December 28, 2025 • 16 mins
Maria Konnikova, is a a psychologist, author, and professional poker player. Her work explores the intersection of psychology, decision-making, and human behavior, and she’s written bestselling books like The Confidence Game and The Biggest Bluff.
Today we explore her thoughts on decision-making under pressure, the psychology of cons, and the importance of mindfulness in navigating life’s challenges.
LINKS:
- Listen to the full interview with Maria from 2021 here
- Help with a gambling addiction can be found here
- Watch Story Club on YouTube and grab tickets to Story Club's next show
- My books So What? Now What? and Back After The Break are available here
- Send a pic of what you're looking at to sendosheremail@gmail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Goodda, Thanks so much for download the show. Welcome This
is better than Yesterday. Useful tools and useful conversations to
help make your day to day better than yesterday, every
single episode since twenty thirteen. My name's Oosha Ginsberg. I'm
very glad you're here. It is summer and you're taking
a break, or you're trying to take a break and
you're slowing down. My team's taking a break. But I
(00:22):
didn't want to leave you empty handed today, So we're
going back over the twelve years more than twelve years
now of episodes to give you something to think about
that isn't Is this sun block actually got any PF
of the sun protection factor? Or is it just expensive moisturizer?
Are my children going to get melanomic after going through
swim today, which is what I think about. I don't
(00:44):
know if you do that today today. I love this
conversation so much. I can't wait to give you this
little part of it. We're going to dive into the
fascinating mind of Maria Khonnikova, who is a psychologist, an author,
and a professional poker player. All Right, her work is extraordinary.
It explores the intersection of psychology and decision making and
(01:05):
human behavior. And she's written two brilliant books. One's called
The Confidence Game and one's called The Biggest Bluff. And
I love both of those books. They're really really exploring
decision making through the lens of a game like poker,
for example, and it taught me a lot about how
we will make up our minds to do things. In
this conversation today, I'm going to give you just just
(01:26):
some bits to chew on, and we're going to talk
about making decisions under pressure, the psychology of con artists,
and how people get scammed, and the importance of mindfulness.
Even professional poker players, it's important for them. So she's
a psychologist, she's a professional poker player. The journey started
as she was doing research for the book The Biggest Bluff,
(01:47):
But then off she went and she ended up at
the World Series. So in this little first part, Maria
talks about how she learned to or she had to
have to learn. She really had to learn to manage
her emotions and make rational decisions in high pressure situations
sitting at the poker table. And it's fascinating hearing her
describe the mastery of staying calm when it comes to
(02:09):
making calculated choices. What did you find out about trying
to intercept that? Like, say, for example, you're in a
poker tournament, you're at the final table, all right, which
you've done a number of times. You're an exceptional poker player.
I dared never come up against you. Say, there's four
of you at the table, and you flop pocket kings,
all right, and you go, fuck yeah, here we go.
(02:31):
I'm going to push this motherfucker right off this table,
all right. And the flop comes down and you're already
your heart's already beating through your chest, all right. How
did you learn? And you clearly did learn. How did
you learn to circumvent and stop that excitement that hope
of I'm going to take this final table. I'm already
(02:52):
seeing the cash floating through the air as it flutters
down on me. How did you stop that emotional thing
from taking over as you then saw the next cards
and go how do I make a correct decision here
based on not only the cause, but what these other
three people have been doing for the last three days?
How did you do that?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
That is an excellent question, and I think that the
true answer is I'm always working on it. It's not
a magic thing where you do it and then hurrah,
you will never ever experience those moments again. I think
it's very hubristic to think that you can just cure
it once and for all. But I think the key
(03:32):
is to do the hard work and the heavy lifting
ahead of time, to recognize that those moments are going
to happen, and that you will be in situations where
you get emotional and where your heart starts racing and
your pulse starts beating and all of these things start happening,
and to figure out, Okay, when I'm in that situation,
(03:54):
what am I going to do? Because if you didn't
do the hard work and the heavy lifting ahead of time,
you are not going to be able to do it
in the moment. You need to recognize that in the
moment you are going to be limited. No matter who
you are, you could be the greatest self control guru
in the world, but if you did not do that
(04:14):
self analysis and identify that possible situation ahead of time
and figure out how am I going to respond to it.
