Your Brain is a Large Language Model (#368)

Religion on the Mind

Religion & Spirituality, Religion, Spirituality

4.7 • 542 Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2025

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today’s episode, I’m joined by social psychologist Dr. James Pennebaker from UT Austin to explore an uncomfortable truth: we don't use language to tell the truth—we use it to justify ourselves and protect our egos, whether we're explaining to our spouse why we didn't do the dishes or electing presidents based on confidence rather than facts. We dig into why we're suckers for confident, simple speakers (explaining the rise of figures like Trump and Obama), how wisdom traditions manage to preserve truth despite our constant self-deception, why we've all retreated into communities that confirm our existing beliefs, and whether the 90% of values we actually share can compete with the 10% that's tearing us apart. James brings decades of psychological research to help explain several cultural movements, like how politicians have become less logical but more confident over the past century and how evangelical Christian institutions have trained millions of people to tune out challenging information. We end wrestling with whether AI represents humanity's next great cognitive leap forward or just gives us shinier tools to build more convincing echo chambers—and why the answer might depend entirely on how we choose to use them. James's Faculty Page ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: youhavepermissionpodcast@gmail.com YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:46.3	Welcome back everybody to Rel to Religion on the Mind, the show that focuses on the overlap of psychology and religion and spirituality. I am your host, Dr. Dan Koch, licensed therapist, and psychology of religion researcher.
0:52.4	But when I say researcher, you say bullshit,
0:56.3	because on the other line is Dr. James W. Pennebaker,
1:00.9	Professor Emeritus of Psychology at University of Austin.
1:05.6	And if I say I'm a researcher,
1:08.5	then I don't know what that makes you, Jamie. So let me, University of Texas
1:15.6	said Austin. Okay, okay. Do what I say. University of Austin. Oh, I know it's UT Austin. I
1:23.4	know that your, I know that your football field holds as many people as live within the city limits.
1:28.1	I know a lot about UT.
1:29.6	I can't believe I mess that up.
1:31.0	Wow.
1:31.6	I must be nervous.
1:32.9	I'm shivering with my one public, my one or two publications up against your, I don't know, what is it?
1:40.9	300 peer-reviewed articles or something.
1:43.5	Your CV, your CV is longer than if
	...

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