Psychology
Why people do what they do. New research, old instincts, and the patterns that explain us.
Open this topic in the app to listen.
In 1975, scuba divers memorized word lists on land or beneath the sea, then tried to recall them in each setting. The results revealed that memory is secretly tethered to the place where it was formed, reshaping how we understand learning, exam performance, and even eyewitness testimony.
In 1966, researchers phoned hospital nurses posing as unknown doctors, ordering a dangerous overdose of an unfamiliar drug. Almost all of them complied, revealing how authority and hierarchy can override professional judgment and common sense.
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.
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.
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.
An exploration of how apps use variable reward schedules and behavioral engineering to capture human attention, and the cognitive consequences of constant digital distraction.
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.
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.
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, written, and voiced 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.