Choice

Summary

Radiolab: "Choice" (November 17, 2008)
Hosted by Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
A detailed summary by podcast timestamp

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Episode Overview

This episode of Radiolab explores the paradoxical relationship humans have with choice: How does having too many options impact our happiness? How do our brains cope with complex decisions? Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, joined by leading psychologists, neuroscientists, and writers, guide listeners through the science of choice—from the overwhelming aisles of a grocery store to the subtleties of gut feelings, rationality, and unconscious biases. They examine the limits and consequences of free will, the ways in which emotions are necessary for decision-making, and how even physical sensations (like a hot cup of coffee) can unconsciously influence our judgments.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Paradox of Choice in Modern Life

Featuring: Barry Schwartz (Swarthmore College psychologist, author of "The Paradox of Choice")

• Scene: Supermarket in Berkeley Bowl, renowned for its enormous produce selection.
• Key Theme: The abundance of choice leads to anxiety and paralysis rather than happiness.
• Notable moment: Schwartz points to how college students, given every opportunity, are paralyzed by options and terrified of making wrong choices that close off other doors.
  • “People don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to choose. They can’t face a world in which everything is available.” — Barry Schwartz (04:00)
• Insight: The ‘disease of modernity’ is an anxiety over making choices—especially for the privileged, which manifests as “choice angst.”

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2. Cognitive Limits and The Magic Number Seven

Guests: Jonah Lehrer (author)

• Psychological Principle: George Miller's 1956 "Magic Number Seven” — humans can hold about 7±2 pieces of information in working memory. (06:01)
  • “The average human could hold about seven digits, plus or minus two, at any given moment in working memory.” — Jonah Lehrer (06:30)
• Implication: Cognitive overload directly hampers our rational decision-making capacity.

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3. The Cake vs. Fruit Experiment: Overloading Reason

Featuring: Baba Shiv, Stanford behavioral psychologist

• Experiment: Subjects trying to keep either a 2-digit or 7-digit number in mind are offered cake or fruit.
  • Those with 2 digits typically chose the healthy fruit; those with 7 digits overwhelmingly chose the cake.
    (08:00–09:40)
• Insight: Slightly overloading the working memory suppresses rational, deliberative brain functions and gives the emotional brain control ("Team Reason is pretty feeble").
  • “Seven numbers is all it takes to screw up reason.” — Jonah Lehrer (11:46)

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4. Regret and Post-Choice Lament

• Anecdote: Jad deliberates endlessly over apples and ends up less satisfied than Robert, who chooses quickly and is happier.
• Point: The more you deliberate, the greater the potential regret.
  “You can only hold so much data at once… so you can fixate on seven apples, but only one piece of information for each apple.” — Jonah Lehrer (14:09)
• Barry Schwartz: The plague of “what could have been” haunts those confronted with too many choices.

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5. Escape from Indecision: Routine and Rule-Making

Featuring: Oliver Sacks, neurologist & author

• Approach: Sacks self-regulates by creating routines (e.g., seven apples a week: one per day) to escape endless decision-making.
  • “If I had 70 apples, I would eat them all.” — Oliver Sacks (16:06)
• Story: Over-ordering kidneys and being unable to waste them, leading to self-inflicted suffering—a metaphor for the potential downside of unbounded choices.

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6. Could We Be Purely Rational Choosers?

Featuring: Dr. Antoine Bechara (USC neurologist), Jonah Lehrer
Case Study: "Elliot"—the Unemotional Accountant

• Details:
  • After the removal of a brain tumor in the orbital frontal cortex, Elliot loses his ability to feel emotions but retains his IQ.
  • Becomes pathologically indecisive, unable to make even minor choices.
  • Neurological tests show an absence of emotional response to disturbing images.
    • “Here was this guy who couldn’t experience emotions, and he was pathologically indecisive.” — Jonah Lehrer (30:04)
• Conclusion: Emotions are essential to navigate and abbreviate choices. Pure logic leads to paralysis and ruin.
  • “Without feeling, you’re stuck.” — Antoine Bechara (30:36)

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7. The Power and Source of Gut Feelings

Featured Story: Steven Johnson (author) recounts a near-accident with a storm window.

• Point: The emotional brain stores pattern snapshots of danger or reward and triggers feelings as summary signals—essential for survival. Gut feelings are our subconscious drawing on all lived experience to guide us when options blur together. (36:04)
• Jad's explanation: "A gut feeling is… a kind of shorthand average of all of this past wisdom.” (37:24)

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8. Loss Aversion — Why Losses Hurt More

Experiment: Mike Pesca surveys people’s willingness to gamble; most refuse unless the potential gain is at least twice the potential loss.
(38:06–39:33)

• Key Fact: Losses loom twice as large as gains; a $2 win is required to risk $1.

  • “Everybody seems to converge around two bucks… loss hurts twice as much as gain feels good.” — Mike Pesca (39:29)

• Application: In casinos, Harrah’s uses ‘loyalty cards’ to track individual pain points and manage loss aversion, rewarding guests just as they’re reaching their own limits to keep them playing. (41:00–44:00)

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9. The Illusion of Conscious Will: Who’s Really Choosing?

Discussion with: Malcolm Gladwell (author, "Blink", "Outliers")

• Poster Study Story: When people must explain their choices, they prefer easy-to-explain, less sophisticated options (cat posters over impressionist art)—and later regret the choice.
  • “The act of making you explain your preferences not only biased you in favor of something that you didn’t actually want, it also made you change your preference…” — Malcolm Gladwell (50:29)
• Capitalism’s Saving Grace: Many of the biggest cultural successes only make it through because someone ignores focus group data and “goes with their gut.” (51:20)
• Priming Experiments:
  • People primed with elderly words ("wrinkle", "Florida") literally walk slower.
  • Thinking of professors improves trivia results; thinking of soccer hooligans worsens them. (53:36–54:12)
• Coffee Temperature Study (John Bargh, Yale):
  • Holding a warm cup of coffee unconsciously makes people rate others as “warmer”; cold coffee does the reverse (56:32–56:42).

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10. Unconscious Bias & The Limits of Self-Knowledge

• Gladwell shares: Even he, though biracial, shows an unconscious preference for whites when taking the IAT (Implicit Association Test), showing how culture programs our subconscious (60:06).
  • “My unconscious is just basically collecting impressions… from the world I live in, amassing this massive database in a very kind of unfiltered way.” — Malcolm Gladwell (60:14)
• Big Question: If so much choice is driven by “mysterious” motivations, priming, and biases, how much control do we really have?
  • “The notion of conscious will is an illusion… we make up stories that make us feel good about the decisions we make, but in fact, we’re not really as nearly as in charge as we think we are.” — Malcolm Gladwell (62:04)

