How to bring more play into your life

Summary

Life Kit (NPR): How to Bring More Play Into Your Life

Host: Marielle Segarra
Guests: Jeff Harry (play coach), Dr. Stuart Brown (physician, play researcher), Whitney Bay (comedian)
Date: May 25, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores why play is essential not just for kids, but for adults too—offering practical advice on how to rediscover playfulness and design play into your daily routine. Host Marielle Segarra speaks with play experts and shares personal stories on how to tune into your "play personality," quiet your inner critic, and find small but powerful moments for joy.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Nature and Importance of Play (00:31–04:16; 05:33–07:03)

• Childhood Play Memories:
  Whitney Bay recalls imaginative play growing up—"climbing trees," "making mud pies," and reenacting the 1996 Olympics with friends. Play was boundless and creative.

  "We'd set up, like, this little bench, and I'd run and I'd, like, jump over it. Like it's a vault and it's literally just like a sitting bench. So just, like, use our imagination."
  — Whitney Bay (01:17)

• Defining Play:
  Jeff Harry describes play as immersive joy:

  "Any joyful act where you forget about time. It's where you're, like, fully immersed in the moment. It's when you're your you-est you."
  — Jeff Harry (01:43)

• Why Play Matters:
  Play is fundamental for humans and all animals. Citing animal research (especially in rats), Dr. Stuart Brown explains:

  "The play deficient rats have the inability to socialize as well as those who have played, so that play itself is seen as a necessity for rat health and rat pack socialization."
  — Dr. Stuart Brown (06:43)

2. How to Rediscover Play as an Adult (07:03–13:16)

• Challenges in Adulthood:
  Whitney describes conforming in a serious work environment and feeling like she was "losing herself."

  "Like, don't be so funny. Goofy. Like, this is a serious workplace. Be more serious."
  — Whitney Bay (07:35)

• Listen to Your Inner Child:
  Jeff Harry encourages reconnecting with what made you happy as a child:

  "There is an aspect of you that knows what you want, that has always known what you want. Your kid self knows what makes you happy."
  — Jeff Harry (08:08)

  Takeaway 1: Reflect on your favorite forms of play as a kid—are you a builder, storyteller, director, joker, artist, or kinesthete? See Dr. Brown’s play personalities framework.

  "It's a clustering of what really gives you a sense of joy and engagement and sustained motivation."
  — Dr. Stuart Brown (09:19)

• Follow the Whispers:
  Give yourself bored downtime; your inner child will suggest new ideas.

  "When you get bored, all of a sudden that inner child starts to whisper all these nerve sided ideas, these ideas that make you nervous..."
  — Jeff Harry (11:14)

• Small Acts of Playful Choice:
  Marielle shares how choosing to buy a coconut at an event became an act of joy and a social icebreaker.

  "What you did in the moment, you're like, what will bring me joy right now? And you just walked on over to that."
  — Jeff Harry (12:47)

3. Overcoming Obstacles to Play (15:27–17:38)

• Confront Your Inner Critic:
  Jeff Harry advises naming and challenging the negative voice:

  "Does it sound like that bully from third grade? Like, who's that inner critic? So get a visual and then name it... And literally when Gargamel shows up, I write down what it's saying."
  — Jeff Harry (16:04)

  Write down the inner critic's insults, cross them out, and replace with affirming opposites (“You are enough,” “You’re already successful”).

• Freedom and Play:
  Dr. Brown highlights the link between freedom and play:

  "Was there a moment, was there a circumstance, was there a situation that allowed you to really feel like you were yourself whether you were 4 years old or 40?"
  — Dr. Stuart Brown (17:15)

  Avoid attaching outcomes solely to achievement—find value in the experience of play itself.

4. Making Time for Play (18:48–20:59)

• Finding Moments of Play:
  Whitney describes a quick and fun family game at dinner—each person adds to an imaginary story. Lasting only 10 minutes, it created a long-term happy memory.

  "It was only like 10 minutes and our food came out, and that was the end of that. But to this day, we still talk about that."
  — Whitney Bay (19:47)

• Micro-Moments:
  Marielle and Dr. Brown stress the value of tiny bits of playful behavior—petting a puppy, picking up a pine cone, watching nature.