The nature of these hot emotional situations is they're hot
emotional situations. They are going to get you into a
spot where you're not thinking rationally. And so what I
(04:35):
ended up doing was, first of all, I had to
overcome my misgivings about mental coaches and get one of
my own. So I always thought, I'm a psychologist, I've
studied decision making, I know all of these biases, I
know all about it. I don't need a mental coach.
And then obviously I realized, oops, I do need a
(04:56):
mental coach, because you can't do it all yourself. And
then it was very funny because I really resisted what
he asked me to do. He said, okay, you know,
we would talk and I would go through a game
and all of these situations, and he'd make me identify
all these things, and then he said, you have to
write this all down. He actually made me fill out
spreadsheets where I would say, okay, I flop pocket kings, right,
(05:19):
I describe the situation, what do I do? Okay? What
am I going to do next time? What am I
going to say to myself? How am I going to react?
What are the techniques I'm going to employ? And at
first I didn't do the stupid Excel spreadsheet because that's yes,
why in the world would I waste my time doing that.
(05:41):
I'm smart and I don't need it. No, I didn't
need it, because writing it down and going through that
process actually forces you to think through things in a
way that you wouldn't otherwise do. And I'm a writer,
I write things down all the time. And still I
was resistant to this. And so by the time I
get to that final table and I'm in that situation,
I've actually thought about what I was going to do,
(06:03):
and I've actually already realized, Okay, well, first of all,
just general thing, I'm going to be standardizing all of
my reactions in terms of how I handle the cards
and what I do. And then when I'm in this
type of situation, here's exactly what I'm going to do.
I'm going to take three deep breaths. I'm going to
think about, you know, whatever it is I'm going to
think about. I'm going to think about the clouds and
(06:23):
the sky and pretend that I'm on a beach under
the clouds and not at this table at all. Then
I'm going to kind of go back and these are
the elements that I'm going to analyze and the decision process.
I'm going to think about who these opponents are and
what they did, and I'm going to mentally check off,
did I think about this? Did I think about that?
Did I think about the other thing? And then I'm
(06:43):
going to act accordingly, and I'm going to be willing
at any point to let go and to say, Okay,
you know what, this isn't a great situation. That's also
very important. It's important not to get too committed or
to emotionally invested in any course of action or decision
ahead of time, because you need to be willing to
(07:04):
be flexible and to think, you know what, if the
data in no longer add up, I'm going to take
those pocket kings and throw them into the muck. I'm
going to I'm going to fold. And that's not something
that I was capable of doing early on, and it
took all of that time, and sometimes, like I said,
it's still it's a work in progress. Sometimes you still
find yourself unable to take a step back. But it's
(07:29):
so important to think through that plan of action ahead
of time. If I have a bad beat at the
table and something terrible happens and I'm in a really
bad state because I just lost a lot of chips,
I might actually get up and walk around the room
and yeah, I might miss a few hands and I
might look stupid, but I don't care because that's actually
(07:49):
going to make me money, because I know that for
me personally, it's powerful to get out of the situation,
to actually physically move away, and that I come back
with a clear head and able to make good decisions.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
We'd like to think that we get a chance to
make really important life decisions when we're calm, we're relaxed,
we're centered, we've got all the facts, but generally that's
not the case. We're like in this really heightened state
and our brains are really small, narrow fight or flight.
You know, there's binary options most of the time. It's
fascinating listening to Maria talk about decision making under pressure,
(08:26):
not just for poker players, but for anyone facing a
high stack situation. I love that, you know, she talked
about preparation, self awareness, detaching emotionally from the outcome, really
really really powerful reminders of being mindful and planning. Certainly
when it comes to I don't know your next contract negotiation,
or talking to your kid about when they're actually going
to get a phone. Now, I do need to take
a break, but I just wanted to let you know
(08:48):
that the story Club YouTube if you're looking for something
to watch that's fifteen minutes long and hilarious. Not really
used to You can't watch it with kids in the
room most of the time. The story Club YouTube is
up and firing a lot. You can find the link
in the show notes. Every story is true. Some of
the greatest storytellers and racontours in the country. There's a
live storytelling show that I run every month here in Sydney.
