When your four-year-old looks like she just lost a fistfight with a Hershey bar and blames the dog—despite the suspicious chocolate handprint on its fur —don't ground her. Congratulate her. On this episode of Dumbify, we explore why that shameless, physically impossible lie is actually a massive cognitive milestone. We dive into the science of "semantic leakage control" and explain why your little liar isn't a future sociopath, but a genius whose brain is running a sophisticated counterintelligence operation.

Join us as we entrap five-year-olds with the "Barney theme song" , hand disappointed kids bars of soap to test their manners , and reveal why not even social workers or police officers can tell if a toddler is lying. We’ll discuss why the "boring truth" is easy, but a good lie requires the heavy lifting of executive function and working memory. Tune in to learn why "fabulation" is the new honesty, and why you should actually be proud the next time you get played by a preschooler.

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Dumbify celebrates ideas so weird, wrong, or wildly impractical… they just might be brilliant. Hosted by David Carson, a serial entrepreneur behind multiple hundred-million-dollar companies and the go-to secret weapon for companies looking to unlock new markets through unconventional thinking. Dumbify dives into the messy, counter-intuitive side of creativity — the “dumb” ideas that built empires, broke rules, and ended up changing everything.

Have you ever whispered the Trader Joe's prayer right before you black out and wake up with eleven bags of cauliflower gnocchi and a succulent you'll kill by Thursday? This store shouldn't work. No app. No loyalty points. A parking lot designed by someone who hates cars. And yet people drive past three normal grocery stores to shop there like it's a pilgrimage.

The origin story is unhinged. Joe Coulombe realized he couldn't out-7-Eleven 7-Eleven, so he fled to the Caribbean and wrote a manifesto about a customer who didn't exist yet. He predicted exactly what they'd want, what would flatter them, and what would make them feel like they'd discovered something the masses had missed. Then he built a store that runs on psychological tricks most retailers would consider business malpractice. Why won't they put in a loudspeaker? Why do the employees wear Hawaiian shirts? Why is the cheese section a disaster on purpose? Every answer is weirder than you think.

Sign up for the Dumbify newsletter: https://www.david-carson.com/

Dumbify celebrates ideas so weird, wrong, or wildly impractical… they just might be brilliant. Hosted by David Carson, a serial entrepreneur behind multiple hundred-million-dollar companies and the go-to secret weapon for companies looking to unlock new markets through unconventional thinking. Dumbify dives into the messy, counter-intuitive side of creativity — the “dumb” ideas that built empires, broke rules, and ended up changing everything.

You know that feeling when someone finishes explaining something and asks, "Does that make sense?" and you nod like an idiot even though you understood maybe 12% of it? Turns out that nod is the problem. In this episode, we make the case that confused people are actually the smartest ones in the room — and that your lifelong suspicion that you're the only one who doesn't get it is actually a sign your brain is still working while everyone else's quit early.

We'll dig into the UCLA research on "desirable difficulties" that proves confusion is literally how learning works, why Einstein called abandoning his own confusion his "biggest blunder," and how Jeff Bezos built a trillion-dollar company on being 30% unsure about everything. If you've ever felt dumb for not getting it while everyone else nods along confidently, this one's for you.

Sign up for the Dumbify newsletter: https://www.david-carson.com/

Dumbify celebrates ideas so weird, wrong, or wildly impractical… they just might be brilliant. Hosted by David Carson, a serial entrepreneur behind multiple hundred-million-dollar companies and the go-to secret weapon for companies looking to unlock new markets through unconventional thinking. Dumbify dives into the messy, counter-intuitive side of creativity — the “dumb” ideas that built empires, broke rules, and ended up changing everything.