  "That little bird is really glad to be alive. Okay, so am I. I'm an old guy, but I'm still glad to be alive."
  — Dr. Stuart Brown (20:19)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Defining Play:

  "It's when you're your you-est you."
  — Jeff Harry (01:43)

• Rediscovering Yourself:

  "I feel like I'm losing myself."
  — Whitney Bay (08:04)

• Inner Critic Exercise:

  "Mine is Gargamel from Smurfs. Gargamel would always love to suck all the joy and play out of everything, right?"
  — Jeff Harry (16:04)

• Serendipitous Play:

  "I was like, we got the beets. And I was alone in my life. But I was like, we got the beats."
  — Marielle Segarra (22:27)

• Magic of Play:

  "That's part of the magic of play itself. All of a sudden you feel better."
  — Dr. Stuart Brown (22:32)

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Play Memories & Definitions: 00:31–02:29
• Why Play Matters: 05:33–07:03
• Play Personalities & Inner Child: 08:04–09:41
• Practical Play Stories (Whitney & Marielle): 11:31–13:16
• Overcoming the Inner Critic: 15:27–16:47
• Freedom & Play: 17:15–17:51
• Making Time for Play (Family Game): 19:09–19:59
• Moments of Joy (Bird Story): 20:19–20:59

---

Recap & Practical Tips

• Figure out your play personality—Who were you as a playful child?
• Listen for the whispers—Notice small urges to do enjoyable things.
• Engage your inner critic—Name it, refute its arguments in writing.
• Remember the link between freedom and play—Seek experiences that feel liberating, not just productive.
• Find meaningful micro-moments—Let short, simple acts of playfulness brighten your day.

---

Tone & Final Takeaway

Friendly, supportive, and deeply practical, this episode reminds listeners that play is an antidote to stress, a source of connection, and a path to being fully alive—as long as we let ourselves embrace it, even (and especially) as adults.

"That's part of the magic of play itself. All of a sudden you feel better."
— Dr. Stuart Brown (22:32)

Transcript

[Charles Schwab Announcer]

This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] podcast support for NPR comes from TaskRabbit, your trusted partner for home projects. TaskRabbit connects you with skilled local taskers for furniture assembly, mounting, and repairs. You can browse profiles and book help [e-mail] or on the TaskRabbit app.

[Mariel Segarra]

You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Marielle. When Whitney Bay was growing up in Illinois and her mom would tell her, go outside and play, she knew what that meant.

[Whitney Bay]

Play for us was going outside, climbing trees. It was making mud pies. It was. We used to, like, reenact lot of, like, current events, like The Olympics. The 1996 Olympics.

[Mariel Segarra]

I believe the 1996 Olympics were an iconic moment for young girls. The Dream Team for us was made up of gymnasts. Dominique Mocciano, Carrie Strug. We little ones were obsessed.

[Whitney Bay]

We'd set up, like, this little bench, and I'd run and I'd, like, jump over it. Like it's a vault and it's literally just like a sitting bench. So just, like, use our imagination. And it was fun. It really felt. I mean, of course, it wasn't real, but it just, it felt like I was somebody.

[Mariel Segarra]

Like a lot of kids. Whitney was fluent in play. You probably have an idea of what play is, but here's a definition I think really rings true.

[Jeff Harry]

I define play as any joyful act where you forget about time. It's where you're, like, fully immersed in the moment. It's when you're your you est you.

[Mariel Segarra]

That's Jeff Harry. He's a play coach. Companies hire him to get their employees to play more.

[Jeff Harry]

I like to say I make work suck less because work sucks right now and it really doesn't have to.

[Mariel Segarra]

And he says play looks different depending on who you are. It could be white water rafting or pickleball. It could be making a podcast. It could be cooking. As adults, we often stop playing. Sometimes we even forget how to do it. Dr. Stuart Brown, a play researcher and physician, psychiatrist by training, says that is a problem because play is a central part of our existence.

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

It's as basic as sleep and nutrition. It just doesn't necessarily produce the same outcome as hunger or fatigue. But the need to play is there in all of us, and we all have deficits when we don't experience it sufficiently.

