Sketchplanations
Big Ideas Little Pictures

Sketchplanations in a book! I think you'll love Big Ideas Little Pictures

Sketchplanations podcast photo of Rob Bell, Tom Pellereau and Jono Hey

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Explaining the world one sketch at a time

Sketchplanations makes complex ideas simple with clear, insightful sketches. Explore topics from science, creativity, psychology, and beyond explained in pictures.

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Learn something new in a sketch each Sunday

Recent sketches

What is the Betty Crocker effect explained with an illustration about adding an egg

The Betty Crocker Effect

The Betty Crocker effect refers to how, in the world of instant cake mixes, when something is too easy, it reduces the value. The legend goes that instant cake mixture that just needed water didn't sell nearly as well as when you needed to add an egg. Adding the egg yourself gives investment in the process of making the cake, so we appreciate it more, and the extra effort demonstrates the act of love that is baking a cake. Rather similar is the IKEA effect. As is so often the case, Dan Ariely explains it well. 20mins well spent watching Dan Ariely's TED talk What makes us feel good about our work?. You can jump straight to it around 12mins 50s.
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Sneaky casinos

Of course they’re just businesses like any others. 
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Improve your front crawl

Improve your front crawl

Unfortunately, a site I really respect, Swim Smooth, recommends avoiding glide, though I do think that a good 80% of the swimmers I see could do with extending the reach of and calming down their front crawl stroke at least some. Bottom line: not too much glide and avoid dead spots. Swimming is awesome. It seems so simple, but there’s always so much to learn.  (disclosure: I’m surely an overglider) Also see: Rotate your elbow, not your hand Swimrun
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Cut out some fluff

And spend more time and attention on ‘the point’. </rant>
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Sneaky cognitive biases: hindsight bias, loss aversion, recency bias

Hindsight bias, Loss aversion and Recency bias. Parents in particular frustratingly seem to suffer from hindsight bias where everything becomes blindingly obvious as soon as a child has dropped the glass/fallen over/bumped into someone. Though ‘careful’ is not so useful after the fact.
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