You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas.

This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it matters.

A few weeks ago, I realized that it's 2022. I know. I'm a bit late to the party, but you know how the last few years have been.

And that means that I've been hosting podcasts for a decade now. And that made me think about

how serendipitous my start in podcasting was. In case you didn't know, back in 2011, I hosted a TV

show on the Oprah Winfrey network called Miracle Detectives. I was the scientific foil to a journalist

who believed in miracles, and we flew around the U.S. investigating people's accounts of the miraculous

or supernatural. To promote the show, I was asked to appear on some radio shows and podcasts.

What's a podcast? I remember thinking. Well, one of those podcasts was called Point of Inquiry.

And a few months later, I ended up as one of its hosts. Then, several years later, Adam Isaac, Chris

Mooney and I launched this show. And now podcasting is a big part of what I do. But around the time

of my introduction to podcasts, another podcaster was also getting

started, one whose work I admired and whose show name I coveted. You are not so smart. Man,

why didn't we think of that? Well, because we're not David McRaney. David has been hosting that

podcast for as long as I've been hosting one, and his book,

You Are Not So Smart, is on the bookshelf where I keep the books that I most often reach for,

just in arm's length away. I've admired David for a long time because he's really mastered

the literature on how our brains fool us into thinking we know more than we do, or that we are

rational creatures.

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