentally create? How do edge cases derail agents in ways humans handle effortlessly? Why is “be helpful” a dangerous default for external-facing bots? If someone can fake familiarity, how easily can they rewrite an agent’s memory? When you can’t see the system prompt, what are you really evaluating? Should we say please to machines, and what habits does that build in us? If we can’t tell performance from experience, how should we treat AI under uncertainty? Evan Ratliff is a longtime journalist, writer and host of Shell Game, the podcast and newsletter about things that are not what they seem. Links: Evan's Podcast: Shell Game Evan's X Profile Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]

    1h 22m

  7. FEB 21

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

    Read the full transcript here. If you enjoy our podcast, we have some exciting news – we’ve just launched a new membership called Clearer Thinking Plus. Members get this podcast completely ad-free, as well as two professional coaching sessions every month, access to our advanced cognitive assessment, and seven other exclusive perks. Clearer Thinking Plus is one of the most affordable ways to get access to a high-quality coach - whether you want to improve your habits, find more effective ways to work towards your goals, or get assistance making difficult decisions. It is also a more affordable and convenient way to get all the perks we offer. If you're not interested in coaching, you can still get ad-free access to this podcast and the other perks with our explorer plan. Access www.clearerthinking.org/plus to become a member today. We hope to see you there! Is Long COVID one illness or many? What turns a short infection into years of symptoms? When does “post viral” become a new chronic disease? Is viral persistence driving symptoms in some people? Could EBV reactivation be the hidden trigger? How might immune overreaction turn into autoimmunity? What do autoantibodies actually do to the body? Why do fatigue and exertion intolerance cluster together? Can we define subtypes with biomarkers, not guesswork? How much of long COVID is misdiagnosis versus missed mechanisms? What does pacing really mean in daily life? What would a mechanism first trial design look like? Are there early warning signs for who will stay sick? Is long COVID becoming a stable percentage of society? What would it take to build care systems that learn fast? Carmen Scheibenbogen is a German immunologist who is the acting director of the Institute for Medical Immunology of the Charité university hospital in Berlin. She specialises in hematology (blood and blood diseases), oncology and immunology. She leads the Outpatient Clinic for Immunodeficiency and the Fatigue Centre at the Charité hospital. She is one of the few doctors specialised in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) in Germany, and also researches long COVID. To explore a different perspective on these issues, we have an excellent episode with Suzanne O'Sullivan, "What is psychosomatic illness?" Links: Resources on ME/CFS and Long COVID Guidelines for Long COVID Patients (Ger) Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]

    1h 25m

  8. FEB 11

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

    Read the full transcript here. The Clearer Thinking Podcast listener survey is here! If you've ever listened to the Clearer Thinking podcast before, we'd love it if you'd take our listener survey so we can learn about your experience and improve the podcast based on your feedback. Give feedback to help us improve the Clearer Thinking podcast! What makes a conversation feel like shared discovery? HWhen does repeating polished ideas kill discovery? What practices force live thinking, not rehearsed speech? How do you check that both people are scouting? How do you align vibe and tempo without dulling the experience? How do you compress a garden of thoughts into words? What kinds of responses prove they really listened? When is a point of order interruption essential? Why do groups oscillate instead of moving forward? How do you pick one promising path among many? What role should a moderator actually play? Why does the lowest relevance threshold dominate airtime? How do pause and interruption norms decide who speaks? Can groups make progress without turning into debates? What explicit rules make book clubs worth attending? When should you opt out rather than endure? We're thrilled to have friend of the podcast and frequent factotum, Uri Bram, join Spencer for this very special celebration of our 300th episode of The Clearer Thinking Podcast. Uri is CEO and Editor-at-Large at The Browser. He has written about science and business for Nautilus, Motherboard, Quartz and more and is regularly featured on i24 News as an economics analyst. Prior to that, Uri led Communications at GiveWell, a research and grantmaking organization focusing on global health. Links: The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef Clearer Thinking Nuanced Thinking Module Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift [Read more]

    1h 23m
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4.7
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139 Ratings

About

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, economics, self-help, mental health, and technology. We focus on ideas that can be applied right now to make your life better or to help you better understand yourself and the world, aiming to teach you the best mental tools to enhance your learning, self-improvement efforts, and decision-making. • We take on important, thorny questions like: • What's the best way to help a friend or loved one going through a difficult time? How can we make our worldviews more accurate? How can we hone the accuracy of our thinking? What are the advantages of using our "gut" to make decisions? And when should we expect careful, analytical reflection to be more effective? Why do societies sometimes collapse? And what can we do to reduce the chance that ours collapses? Why is the world today so much worse than it could be? And what can we do to make it better? What are the good and bad parts of tradition? And are there more meaningful and ethical ways of carrying out important rituals, such as honoring the dead? How can we move beyond zero-sum, adversarial negotiations and create more positive-sum interactions?

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