How Minds Change: A Tour Update (and a Kindle Daily Deal)
For a limited time you can grab the ebook of How Minds Change on Amazon for $2.99 - so I thought an update on the whirlwind promotional tour would be nice
Hey y’all,
So, for a limited time, you can get the Kindle ebook of How Minds Change for $2.99 over on Amazon. The Apple ebook is also $2.99 for a limited time. Here’s the Amazon link. Here’s the Apple link.
Here is a sample chapter, and when you grab a copy, here are a few extras: Images from Chapter Three, a Discussion Guide, and a spirited Roundtable Discussion video with a few persuasion experts featured in the book.
It’s been a wild year for How Minds Change. I just wrapped a 23-city lecture tour that took me to Amsterdam, London, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, New York, San Francisco, Nashville, Gettysburg, Austin, and many places in between like Bridgewater College in Virginia and Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi where I got to do a book signing at the world-famous Square Books.
Along the way, I accepted an award for Excellence in Science Journalism from The Society for Personality and Social Psychology, spoke at NASA, the Rotman School of Management, the BBC, and the US Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, traveled to northern Ontario to film a segment in a documentary about climate change denial for Take Action Films, opened the Internet Archive’s annual celebration, contracted COVID somewhere in Dallas, and delivered keynotes at some giant conferences like Evanta, TMRE, and DataUniverse. Lots of travel, lots of lectures, and lots of conversations with incredible people about how minds do (and do not) change and how (and how not) to change people’s minds.
Most overwhelming of all these trips was my visit to University of Wisconsin-Madison where I was honored as their 2023 “Go Big Read” author. They handed out more than 10,000 copies and held events at the city’s libraries before I visited campus as part of an overwhelming How Minds Change celebration that included a lecture, a powerful on-stage conversation with the brilliant Chancellor Mnookin, a roundtable with the UW-Madison Psychology Department, a workshop with the honors college, and a wonderful book-signing reception with food and drinks and many astonishing humans.
Some pics from all these trips:
Some incredible humans:
Before the in-person, by-airplanes tour, I ventured on a podcast promo gauntlet and appeared on more than 60 shows. Lots and lots of great interviews on great episodes, here are a few:
And during all that, How Minds Change was chosen as the 2022 Porchlight Marketing and Sales Book of the Year and an Editor’s Pick by Amazon. It became a finalist for The Next Big Idea Club, was named one of the best health and self-help books of the year by the Washington Post, and was featured in Wired Magazine to help explain why we couldn’t agree on the true color of The Dress and how that helps us understand disagreement in general. Marketing, Self-Help, and a salve for internet argumentation – this is why you might have to ask which shelf they’ve put it on in your local bookstore.
And before all that, How Minds Change received some fantastic blurbs:
And as this all unfolded, I kept receiving wonderful pics from fans and supporters (please send more):
Also, several books came out around the same time as mine with similar themes.
There seems to be a movement afoot, a new wave of nonfiction about how to have better conversations and reduce all this argumentative madness and epistemic chaos.
I really wanted to boost everyone's signal, so I thought it would be nice to collaborate instead of compete, since that's part of what we are all proselytizing with these books.
So, on my own podcast, You Are Not So Smart, I invited authors of similar books to take part in a series about how to have difficult conversations with people who see the world differently, how to have better debates about contentious issues, and how to ethically and scientifically persuade one another about things that matter - in short, a series about how minds change.
Here are those episodes:
What’s next? I’m headed to some state houses in Michigan, New Hampshire, and Ontario to give lectures and teach workshops aimed at reducing polarization in government. I get the feeling that’s where How Minds Change is headed, thanks in part to former president Bill Clinton holding up a copy of the book during a recent fireside chat at PCMA (a conference for conference organizers) and urging the audience to read it.
I also became the Vice President and Director for The School of Thought, joined as an ambassador at The Alliance for Decision Education, partnered with Braver Angels, and became an advisor for The Society Library. Each is devoted to the major themes that run throughout my work – intellectual humility, critical thinking, and media literacy – so I expect to be doing a tremendous amount of consulting and outreach through those organizations in the coming months.
Ok, whew, that’s a lot.
Once again, here’s the link to the Kindle Daily Deal, and I leave you with this amazing moment at NASA’s Goddard Space Center where I got a chance to experience their centrifugal whispering gallery: