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The Jordan Harbinger Show

1326: Simone Stolzoff | How to Make the Most of Uncertainty

The Jordan Harbinger Show

Jordan Harbinger

Education, Science, Business

4.8 • 12.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2026

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Why does not knowing feel worse than bad news? How to Not Know author Simone Stolzoff shows us how to make uncertainty work for us, not against us.

Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1326

What We Discuss with Simone Stolzoff:

  • Certainty feels like wisdom but often isn't — Phil Tetlock found the average expert predicting the future is about as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee, yet we keep mistaking confidence for competence and rewarding the loudest voice in the room.
  • Our brains are wired for the savanna, not the spreadsheet. The same alarm bells that once warned us about rustling bushes now fire over phone storage decisions, leaving us anxious about choices that have almost nothing to do with survival.
  • We hate ambiguity so much we'd choose guaranteed pain over uncertainty — one study found people facing a 50 percent chance of a shock felt more stressed than those facing 100 percent. Not knowing whether you'll lose your job hurts as much as actually losing it.
  • Intolerance for uncertainty traps us in mediocre jobs, mediocre relationships, and mediocre lives. The "safe" choice quietly becomes the costly one, because the breakthroughs — entrepreneurial, creative, personal — all live on the other side of not knowing.
  • Treat uncertainty tolerance as a muscle you can train. Take a new route to work, order the unfamiliar dish, run small experiments, write down your predictions, and trust your future self to handle future problems — that version of you will have more context than the one worrying today.
  • And much more...

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode is brought to you by Lufthansa.

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Lufthansa Allegra is an innovative, elevated travel experience across all classes,

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focusing on each person with their own individual and situational needs.

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Look forward to your own feel-good moment above the clouds.

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Visit Lufthansa.com and search for Allegrais to learn more.

0:16.0

Lufthansa Allegrais. All it takes is a yes.

0:19.0

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

0:21.8

The version of yourself that will handle that tragic situation if or when it occurs will be

0:28.8

born into existence in that moment.

0:32.0

And that version of you will have more context, more information, and be better equipped to handle that tragic event than the

0:40.8

version of you today. You have to trust in your future self to be able to solve your future

0:47.4

problems.

0:52.0

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories,

0:56.7

secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical

1:01.0

advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you

1:05.2

become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of

1:09.3

amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional mafia enforcer,

1:15.8

Russian spy, cold case homicide investigator, or hostage negotiator.

1:19.8

And if you're new to the show or you're looking for a way to tell your friends about it,

1:22.6

I suggest our episode starter packs.

1:24.8

These are collections of our favorite episodes, some of them anyway, on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China,

1:32.7

North Korea, crime and cults, and more that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do

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