Category
Psychology
Why people do what they do. New research, old instincts, and the patterns that explain us.
In this category
The Dunning-Kruger effect, beyond the meme
The idea that the least competent are the most overconfident became an internet punchline. Explore what the original research actually found, the statistical debate around it, and what it really says about self-knowledge.
12 min
The bystander effect and the truth about Kitty Genovese
The murder that supposedly launched research into why crowds fail to help — and how the real story differs from the legend. Explore diffusion of responsibility and when people actually step in.
12 min
Flow: the psychology of total absorption
The state where time disappears and performance peaks. Explore Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's research on flow, the conditions that reliably trigger it, and why it may be the antidote to a distracted age.
12 min
The Attention Economy and the Psychology of the Infinite Scroll
An exploration of how apps use variable reward schedules and behavioral engineering to capture human attention, and the cognitive consequences of constant digital distraction.
12 min
Cognitive Dissonance and How We Protect Our Beliefs
An exploration of the psychological discomfort that arises from holding contradictory ideas and the lengths we go to—from doomsday cults to everyday rationalization—to maintain internal consistency.
12 min
How memory rewrites itself
Memory isn't a recording; it's reconstructed each time you recall it. Explore Elizabeth Loftus's work on false memories, how easily recollection can be distorted, and why confident eyewitnesses are so often wrong.
12 min
Milgram's obedience experiments, reexamined
The famous study suggesting ordinary people would deliver painful shocks on command shaped how we think about authority — but newer analysis of the archives complicates the story. What the experiments really showed.
12 min
The replication crisis in psychology
When researchers tried to reproduce famous psychology experiments, a startling number failed. Explore which celebrated findings collapsed, which held up, and how the field is trying to fix how it does science.
12 min
About Psychology
Why people do what they do — the research behind the instincts. The stream re-examines the famous studies (Milgram's obedience experiments, the bystander effect and the real Kitty Genovese story, Dunning-Kruger beyond the meme) and explores the forces working on you right now: variable rewards and the infinite scroll, cognitive dissonance, how memory rewrites itself every time you recall it. Old classics, new findings, and the replication crisis that sits between them.
Fylom episodes are researched and written by AI. Automated checks help catch inaccuracies, but episodes aren't reviewed by a human and AI can still get things wrong. Treat them as a starting point, not a source of record — more in our accuracy disclaimer.