Thinking Clearly

Emotions are often viewed as interfering with clear, objective, evidence-based reasoning; in fact, “appeal to emotion” is considered to be a logical fallacy. However, our guest, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang—professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Southern California and author of: "Emotions, Learning, and the Brain"—argues that this narrow perspective overlooks a substantial body of research, and, far from being disruptive, emotions are integral to cognition, learning, and decision-making. As she states in her book: “It is literally neurobiologically impossible to build memories, engage in complex thoughts, or make meaningful decisions without emotion.”

Coauthors of the widely acclaimed book, They Say/I Say-The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, explore how to craft persuasive arguments and communicate them effectively. Topics discussed include: the connection between thinking and writing; the nature of academic writing; the concept of “entering the conversation”; specific templates to improve the content of your writing, speaking, and thinking about issues that matter; the role of artificial intelligence in education; and a variety of other topics.

With a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology, a Master’s Degree in Philosophy, and experience as a teacher, our guest for this episode, Stephanie Simoes, developed Critikid, a website for kids, teens, teachers and others. Critikid offers instruction in: emotional intelligence (Learning to recognize, understand, and manage your emotions), safe and effective use of social media, principles of logic (including logical fallacies) and statistical and data literacy—by blending storytelling with interactive activities.

James Fishkin, Stanford University Professor (and Director of the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab) discusses his extensive research and development focused on the process of "Deliberative Polling" and clarifies its relationship to Deliberative Democracy—a form of democracy in which deliberation is central to decision-making. Professor Fishkin suggests that institutionalizing deliberative processes could lead to reducing political polarization, while also increasing citizens’ political involvement and knowledge of the issues, as discussed in his recent book: Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?  

Patrick Hurley, Philosophy Professor Emeritus at University of San Diego and author of the widely acclaimed textbook: A Concise Introduction to Logic, joins us to discuss: the role of logic in acquiring knowledge and forming beliefs; the most important aspects of logic for critical thinkers to master; what can be done to encourage better practices in our thinking, communication and belief formation; using logic to navigate issues which relate to values; and a variety of other topics.

Early in his career our guest, Bill Adair, worked as a journalist, author, and later founded the fact-checking organization Politifact. And in 2013 he accepted a position at Duke University as the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy, where he now teaches journalism in the Sanford School of Public Policy and directs the Duke Reporters’ Lab. We discuss the negative effects of lying in politics, different types of lies, why people fall for lies, how fact-checking works, the response of journalists to political lying, and his recent book: Beyond the Big Lie-The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy.  

Untrue information is called misinformation, and intentionally spread misinformation is known as disinformation. When one uses disinformation to further one’s own agenda, especially in the political realm, then the information has been weaponized. And the continued acceleration of weaponized information further erodes our trust in experts, media, and other institutional sources of accurate information, and severely damages the social trust required for a healthy democracy. The “code red” conditions now prevalent in America motivate us to revisit an episode of Thinking Clearly (from May of 2022), which explores the "Nature of Trust", and to include new, updated comments from the present.

This episode looks back to the previous episode: # 22- Worldview-The Elephant in the Room of Critical Thinking, and updates it from the perspective of 2025.

This episode takes a deep dive into the concept of “worldview”, based on the research and work done by Annick de Witt: researcher, writer, teacher, and founder of the organization Worldview Journeys. Topics discussed include: conceptualizing the idea of worldview; how our worldview might affect our beliefs and behaviors; examples of types of worldviews; methods of uncovering our own worldview and the worldviews of others we communicate with; how an awareness of worldviews can help us examine our own beliefs while also improving our dialogues with others.

Even though they affect all of our lives, most of us know almost nothing about how policies are made, especially policy made by our state and federal governments. So, Julia and Bob learned a lot from this conversation with guest: Robert MacCoun, Law Professor at Stanford University. With a Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD degree in Psychology, professor MacCoun has long worked at the nexus between law and psychology and specialized in bringing evidence-based policy making into policy decisions, including controversial areas such as military policy debates about allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the US military and drug policy. His book, "Drug War Heresies" is considered a landmark scholarly analysis of the drug legalization debate.