(09:10):
If you haven't able to get to a show, I
film every one of them and I'm putting new stories
up every single week. The live show's returned in February.
You can watch the YouTube and find tickets to the
live shows in the show notes. On top of that,
I have a new book out and it's a great
gift and a great thing to read. To take you
forty minutes to read, I'd like to think it'd probably
change your life. It's called So What Now What the
(09:30):
links in the show notes. We're back in a moment
with Maria Kona Koba. Don't go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
So.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
In her book The Confidence Game, Maria breaks down the
stages of a con because there's stages of when people
get scammed or con there's different phases that it works through.
And she talks about how even the smartest people can
be deceived. Now I'm not saying I'm super smart, but
I'm not silly. But I started telling her about how
once I was, you know, I was in the Middle
East and I'm in this big market, and you know,
(10:01):
there's spices and fluffle and everything, and there was some
guys playing the three shell game, all right, when they
you know which shell is the bean under? And I
fell for it. I'd seen it in the movies and whatever,
and i was watching like five or six games fourhand.
I'm like, I know exactly how to do this, and
I fully got taken. I got taken, absolutely taken. And
(10:23):
I was devastated because I thought I'm a smart person
and I figured it out and I knew that this
is a scam, but I still got done by it.
And in this bit of the conversation, Maria explains that
intelligence and skepticism hadn't enough really to protect us from
being conned. When I read your book, I was like,
oh shit. The three people that went before me were
(10:43):
all a part of the.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Team they were and did. But you know what, to
make you feel better, One of the people I interviewed
for the book fell for the exact same thing, Three
card Monty, which is a version of the Shell Game.
It's all the same thing, right, you've got three, you've
got find the one. And in the case of three
card Monte, you have to follow the queen. In the
(11:06):
case of the shell game, you have to figure out
under what shell, the hidden whatever it is, is located.
And one of the people I interviewed for the book
was at that time one of the senior editors at
Scientific American, you know, a major publication of Scientific fact
(11:26):
was studying for her PhD. An incredibly, incredibly intelligent woman,
and she was just overwhelmed. She was in New York,
in the big city, visiting her friend on Canal Street.
It was also big and bright, and she thought that
she could win, just like you. And it's so funny
(11:47):
before you get into it, if you just hear about it,
you think, who are these rubes? And you call them rubes?
You think I would never fall for something like that.
How stupid do you have to be? And then if,
like me, you delve into that world and you interview people,
and you see kind of who it is. They're not rooms,
(12:07):
they're not stupid, they're incredibly intelligent people. And intelligence does
not protect you, and skepticism does not protect you. The
people who are running your shell game with your full
offel in one hand and your money in the other
and your three card monty, they're very smart, and they're
very good at exploiting human psychology. And it's actually to me,
(12:31):
those are kind of the quintessential cons because in that
small game, right in that ten minute game, you have
all of the elements of long cons that take years.
They're all there. It's just this brilliantly orchestrated theater, and
they know how to press your buttons, they know how
to make you think you can win. They know how
to even exploit people who know the game. But there
(12:55):
are people who know what three card monty is, what
a shell game is. They've read my book. Maybe they
know that this is a con and they think they
can beat it. I've interviewed those people too.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
The way she explains the psychology of cons is just fascinating,
and it is a reminder that none of us are
immune to manipulation, and that con artists are absolute experts
at exploiting our cognitive biases and our emotions and knowing
exactly what to say to us when to get us
to be duped. A lot of her work focuses on
human decision making, on why we think it's a good
(13:30):
idea to do something, even when you know we might
be getting scammed. We think it's a great idea to
send that bsp an account number over to somebody, or
send out two factor authentication over a text message to
a number we've never seen before. So how to defend
yourself against stuff like that, Well, Maria talks about it. Mindfulness. Yeah, mindfulness.