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Notable Quotes

• “People don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to choose. They can’t face a world in which everything is available.” — Barry Schwartz (04:00)
• “Seven numbers is all it takes to screw up reason.” — Jonah Lehrer (11:46)
• “Without feeling, you’re stuck.” — Antoine Bechara (30:36)
• “A gut feeling is… a kind of shorthand average of all of this past wisdom.” — Jad Abumrad (37:24)
• “Loss hurts twice as much as gain feels good.” — Mike Pesca (39:29)
• “The act of making you explain your preferences not only biased you in favor of something that you didn’t actually want, it also made you change your preference…” — Malcolm Gladwell (50:29)
• “My unconscious is just basically collecting impressions and thoughts and biases… amassing this massive database in a very kind of unfiltered way.” — Malcolm Gladwell (60:14)
• “The notion of conscious will is an illusion.” — Malcolm Gladwell (62:04)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:42] Introduction to the problem of choice (Berkeley Bowl scene)
• [03:09] Barry Schwartz on the modern crisis of too much choice
• [06:01] "Magic Number Seven" and cognitive limits
• [08:00] Baba Shiv’s cake vs. fruit memory-load experiment
• [12:16] Apple aisle anecdote: more choice leading to regret
• [15:27] Oliver Sacks on his routines and self-regulation
• [26:06] Case study: Elliot, the emotionless decision maker
• [36:04] Steven Johnson – how brains process feelings and danger
• [38:06] Loss aversion experiment with coin flips
• [41:00] Harrah’s casino: loyalty cards and data-driven loss management
• [48:00] Malcolm Gladwell on the perils of introspection, unconscious influences
• [53:36] Priming experiments (walking speed, trivia performance)
• [56:32] Coffee-temperature “warmth” experiment
• [60:06] Implicit bias and the illusion of conscious will

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

The episode, marked by wit and curiosity, echoes Radiolab’s signature blend of storytelling, science, and sound design. It playfully (but seriously) probes the tenuous line between rational choice and emotional impulse, our powerful urges to avoid regret and loss, and—unsettlingly—the realization that our decisions may be guided more by subconscious scripts than conscious deliberation. The hosts and guests maintain a conversational, often humorous tone, even as they explore some of the most profound, and at times troubling, dimensions of human psychology.

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For further exploration or to listen again, visit Radiolab.org.

Transcript

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[Mike Pesca]

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[Jad Abumrad]

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[Jad Abumrad]

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[Mike Pesca]

Selection varies by location.

[Jad Abumrad]

You're listening to radiolab from public radio, wnyc and npr. Today's show.

[Robert Krulwich]

Have you ever heard of this?

[Jad Abumrad]

Jed is about choice. I don't know what to expect.

[Robert Krulwich]

I believe you're about to see a miracle.

[Jad Abumrad]

And we thought we would start things off in a parking lot in sunny Berkeley, California, with a psychologist.

[Barry Schwartz]

I'm Barry Schwartz. I'm a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, where I have been teaching since 1971, the only job I ever applied for. So I think deep down in my past I appreciated the value of simplifying one's options.

[Jad Abumrad]

He even wrote a book about it called the Paradox of Choice. And to illustrate that paradox, he brought us to. Well, you'll see. Barry, will you give us a visual as to what we're doing?

[Barry Schwartz]

So we're about to walk into Berkeley's very famous Berkeley bowl, which is a supermarket. Very unusual when it comes to fresh fruits and vegetables.

[Alex Honnold]

Wow.

[Barry Schwartz]

It has a selection unlike any I've ever seen in my life.

[Robert Krulwich]

Dad, could you describe your first view of the produce?

[Jad Abumrad]

I see just fields of oranges.

[Barry Schwartz]

So we've got Navel Orange, Valencia Juice Orange Texas Valencia Juice, Orange organic Navel Orange, Miniola, Tangella Daisy Tangerines. We have large Navel Orange Plantain bananas small.

[Robert Krulwich]

Red bananas. Buro saba bananas large.

[Barry Schwartz]

Gaylord. Heirloom Washing.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hawaiian.

[Barry Schwartz]

Plantain, Golden Delicious, Morocco.

[Robert Krulwich]

What are Georgia, Vidalia?

[Barry Schwartz]

We have freedom of choice with respect to everything. Yellow Onion. And you see it in every area of life in romantic relationships. When I was growing up, the answer to the question, should I get married? Was obvious. The answer to the question, when was obvious, which was.

[Jad Abumrad]

Of course.

[Barry Schwartz]

Of course. And as soon as possible. Well, now there are no deforms. Every imaginable lifestyle is available.

[Jad Abumrad]

You can be gay, straight, bi.

[Jed Abumrah]

Exactly.

[Mike Pesca]

Oh, boy, look at this.

[Robert Krulwich]

Seedless grapes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, seedless grapes.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, wait, wait.

[Jad Abumrad]

More apples.

[Barry Schwartz]

The sense that there are a million opportunities for you. You can make your own rules. Just overwhelming.

[Robert Krulwich]

Overwhelming.

[Barry Schwartz]

Counseling centers, psych services centers, and universities are bursting at the seams. Why, these are the most privileged kids ever. The schools are giving them everything they could possibly want, and they're banging down the doors because they're so screwed up. Why? What's going on? An answer is people don't know what to do. They don't know how to choose. They can't face a world in which everything is available. And I see this in the college. It's heartbreaking to see these incredibly talented college seniors, who we have given every opportunity to do whatever they want, terrified at graduation. They know that this is a stage in life where walking through one door means they're going to hear a lot of other doors slam shut. They can't bear the thought that they may walk through the wrong door.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's choice angst.

[Barry Schwartz]

It is. It's the disease of modernity.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is what. Sorry.

[Robert Krulwich]

Sorry. Well, come on. Go ahead and just do the show. But I say, come on in. Reservation?

[Jad Abumrad]

Why?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, because, like, people from Swarthmore College get to pay, like, $45,000 a year for the privilege of, you know, that's a very, very rare slice of America.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, fine. You're right. You're right.

[Robert Krulwich]

Thank you.

[Jad Abumrad]

But come on, you have this, too. I mean, how many speeds on your bike do you really need?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, that's a different thing. I mean, I don't need 22 speeds. I happen to make do with five.

[Jad Abumrad]

There you go. So there are some real questions here. And on this hour, we're going to.

[Robert Krulwich]

Look at choice, choice and decision making. When do we choose?

[Jad Abumrad]

How do we choose? Where do we choose? The limits of choice, of choice, of choose.

[Robert Krulwich]

The limits of choose. On Radio Land, I'm Jed Abumrah. And I'm Robert Krolwit.

[Jad Abumrad]

Stay with us, bitches. Okay, to begin Are you ready?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yep.

[Jad Abumrad]

Let me just ask the basic question, a basic question, which is, okay, so a lot of choice can be bad, but clearly we need some choice. So what's the right amount? Actually, how much can you really handle? I asked that question to Barry Schwartz.

[Barry Schwartz]

Well, there's a classic study in psychology from 50 years ago called the magic number seven.

[Jonah Lehrer]

The magic number seven plus or minus two.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's Joan Allaire, author of the book Proust was a neuroscientist. In a new book called How we decide in the 50s, he says something like 1956, a guy named George Miller wondered about this. How much can the human brain really hold? So he conducted a series of memory tests, asked people to memorize different sets of numbers, letters, musical notes. And what Miller found out is that.

[Jonah Lehrer]

The average human could hold about seven digits, plus or minus two, at any given moment in working memory.

[Jad Abumrad]

When you say working memory, you mean like what we can keep in our top of mind memory. Right? Not like memory memory, but like ram.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Exactly. Random digits. You can hold about seven plus or minus two. And with practice, people can really bump it up a bit.