This discussion with philosopher, former tenured professor at Iowa State University, and now independent critical thinking educator and consultant, Kevin deLaplante, revisits the importance and benefits of critical thinking in today’s post-truth world, reviews the basic skills involved with critical thinking and understanding of human cognitive vulnerabilities, while also introducing more recent ideas about human cognition like the Predictive Processing Model and Extended Mind Theory. The resources for learning and practicing critical thinking, found at Kevin’s Argument Ninja Dojo membership program, are also discussed.

Researcher, author and former Research Manager of the Stanford Internet Observatory, Renée DiResta, discusses how numerous internet-savvy individuals (influencers) are causing a profound shift in power and influence over our politics, beliefs and behavior, as outlined in her recent book: Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality. She also discusses: what can be done to mitigate the negative effects of this influence while harnessing the power of the internet to bring us together to thrive as we reestablish the trust and cooperation needed to meet our future global challenges.

Professor Jacqueline Gottlieb, Principal Investigator at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute and former head of the Research Cluster on Curiosity at Columbia University’s Center for Science and Society, brings her research experience and deep thinking about the human brain's higher cognitive functions—including decision making, memory, and attention—to discuss that wonderful and invaluable human capability that we call curiosity.  

Second time Thinking Clearly guest, Tania Israel, Professor of Counseling Psychology at UC Santa Barbara, guides us through how to overcome the toxic effects of consuming politicized news and social media in this current, highly polarized American environment and discusses how to more effectively communicate with people holding opposing views to ours. Professor Israel is the author of the recently published book: Facing the Fracture: How to Navigate the Challenges of Living in a Divided Nation.

Calling on his experience in evidence-based policy making, teaching a course at UC Berkeley called Sense and Sensibility and Science, and coauthoring the book Third Millennium Thinking-Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense, social scientist and law Professor at Stanford University, Robert MacCoun, discusses: how to avoid failure modes when making decisions; using practices, and tools of science to make better decisions in our every-day-lives; the value of probabilistic thinking; how to weave facts and values together; and how to reboot trust and develop a new collaborative approach to our shared problems and opportunities.

Research and current theories about the nature of human consciousness are explored with guest Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. Topics include: how human consciousness can be thought of as controlled hallucination, the relationship of human consciousness to critical thinking, how thinking of the brain as a "prediction machine" affects how we form beliefs, and a number of other topics from Professor Seth’s international best selling book: Being You-a New Science of Consciousness.  Dr. Seth has co-authored close to 200 journal publications, and is a regular contributor to the New Scientist, The Guardian, and BBC.

Thinking Clearly hosts Bob and Julia review their definition of critical thinking, discuss how doing a show about critical thinking has changed them, and do several demonstrations of best practices (using the LAP-EFI method) for having productive, civil dialogues with people who have different views than yours.

Dr. Seema Yasmin, professor at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, discusses: information disorder and its treatment, common techniques used for pushing lies, the use of narrative in communicating, the history and current state of journalism in America, how to best consume the news and mitigate the negative effects of social media, and a wide variety of other topics. Dr. Yasmin has investigated disease outbreaks for the CDC, worked as a CNN medical analyst and authored many books including: What the Fact? - Finding Truth in all the Noise.

In this fourth in a series of Thinking Clearly episodes—offered in the hope of fostering critical thinking and civil dialogue as we approach our 2024 Presidential Election in America—we are replaying core episodes with those themes. In this edition, you’ll hear a previous episode that we recorded with Colonel (retired) Steve Gerras, who teaches critical thinking at the Army War College, sharing his advocacy and passion for critical thinking, and his experiences of teaching it to future military leaders. Professor Gerras has a PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Pennsylvania State University and has authored and coauthored many publications including the widely circulated: “Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession.”

The development of artificial intelligence naturally leads us to deeply explore what intelligence, reasoning and knowledge are; the processes required to achieve them; and the implications that has for human thought, belief and decision making—all topics that have been deeply thought about by our guest, Leslie Valiant, Harvard University Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. Professor Valiant is the winner of the 2010 A.M. Turing Award and author of three books, including his recent book: The Importance of Being Educable-a New Theory of Human Uniqueness.