About

Brain Primer is an independent channel and website about the psychology behind money, power and everyday decisions.

We tell stories, from history, from markets and from ordinary life, and use each one to explain an idea that helps you think more clearly. The name says what we try to be: a primer, a short first lesson that makes the next thing easier to understand. You do not need a background in economics or psychology. You need curiosity, and about ten minutes.

What we cover

• Money & Markets: Why prices, bubbles and your own money decisions behave the way they do.
• Business Collapses: How giant companies fail, and the warning signs nobody wanted to see.
• Scams & Frauds: How the cleverest cons work, and why smart people fall for them.
• Mind Traps: The mental shortcuts and biases that quietly steer your decisions.
• Incentives & Game Theory: Why people do what they are rewarded for, and how rules backfire.
• Mental Models: Simple thinking tools that help you see problems more clearly.

Four languages

Brain Primer has four YouTube channels, one for each language: English, Hindi, Spanish and Portuguese. Each channel chooses its stories for its own viewers, so some stories are told in one language and some in all four. When a story is told in more than one, each language uses examples from its own world where they suit it, such as rupees and the Nifty in Hindi, pesos in Spanish, or reais and the Ibovespa in Portuguese. The facts of the story itself never change.

What we are not

We are not financial advisers, and nothing here is advice to buy or sell anything. We explain how decisions go wrong so that you can make your own with open eyes.

Get in touch

Write to hello@thebrainprimer.com. We read everything.