Why do we fall for surprise endings? It turns out that our capacity to be easily fooled in books and movies is made possible by a handful of predictable mental shortcuts. In this 2018 conversation, we talk with Vera Tobin, one of the world's first cognitive scientists to study plot twists. She says storytellers have been exploiting narrative twists and turns for millennia — and that studying these sleights of hand can give us a better understanding of the contours of the mind.

Podden och tillhörande omslagsbild på den här sidan tillhör Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam. Innehållet i podden är skapat av Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam och inte av, eller tillsammans med, Poddtoppen.