[Mariel Segarra]

On this episode of Life Kit, why we should Play as Adults and how to do it. We'll help you figure out what feels like play to you using the concept of play personalities and how to work it into your life even if you don't have a lot of free time.

[Charles Schwab Announcer]

This message comes from Saatva how you sleep shapes how you live. Restorative sleep can sharpen, focus, stabilize mood and support long term health. Voted Best Luxury Mattress by Sleep Foundation, Saatva's handcrafted luxury mattresses are designed to help people sleep more deeply and recover more fully at prices below traditional retail. Save up to $625 this Memorial Day at saatva.com NPR this message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast Choiceology, hosted by Katie Milkman, an award winning behavioral scientist and author of the best selling book how to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, historians, authors, athletes and more about why people do the things they do. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] podcast or wherever you listen.

[Sponsor Announcer]

This message comes from American Home Shield An AHS home warranty helps protect your major home systems and appliances, whether they're brand new or part of your home's history. A home warranty is different than homeowner's insurance, which covers things that might happen like fire, theft or storm damage. A home warranty covers what will happen like normal wear and tear on the items you use every day, like your oven, fridge, AC and plumbing. American Home Shield will fix a covered item when it breaks down and if they can't repair it, they'll replace it. American Home Shield don't worry. Be warranty get 20% off all [e-mail] NPR and see promo details. See AHS.com contracts for coverage details, including service fees, limitations and exclusions. This message comes from Northwestern Mutual. One of the biggest life hacks people miss is putting off working with a financial professional. Northwestern Mutual will match you with a financial professional to build a plan based on what's important to you, finding new opportunities to help grow your wealth and protect what you've worked so hard for. Find a better way to [e-mail] the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company.

[Mariel Segarra]

Before we get into the how of play, let's talk about the why. First off, you should know that humans are not the only animals that play. Obviously, domesticated animals like dogs and cats do it, but so do bears and leopards and Bison and ravens and dolphins, and the list goes on. And from an evolutionary perspective, play might not make sense at first. It often seems to have no purpose, and it can come at a cost. You know, it uses up energy and it can even be dangerous. But animal play scholars and biologists argue that play does serve a number of purposes, that it can help us adapt to difficult circumstances, to practice skills that we need to survive, to problem solve, and to collaborate. Stuart Brown, whose voice you heard just before the break, says there's a lot of research on how animals play and also on how humans play when we're kids. But there aren't as many studies on play in adult humans. For now, at least, we. We have learned a lot, though, from watching other social animals. For example, there's research on rats, who are highly playful creatures. The researcher prevented them from playing and then after watched them run a maze and also socialize with other rats.

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

The play deficient rats have the inability to socialize as well as those who have played, so that play itself is seen as a necessity for rat health and rat pack socialization.

[Mariel Segarra]

He says the same seems to be true for humans and other social animals. As you can see, there are a lot of reasons you might want to incorporate more play into your life also. Come on. Feels good, right? So let's move on to the how portion of this episode and get back to Whitney Bay, our make believe Olympic gymnast classic story. She grew up and she learned from the world that her playfulness was inappropriate. Whitney studied engineering in college, and when she graduated, she went to work for an engineering firm in Seoul.

[Whitney Bay]

They were like, kind of pushing me. Hey, you need to be more serious. Like, don't be so funny. Goofy. Like, this is a serious workplace. Be more serious.

[Mariel Segarra]

So you would get that feedback, like

[Whitney Bay]

at the office all the time, every day. My boss would be like, you're laughing too loud. And I was like, it's funny. I can't help it. Or they'd be like, oh, your clothes are too bright. You know, these kinds of things. And I was like, I feel like I'm losing myself.

[Mariel Segarra]

Whitney's talking about a concept that psychologists call the inner child.

[Jeff Harry]

There is an aspect of you that knows what you want, that has always known what you want. Your. Your kid self knows what makes you happy. Your kid self knows what makes you fulfilled and satisfied.