It can help us identify when we're being emotion manipulated
(13:52):
and help us make better choices. And I want us
to know what's the role of self awareness in navigating
the flood of emotions that can cloud judgment in those
high stakes situations.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I do try to be mindful and to understand that
I can then go back and say, you know, I'm sorry,
but unfortunately, if you voted for someone, or if you
voted for brexit and then the next day said shit,
I'm sorry, I didn't think that was actually going to
pass your shit. I'm sorry it's not going to do anything.
It already happened. So I think just taking that time
(14:29):
and learning too, more aware of yourself and more aware
pow motions affect you, and of the fact that a
campaign like the one you described, I mean, that's stoking
my fear, that's going straight for that. And when a
campaign does that, instead of being afraid, I should say,
what the hell, why are you manipulating me? What is
(14:50):
the actual policy here? This is why I actually and
I don't think this is going to ever be viable.
But since you're asking about politics, let me just take
a few seconds to say it's why I always say
that we should actually just get rid of parties because
they short circuit the thought process. You're like, oh, you know,
I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat, I'm a liberal, I'm
(15:11):
a conservative. This is what I'm supposed to believe, and
you don't think the critical thinking doesn't actually happen. Instead,
we should actually be forced to read through everyone's platform
and to think through for ourselves do I agree with
this or not, and then make a decision. Because of that,
No one does that.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
That was Maria Khannikova. I love the way she talked
about mindfulness and critical thinking right there. It's a powerful
reminder of not only how easily we can be swayed
by emotion manipulation, even the smartest of us can have
that happen to us. But if we take the time
to slow down and reflect and question motives behind messages,
not in the like everyone's out to get me away,
but yes, take a breath, maybe we can make more
(15:53):
informed decisions and resist being influenced by either fear or biases.
Her insights intocy making are just fantastic. The psychology of
cons is brilliant, The importance of mindfulness really really really
fascinating stuff. I thoroughly recommend her books. Thanks for listening
to the show. The full conversation is just way it
goes for an hour and a bit. It's full of
(16:14):
stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Thanks for listening to the show. If you like the show,
please share it with someone, follow, subscribe, rate, comment. All
those things really help us in ways that I can't
even tell you. Like I said earlier, story Club YouTube
is live right now. If you're looking for something a
great Australian story to go and watch, you can find
it right there. Also, grab the new book, So what
now what the linkers in the show notes, Thanks for listening,
Goodda, Thanks so much for download the show. Welcome This
is better than Yesterday. Useful tools and useful conversations to
help make your day to day better than yesterday, every
single episode since twenty thirteen. My name's Oosha Ginsberg. I'm
very glad you're here. It is summer and you're taking
a break, or you're trying to take a break and
you're slowing down. My team's taking a break. But I
(00:22):
didn't want to leave you empty handed today, So we're
going back over the twelve years more than twelve years
now of episodes to give you something to think about
that isn't Is this sun block actually got any PF
of the sun protection factor? Or is it just expensive moisturizer?
Are my children going to get melanomic after going through
swim today, which is what I think about. I don't
(00:44):
know if you do that today today. I love this
conversation so much. I can't wait to give you this
little part of it. We're going to dive into the
fascinating mind of Maria Khonnikova, who is a psychologist, an author,
and a professional poker player. All Right, her work is extraordinary.
It explores the intersection of psychology and decision making and
(01:05):
human behavior. And she's written two brilliant books. One's called
The Confidence Game and one's called The Biggest Bluff. And
I love both of those books. They're really really exploring
decision making through the lens of a game like poker,
for example, and it taught me a lot about how
we will make up our minds to do things. In
this conversation today, I'm going to give you just just
(01:26):
some bits to chew on, and we're going to talk
about making decisions under pressure, the psychology of con artists,
and how people get scammed, and the importance of mindfulness.
