You and Betty and the nancy's and bills and joes and janes will find in the study of science a richer, more rewarding life.

Hey, welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Adam Isaac. This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover,

and why it matters.

Hello, it's me, producer Adam, filling in for Indre this week. Today's episode is an interview with science writer Maria Konnikova about her 2016 book,

The Confidence Game, Why We Fall for It Every Time.

Indre did this interview when the book first came out, but it is perhaps depressingly,

still as relevant as ever.

While it hasn't always involved pillow salesmen

and crypto billionaires, there have been people trying to con you always. So look, there's no

better time than now to brush up on all the ways people get conned, the psychology of why it works,

and what you can do to avoid it. Also, as an aside, I have been making this show with

Indre for nearly a decade, which is wild in and of itself, but because Indre and I are historically

terrible at social media, it feels like I've only gotten to actually talk to a handful of you.

A lot of the time it's this weird situation where I make

a little episode on my little computer and I put it on the internet and it tells me that people

listen, but I have no proof of that. I don't know if you're real. So I would love it so much. If any

of you would message me over email or Instagram or whatever and tell me what you think of the show,

especially if you have thoughts on how to make it better, things you wish would change, whatever.

You can email contact at inquiring.com. That just goes to me. Or you can message me on Instagram at Adam Isaac, I-S-A-A-A-K.

Anyway, please consider it. I would love to hear from you. And for right now, please enjoy this interview with Maria Konnikova about the psychology of getting conned.

Welcome to Inquiring Minds, Maria Konnikova. Thank you so much for having me.

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