[Mariel Segarra]

So, takeaway 1. Figure out your play style by getting in touch with your inner child. Let's start with a question that Jeff shared. What were your favorite ways to play as a kid? Were you super into Legos or erector sets. Finger painting, make believe, catching fireflies, seeing how far you could catapult yourself off the swing set. For me, it was Barbies. Hello, Barbie. Let's go for a drive. I love to dress them up in the coolest fashions and also create storylines for them. They'd be in love triangles filled with passion and betrayal. Tonight's the school dance. Gotta look great. Okay, so then you're gonna think about what kind of play that is, what's at the center of it. One framework that can help you is called play personalities. Stuart Brown lays these out in his book. In his decades as a psychiatrist, he would ask patients about their early experiences with play. He and his colleagues would review the notes, and they noticed some archetypes.

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

So that there is a kind of a play fingerprint that I would call the play personality that emerges. It's not scientific. This is not something that we're measuring with a series of neurotransmitters. But it's a clustering of what really gives you a sense of joy and engagement and sustained motivation.

[Mariel Segarra]

Here are a few examples, and you can be more than one of these. There's the joker who loves to laugh and make other people laugh, whether that's through practical jokes, wordplay, physical comedy. There's the artist creator. The point for this person is to make something. Could be something beautiful, something functional, something goofy. As Barbie's personal stylist, my inner child definitely fell into this category. You've got the kinesthete who finds joy in movement. You know, swimming, running, stretching. You've got the director. They love to call the shots, to plan the parties.

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

One of the people that we picked out that's a celebrity director is Oprah.

[Mariel Segarra]

Also the storyteller. Hi. Hello. Those relational dramas between my Barbies, Classic storyteller behavior. Once you have a sense of your play personality as a kid, you can start to think of ways you might like to play. Now, for my artist creator side, I put together a gallery wall of art behind my couch. For the storyteller, I watch shows with storylines filled with love and betrayal, like Grey's Anatomy. Another way to find out what kind of play is for you is to listen to the whispers. And this is takeaway two. Jeff. Harry says, think for a moment about what we started doing when we were stuck at home during the pandemic with nothing to do. We picked up hobbies. Baking sourdough bread, doing embroidery, woodworking. And that was in part because we were bored. His challenge for you, for five or ten minutes A day, put down your phone and your laptop and do nothing.

[Jeff Harry]

When you get bored, all of a sudden that inner child starts to whisper all these nerve sided ideas, these ideas that make you nervous and you know, ideas like, hey, you know, why don't you start writing that book or that blog post, why don't you make a video on TikTok?

[Mariel Segarra]

Whitney heard the whispers when she was working at that engineering job in Seoul. They were telling her to travel and to start her own YouTube channel.

[Whitney Bay]

Hey everyone, it's me, Whitney.

[Mariel Segarra]

Hi, everyone. Good morning. Good morning.

[Whitney Bay]

And those videos got a lot of good feedback and so I just like kept going off to the next adventure.

[Mariel Segarra]

She started doing improv in Korea and then in 2019 she moved to New York to pursue a career in comedy. And she loves it.

[Whitney Bay]

So like, I'm on the stage and someone sets me up to be a rat that can do karate. So I'm on the stage and I'm doing karate as a rat. Just like very imaginative. Just things I would probably never really do on my own. So yeah, I find like now I go in these wacky worlds and I just follow the fun.

[Mariel Segarra]

Sometimes smaller, less world shifting opportunities for play will present themselves. I was at this event one time and I was deciding what to do. Did I want to drink? Did I want to go to another panel? Was I ready to leave? And then I saw that someone was selling coconuts. They'd chop off the top and stick a straw in. And I was like, that, that's what I want. So I got one. I told Jeff this story.

[Jeff Harry]

I love that story so much. Because what you did in the moment, you're like, what will bring me joy right now? And you just walked on over to that.

[Mariel Segarra]

But then I'm walking around happy as a coconut and people started talking to me. One woman with the cool silver boots complimented my drink. We chatted and exchanged info and she even held my coconut when I went to the bathroom. And that's the thing, doing what's calling you in a given moment can lead to connection because people think, ooh, she looks so happy.

[Jeff Harry]

I want to be around that type of energy.

[Mariel Segarra]

So the advice here, do the things that you find interesting and watch what adventure shows up. We'll have more life kit after the break.

[Charles Schwab Announcer]

This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] podcast.