Even professional poker players, it's important for them. So she's
a psychologist, she's a professional poker player. The journey started
as she was doing research for the book The Biggest Bluff,
(01:47):
But then off she went and she ended up at
the World Series. So in this little first part, Maria
talks about how she learned to or she had to
have to learn. She really had to learn to manage
her emotions and make rational decisions in high pressure situations
sitting at the poker table. And it's fascinating hearing her
describe the mastery of staying calm when it comes to
(02:09):
making calculated choices. What did you find out about trying
to intercept that? Like, say, for example, you're in a
poker tournament, you're at the final table, all right, which
you've done a number of times. You're an exceptional poker player.
I dared never come up against you. Say, there's four
of you at the table, and you flop pocket kings,
all right, and you go, fuck yeah, here we go.
(02:31):
I'm going to push this motherfucker right off this table,
all right. And the flop comes down and you're already
your heart's already beating through your chest, all right. How
did you learn? And you clearly did learn. How did
you learn to circumvent and stop that excitement that hope
of I'm going to take this final table. I'm already
(02:52):
seeing the cash floating through the air as it flutters
down on me. How did you stop that emotional thing
from taking over as you then saw the next cards
and go how do I make a correct decision here
based on not only the cause, but what these other
three people have been doing for the last three days?
How did you do that?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
That is an excellent question, and I think that the
true answer is I'm always working on it. It's not
a magic thing where you do it and then hurrah,
you will never ever experience those moments again. I think
it's very hubristic to think that you can just cure
it once and for all. But I think the key
(03:32):
is to do the hard work and the heavy lifting
ahead of time, to recognize that those moments are going
to happen, and that you will be in situations where
you get emotional and where your heart starts racing and
your pulse starts beating and all of these things start happening,
and to figure out, Okay, when I'm in that situation,
(03:54):
what am I going to do? Because if you didn't
do the hard work and the heavy lifting ahead of time,
you are not going to be able to do it
in the moment. You need to recognize that in the
moment you are going to be limited. No matter who
you are, you could be the greatest self control guru
in the world, but if you did not do that
(04:14):
self analysis and identify that possible situation ahead of time
and figure out how am I going to respond to it.
The nature of these hot emotional situations is they're hot
emotional situations. They are going to get you into a
spot where you're not thinking rationally. And so what I
(04:35):
ended up doing was, first of all, I had to
overcome my misgivings about mental coaches and get one of
my own. So I always thought, I'm a psychologist, I've
studied decision making, I know all of these biases, I
know all about it. I don't need a mental coach.
And then obviously I realized, oops, I do need a
(04:56):
mental coach, because you can't do it all yourself. And
then it was very funny because I really resisted what
he asked me to do. He said, okay, you know,
we would talk and I would go through a game
and all of these situations, and he'd make me identify
all these things, and then he said, you have to
write this all down. He actually made me fill out
spreadsheets where I would say, okay, I flop pocket kings, right,
(05:19):
I describe the situation, what do I do? Okay? What
am I going to do next time? What am I
going to say to myself? How am I going to react?
What are the techniques I'm going to employ? And at
first I didn't do the stupid Excel spreadsheet because that's yes,
why in the world would I waste my time doing that.
(05:41):
I'm smart and I don't need it. No, I didn't
need it, because writing it down and going through that
process actually forces you to think through things in a
way that you wouldn't otherwise do. And I'm a writer,
I write things down all the time. And still I
was resistant to this. And so by the time I
get to that final table and I'm in that situation,
I've actually thought about what I was going to do,
(06:03):
and I've actually already realized, Okay, well, first of all,
just general thing, I'm going to be standardizing all of
my reactions in terms of how I handle the cards
and what I do. And then when I'm in this
type of situation, here's exactly what I'm going to do.
I'm going to take three deep breaths. I'm going to
think about, you know, whatever it is I'm going to
think about. I'm going to think about the clouds and
(06:23):
the sky and pretend that I'm on a beach under
the clouds and not at this table at all. Then
I'm going to kind of go back and these are
the elements that I'm going to analyze and the decision process.
I'm going to think about who these opponents are and
what they did, and I'm going to mentally check off,
did I think about this? Did I think about that?
