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Can we predict the future more accurately?\n\nIt\u2019s a question we humans have grappled with since the dawn of civilization \u2014 one that has massive implications for how we run our organizations, how we make policy decisions, and how we live our everyday lives.\n\nIt\u2019s also the question that Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-author of \u201cSuperforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction,\u201d has dedicated his career to answering. In 2011, he recruited and trained a team of ordinary citizens to compete in a forecasting tournament sponsored by the U.S. intelligence community. Participants were asked to place numerical probabilities from 0 to 100 percent on questions like \u201cWill North Korea launch a new multistage missile in the next year\u201d and \u201cIs Greece going to leave the eurozone in the next six months?\u201d Tetlock\u2019s group of amateur forecasters would go head-to-head against teams of academics as well as career intelligence analysts, including those from the C.I.A., who had access to classified information that Tetlock\u2019s team didn\u2019t have.\n\nThe results were shocking, even to Tetlock. His team won the competition by such a large margin that the government agency funding the competition decided to kick everyone else out, and just study Tetlock\u2019s forecasters \u2014 the best of whom were dubbed \u201csuperforecasters\u201d \u2014 to see what intelligence experts might learn from them.\n\nSo this conversation is about why some people, like Tetlock\u2019s \u201csuperforecasters,\u201d are so much better at predicting the future than everyone else \u2014 and about the intellectual virtues, habits of mind, and ways of thinking that the rest of us can learn to become better forecasters ourselves. It also explores Tetlock\u2019s famous finding that the average expert is roughly as accurate as \u201ca dart-throwing chimpanzee\u201d at predicting future events, the inverse correlation between a person\u2019s fame and their ability to make accurate predictions, how superforecasters approach real-life questions like whether robots will replace white-collar workers, why government bureaucracies are often resistant to adopt the tools of superforecasting and more.\n\nMentioned:\n\nExpert Political Judgment by Philip E. Tetlock\n\n\u201cWhat do forecasting rationales reveal about thinking patterns of top geopolitical forecasters?\u201d by Christopher W. Karvetski et al.\n\nBook recommendations:\n\nThinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman\n\nEnlightenment Now by Steven Pinker\n\nPerception and Misperception in International Politics by Robert Jervis\n\nThis episode is guest-hosted by Julia Galef, a co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, host of the \u201cRationally Speaking\u201d podcast and author of \u201cThe Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don\u2019t.\u201d You can follow her on Twitter @JuliaGalef. (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra\u2019s parental leave here.)\n\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\n\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\n\n\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rog\xe9 Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Alison Bruzek.