Episodes

The cognitive story behind a simple act of aggression. How our brain is essentially stuck in the Stone Age, struggling to deal with the complexity and pressures of modern life. And how an ongoing battle between our twin cognitive systems - our fast and slow thinking brains - lies behind much that goes wrong in our lives.  

We enter the Magic Lab, where science and magic meets. We explore how the brain is prey to a whole range of cognitive defaults and errors which impair our ability to make choices which are in our best interests. Derren reveals the mistakes our brains make, but also identifies ways to avoid them – including the cunning Decoy Effect, which causes excessive popcorn consumption.

Our brain is a machine for jumping to conclusions. Derren reveals how the Halo Effect, Anchoring and Confirmation Bias distort our ability to judge one another – when interviewing someone for a job for example. And nothing makes it more difficult for us to read each other than our powerful instinct to lie, and our equally instinctive tendency to believe.  

Your brain miscalculates odds and underestimates risk, unless you are the owner of a gambling casino of course. Even rats are better at estimating probability than humans. How optimism and over-confidence results in most new business ventures failing. And some advice on how we can become luckier.

Our confidence in our ability to multitask is largely misplaced. Our brain is really only capable of efficiently doing one thing at a time. Derren explores the difference between our ability to 'look' and 'see', hearing how being responsible for a fatal road accident taught one motorist about the dangers of 'neurological hijacking'. 

To err is human...but so is our need to deny we have erred. How 'cognitive dissonance' prevents us from admitting errors and learning from our mistakes - leading to medical disasters, miscarriages of justice, warping love and causing life-long feuds. But also how we can learn to deal with cognitive dissonance and redefine our attitude to failure.

Our brain defaults to thinking in stereotypes which can result in prejudiced words, thoughts and deeds. Derren reveals that our brains can be easily 'primed' to trigger biased responses, but that we do have the capacity to resist. And how one man managed to overcome his aggressively racist attitudes. 

Looking at how understanding both the strengths and weaknesses of our brain can help us avoid many of the mistakes we make in life. And how behavioural science can be applied to make all of our lives better.