The Decision Corner

The Decision Corner is the podcast of The Decision Lab, which describes itself on air as a socially conscious research firm using behavioral science to improve outcomes for all of society. Its host is Brooke Struck, the firm's research director. The setup is simple. Each conversation pairs the host with a single guest and names the topic at the start: conflict at work, say, or eco-anxiety, or threats to democracy. In this set of episodes, a short clip from the conversation plays before the formal introduction. The range of settings is the main draw. Behavioral science is taken into a quarrel at the office, a fund manager's portfolio, the dread that climate news can bring and the health of democracy. Julia Minson, an associate professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, describes a survey in which people were asked to rewrite a persuasive paragraph to show a willingness to learn. Most kept their arguments intact and added a grudging afterthought admitting they might be wrong about one small piece. The episode's opening line makes a related case: advocacy can wait until understanding is real, and people tend to believe they understand long before they do. The conversation with Julia Galef centers on soldier mindset, which means defending the fortress of one's beliefs. It also notes that the language of argument already sounds like combat, from shooting down ideas to buttressing a case. It gets practical, too, with rationalizing about career choices and, from interviews with managers and CEOs in Silicon Valley, about hiring and firing. Clare Flynn Levy brings a similar question to money. Reviewing every position a fund manager has ever held, rather than one trade at a time, can expose a habit of waiting too long while a price keeps falling. Some of the fixes are plain: a set of questions to answer before adding to or trimming a holding, and caution about exciting small-company stories that feed the fear of missing out. The mood shifts with Britt Wray, author of Generation Dread. That conversation stays with how strange it is to fear a problem one is also contributing to, and with the harder work of holding fear and hope together instead of concluding it is too late. Grace Lordan is founding director of the Inclusion Initiative and an associate professor in behavioral science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her episode covers gendered narratives, such as more women going into nursing and more men leading companies, and the idea of embracing a 'diversity mindset'. Struck's question there is concrete: how to set up an ecosystem that accounts for the kinds of people at the table. David Moscrop, a Washington Post columnist and author of Too Dumb for Democracy, turns to democratic backsliding. He cites Larry Diamond's phrase 'democratic recession' and the realization after 9/11 that democracy was more fragile than the liberal democratic world had assumed. Several of these conversations come back to one question: why people dig in on an argument, a belief or a losing stock. The Minson and Galef episodes ask it most directly, so either is a good first listen. Transcripts are posted on The Decision Lab's website.