🎧: Good luck & bad choices w/ Dr. Barry Schwartz
🎧: Good luck & bad choices w/ Dr. Barry Schwartz
Appears in this episode
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Hey!
Very excited to welcome the psychologist Dr. Barry Schwartz to the podcast today. I first spoke with Barry for this piece I wrote for the Times (and loved him), and was super grateful when he agreed to speak again for the Maybe Baby podcast. Barry is famous for his research on choice (especially how, at a certain point, freedom of choice increases anxiety), but his work touches so many related topics, like luck, justice, and politics. His most recent research is on how we respond when we believe our choices reflect who we are as people. I write and think about this sort of thing all the time, and was excited to ask him about what he’s found in his research.
In this conversation we touch on: comparison culture on social media, class differences when it comes to choice, the benefits and perils of individualism, political in-fighting, choice feminism (lol), dating and marriage (!), college admissions, and more. And I feel like we could have talked so much longer!
Hope you enjoy,
Haley
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🎧: Good luck & bad choices w/ Dr. Barry Schwartz
Hey! Making my way through this pod slowly but surely. I’ve 100% been eating up all your talk about commitment = community and freedom maybe not being all we pictured. I have LOVED working from home with no kids and no commitments due to the pandemic, total control over my schedule, but recently been feeling that lack of ‘something’ because of it. I read this note on freedom from Fragrance After Rain by Dr. Jaiya John, and it hit me in a way it wouldn’t have before I experienced the ‘no strings attached’ idea of freedom. “Freedom is not doing whatever you want to do. Freedom is existing in a simultaneous condition of not oppressing and not being oppressed.” So to turn that smaller and personal to me, I’ve now been thinking about what from the before times was merely limiting my choice vs what was oppressive. And also where I might have been acting as the oppressor. I’ll try to use this mindset as a guide for engaging again with commitments. Thanks for doing this newsletter/pod!
Finally got around to this ep and I'm definitely glad I kept it in the queue! I've benefitted from so much luck in my life, and i've gotten a peek behind the curtain at these faux elite institutions that get off on exclusivity...grateful for you both shedding light on this.
Sidenote: I followed your rec on Bittman's bread recipe this morning. Even as someone with very little kitchen competence, I managed to not fuck it up! Thanks for sharing.