Wagner Dodge creates an escape fire at Mann Gulch by burning grass ahead of the blaze to deprive it of fuel.

Grant introduces preacher, prosecutor, and politician as three modes of thinking that prevent people from rethinking their own ideas.

Grant argues everyone should adopt the mindset of a scientist to stay open to new evidence and update beliefs.

Mike Lazaridis's Blackberry collapses after he refuses to rethink his assumptions about smartphones even as the iPhone rises.

Halla Tómasdóttir nearly refuses to run for Iceland's presidency despite strong qualifications because she doubts her own abilities.

Grant explains confident humility as having confidence in oneself while remaining open to being wrong about one's beliefs.

Tómasdóttir finishes second in Iceland's presidential election, capturing 28% of the vote and handily defeating Oddsson.

Daniel Kahneman tells Grant the secret to enjoying being wrong is refusing to let his beliefs become part of his identity.

The Wright brothers each begin arguing against their own positions on propeller design and together discover the correct solution.

Harish Natarajan defeats the Project Debater AI by finding common ground and openly acknowledging his opponent's strongest points.

Daryl Davis asks a KKK member how he can hate someone he has never met, beginning a years-long friendship.

Arnaud Gagneur uses motivational interviewing to convince vaccine-hesitant Marie-Hélène Étienne-Rousseau to vaccinate her children.

Peter Coleman's lab finds that articles framing gun control as a complex issue lead to 100% consensus between opposing parties.

Grant argues education should prioritize active learning to teach students how to rethink and question, not just absorb facts.

Grant recommends scheduling regular career checkups to avoid identity foreclosure trapping people in the wrong life path.

Grant opens with the Mann Gulch wildfire disaster to demonstrate how an inability to rethink costs lives, then introduces his central framework of preacher, prosecutor, politician, and scientist modes of thinking. Through Mike Lazaridis's Blackberry collapse and Halla Tómasdóttir's surprising Icelandic presidential campaign, Grant shows how confident humility and rethinking shape real-world outcomes. Moving into persuasion, he examines how Harish Natarajan, Daryl Davis, and Arnaud Gagneur each succeed by finding common ground rather than overwhelming others with arguments. At the societal level, Peter Coleman's research reveals that framing controversial issues as complex unlocks consensus where opposition had seemed total. Grant closes by urging readers to apply rethinking directly to their own careers through scheduled life checkups.

The core ideas and landmark examples of Think Again.

The Mann Gulch fire never needed to be fought — a failure to update forestry policy needlessly cost the smokejumpers their lives.

Entrepreneurs trained to think like scientists pivot more often and earn dramatically more revenue than untrained control-group entrepreneurs.

Steve Jobs initially opposes the iPhone but is persuaded when employees frame it as putting a Mac into a phone.

Davíð Oddsson, widely blamed for Iceland's financial collapse, runs for president still convinced he is highly qualified for the role.

Henry Murray's 1959 experiment pairs students with aggressive law students tasked with systematically demolishing their personal philosophies.

The student who reacted most intensely to Murray's experiment later became domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

Jean-Pierre Beugoms correctly predicts Donald Trump will win the 2016 Republican primary while most forecasters dismiss Trump as unserious.

Grant's former student tells him he is a logic bully who overwhelms people with facts rather than genuinely persuading them.

Neil Rackham's study finds expert negotiators seek more common ground and ask far more questions than average negotiators do.

Red Sox and Yankees fan experiments show that reflecting on the arbitrariness of a rivalry opens minds to reconsidering views of rivals.

The KKK member Daryl Davis befriended eventually renounces his beliefs and leaves the organization after years of friendship.

Bill Miller publishes research arguing that substance-abuse patients resist treatment when they feel prosecuted rather than genuinely heard.

Astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowns on a spacewalk because NASA had normalized minor equipment malfunctions and missed warning signs.

Amy Edmonson discovers that psychologically safe hospital teams self-report more errors but actually make far fewer errors overall.

Grant devises a Mean Tweets exercise at the Gates Foundation, having executives read complaints about themselves aloud to their teams.

Grant uses the Mann Gulch tragedy to show that entrenched policy, not just individual stubbornness, can have deadly consequences, before demonstrating through entrepreneur research and Steve Jobs's iPhone conversion that scientific thinking pays off even for skeptics. The Icelandic election deepens Grant's case with Davíð Oddsson serving as a cautionary example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in politics, while Henry Murray's experiment and Ted Kaczynski's story reveal the darkest consequence of tying identity to belief. Grant examines the mechanics of persuasion through Neil Rackham's negotiator study and his own uncomfortable experience being called a logic bully. The pool moves through Daryl Davis's longer arc of KKK conversion, Bill Miller's motivational interviewing origins, and Amy Edmonson's hospital research before closing with Grant's Gates Foundation exercise in humanizing leadership through vulnerability.

Supporting stories and research that build Grant's arguments.

Dodge's crew ignores his calls to enter the escape fire and tries to outrun the blaze; only two of them survive.

Grant reveals that mental fitness requires not just the ability to think and learn, but to rethink and unlearn.

Grant introduces the Dunning-Kruger effect: people weakest in a field are paradoxically most likely to overestimate their abilities in it.

Grant discovers that imposter syndrome may actually motivate high achievers to work harder, ask more questions, and develop better skills.

Phil Tetlock finds that the single best predictor of forecasting accuracy is how frequently a forecaster updates their predictions.

Grant's research reveals that highly creative professionals tend to come from friction-filled homes rather than conflict-free environments.

Brad Bird deliberately recruits Pixar's most disagreeable employees to build a challenge network for The Incredibles.

Project Debater's failure to acknowledge the opponent's strong points reveals that this collaborative technique is rare even across 400 million analyzed articles.

Grant learns from a hostile debate experience that asking what evidence would change a person's mind can shift the entire conversation.

Grant discovers that counterfactual thinking — exploring the origins of beliefs — is more effective than simple exposure in overcoming stereotypes.

Betty Bigombe earns the affectionate title Megu from Ugandan villagers by spending hours listening to concerns rather than preaching.

Grant realizes that simply exposing people to opposing viewpoints is not sufficient to reduce polarization and can actually make it worse.

Grant discovers that top students struggle most with assignments requiring them to challenge conventional wisdom and think against the grain.

Ellen Ochoa shifts NASA's culture after Columbia by placing the burden of proof on those wanting to proceed, not those raising concerns.

Grant's cousin Ryan, a neurosurgeon who chose medicine as a child, admits he would have chosen a different career if given the chance.

Grant opens by isolating the pivotal moment when Dodge's crew chooses to run rather than trust the escape fire, then reframes the entire prologue by revealing that mental fitness — not just intelligence — is what separates those who survive a challenge from those who don't. Through the Dunning-Kruger effect, the hidden upside of imposter syndrome, and Phil Tetlock's forecasting research, Grant establishes that rethinking is a trainable skill with measurable payoffs. Brad Bird's deliberate recruitment of disagreeable thinkers and Project Debater's instructive failure show that challenge and acknowledgment of weakness are sources of strength, not liability. Grant traces how counterfactual thinking and influential listening unlock change in the most resistant minds, from prejudiced baseball fans to Ugandan warlord Kony's lieutenants. The pool closes with revelations about education, NASA's cultural turning point under Ellen Ochoa, and Grant's cousin Ryan, whose lifelong tunnel vision into medicine becomes the book's most personal argument for rethinking.