Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

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]

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]

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]

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!
If you vanished from your job tomorrow, what would change? When is a high paying job more impact than direct service? How do you estimate your counterfactual contribution without fooling yourself? What signals tell you a problem is neglected rather than merely unpopular? Are you optimizing for visible outcomes instead of real outcomes? Which incentives in charities and NGOs quietly distort priorities? Could a simple weighted factor model outperform your gut on big choices? What would make you switch paths even if you feel committed? How do you balance personal fit with moral urgency?
Devon Fritz is co-founder of High Impact Professionals and has spent eight years across various roles coaching professionals on maximizing their career impact and advising on strategic philanthropic giving. He most recently served as Chief Operating Officer at Ambitious Impact, leading programs that help philanthropists improve the impact of their grantmaking. Previously, as Managing Director and CTO at Founders Pledge, Devon helped grow the organization's pledge value to over $2 billion. He is a Giving What We Can 10% pledge member and holds degrees in computer science, information technology, and computational linguistics. He serves on multiple nonprofit boards and is author of "How Do You Know?", an illustrated children's book. He lives in Berlin with his partner and two children.
Links:
Devon's New Book: The High-Impact Professionals Playbook
High Impact Professionals
Clearer Thinking Imposter Syndrome Test
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]

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 does personality capture beyond momentary behavior, and how do traits differ from life specific adaptations? How stable are traits across the lifespan when we separate rank order from mean level change? Can psychotherapy shift core traits like neuroticism or mainly improve functioning at the same level? How much of behavior is the person, the situation, or their interaction, and how do traits shape the environments we end up in? What trade offs come with being high or low on extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and neuroticism? Why do people high in neuroticism both perceive more stress and land in more stressful situations? Which life events reliably nudge traits and why do the same events push different people in opposite directions? When should we replace categorical diagnoses with dimensional spectra that align with the Big Five and guide unified treatments?
Colin G. DeYoung is a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota. DeYoung's research in personality psychology has examined the theoretical structure of personality and the biological basis of personality. He currently directs the DeYoung Personality Lab at University of Minnesota.
Links:
Our platform with more than 1 million correlations
Colin's Personality Lab
The Big Five Aspect Scale
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]