The Decision Education Podcast

What if the biggest parenting mistake is following a script you never consciously chose? Corinne Low, associate professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School, joins host Annie Duke to explore how cultural expectations have turned parenting into an endless series of high-stakes decisions. Together, they unpack the hidden trade-offs behind today's parenting norms, the pressure to optimize every choice, and why the best decisions come from understanding your own values rather than following what’s trending on social media–or everyone else's definition of success.Key takeaways from this episode include why every decision has opportunity costs, how weighing trade-offs leads to better outcomes rather than chasing the "perfect" answer, and why stepping back to question default assumptions is one of the most powerful ways to make better decisions.—--------------------------------------------------------This is The Decision Education Podcast, where we explore the science of decision-making with a diverse range of experts and offer practical strategies to transform our understanding of the role decisions play in our lives.

Can you really put a number on what matters most? Barry Schwartz, emeritus professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and a visiting professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, joins host, Annie Duke, to challenge the idea that good decisions come only from spreadsheets, expected utility, or any framework that assumes one’s values can be weighed on a single scale. Drawing on his new book, Choose Wisely, Barry argues that rational choice theory can sometimes push people to rely on oversimplified frameworks that give us a false sense of certainty, when the real world is actually much messier and uncertain, and the decisions we make are more complex.Key takeaways from this episode include why understanding what matters most to you in a situation is the first step to making better decisions, how choosing from a large set of options reveals more about your values than choosing from a small set, and why luck and the quality of your decisions are the true determiners of how your life turns out.—--------------------------------------------------------This is The Decision Education Podcast, where we explore the science of decision-making with a diverse range of experts and offer practical strategies to transform our understanding of the role decisions play in our lives.

What if the same mindset that built a billion-dollar trading firm could change the way women relate to money, risk, and power? Jenny Just, co-founder of PEAK6 and founder of Poker Power, joins host, Annie Duke, to explore how a career built on options trading taught her that you don't have to win every time to have a winning strategy.Jenny reflects on the experiences that shaped her approach to risk, from building one of the world's most successful trading firms to learning how luck and skill interact in every important decision. She and Annie discuss why the best decision makers embrace a range of possible outcomes, how fear can be reframed into curiosity, why waiting for certainty is often the riskiest choice, and what poker teaches us about thinking strategically under uncertainty.Key takeaways from this episode include why good decisions can still produce bad outcomes, how practicing decisions builds better judgment, why understanding risk is more important than avoiding it, and how teaching decision-making through games like poker can help people, especially women, become more comfortable making high-stakes decisions in work, money, and life.—--------------------------------------------------------This is The Decision Education Podcast, where we explore the science of decision-making with a diverse range of experts and offer practical strategies to transform our understanding of the role decisions play in our lives.

Season 7 of The Decision Education Podcast unveils decision-making tips from experts in AI, risk, entrepreneurship, and the military. Host, Annie Duke, engages our guests in interesting discussions, in which they unpack their decision toolkits and share how the world might look different if we practiced decision-making skills from a younger age.

Why do we crave explanations—and what happens when they lead us astray? In this episode, our host, Annie Duke, sits down with cognitive scientist Tania Lombrozo to explore the psychology of “why.” From puzzling over everyday baking mishaps to big-picture questions about conspiracy theories, Tania unpacks how our drive to explain shapes what we believe, how we learn, and the choices we make. Together, Annie and Tania dive into strategies for better reasoning—like probabilistic thinking, generating alternative explanations, and shifting from “could it be true?” to “must it be true?”Key takeaways include why teaching is one of the most powerful learning tools, how to avoid the trap of “satisfying over correct” explanations, and what conspiracy thinking reveals about our deep discomfort with randomness.—--------------------------------------------------------This is The Decision Education Podcast, where we explore the science of decision-making with a diverse range of experts and offer practical strategies to transform our understanding of the role decisions play in our lives.