You Are Not So Smart, David McRaney
You Are Not So Smart, David McRaney
List: $22.00 | Sale: $15.40
Club: $11.00

You Are Not So Smart
Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

Author: David McRaney

Narrator: David McRaney

Unabridged: 8 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 03/17/2026


Synopsis

An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog of the same name. 

Whether you’re deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic. But here’s the truth: You are not so smart. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us—but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human.

Growing out of David McRaney’s popular blog, You Are Not So Smart reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them. But often these stories aren’t true. Each short chapter—covering topics such as Learned Helplessness, Selling Out, and the Illusion of Transparency—is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out.

Bringing together popular science and psychology with humor and wit, You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of our irrational, thoroughly human behavior.

About The Author

A two-time winner of the William Randolph Hearst Award, journalist David McRaney writes the blog youarenotsosmart.com. A self-described psychology nerd, he lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Stephanie *Eff your feelings* on June 07, 2013

Turns out everyone thinks they are somehow smarter than the people around them, everyone. We all are guilty of it. We walk into a Wal-mart, take a look around us and think “what a bunch of freaks, and always in Wal-mart” …..But we are also in Wal-mart as we make this judgment. I don’t go into that s......more

Goodreads review by Kent on June 20, 2012

I love Radiolab. It is the best thing. Here are the episodes that you should listen to instead of reading this book: Deception - [URL not allowed] Memory and Forgetting - [URL not allowed] Placebo - [URL not allowed] Morality - [URL not allowed]......more

Goodreads review by David on September 11, 2014

This is a fun, pop-psychology book that kept me interested from beginning to end. It is arranged into 48 chapters, each devoted to a different misconception that we are all subject to. Some of these misconceptions have technical names that will be unfamiliar to most people. For example, I never hear......more

Goodreads review by Lara on December 30, 2011

like to think that I know just how advertisers are trying to sway my thoughts and opinions and gain my buying power. I also like to think that I am in complete control of such things as my thoughts, opinions, and buying power. But, evidently, I am not so smart. I like the color red. I also like to th......more

Goodreads review by Vui on May 03, 2021

3.75 Mua cả 2 năm rồi hay sao mà giờ mới động tới em nó. Sách sử dụng nhiều nghiên cứu tâm lý để chỉ ra mô thức trong suy nghĩ/hành động/cảm xúc sai mà chúng ta vẫn làm đều đặn từ ngày này sang ngày khác. Chắc vì làm nhiều quá nên tác giả mới đặt tựa đề là bạn không thông minh lắm đâu. Mình thích đặt......more


Quotes

"Every chapter is a welcome reminder that you are not so smart-yet you're never made to feel dumb. You Are Not So Smart is a dose of psychology research served in tasty anecdotes that will make you better understand both yourself and the rest of us. It turns out we're much more irrational than most of us think, so give yourself every advantage you can and read this book." — Alexis Ohanian, Co-Founder of Reddit.com

"You Are Not So Smart is the go-to blog for understanding why we all do silly things." — Lifehacker.com

"You'd think from the title that it might be curmudgeonly; in fact, You Are Not So Smart is quite big-hearted." — Jason Kottke, Kottke.org

"In an Idiocracy dominated by cable TV bobbleheads, government propagandists, and corporate spinmeisters, many of us know that mass ignorance is a huge problem. Now, thanks to David McRaney's mind-blowing book, we can finally see the scientific roots of that problem. Anybody still self-aware enough to wonder why society now worships willful stupidity should read this book." -David Sirota, author of Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now