[Jad Abumrad]

With practice, Robert. With practice.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm still struggling with 6, 6, 6666, 6. And I think to myself, I think I got the first four.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Well, I mean, it's not an accident that so many of these random digits we have to memorize, from phone numbers to Social Security numbers, are 7 plus or minus 2.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now the interesting thing is what happens to our decision making powers when you try and get more than seven in your head.

[Robert Krulwich]

What, you want me to shut the door?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, let me introduce you to someone.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Baba Shiv. I'm a professor here at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in marketing. A lot of my research, it has.

[Jad Abumrad]

To do with the brain and tricking people.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh yeah, absolutely.

[Jad Abumrad]

So, Robert, I want to tell you about one particular experiment that he did.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, so the experiment is pretty straightforward.

[Jad Abumrad]

It goes like this. He got a bunch of subjects together. He said, okay, I'm going to give you all a number. Your number on a little card. You're going to read the number and I want you to commit that number to memory.

[Robert Krulwich]

Take as much time as you want to memorize the number.

[Jad Abumrad]

And then he says, you're now going.

[Robert Krulwich]

To walk to the next room and recall the number. And that's what subjects think, test subjects think that they're going to be doing.

[Jad Abumrad]

So they know they're going to be in one place getting a number, going to reciting that number.

[Jed Abumrah]

That's right.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's all they know.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's all they know.

[Jad Abumrad]

What they don't know is that not everybody is getting the same kind of number.

[Robert Krulwich]

Some people get a seven digit number, some people get a two digit number. That I can do, by the way. I think I can do two digits.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, I doubt it. All the subjects have to do is they've got to memorize a number, walk out of room one, down the hall to room two, then recite their number. Now just imagine you with me.

[Robert Krulwich]

Mm.

[Jad Abumrad]

Person with a two digit number in their head was walking out of room one. One, two is my number. I can definitely remember this. Down the hall, same time, someone with seven digits in their head, 1228936 walks down the hall. Now here is where the trickery comes in. As they're walking down the hall mid memorizing, all of a sudden, excuse me. They pass a lady in the hallway and she's holding something. Sorry to interrupt you, but would you like a snack? Sure. She says, here, have a snack. Just as our way of saying thanks for participating in the study, you can have one of two snacks. You choose. You can choose between either A, a big fat slice of chocolate cake or B, a nice bowl of fruit salad. Meanwhile, they've both got these numbers still in their head. Now here's the weird thing. When they finally make their choice, what would you like some yummy cake or some healthy fruit? The people. This is crazy. The people with two digits in their head, you know, I love cake, but I think I'll take the fruit. Almost always choose the fruit. It's healthy. Whereas the people with seven digits in their head almost always choose the cake. You know, the cake.

[Jed Abumrah]

I want the cake.

[Jad Abumrad]

And we're talking by huge margins here.

[Robert Krulwich]

It was significant. I mean, this was like in some cases a 20, 25, 30 point difference. So what the meaning?

[Jad Abumrad]

If you have seven digits in your head, you are twice as likely to choose cake than fruit. Twice.

[Robert Krulwich]

So let's get on with this. So the people with the seven did just get the cake. I get that part.

[Jad Abumrad]

I don't know why exactly. That doesn't interest you as to why they would choose? Oh, little.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, why?

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, good. Now that I've got your interest, I'll tell you the theory.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay. Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

And this is where it gets interesting. It seems that the brain is anatomically organized into different systems.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Dual systems is what they're called.

[Jad Abumrad]

According to Jonah, you have a rational deliberative, which is sort of more to the front of the brain and then deeper in the brain, you have an emotional unconscious system. And according to Jonah, these two systems are often at war.

[Jonah Lehrer]

I mean, there's constant competition between the rational brain and the emotional brain. They're always competing for attention and to guide and direct your behavior.

[Jad Abumrad]

Especially when you have a tough choice like Baba Shiv's cake versus fruit there, the competition is fierce.

[Robert Krulwich]

The emotional automatic system is pushing them towards the cake.

[Jonah Lehrer]

The emotional brain loves sweet, gooey chocolate cake. That's really what you want me, chocolate.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, on the other hand, the deliberative.

[Robert Krulwich]

System, on the other hand, comes and says, wait a second, are you thinking about this choice carefully? This probably is not good for you because calories, sugar, high fat content, think.

[Jonah Lehrer]

About your waistline, it's going to make you chubby. Think about your cholesterol, it is not.

[Robert Krulwich]

Good for your health, it is not good for your self esteem. And that acts as a check.

[Jad Abumrad]

But if you give that rational deliberative system seven numbers, just seven to memorize.

[Robert Krulwich]

One, two, two, eight, nine, three, six. One, two. No. One, two, two, eight, five, one, two, two.

[Jad Abumrad]

Suddenly, the rational brain has too much to keep track of. It's getting tired. It can't put up as much of.

[Robert Krulwich]

A fight, which means greater likelihood that the emotions will drive their choices.

[Jad Abumrad]

The astounding thing here, says Jonah, is not simply that, you know, sometimes emotion wins over reason, it's how easily it wins. Seven numbers is all it takes to screw up reason.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Just, just, just think about how astonishingly limited that is.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, I mean, compared to emotion, Team Reason is, well, pretty feeble.

[Jonah Lehrer]

And there's no way around it. And we can kind of rage against the machine, but the brute fact is it's just one microchip and a big computer. And when we always rely on it, all the advice you get in decision making is stop and think, slow down, take your time. And yet, when you actually look at the brain, that can lead you to rely on a feeble piece of machinery.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right, let me just offer an admittedly inconsequential case in point. There we were at the Berkeley bowl in the apple aisle. There were thousands and thousands of apples to choose from. Okay, not thousands, but a lot. And Robert and I get in our heads, well, we're gonna choose. Let's each choose an apple. And Robert, yes, being Robert, decides, like.

[Robert Krulwich]

In six seconds because it had this.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really cool name, Washington Pacific Road.

[Barry Schwartz]

Zaz.

[Oliver Sacks]

Zaz.

[Robert Krulwich]

Zaz. I'm gonna get a Zazz.

[Jad Abumrad]

Me. I deliberated. I'm gonna get the. Maybe I should get. Wait, let's Go to the organic. We're running out of time. I lined up about 12 apples, compared them by price, size, color and everything I could think of, and eventually decided on a giant Korean apple pear, which was the only logical choice because it was bigger than his. This is a nine pound apple.

[Barry Schwartz]

Check. It is large.

[Jad Abumrad]

It was more expensive. $2.89. Check. Definitely way more original.

[Robert Krulwich]

It isn't an apple, it's a.

[Jad Abumrad]

And I figure as we're checking out. Paper bag or plastic?

[Robert Krulwich]

Paper, please.

[Jad Abumrad]

Game over. I am the winner. But couple hours later, we get to the airport. We have some time before our flight. I grab a plastic knife, we cut the apples and we do a taste test. Okay, ready?

[Robert Krulwich]

Ready. Here you go.

[Jad Abumrad]

1, 2, 3. And guess whose apple is the best.

