Ep 4: The Risk Factor

Your brain miscalculates odds and underestimates risk, unless you are the owner of a gambling casino of course. Even rats are better at estimating probability than humans. How optimism and over-confidence results in most new business ventures failing. And some advice on how we can become luckier.

Our brain is a machine for jumping to conclusions. Derren reveals how the Halo Effect, Anchoring and Confirmation Bias distort our ability to judge one another – when interviewing someone for a job for example. And nothing makes it more difficult for us to read each other than our powerful instinct to lie, and our equally instinctive tendency to believe.