How to Make Your Own Luck (Update)

A series of academic studies suggest that the wealthy are, to put it bluntly, selfish jerks. It’s an easy narrative to embrace — but is it true? As part of GiveDirectly’s “Pods Fight Poverty” campaign, we revisit a 2017 episode. SOURCES:Jim Andreoni, professor of economics at the ...  Show more

All sorts of people have put their mark on Messiah, and it has been a hit for nearly 300 years. How can a single piece of music thrive in so many settings? You could say it’s because Handel really knew how to write a banger. (Part three of “Making Messiah.”) SOURCES:Charles King, ...  Show more

Strategic decision-making approaches to build wisdom in your everyday decisions. Annie Duke is the author of Thinking in Bets - A book full of genius psychology and poker tips to help you build mental models to make better decisions. Annie is a psychologist studying cognitive beh ...  Show more

Former professional poker player Annie Duke wrote a book about Steve’s favorite subject: quitting. They talk about why quitting is so hard, how to do it sooner, and why we feel shame when we do something that’s good for us.

Manipulation tactics that work - Irrational behaviours that don't - Prediction Fallacies we fall for.In this episode, we dive further into our series on cognitive biases and how they cloud our judgment.Studying applied psychology we can learn how we get manipulated by companies a ...  Show more

Also: are the most memorable stories less likely to be true? Stephen Dubner chats with Angela Duckworth in this classic episode from July 2020.