[Sponsor Announcer]

This message comes from American Home Shield, an AHS home warranty helps protect your major systems and appliances, no matter how old. Do you have an unreliable AC or a leaky water heater? AHS understands the headache and financial burden of surprise breakdowns. With an AHS home warranty, they'll fix a covered item when it breaks, and if they can't repair it, they'll replace it. Plus, as a benefit to select plans, you can even video chat with a repair expert to help troubleshoot home hassles over the phone. American Home Shield don't worry, be warranty. Get 20% off all [e-mail] NPR and see promo details. See AHS.com contracts for coverage details and including service fees, limitations and exclusions this message comes from Northwestern Mutual One of the biggest life hacks people miss is putting off working with a financial professional. Northwestern Mutual will match you with a financial professional to build a plan based on what's important to you, finding new opportunities to help grow your wealth and protect what you've worked so hard for. Find a better way to [e-mail] the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company. This message comes from Dell. Dell PCs with Intel inside are built for the moments that matter, like a big project that can't be interrupted by an update with long lasting battery life. You can stay focused on what matters built for you. Dell.comdellpcs okay, so we're listening to our inner child.

[Mariel Segarra]

We're following the whispers. We're starting to play. At this point we may hear from our inner critic. Takeaway 3 Talk to it Jeff Harry says your inner critic is that voice inside you telling you why you shouldn't do that thing and saying that you look ridiculous when you play.

[Jeff Harry]

You're like feeling crappy or binge watching Netflix. You got popcorn like just dribbling down and you're just like, oh, I'm the worst person in the world. And then you were like, oh my goodness, there's my inner critic.

[Mariel Segarra]

One exercise that can help write down what your inner critic is saying or visualize what it looks like and sounds like.

[Jeff Harry]

Does it sound like that bully from third grade? Like, who's that inner critic? So get a visual and then name it, you know. And mine is Gargamel from Smurfs. Gargamel would always love to suck all the joy and play out of everything, right? And literally when Gargamel shows up, I write down what it's saying.

[Mariel Segarra]

And then once you write the insults down, cross them out and write the opposite.

[Jeff Harry]

So it's like I'm never going to be enough. And then I write, you are going to be enough. Oh, I'm never going to be successful. Actually, you're already successful, and you're going to even be more successful. And you cross those out and put the positive of that, and you start reading those back to yourself. And this is a positive psychology technique. It's just pattern recognition in many ways.

[Mariel Segarra]

You can do this. In the middle of play, your inner critic pops up and says, this is such a waste of time. And you're like, okay, thank you, inner critic. I appreciate you, but I'm playing with my inner child right now. And actually this is a great use of my time. Okay, takeaway four. Liberate yourself. Stuart Brown poses a question in his book, when have you felt free to do and be what you choose?

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

Was there a moment, was there a circumstance, was there a situation that allowed you to really feel like you were yourself whether you were 4 years old or 40?

[Mariel Segarra]

Why are we talking about freedom? Because play and freedom are interwoven. When you're doing something simply for the end result, like to achieve, you lose a part of the joy of being alive.

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

It's easy to lose a sense of an experience which is in itself wondrous by demanding that the experience produce outcome.

[Mariel Segarra]

When you're playing and you're not so attached to the outcome, that gives you the freedom to wonder, to be in awe, to learn for the sake of learning. So in addition to that question above about when you felt free, also ask yourself, what stands in the way of you feeling free now? Is your environment unsafe? Is your job constantly in jeopardy? Is your partner always critical of you? That is all legitimate and for many,

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

many people, living in a violent neighborhood, being impoverished, having physical illness, this is not to make life just fun and games and play. It's not. Life is challenging for all of us, but the play nature that we have usually allows us to find within our lives, even in very difficult lives, moments of joyfulness.

[Mariel Segarra]

And that's takeaway. 5. Find your moments. Look, I get it. You may feel like you barely have time in the day to sit down, let alone play. But playtime doesn't have to mean spending hours every day making sandcastles, though I'm kind of into that idea. You can inject play throughout the day. Whitney Bay was at a restaurant with her parents this one time.

[Whitney Bay]

And my rule is, at a restaurant, everybody puts away their phones.

[Mariel Segarra]

She taught them how to play this game where the first person says who they are, the second person says where they are, and the third person says what they're doing.