[Jonah Lehrer]

I'm guessing the Zazz apple.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, this is a much better apple.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yes.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Oh, so good.

[Jad Abumrad]

The apple wins in almost every. My apple. I don't even want to talk about my apple. This doesn't taste like an apple at all.

[Robert Krulwich]

It has a surprise. Is that a worm? That's a worm.

[Jad Abumrad]

A gigantic core.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is that a core or is that an animal living there?

[Jad Abumrad]

Anyhow, according to Jonah, where I went wrong.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Oh, you just complete. You've short circuited your prefrontal cortex there.

[Jad Abumrad]

The prefrontal cortex is right here in your forehead. And that's where the irrational brain lives. And I just had given it too many things to keep track of.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yeah, all these apples. You can only hold so much data at 1. You know at any given moment. So. So you can fixate on seven apples, but only one piece of information for each apple. How red they are or how shiny they are.

[Jad Abumrad]

So you can't do seven apples with seven variables because then you've got 49. That's way past.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Exactly.

[Jad Abumrad]

But there is a bigger problem than brain fatigue. If you ask Barry Schwartz, and it happens after you choose, you're plagued with.

[Barry Schwartz]

The possibility that you didn't do as well as you could have.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, I'm regret, I'm lamenting what could have been, which I definitely felt at the airport.

[Barry Schwartz]

And chances are you didn't do as well as you could have.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, therein lies the robin of a place like Berkeley Bowl. You get Seduced by an 11 pound apple that turns out to be a fake watermelon with an anus.

[Robert Krulwich]

Alright, so we now understand the problem that Barry proposes. He says that if you have to make a choice, too often the choice is the wrong one because your brain is too full of facts.

[Jad Abumrad]

It hurts your head.

[Robert Krulwich]

It hurts your head. Or because if you make the choice, you think, oh, damn, I should have chosen, otherwise. The regret problem. There are ways to handle this. Our friend Oliver Sacks, Dr. Oliver Sacks, the neuroscientist, is a regular on this program. We were talking, and I told him about this issue, and he said, oh, I don't have the problem. I said, what do you mean, you.

[Jad Abumrad]

Don'T have the problem?

[Robert Krulwich]

He says, well, I make, he says, a willful choice that certain things I care about a lot and I worry over. And then, oh, there's a whole swath of my life that I just.

[Oliver Sacks]

Yes, My housekeeper actually comes tomorrow, and she will get half a gallon of soy milk, half a gallon of prune juice. She will make a gallon or so of orange jello. She will make a large bowl of tabouli. She will get six or seven tins of sardines, because I eat sardines with tabbouleh every evening. She will get seven apples and seven oranges.

[Robert Krulwich]

Seven apples? Why seven apples and seven oranges?

[Oliver Sacks]

Okay. Well, because I'm also very greedy and impulsive, and therefore I have to have a rule that I'm permitted to eat an apple a day and a pear a day. If I had 70 apples, I would eat them all.

[Robert Krulwich]

So you have worked it out so that you are regulating yourself, and somehow your appetite has become regulated in the meantime?

[Oliver Sacks]

Yes. I never get bored with my food.

[Robert Krulwich]

Why not? That seems so boring.

[Oliver Sacks]

Well, I don't find it boring. I enjoy it equally and with equal relish every time.

[Robert Krulwich]

If I were to sit down with you and describe to you a new candy, I don't know, Almond MMs. And I were to do it with all the talent that I could possibly bring to description. So you would see the nice outer candy shell. It would glisten, it would be sugary, it would have this most delicious nut inside. Would you not feel at all tempted to break the habit of yours, whatever suite is, and just venture over to Almond M and M?

[Oliver Sacks]

I would certainly try the Almond M and M. But since you mention it, with chocolate, there is a shop close to me which has broken 72% chocolate. I go there each day. Indeed, I have, as you see with me, a single dollar in my pocket. I put it down and I say, a dollar's worth of 72 every day. Every day, neither more nor less.

[Robert Krulwich]

Can you recall the moment when you somehow leaped from whatever your predecessor chocolate routine was to the 72% cocoa content? Something wonderful must have happened on that day where you got yanked from the deep rut that you Were in into the next deep rut. I'm just curious what happened on the day of change?

[Oliver Sacks]

I don't. I don't clearly recollect, but I can tell you a day of negative change. This again goes back to my carnivorous days when I got a thing about kidneys for some reason.

[Robert Krulwich]

You mean the organ or the pee?

[Oliver Sacks]

No, no, the organ. It was when I was a resident at ucla. And as I now have sardines every time for dinner at that time, living in Topanga Canyon, I would have kidneys. And I would go to the farmer's market and I would buy my weekly kidneys. But on one occasion, a strange mistake happened. Whether I made the mistake or whether I was misheard, instead of my usual 2 pounds of kidneys, I was given 22 pounds of kidneys. And if a mistake is made, I'm too shy to say anything.

[Robert Krulwich]

Aren't you embarrassed to be such a wimp? Both of routine and of shyness? I mean, it's a double. It's a double duty there.

[Oliver Sacks]

Yes, I am. Well, what the hell. Anyhow, with these, I should, of course, have thrown away this monstrous palpitating bag of kidneys. But in the event, I took it back to my little house in Topanga. And then followed an increasingly nightmarish period in which I had kidneys for breakfast, for lunch, kidneys, stewed, sweet kidneys. And finally, after about 10 days, by which time I'd eaten about 50 pounds, an uncontrollable nausea and vomiting took hold of me.

[John Barge]

Literally.

[Robert Krulwich]

Or just the mind.

[Oliver Sacks]

I think it was literally as well, because I remember seeing bits of kidney in the vomit. And I then threw out the rest of the kidneys, and I've never had a kidney since.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oliver Sachs, author of, most recently, the book Musicophilia.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, what did he call us? Kidneys.

[Robert Krulwich]

Just.

[Jad Abumrad]

What is that?

[Robert Krulwich]

That's French for kidney.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, really.

[Jad Abumrad]

No kidding. What's French for let's go to break?

[Robert Krulwich]

Au revoir? Au revoir?

[Jad Abumrad]

No, but that's. That's goodbye for good.

[Robert Krulwich]

Meaning. We'll be right back.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay. Coming up, we have a story you will not believe about what happens behind the scenes at a casino when you are trying not to lose, but nonetheless, you're getting gouged? That's coming up on Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Kulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

Stay with us. Message one.

[Barry Schwartz]

Hi.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Barry Schwartz.

[Barry Schwartz]

Radiolab is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the National Science Foundation.

[Jad Abumrad]

Radiolab is produced by WNYC and distributed.

[Barry Schwartz]

By National Public Radio.

[Robert Krulwich]

Bye.

[Jad Abumrad]

End of message. Radiolab is supported by Bilt. Nobody wants to pay rent, but if you have to, Bilt works to make it more worthwhile. By paying rent through Bilt, you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and more. But it doesn't stop there. You can dine out at your favorite local restaurants and earn additional points, get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios, and enjoy exclusive experiences just for built members. Every month, earn points on rent and around your neighborhood, wherever you call home, by going to joinbilt.com Radiolab that's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com Radiolab.

