The Hidden Force Controlling Money, Power and Your Choices
Kwik Brain with Jim Kwik
Jim Kwik, Your Brain Coach, Founder www.KwikLearning.com
4.7 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if the real power in your life isn’t what you know, but what you know that everyone else knows you know?
Money only works because we all believe everyone else believes in it. Governments stand because we assume everyone else will follow the rules. Even love, status, trust, and cancel culture are driven by invisible social agreements that live in our shared mind.
In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Steven Pinker, Harvard psychologist, cognitive scientist, bestselling author, and one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today,” to decode the science of common knowledge and how it shapes everything from money and power to social media, revolutions, and your daily relationships.
We talk about why some ideas go viral and others don’t, why cancel culture and public shaming are so effective, why dictators fear free speech, and how misinformation hijacks our “collective brain.” Steven also shares powerful tools from his books Rationality and When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows to help you think more clearly, protect yourself from cognitive biases, and become a better learner and communicator in a noisy, hyper-connected world.
If you’ve ever wondered why people follow the crowd, why markets boom and crash, why social norms feel so powerful, or how to stay rational when everyone is yelling online, this conversation will help you see the hidden architecture behind human behavior – and use that insight to upgrade your thinking, your learning, and your life.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Quick Brain, bite-sized brain hacks for busy people who want to learn faster and achieve more. |
| 0:06.1 | I'm your coach, Jim Quick. |
| 0:08.2 | Free. |
| 0:09.2 | You're mine. |
| 0:10.2 | Let's imagine if we could access 100% of our brain's capacity. |
| 0:15.1 | I wasn't high, wasn't wired, just clear. |
| 0:17.8 | I knew what I needed to do and how to do it. |
| 0:20.2 | I know Kung Fu. |
| 0:22.9 | Show me. |
| 0:24.7 | Welcome back to the show, Quick Brain podcast, where we upgrade your greatest superpower, |
| 0:31.4 | your ability to learn, to think, and live without limits. |
| 0:35.0 | I'm your host and your brain coach, Jim Quick. |
| 0:37.4 | Today's conversation is going to stretch the way you think about thinking itself. We've done |
| 0:42.9 | episodes on metacognition, thinking about your thinking, but this is going to go even deeper. |
| 0:49.3 | So I encourage everyone to take notes. It almost feels like it's going to be a master class. If you ever wonder why |
| 0:55.9 | societies cooperate, why rumors spread, and why markets rise and fall, you're about discover that |
| 1:02.4 | the real force behind it isn't just intelligence or even emotion. It's shared cognition. And our |
| 1:09.5 | guest is Dr. Stephen Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, |
| 1:13.5 | cognitive scientist, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalists, one of times 100 most influential |
| 1:19.6 | people in the world today. If I was to read the CV, it would take the entire episode. |
| 1:25.1 | He's written a dozen books. His latest we're going to be diving |
| 1:29.4 | into today. And if you're watching the extended version on YouTube, which I always encourage you to do, |
... |
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