[Whitney Bay]

Like, if I say, oh, we are farmers, then you have to say where we are. And so my mom would be thinking, like, okay, I'm a farmer. Where am I? And just kind of using her imagination, we are farmers and we are at Walmart. You could say anything.

[Mariel Segarra]

And then maybe the third person is like, okay, we're farmers at Walmart and we are shopping for bikinis. And you do a little scene.

[Whitney Bay]

I could be like, hey, Farmer Joe, that's a nice hot pink bikini you got on.

[Mariel Segarra]

And so on.

[Whitney Bay]

It was only like 10 minutes and our food came out, and that was the end of that. But to this day, we still talk about that. We're like, well, remember when my dad did this and my mom did that? Like, we still talk about that fun moment that we had.

[Mariel Segarra]

You can also find moments of play by just letting yourself be playful, even for 30 seconds. Pet A puppy on the street with permission. Pick up a pine cone at the park and ask your friend to name it. Watch people flirting on your subway car. Stewart said that on the morning of our interview, he walked out of his house to get his copy of the New York Times.

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

And there on the step in front of me was a little Oregon junco. And that little Oregon junco was looking up at me and jumping up and down and jumping up and down. And I thought, that little bird is really glad to be alive. Okay, so am I. I'm an old guy, but I'm still glad to be alive. So I got from the immediate surroundings a sense from nature that, you know, at least that moment was a joyful one.

[Mariel Segarra]

Okay, it's time for a recap. Figure out your play style or personality. You can start by asking, how did I like to play as a kid and how can I incorporate that form of play into my life now? Also, follow the whispers. Whether you're at a job you hate or at an event, unsure of what to do next. Let's listen to that voice that's saying, go get a coconut. Engage with your inner critic. Give it a name. Mine's called Doreen. She is the worst. And when she starts yapping and telling me that I look ridiculous, I tell her she's wrong. Think about what makes you feel free. And by that, we mean think of a time when you felt free to do and be as you choose. What stands in the way of that? Now, lastly, find moments of play whenever you can. I. Sorry, I was just thinking of something else silly that I did this morning, but it's too silly to tell you Good for you.

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

Well, don't, don't. Don't hesitate to share it.

[Mariel Segarra]

Okay. So, like, I. I don't know if you'll know this song. I think it's like a song from the 80s, but it's like we got the be. You know that one?

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

No, I don't, but. Couple of generations older than you.

[Mariel Segarra]

I got food groceries delivered and I got beets. And so as soon I took out the bag of beets, I just started singing we got the beets. And I was alone in my life.

[Whitney Bay]

Good for you.

[Mariel Segarra]

But I was like, I was like, we got the beats.

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

Well, you felt better when you sung it while you were singing it.

[Mariel Segarra]

I really see that.

[Dr. Stuart Brown]

That's. That's part of the magic of play itself. All of a sudden you feel better. Why. Why does play do that? Why do we have that in us? And, and since it's in us, why don't we use it more?

[Mariel Segarra]

Good question. Hey, by the way, did you know that Life Kit has its own newsletter? We sure do, and I think you're going to like it. We have so many smart, supportive listeners that send us amazing tips of their own, and those are often featured in the newsletter. So if you want to be part of that community, [e-mail] LifeKitnewsletter this episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our digital editor is Malika Garib, and our visuals editor is CJ Ricolon. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Claire Marie Schneider, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Simon Laszlo Jansen. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.

[Charles Schwab Announcer]

This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] podcast

[Sponsor Announcer]

this message comes from Northwestern Mutual. Their financial professionals will build a tailored plan based on your goals, looking out for blind spots and new opportunities. Get [e-mail] the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This message comes from American Home Shield. An AHS home warranty helps protect your major systems and appliances, no matter how old. Do you have an unreliable AC or a leaky water heater? AHS understands the headache and financial burden of surprise breakdowns. With an AHS home warranty, they'll fix a covered item when it breaks, and if they can't repair it, they'll replace it. Plus, as a benefit to select plans, you can even video chat with a repair expert to help troubleshoot home hassles over the phone. American Home Shield don't worry, be warranty. Get 20% off all [e-mail] NPR and see promo details. See ahs.com contracts for coverage details, including service fees, limitations and exclusions.