[Alex Honnold]

Radiolab is supported by Rippling Finance teams often spend weeks chasing receipts, reconciling spreadsheets and fixing errors across disconnected spend tools. This can be frustrating. And that's not software as a service. That's sad software as a disservice. If you've been thinking about replacing stitched together tech stacks with one platform for all departments, Rippling can help. Rippling is a unified platform for global hr, payroll, IT and finance, helping people replace their mess of cobbled together tools with one system designed to help give leaders clarity, speed and control. By uniting employees, teams and departments in one system, Rippling works to remove the bottlenecks, busy work and silos in business software. With Rippling, you can choose to run hr, IT and finance operations as one, or pick and choose the products that best fill the gaps. Right now you can get 6 months free when you go to rippling.com Radiolab learn more at r I p p l-I n g.com/radiolab terms and conditions apply.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, I'm Molly Webster and this is an ad by BetterHelp. So it happens every year. The seasons are changing, the days are getting shorter, and basically once it becomes dark outside of my window, I feel like the rest of the world disappears and I'm just alone and there's nothing left to do but watch television. This November, Better Help is asking everyone to reach out to our people. That could be your family, your friends, your neighbors, and to resist this call of the cocoon. And yeah, reaching out can take some courage. I've got text messages from January I haven't responded to and you know what? I'm going to write them back right now. Hi, sorry I've been missing. How are you? Why don't we all do this sooner. Therapy is the same way. BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step. You just fill out a short questionnaire and they find a licensed therapist who they think you'll like. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com Radiolab that's better. H E L P.com Radiolab.

[Alex Honnold]

Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. The show is hosted by Alex Honnold, who you may recognize from Free Solo, where he climbed El Capitan without ropes. And now he's turning his focus to the biggest challenge of protecting the only planet we've got. Every episode brings you stories that prove climate optimism isn't naive, it's a strategy. The episodes span the globe, from Arctic scientists and Amazon forest guardians to entrepreneurs reimagining fashion and food systems. You'll hear from explorers, scientists, activists and storytellers who are working to reshape the future in practical, human ways. In one episode, Alex sits down with wildlife photographer Birdie Gregory to discuss how animals can teach humans resiliency, empathy and hope in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Check out Planet Visionaries Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hello, I'm Jad Abumran.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krillooy.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab. Today's program is about choice. How we choose, choose why. And one's just choice.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, and I'm going to choose. I'm actually going to dream of the possibility one day of walking into a store and instead of being obsessed and turned on by the beauty of an object or by the promise of an object, or the price, the price of an object, or the status that would be conferred upon me if I chose or not conferred upon me all those messy emotions. What would happen if I could be like Spock?

[Jed Abumrah]

I am half Balkanian. Vulcanians do not speculate.

[Jad Abumrad]

I speak from pure logic.

[Jed Abumrah]

Hello.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hi.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hi.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hi, Jed and Robert. We actually put the spot question to a neurologist, Dr. Antoine Bishara, who works at the University of Southern California.

[Robert Krulwich]

If I could say abracadabra and go all logic, would I be a happy chooser?

[Jed Abumrah]

I would say no, based on our work with neurological patients.

[Robert Krulwich]

Then he told us about a patient he once had. He's changed the name of the patient. He was. He would call him Elliot.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can you describe him? What was he like?

[Jed Abumrah]

Well, he's about 5ft 10, you know, 170 pounds, I would say.

[Jad Abumrad]

Is that kind of degree it looks very normal, like a normal person.

[Jonah Lehrer]

He was an accountant.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's Jonah Lehrer again.

[Jonah Lehrer]

For a large corporation. A successful accountant, upper management, active in his local church.

[Jad Abumrad]

And he was married at the time?

[Jed Abumrah]

Yes. A very conservative family, very religious, house.

[Jonah Lehrer]

In the suburbs, Good money saving, smart, successful man. Kind of the American dream.

[Jed Abumrah]

And then, you know, the tumor happened.

[Jad Abumrad]

This was in 1982. Doctors discovered a small knot in the front of Elliot's head in a part.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Of the brain called the orbital frontal cortex.

[Jad Abumrad]

And where is that?

[Jonah Lehrer]

That's just behind the eyes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Did doctors remove the tumor? Yeah, he had the surgery. The tumor was removed, and then the doctors sent him home.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Well, at first glance, it seems like a tremendous success. No language impairment, no movement disorders. He still scores 97th percentile on the intelligence test. He seems fine, like good old Elliot does.

[Robert Krulwich]

Good old Elliot go back to the good old jobs.

[Jonah Lehrer]

He starts going back to the good old job, the good old family.

[Jad Abumrad]

And that's when things got really weird.

[Jonah Lehrer]

At first, it's just subtle things, these.

[Jad Abumrad]

Very minor decisions that he suddenly couldn't make. Like, he'd be at the office, he'd want to sign a contract, and he'd have in front of him a blue pen and a black pen. And he would think, well, the type on this contract is black, so maybe I should use a blue pen.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Maybe a blue pen sticks out more. On the other hand, maybe it sticks out too much and will become too distracting. Then again, black pen is lower on ink, so you want to save that for later.

[Jad Abumrad]

This would go on and on, says.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Jonah, for half an hour.

[Robert Krulwich]

And if it takes him a half an hour to decide which pen to choose, imagine Elliot in the cereal aisle in the grocery store.

[Jonah Lehrer]

I mean, the cereal aisle is particularly tough because There must be 200 varieties of cereal.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is a sugary cereal. This is a not sugary cereal.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Standing there, I think about, you know, what would I prefer tomorrow?

[Robert Krulwich]

The one with extra protein.

[Jonah Lehrer]

I've got these other cereals at home. Are they also Honey Nut theme? Do I want something to break up the honey Nut monotony? Is, is there one cereal on sale that's a better deal?

[Robert Krulwich]

With Elliot, it'll take forever to decide.

[Jad Abumrad]

According to Dr. Bashar, he would just keep on analyzing, analyzing.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Well, this one's 14 ounces, analyzing 15 ounces, but they're the same. Analyzing, analyzing, analyzing. Is there one serolog Analyzing all day.

[Jad Abumrad]

Long, the question was, what exactly had happened to Elliot to make him that way? Like, what exactly did that tumor do? And the breakthrough came When Elliot went to see a neurologist named Antonio Damasio. And Dimasio immediately noticed something. Even though Elliot was perfectly thoughtful, perfectly.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Articulate, always controlled, always relaxed, when he.

[Jad Abumrad]

Spoke, he seemed kind of numb.

[Jonah Lehrer]

No sign of anger or rage or self pity.

[Jad Abumrad]

No feeling at all. So Damasio had an idea. He put Elliot in a chair, hooked him up to all these measuring devices, and then showed Elliot a series of really charged pictures.

[Jonah Lehrer]

A severed foot, a naked woman, a house on fire. Pictures that, in normal people, trigger an automatic emotional response. You can't help it, but your blood pressure increases, your pulse increases, your hands start to sweat.

[Jad Abumrad]

But with Elliot, these pictures triggered nothing. And that's when it became clear what had happened to Elliot. What his tumor had really done was cut him off from his emotional mind. He'd become, in effect, some kind of.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Like Spock, like Vulcan. The conventional theory would be that a person without emotions would be perfectly rational. That emotions somehow interfered with rationality, that they got in the way. And yet, here was this guy who couldn't experience emotions, and he was pathologically indecisive.

