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Modern Wisdom

#585 - Adam Mastroianni - Are Smart People Actually Happier?

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.74.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2023

⏱️ 77 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Adam Mastroianni is a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School and a writer whose research focuses on how people perceive and misperceive their social worlds.

Does being smart make you happy? Does being dumb make you miserable? Why did the guy who created eugenics also get published in Nature for a revolutionary way to cut a cake? Adam is one of my favourite writers so today I get to ask him all these things.

Expect to learn why super smart people can be so stupid, Adam's issue with the productivity approach of eating frogs, whether you can learn arithmetic by smell, why humans misjudge what other people want to talk about, why we forget so many of the things that we've learned, how come it's trendy to call the general public stupid and much more...

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Extra Stuff:

Follow Adam's Substack - https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/

Check out Adam's website - https://www.adammastroianni.com/

Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show.

0:03.5

My guest today is Adam Masteryani.

0:05.7

He's a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School and a writer.

0:10.3

His research focuses on how people perceive and misperceive their social worlds.

0:15.8

Does being smart make you happy?

0:18.1

Does being dumb make you miserable?

0:19.9

Why did the guy who created eugenics also get published in nature for a revolutionary way

0:25.4

to cut a cake?

0:26.8

Adam is one of my favourite writers, so today we get to ask him

0:29.9

all of these things.

0:31.6

Expect to learn why super smart people can be so stupid.

0:35.6

Adam's issue with the productivity approach of eating frogs, whether you can learn arithmetic

0:40.1

by smell, why humans misjudge what other people want to talk about, why we forget so many

0:45.7

of the things we've learned, how come it's trendy to call the general public stupid?

0:50.6

And much more.

0:52.6

Don't forget, if you are listening, you should have also got a copy of the Modern Wisdom

0:55.5

Reading List.

1:02.5

In other news, this episode is brought to you by Surfshark.

1:26.8

Protect your browsing online and get access to the entire world's Netflix library for

1:31.0

less than the price of a cup of coffee per month.

1:33.6

If you use a public wifi network like a library or a cafe or university grounds, you are

1:39.8

letting the university admin or the internet admin of that place see everything that you're

...

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