YANSS 333 - Selective Perception - Jay Van Bavel
2/16/202638 min
How can two people watch the same video yet see two different things? How can two people witness the same event but arrive at two different truths about what they witnessed? How can the same evidence lead people to drastically different realities? In this episode, Dr. Jay Van Bavel at NYU explains.
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First 90 secondsMeghna Chakrabarti0:00
No other organ brings together science and spirituality quite like the human brain. Our thinking is very different from what we have imagined. Studies about the brain are, at heart, studies about ourselves. So why, even after centuries of research, has the brain still remained such a stubborn and elusive mystery? I'm Meghna Chakrabarti. Listen to On Point for our special series, Brain Waves, wherever you get your podcasts.
David McRaney· Host0:27
[music] You can go to Kitted, K-I-T-T-E-D.shop and use the code SMART50, S-M-A-R-T-5-0, at checkout, and you will get half off a set of thinking superpowers in a box. If you wanna know more about what I'm talking about, check it out middle of the show. [music] On January 7th, 2026, United States federal agents shot and killed Rene Goode. And on January 24th, 2026, United States federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretty. These shootings took place during protests over the conduct of immigration agents, and the people who died, they were protesters. Each incident, each shooting, each killing, was recorded on video by bystanders, and those videos spread all across the internet, social media,