The loss of Daniel Kahneman looms large over the behavioral sciences. The pathbreaking and Nobel-winning psychologist has died at the age of 90. His work deepened our understanding of how the mind works and how people make decisions. In doing so, it transformed the fields of psychology and economics.  His research on biases and heuristics, conducted alongside his close collaborator Amos Tversky, challenged the dominant model of human behavior in economics, one in which people act as rational utility maximizers. Kahneman and Tversky showed that our judgments err in predictable ways (biase ..read more

In the summer of 1966, toward the end of his second year as a staff writer for The New Yorker, John McPhee found himself on his back on a picnic table under an ash tree in his backyard near Princeton, New Jersey. “I lay down on it for nearly two weeks, staring up into branches and leaves, fighting fear and panic,” he recalls in his 2017 book, Draft No. 4. McPhee had already published five long-form articles for The New Yorker and, before that, had spent seven years as an associate editor for Time. He wasn’t, in other words, new to magazine writing, but the article that immobilized him on his ..read more

Recycling captures less than a quarter of waste in the United States. Take plastics, a particularly pernicious waste material: every year, some 400 million metric tons of plastic are produced worldwide, more than the weight of all 8 billion humans combined. Less than 10 percent, by some estimates, of that plastic gets recycled. Instead, it ends up polluting far and wide, from the natural environment to our bodies (some evidence even suggests it can permeate the blood–brain barrier). The waste predicament in the U.S. grows bigger with each passing year, despite Americans’ increasing concerns a ..read more

Diagnosing what ails struggling companies, choosing the "least crappy option", and managing constant stress with Jeff Vogelsang, a turnaround consultant. What kind of personality do you need to lead turnarounds? And what does it mean to make someone "available to industry”? [buzzsprout episode='14607928' player='true'] View the episode transcript About What It's Like to Be... In each episode of What It's Like to Be..., bestselling author Dan Heath speaks with someone about what it's like to walk in their (work) shoes. Behavioral Scientist serves as a distribution partner with episo ..read more

“Why people ‘click’ with some people, but not others, is one of the great unsolved mysteries of science,” neuroscientist Thalia Wheatley and her colleagues wrote in the journal Social and Personality Psychology Compass. When we align with someone through conversation, they explained, it feels wonderful, in part because our brains have evolved to crave these kinds of connections. The desire to connect has pushed people to form communities, protect their offspring, seek out new friends and alliances. It’s one reason why our species has survived. “Human beings have the rare capacity,” they wrote ..read more

My partner, E., is responsible for taking the trash out to the curb on Sunday evenings. But on a recent Monday as I was sitting down to work, I noticed that the garbage bin next to my desk hadn’t yet been emptied. I spent a good five minutes dithering over what to do next. My thoughts went something like this: If I remind him to do it, he might expect me to remind him in the future. And if he expects a reminder, then I’ll have to add “trash day” to the long list of tasks already swimming through my brain and crowding out more important stuff. Then again, if I forgot, I’d probably appreciate a ..read more

Caring for patients with serious burns, making sure the correct leg gets operated on, and working 24 hours straight with Teresa Shuster, a nurse in Florida. How did a patient change the trajectory of her career? And what's a "Code Brown"? [buzzsprout episode='14562659' player='true'] View the episode transcript About What It's Like to Be... In each episode of What It's Like to Be..., bestselling author Dan Heath speaks with someone about what it's like to walk in their (work) shoes. Behavioral Scientist serves as a distribution partner with episodes released every other week. Learn ..read more

One day in late 2021, the MIT economic geographer Amy Glasmeier, who runs a highly influential “living wage calculator,” received an exasperated email from a woman named Mary in New Mexico. Glasmeier’s calculator generates a living wage based on the number of children and working adults in a household, using county- and state-level data on the cost of housing, childcare, transportation, out-of-pocket health care costs, food, and other typical expenses (such as cleaning products). Citing her own life and circumstances, Mary told Glasmeier that her calculations were “wrong, wrong, wrong.” (In e ..read more

In the 1980s, there was a burst of research on how people told stories about emotion; social scientists wanted to understand how people react to common experiences. Their subjects described clammy hands on a first date, clenched jaws during a final exam, road rage while sitting in traffic. From this collection of stories, researchers created a map of sorts—where certain situations and behaviors corresponded to specific emotions (like anger, joy, and sadness). The only problem was that almost all the people surveyed were students from North America and Western Europe. What we knew about the ex ..read more

Crafting jokes that kill, hustling to find gigs, and improvising based on the audience's reaction with Chris Grace, a stand-up comedian. What's the worst he's ever bombed? And what is a "bringer" show? [buzzsprout episode='14464756' player='true'] View the episode transcript About What It's Like to Be... In each episode of What It's Like to Be..., bestselling author Dan Heath speaks with someone about what it's like to walk in their (work) shoes. Behavioral Scientist serves as a distribution partner with episodes released every other week. Learn more about the podcast's missio ..read more