Episode 5: Wisdom Frontiers (with Dilip Jeste, Barry Schwartz, and Justin Brienza)

Can wisdom live beyond the individual, in the organizations we build, and the technologies we create? In the final episode of our special series, Dilip Jeste, Barry Schwartz, and Justin Brienza join Igor and Charles to explore the frontiers of wisdom research, from neuroscience to the design of wiser institutions. Dilip takes us inside the brain systems involved in empathy, emotion regulation, and perspective-taking, while explaining why measuring wisdom remains such a challenge. Barry turns to the organizations we spend our lives in, revealing how even well-intentioned people can make poor judgments when the culture around them gets in the way, and why better decisions depend on creating environments where people can learn from their mistakes. Justin asks how we might build wisdom into institutions themselves, from red-teaming and premortems to incentives that encourage dissent, stewardship, and collective responsibility. The series arrives at one final question: if we can build machines that are increasingly intelligent, what would it mean to make them wise?

Special Guests: Barry Schwartz, Dilip Jeste, and Justin Brienza.

Links:

• Barry Schwartz: Our loss of wisdom | TED Talk
• Wisdom in action: A call to bridge fields in psychology (and beyond) to solve complex world problems | American Psychologist. Advance online publication - Glück, J., & Brienza, J. P. (2025)
• Transforming artificial intelligence into artificial wisdom | Nat. Mental Health 4, 886–897 - Jeste, D.V., Paulus, M.P., Alexopoulos, G.S. et al. (2026)
• Imagining and building wise machines: The centrality of AI metacognition | Trends in Cognitive Sciences - Johnson, S. G., Karimi, A. H., Bengio, Y., Chater, N., Gerstenberg, T., Larson, K., ... & Grossmann, I. (2026)

Episode 1: Exemplars and Narratives (with Cristine Legare, Dan McAdams, and L.A. Paul)

When we face life challenges, where do our ideas about wise judgment, or even wisdom writ large come from, and how do they shape the way we work through such challenges and live thereafter? Cristine Legare, Dan McAdams, and L.A. Paul join Igor and Charles to explore the stories, proverbs, and exemplars we inherit, and what happens when they don't quite fit the situation in front of us. Cristine reveals why the ideas that stick with us aren't necessarily the ones that are true, Dan explores how the stories we tell about ourselves can help us navigate uncertainty (or trap us in the wrong story), and Laurie asks who (or what) is doing the choosing, if we can’t know in advance how a life-changing decision will transform us?

Special Guests: Cristine Legare, Dan McAdams, and L.A. Paul.

Links:

• Navigating the Unknown: The Sociocultural and Metacognitive Architecture of Wisdom (accepted) | Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 78 - Igor Grossmann and Nic M. Weststrate