[Robert Krulwich]

So then the answer to my question, my first question. Wouldn't we all be better off if we could be completely rational? We now have the answer. It's no. When you've got all these options to consider and they're more or less the same. The only way to wheedle your way to a choice is to stop thinking and go with a feeling, right? And so the logic of yes, no, yes, no, yes, no leaves you nowhere. But the feelings of yes, no, yes, no, that does lead you somewhere.

[Jed Abumrah]

That's right.

[Robert Krulwich]

Feeling, says Antoine Bechar. That's the key. Without feeling, you're stuck.

[Jad Abumrad]

So what ended up happening to Elliot?

[Jed Abumrah]

He ended up in a divorce, ended up losing his job, losing all his savings.

[Jonah Lehrer]

He got involved with a con artist. He had to move back in with his parents. Elliot was stuck. His life fell apart.

[Robert Krulwich]

Which makes you kind of re evaluate the Dr. Spock advantage. So called because if we really were keeping company with a flock of Spocks and we brought them to the grocery store, there they'd be 55 spocks, staring at the Cheerios, Staring at the Honeycutt, staring at the Cheerios.

[Jad Abumrad]

Not to mention that they're divorced and broke.

[Robert Krulwich]

So, I mean, obviously we have some advantage over these Vulcans because we have these feelings that can push us to a. But what I still get is it just the roar of feeling that does it, or is there something about having a feeling that's more subtle? Than that is there some. What is the power of the feeling?

[Jad Abumrad]

That's an interesting question. Let me walk this story in from a writer, Steven Johnson. He's written a whole bunch of books, Emergence, Mind Wide Open. And he tells this story that.

[Jed Abumrah]

Can we press record?

[Jad Abumrad]

Really gets at what you're asking.

[Jed Abumrah]

My wife and I had moved into this new, wonderful apartment that overlooked the Hudson river on the west side of Manhattan. It had this vast window. It was one kind of window in this room, but it was huge. And we would sit there and stare out at the river all times of the day. And at one point, the first summer we were there, the storms started to come in and they would kind of build up over Jersey and come rolling in. And we thought, oh, this is great. We can look at the white caps on and see the lightning over there, Jersey City and all this stuff. And one late June day, we're sitting out there in our apartment, we can see the skies getting darker and darker. And we immediately say to each other, wow, this is going to be a great show. So we both come over to the window and we were standing at the window, my wife literally with her hands pressed against the glass, and I'm standing right next to it, just to the side of it, kind of looking out, and the storm starts really kicking up. There's a lot of lightning and you can see the window actually kind of flex just a tiny little bit.

[Oliver Sacks]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

So you notice this?

[Jed Abumrah]

Yeah, we noticed that there was a little bit of give. And a window that size, it has to have a little bit of give, otherwise it's not stable. So we could tell it was really, it was really windy, and there are a couple of pretty powerful gusts. And then all of a sudden there's this very strange sharp kind of click sound. My wife instantly jumps back from the window, jumps back four or five feet and says, what was that? I say, being the incredibly perceptive person that I am, I say I'm pretty sure it was the study door slamming with the wind around the corner in the other part of the apartment. So she goes back around the corner to check on whether it was in fact the study door slamming. And. And at that moment, as I'm standing 2 inches from the frame in the window, the entire thing blows in, it makes an insane noise, it shatters glass. And all of a sudden there's a 60 mile an hour storm blowing through our apartment. So we both run into the bathroom and close the door, and all of a sudden, you know, I suddenly think like, oh my God, you were Standing in front of that window three seconds before, if I hadn't stupidly told you that I thought that clicking sound was the door slamming, that thing would have landed on you. I think it's entirely possible that it.

[John Barge]

Would have killed her.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, so that happened. His wife, by the way, was fine.

[Robert Krulwich]

Good.

[Jad Abumrad]

They installed a new window. They cleaned up the apartment.

[Robert Krulwich]

They did. Because I am covered with imaginary glass. I mean, our sound effects are so unbelievably real.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thank you very much. But what's illuminating and what gets at the question you asked.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Is actually what happened next. It's the postscript to that event.

[Jed Abumrah]

For literally years, every time I heard the sound of wind blowing through a window in that apartment and really pretty much anywhere else, I had an involuntary fear reflex.

[Jad Abumrad]

The sound of any wind, or is it a specific kind of wind sound?

[Jed Abumrah]

It was the sound of wind associated with the window. So, you know, it's the, you know, I would go to my parents house, who live on the ground floor in a house in suburban Washington, but I would just hear wind kind of going through the window there. And I would think something's not right.

[Jad Abumrad]

And this was not a rational feeling.

[Jed Abumrah]

It was certainly not a rational thought. I could look empirically and say, it's 30 miles an hour, this wind. The window is clearly not going to blow. And it's not that big a window and I'm standing nowhere near it.

[Jad Abumrad]

But you still somehow couldn't shake the, the dread.

[Jed Abumrah]

I couldn't get rid of that feeling. And it's one of those moments where you really, you really ask yourself, I think, you know, who's in charge, you know, who's driving the ship? You know, because some part of me is looking at this situation empirically and saying, rationally, this window is no threat to me.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right.

[Jed Abumrah]

It's not going to blow in. And yet some other part of me is unable to shake this emotional state of dread and fear and alertness and threat.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right, now to get back to your question, Robert, where do feelings come from?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah. Why do I say yes to wheat checks with power.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right. Well, consider the story we just heard from the perspective of Steven Johnson's brain.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

So what a brain wants to do most of all is keep the organism safe. Right? And it does that by looking for patterns. Like, here's an explosion, wife almost died.

[Jed Abumrah]

I think it's entirely possible that it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Would have killed her in that moment. Brain soaks it all in, takes kind of a snapshot. What do we got here?

[Jed Abumrah]

Wind, window, glass shock.

[Jad Abumrad]

So later, wind blows Brain thinks. Wait a second.

[Jed Abumrah]

Wind, window glass.

[Jad Abumrad]

We've seen this before. Warn the organism.

[Jed Abumrah]

Be afraid. Be afraid. Be afraid.

[Jad Abumrad]

My point is that feeling of dread.

[Jed Abumrah]

Dread and fear and alertness and threat.

[Jad Abumrad]

That'S just an alarm signal. The brain is just trying to help Steve make the right decision. Okay, now to the cereal owl. I got cereals at home. There you are. You're looking at all the boxes, Captain Crime. And as your eyes fall on the Rice Krispies box. Rice Krispies. Rice Krispies. Just like Steve Johnson with the wind, somewhere way deep down, your brain is calling up all the experiences you've ever had with Rice Krispies. The good Rice Krispies experiences, the bad ones. Maybe in college you got dumped by that girl who likes Rice Krispies treats. I don't know.

[Robert Krulwich]

I remember her.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thousands of little memory fragments down there.

[Robert Krulwich]

Roil about a lot of information, right?

[Jad Abumrad]

Too much. And so what ends up happening is that it all gets. It's summed somehow in your subconscious, and then it bubbles up as a feeling. Nice crispies.

