Choiceology

After learning an outcome, people believe they predicted it all along. Explores hindsight bias — the 'I knew it all along' effect — and how it distorts learning, accountability, and self-assessment.

Explores the psychology of regret — why we regret inactions more than actions in the long run, how counterfactual thinking creates suffering, and how to use anticipated regret as a decision-making tool.

Defaults are the most powerful nudge in behavioral science. Organ donation rates, retirement savings, and privacy settings are all determined more by what happens when people do nothing than by what they actively choose.

Why people donate the same amount to save 2,000 birds as to save 200,000 birds. Explores scope insensitivity — our inability to scale emotional responses proportionally to the magnitude of a problem.

A mental accounting trick that can help maximize joy and minimize pain. Explores how the way we separate life's highs and lows can influence our happiness — distributing small pleasures across time rather than bundling them.

Why having more options can make us less happy and less likely to choose at all. Explores choice overload, satisficing vs. maximizing, and practical strategies for navigating a world of infinite options.

The motivational power of streaks — and what happens when they break. Explores how streaks can be both powerfully motivating and devastatingly demotivating, and strategies for recovering from a broken streak.

Explores our tendency to defer to authority figures even when they're wrong. From Milgram's obedience experiments to modern examples, examines why we follow experts uncritically and how to maintain independent judgment.

Why people evaluate savings and costs as proportions rather than absolute amounts. Explores ratio bias — driving 20 minutes to save $10 on a $20 item but not on a $500 item, even though $10 saved is $10 saved regardless.

Why we fixate on numbers even when words or graphs convey the same information. Explores quantification bias — our tendency to trust and overweight numerical data while discounting qualitative information of equal or greater value.

How framing your life narrative as an epic journey gives you control and meaning. Explores the psychology of narrative identity — why the stories we tell about ourselves shape our resilience, motivation, and sense of purpose.

Can resistance to authority be leveraged for positive change? Explores psychological reactance — our instinct to push back when we feel our freedom is threatened — and how to redirect that energy productively.

How to structure experiences so we remember them more fondly. Research on the peak-end rule and how the final moments of an experience disproportionately shape our memory of the whole thing.

Why tiny gaps near round numbers drive big decisions. Milkman explores why a used car with 99,500 miles sells for dramatically less than one with 100,500 miles — and what this reveals about how our minds process numbers.

Why we prefer simple explanations — and the cost of that preference. Explores our bias toward simplicity in causal reasoning and why the simplest answer isn't always the right one.

When facing losses that aren't yet finalized, people take on more risk than they normally would. Explores how loss aversion and the disposition effect cause investors and everyday decision-makers to hold onto losing positions too long.

Milkman explores why streaks (Duolingo, exercise apps, journaling habits) are so motivating — and why breaking a streak can be devastating enough to make people quit entirely.

How giving advice can benefit the giver as much or more than the receiver. Research shows that the act of advising others activates motivation, crystallizes knowledge, and increases the advisor's own follow-through.

A special episode featuring a video game designed to reduce cognitive biases and a practical checklist for making better decisions. Research shows that structured decision-making processes can permanently reduce common judgment errors.

Why people keep investing time, money, or effort into something even when future benefits no longer justify continuing. Explores the sunk cost fallacy through stories of escalating commitment in business, relationships, and personal projects.

The dark side of social proof. Explores how our tendency to copy others — a normally adaptive heuristic — can lead to herding, information cascades, and collective errors when the crowd is wrong or uninformed.

Milkman revisits her own research on temptation bundling — pairing a guilty pleasure (like binge-watching a show) with a behavior you want to do more (like exercising). Updated evidence on when it works, when it doesn't, and how to design effective bundles.

Moral licensing — how doing something good can give us psychological permission to do something bad. After exercising, people eat more. After buying organic, people are less generous. Explores the hidden costs of virtuous behavior.

Why we systematically misjudge the probability of rare events — both overestimating dramatic risks (plane crashes, shark attacks) and underestimating mundane ones (car accidents, heart disease). The psychology of probability neglect and availability bias.

Why we instinctively infer causation from correlation — and the costly real-world consequences. Explores how spurious correlations fool intuition, why randomized experiments are essential, and practical tests for distinguishing causation from coincidence.

Why humans systematically prefer smaller rewards now over larger rewards later. Milkman uses the marshmallow test, retirement savings data, and climate change inaction to explain present bias.

Milkman introduces temptation bundling — her research showing that pairing an indulgent activity (binge-watching TV) with a virtuous one (exercising) makes both more likely. A behavioral science hack for willpower.

Milkman presents her original research on the 'fresh start effect' — the finding that people are more likely to pursue goals at temporal landmarks like New Year's, birthdays, and Mondays. The psychology of why new beginnings feel motivating.

Milkman explores why people value things they own more than identical things they don't own. The coffee mug experiment, housing bubbles, and why sellers consistently overprice and buyers consistently lowball.

Milkman explores why we seek information that confirms our existing beliefs and dismiss evidence that challenges them. From misdiagnosed patients to failed investments, confirmation bias is the most expensive cognitive error humans make.

The story of Howard Hughes's Spruce Goose — the largest airplane ever built, and a monument to the sunk cost fallacy. Milkman uses the story to explain why we throw good money after bad and how to recognize the trap.