Did I think about the other thing? And then I'm
(06:43):
going to act accordingly, and I'm going to be willing
at any point to let go and to say, Okay,
you know what, this isn't a great situation. That's also
very important. It's important not to get too committed or
to emotionally invested in any course of action or decision
ahead of time, because you need to be willing to
(07:04):
be flexible and to think, you know what, if the
data in no longer add up, I'm going to take
those pocket kings and throw them into the muck. I'm
going to I'm going to fold. And that's not something
that I was capable of doing early on, and it
took all of that time, and sometimes, like I said,
it's still it's a work in progress. Sometimes you still
find yourself unable to take a step back. But it's
(07:29):
so important to think through that plan of action ahead
of time. If I have a bad beat at the
table and something terrible happens and I'm in a really
bad state because I just lost a lot of chips,
I might actually get up and walk around the room
and yeah, I might miss a few hands and I
might look stupid, but I don't care because that's actually
(07:49):
going to make me money, because I know that for
me personally, it's powerful to get out of the situation,
to actually physically move away, and that I come back
with a clear head and able to make good decisions.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
We'd like to think that we get a chance to
make really important life decisions when we're calm, we're relaxed,
we're centered, we've got all the facts, but generally that's
not the case. We're like in this really heightened state
and our brains are really small, narrow fight or flight.
You know, there's binary options most of the time. It's
fascinating listening to Maria talk about decision making under pressure,
(08:26):
not just for poker players, but for anyone facing a
high stack situation. I love that, you know, she talked
about preparation, self awareness, detaching emotionally from the outcome, really
really really powerful reminders of being mindful and planning. Certainly
when it comes to I don't know your next contract negotiation,
or talking to your kid about when they're actually going
to get a phone. Now, I do need to take
a break, but I just wanted to let you know
(08:48):
that the story Club YouTube if you're looking for something
to watch that's fifteen minutes long and hilarious. Not really
used to You can't watch it with kids in the
room most of the time. The story Club YouTube is
up and firing a lot. You can find the link
in the show notes. Every story is true. Some of
the greatest storytellers and racontours in the country. There's a
live storytelling show that I run every month here in Sydney.
(09:10):
If you haven't able to get to a show, I
film every one of them and I'm putting new stories
up every single week. The live show's returned in February.
You can watch the YouTube and find tickets to the
live shows in the show notes. On top of that,
I have a new book out and it's a great
gift and a great thing to read. To take you
forty minutes to read, I'd like to think it'd probably
change your life. It's called So What Now What the
(09:30):
links in the show notes. We're back in a moment
with Maria Kona Koba. Don't go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
So.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
In her book The Confidence Game, Maria breaks down the
stages of a con because there's stages of when people
get scammed or con there's different phases that it works through.
And she talks about how even the smartest people can
be deceived. Now I'm not saying I'm super smart, but
I'm not silly. But I started telling her about how
once I was, you know, I was in the Middle
East and I'm in this big market, and you know,
(10:01):
there's spices and fluffle and everything, and there was some
guys playing the three shell game, all right, when they
you know which shell is the bean under? And I
fell for it. I'd seen it in the movies and whatever,
and i was watching like five or six games fourhand.
I'm like, I know exactly how to do this, and
I fully got taken. I got taken, absolutely taken. And
(10:23):
I was devastated because I thought I'm a smart person
and I figured it out and I knew that this
is a scam, but I still got done by it.
And in this bit of the conversation, Maria explains that
intelligence and skepticism hadn't enough really to protect us from
being conned. When I read your book, I was like,
oh shit. The three people that went before me were
(10:43):
all a part of the.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Team they were and did. But you know what, to
make you feel better, One of the people I interviewed
for the book fell for the exact same thing, Three
card Monty, which is a version of the Shell Game.
It's all the same thing, right, you've got three, you've
got find the one. And in the case of three
card Monte, you have to follow the queen. In the
(11:06):
case of the shell game, you have to figure out
under what shell, the hidden whatever it is, is located.
And one of the people I interviewed for the book
was at that time one of the senior editors at
Scientific American, you know, a major publication of Scientific fact
(11:26):
was studying for her PhD. An incredibly, incredibly intelligent woman,
and she was just overwhelmed. She was in New York,
in the big city, visiting her friend on Canal Street.