[John Barge]

All right.

[Jad Abumrad]

So one way to look at a gut feeling is that it's a kind of shorthand average of all of this past wisdom.

[Robert Krulwich]

So you have this tremendous sturm and drang of feelings inside. That's German. I can do a little German. But there is, say scientists, one feeling that humans have that seems to trump all the others, and that is the feeling of loss. People hate to lose.

[Jad Abumrad]

You can actually put a number on it, how much they hate to lose versus winning.

[Robert Krulwich]

And it's a really cool experiment that was done. It's been done everywhere. But our experiment will be done by National Public Radio's wonderful reporter, Mike Pesca.

[Mike Pesca]

Are you a bit of a gambler, or would you rather just keep your money and not risk it?

[Jad Abumrad]

I mean, I wouldn't mind risking a.

[Robert Krulwich]

Few dollars, but I just don't want to go overboard, you know?

[Mike Pesca]

Would you say you're a gambling woman? You like gambling?

[Jad Abumrad]

No, I don't.

[Robert Krulwich]

I don't really gamble.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm very cautious and finicky. Whether it's eating or taking chances. Yeah, the risk of losing something isn't.

[Robert Krulwich]

Worth the gambling of it, I guess.

[Jad Abumrad]

I wouldn't take a risk, let's put it that way.

[Mike Pesca]

If we were to play heads or tails, would you want to do it? If you won, you won a dollar. But if I won, I won a dollar.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Probably not.

[Robert Krulwich]

No, no, no, thanks.

[Mike Pesca]

If you knew the game was on the up and up, and I were to flip a coin, and I. I said, oh, look, I'll pay you $1.25 if you win. You only have to pay me a dollar.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, I ain't doing it with you.

[Robert Krulwich]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

I don't know. That just doesn't seem worth it.

[Mike Pesca]

I said, look, I'll give you $1.50, and you only have to put up a dollar. Would you do it then?

[Jad Abumrad]

No, not really. 50 cents is not worth.

[Mike Pesca]

What if I offered you $1.75 if you want.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's a possibility.

[Mike Pesca]

Maybe, like, at that point, you maybe start thinking about. Fine, I'll give you $2. You only have to put up a dollar. Would you be interested?

[Jad Abumrad]

Sure. Yeah, I would do that. I would do that. Yes. Sure. Wow. So everyone seems to converge around two bucks. Two to one?

[Mike Pesca]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

So that means that, like, loss is twice as painful.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

You could say loss hurts twice as much as gain.

[John Barge]

Feels good.

[Jad Abumrad]

Why do you think that is?

[Mike Pesca]

It must have something to do with, you know, when we were all running away from lions on the savannah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, it always seems to come back to that, doesn't it?

[Mike Pesca]

I guess a wildebeest in the brush is worth a lion on the heels or something.

[Jad Abumrad]

I don't know what that means, but were there any people that you talked to who went way past 2 to 1?

[Mike Pesca]

Sure.

[John Barge]

Okay.

[Mike Pesca]

100 to 1. No. Come on. You're crazy. 100 to 1 on a coin.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

100 to 1.

[Robert Krulwich]

Nope. Nope. I'm just not a gambler.

[Mike Pesca]

Is this a religious thing?

[Jad Abumrad]

Nope.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm just not a gambler.

[Jad Abumrad]

So here's the question to get us to our next thing. Given that human beings hate to lose, what do you do if your entire business is getting people to lose money?

[Robert Krulwich]

You're talking about casinos, are you not? Indeed I am. We're going to Las Vegas. Are we?

[Jad Abumrad]

Atlantic City.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

No.

[Robert Krulwich]

Atlantic City, then.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Larry.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, normally, what a casino will do, they will try to distract you with, you know, fountains of jelly beans and statues that move. But there is one casino in particular called Harrah's. It's a chain that doesn't do any of that.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, they offer slots and they offer blackjack, but there's no exploding volcano, there's no Picasso on the wall.

[Jad Abumrad]

And yet, according to Mike, Harrah's jumps out at you. They are the success story in the casino. Bizarre.

[Mike Pesca]

And Gary Loveman has a lot to do with that.

[John Barge]

Yeah. Any minute you're not drunk or depressed, I'd like you in the casino.

[Mike Pesca]

He's the CEO of Harrah's casinos, and he's developed a really brilliant technique. For slaying the beast.

[Jad Abumrad]

That is.

[Mike Pesca]

Loss aversion.

[John Barge]

That's one way to put it.

[Jad Abumrad]

What's his technique?

[Mike Pesca]

Loyalty cards.

[Robert Krulwich]

What's a loyalty card? What does that mean?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, basically, I mean, you know how back in the day, if you wanted to play the slots, you just stuck a quarter in. Can't do that anymore, right?

[Mike Pesca]

You're like, I'd like to throw a quarter in the one armed bandit. Turns out there are no quarters. Okay, I'll slide a dollar bill in. Turns out before you have to do it, you have to sign up for a card. Well, why would I want to sign up for a card? Well, A, you have to. But B, the first time you play, we'll give you a couple extra dollars. Everyone wants to sign up for that card. It's free money.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, just to be clear, at Harrah's, it's actually not obligatory to sign up for this card, but most people do to get the rewards. And so there you are. You've got this little loyalty thing, and you're sticking it in every slot or machine that you play. And that offers them certain. Well, they've got this new pilot program where they basically watch every move you make. Check it out.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay, let's say you're playing the slots.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay?

[Mike Pesca]

You stick your card in the slot machine. All right, My card is in at that very moment.

[Jad Abumrad]

Let's try this.

[Mike Pesca]

The information is transmitted downstairs. In the case of this casino we were at, it goes downstairs, deep in the bowels of the casino.

[Jed Abumrah]

I need to take a photo.

[Mike Pesca]

There's a dispatcher sitting there in front of a monitor. This computer sees that you've put your card into slot machine number 42. And the computer begins taking notes. Every game that you play, they're logging, adding, dividing, graphing, whatever. It's able to crunch those numbers. And over many visits, the casino begins to know you. They know your game is slots.

[Jad Abumrad]

Come on.

[Mike Pesca]

They know you like to play for an average of six hours. And they know that generally you have a limit. Say 89.

[Alex Honnold]

Wow.

[Jad Abumrad]

They can know that. I usually leave after losing 89 bucks.

[John Barge]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

And they know on this particular visit, you're not doing so well. You've lost more than you're winning. In fact, you've lost 1772 bucks, which is really close to your personal limit.

[Jad Abumrad]

And this is a crucial moment. You're starting to get that sinking feeling, and you might just pack it in.

[Robert Krulwich]

I walk out of the casino?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes. And the casino doesn't want you to do that.

[Mike Pesca]

They want to keep you There.

[Jad Abumrad]

So as your losses are increasing from 72 to 77 to 85, and you're getting closer and closer to that point.

[Mike Pesca]

In a back room, there's a computer going off. The dispatcher is seeing it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Juliet 3703.

[Mike Pesca]

The dispatcher knows to call the slot attendant up on the floor.

[Jad Abumrad]

Tango for Willie. I have a DCL one at golf. 1401 for Karen Masset. Copy that. Tango four, Willie.

