🎧: Good luck & bad choices w/ Dr. Barry Schwartz

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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

This month a portion of subscriber proceeds will be redistributed to Labor Notes, “a media and organizing project that has been the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back in the labor movement since 1979.”

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