It was also big and bright, and she thought that
she could win, just like you. And it's so funny
(11:47):
before you get into it, if you just hear about it,
you think, who are these rubes? And you call them rubes?
You think I would never fall for something like that.
How stupid do you have to be? And then if,
like me, you delve into that world and you interview people,
and you see kind of who it is. They're not rooms,
(12:07):
they're not stupid, they're incredibly intelligent people. And intelligence does
not protect you, and skepticism does not protect you. The
people who are running your shell game with your full
offel in one hand and your money in the other
and your three card monty, they're very smart, and they're
very good at exploiting human psychology. And it's actually to me,
(12:31):
those are kind of the quintessential cons because in that
small game, right in that ten minute game, you have
all of the elements of long cons that take years.
They're all there. It's just this brilliantly orchestrated theater, and
they know how to press your buttons, they know how
to make you think you can win. They know how
to even exploit people who know the game. But there
(12:55):
are people who know what three card monty is, what
a shell game is. They've read my book. Maybe they
know that this is a con and they think they
can beat it. I've interviewed those people too.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
The way she explains the psychology of cons is just fascinating,
and it is a reminder that none of us are
immune to manipulation, and that con artists are absolute experts
at exploiting our cognitive biases and our emotions and knowing
exactly what to say to us when to get us
to be duped. A lot of her work focuses on
human decision making, on why we think it's a good
(13:30):
idea to do something, even when you know we might
be getting scammed. We think it's a great idea to
send that bsp an account number over to somebody, or
send out two factor authentication over a text message to
a number we've never seen before. So how to defend
yourself against stuff like that, Well, Maria talks about it. Mindfulness. Yeah, mindfulness.
It can help us identify when we're being emotion manipulated
(13:52):
and help us make better choices. And I want us
to know what's the role of self awareness in navigating
the flood of emotions that can cloud judgment in those
high stakes situations.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I do try to be mindful and to understand that
I can then go back and say, you know, I'm sorry,
but unfortunately, if you voted for someone, or if you
voted for brexit and then the next day said shit,
I'm sorry, I didn't think that was actually going to
pass your shit. I'm sorry it's not going to do anything.
It already happened. So I think just taking that time
(14:29):
and learning too, more aware of yourself and more aware
pow motions affect you, and of the fact that a
campaign like the one you described, I mean, that's stoking
my fear, that's going straight for that. And when a
campaign does that, instead of being afraid, I should say,
what the hell, why are you manipulating me? What is
(14:50):
the actual policy here? This is why I actually and
I don't think this is going to ever be viable.
But since you're asking about politics, let me just take
a few seconds to say it's why I always say
that we should actually just get rid of parties because
they short circuit the thought process. You're like, oh, you know,
I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat, I'm a liberal, I'm
(15:11):
a conservative. This is what I'm supposed to believe, and
you don't think the critical thinking doesn't actually happen. Instead,
we should actually be forced to read through everyone's platform
and to think through for ourselves do I agree with
this or not, and then make a decision. Because of that,
No one does that.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
That was Maria Khannikova. I love the way she talked
about mindfulness and critical thinking right there. It's a powerful
reminder of not only how easily we can be swayed
by emotion manipulation, even the smartest of us can have
that happen to us. But if we take the time
to slow down and reflect and question motives behind messages,
not in the like everyone's out to get me away,
but yes, take a breath, maybe we can make more
(15:53):
informed decisions and resist being influenced by either fear or biases.
Her insights intocy making are just fantastic. The psychology of
cons is brilliant, The importance of mindfulness really really really
fascinating stuff. I thoroughly recommend her books. Thanks for listening
to the show. The full conversation is just way it
goes for an hour and a bit. It's full of
(16:14):
stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Thanks for listening to the show. If you like the show,
please share it with someone, follow, subscribe, rate, comment. All
those things really help us in ways that I can't
even tell you. Like I said earlier, story Club YouTube
is live right now. If you're looking for something a
great Australian story to go and watch, you can find
it right there. Also, grab the new book, So what
now what the linkers in the show notes, Thanks for listening,
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