Professor Jacqueline Gottlieb, Principal Investigator at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute and former head of the Research Cluster on Curiosity at Columbia University’s Center for Science and Society, brings her research experience and deep thinking about the human brain's higher cognitive functions—including decision making, memory, and attention—to discuss that wonderful and invaluable human capability that we call curiosity.

Second time Thinking Clearly guest, Tania Israel, Professor of Counseling Psychology at UC Santa Barbara, guides us through how to overcome the toxic effects of consuming politicized news and social media in this current, highly polarized American environment and discusses how to more effectively communicate with people holding opposing views to ours. Professor Israel is the author of the recently published book: Facing the Fracture: How to Navigate the Challenges of Living in a Divided Nation.

Calling on his experience in evidence-based policy making, teaching a course at UC Berkeley called Sense and Sensibility and Science, and coauthoring the book Third Millennium Thinking-Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense, social scientist and law Professor at Stanford University, Robert MacCoun, discusses: how to avoid failure modes when making decisions; using practices, and tools of science to make better decisions in our every-day-lives; the value of probabilistic thinking; how to weave facts and values together; and how to reboot trust and develop a new collaborative approach to our shared problems and opportunities.