[Robert Krulwich]

DCL one for Kevin Massey.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Copy.

[Mike Pesca]

The slot attendant walks out, taps you on the shoulder.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hello.

[Robert Krulwich]

How you doing, ma'?

[Jad Abumrad]

Am?

[Robert Krulwich]

Ms. Kevin Massey?

[Oliver Sacks]

Yes.

[Robert Krulwich]

Everything going okay for you today?

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm losing.

[John Barge]

And of course, we know that's the case because our systems allow us to monitor that.

[Mike Pesca]

And so the attendant offers you something.

[John Barge]

You might like to visit to the steakhouse, A visit to our coffee shop.

[Mike Pesca]

They could offer you tickets to a show. Celine Dion's playing the Big Room. Or they could just offer cold hard cash.

[Robert Krulwich]

Want some money today? Just by playing with your car?

[Jad Abumrad]

Your lucky reward card. Oh, really?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Okay.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes. I got $15 DCL1 for you.

[Mike Pesca]

Will you accept it?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, sure.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right.

[Barry Schwartz]

All right.

[Mike Pesca]

And all of a sudden you're happy that you won 15 bucks. You're not fixated on the fact that you've lost 72. So you come back again and again and again and again.

[Jad Abumrad]

I think it's great.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's something to do.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm always humble.

[Robert Krulwich]

I lose $300 all the time.

[Jad Abumrad]

Good thing our boys don't know how much. Now, here is the amazing part.

[Mike Pesca]

For all the different thousands of people who come through the doors of Harrods casinos, they could figure out their own individual pain points.

[Jad Abumrad]

So you're telling me that if you walk into a casino, I walk in right after you, Robert Krobich? Right after us, yeah. And we do that enough times. After a while, they can know that you like to gamble until you're about to. $700 down. Me, I usually leave around 11 bucks.

[Mike Pesca]

And Moneybag's Crow, which over there.

[Jad Abumrad]

Moneybag's Crow, which usually holds out until he's four grand in the hole. And they can know that about each of us?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, they can.

[Jad Abumrad]

What do you think about this strikes you as a good business proposition? Or does it strike you as a creepy example of Big Brotherism?

[Mike Pesca]

Obviously, this works out well for Harris. So does it work out well for me, you and Robert Krolwich? I think it does.

[Jad Abumrad]

What do you mean?

[Mike Pesca]

Well, they can't ever change the odds. So when we go into a casino, by state law, they'll never be able to change the odds of the game. All that Harrah's can do is kind of manage the feeling that we get.

[John Barge]

They leave a lot happier than if they had simply had a bad gaming experience, put their wallet back in their pocket and gone home unhappy.

[Mike Pesca]

And everything about going to a casino is a poor decision, an irrational decision. And if there was a way they can make me walking out of there feeling like a million bucks when I spend 2 million, well, then I say more power to them.

[John Barge]

And I would add, of course, that almost any business could try something similar, assuming they had appealing sorts of things to do for customers that had bad experiences.

[Jad Abumrad]

What's your pain point, by the way?

[Mike Pesca]

You know what it is? If I'm down 300 bucks, I'm really pissed off. I'm not gonna get there.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

There's only one thing that would keep me at the table.

[Jad Abumrad]

What's that?

[Robert Krulwich]

Celine Dion.

[Mike Pesca]

Not tickets to her concert if she was actually in the game. She's a terrible poker player. What we call dead money.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, by. Thanks, Mike.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, we'll be back in a moment.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, by the way, Mike works at NPR News. Thank you to them for letting us borrow him. I am Candice Crotty calling from St. Paul, Minnesota. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about [e-mail].

[Alex Honnold]

Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Stay tuned for a trailer and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[John Barge]

I'm Alex Honnl, professional rock climber and founder of the Honl Foundation.

[Jad Abumrad]

I wanted to let you know about.

[John Barge]

A brand new season of the Planet Visionaries podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. This is the podcast exploring bold ideas and big solutions from the people leading the way in conservation.

[Jad Abumrad]

Join me in conversation with the likes.

[John Barge]

Of climate champion Mark Ruffalo, biologist and photographer Christina Mittermeier, and one of the most successful conservationists of our time, Chris Tompkins. Join us on Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jonah Lehrer]

What are you doing in a meeting? That could have been an email. That's right, you're losing interest. Don't let it happen to your money, too. Vanguard's Cash plus account can't help you.

[Jad Abumrad]

At work, but we can help with.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Your savings because Vanguard believes in giving you more. So how much interest could you earn? Find [e-mail] cashplus offered by Vanguard Marketing Corporation member Finra and SIPC.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hello, this is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumran.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krylwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

And today we are talking about decision making, how we make decisions.

[Robert Krulwich]

Whoa, I want to just stop you on that pronoun you just happen to use. You say, we make decisions now. So when you jettaboomrab. When you decide to choose a pen, black over blue. If you decide to choose a cereal.

[Jad Abumrad]

Cheerios over Special K. Cheerios, definitely.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm assuming that you feel very much in charge of that choice. You know, if someone said, hey, who chose?

[Jad Abumrad]

You'd say, this feels like a trick question.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's gonna be a trick question.

[Jad Abumrad]

I chose Tachirios.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, you think you chose. Would you please welcome the studly Malcolm Gladwell. In talking with Malcolm Gladwell, the writer of the Tipping Point, and at the time he'd just written the book Blink, we were at the 92nd Street Y in New York. He raised an interesting question. We began the discussion by talking about a dangerous element in decision making which he calls. You call this the perils of introspection. And you tell the story of a poster contest. It involves hanging cats versus impressionists. Do you recall this?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yes, yes. I have no memory. This is a famous study by Tim Wilson, who's one of my favorite psychologists at uva, and a guy named John Schooler, who's absolutely brilliant. They have a whole bunch of posters and they bring students in and they say, take anyone you want, it's yours. And then they bring in another group and they say, take anyone you want. But by the way, before you go home with it, just explain. Write out a paragraph about why you're taking it home, why you like it. And then they call up a student six months later and they say, that poster you got for free six months ago, do you like it? Are you still happy with it? And the ones who didn't have to explain themselves still love their poster. And the ones who did hate their poster. And furthermore, the ones who had to explain themselves, it turns out, only took the posters of the hanging cats, of little kittens, you know, hanging their babies.

[Robert Krulwich]

What does this mean, hanging cats? It doesn't mean, like, no, no, no, no.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You know, those posters, you surely you saw them, or maybe you have lived in the upper kind of intellectual precincts for so long that you've lost contact with the rest of us. But, you know, if you've never seen them, the little kitten hanging on a bar and it says, hang in there, baby.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know, oh, yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

All right.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes. I don't think of it as hanging. I think it is sort of.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You're faking it. You're just saying.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, no, no, you're right. You're right. I am faking it up.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Jed Abumrah]

My.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Actually when I first saw that, I thought the kitten was having to do a chin up. And so it didn't have the desired effect. I thought, why are they torturing this kitten?

[Robert Krulwich]

Right.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Why do kittens have to work? Is it not enough that human beings have to go to the gym anyway? But you had those. Then you had impressionist posters. And the kids who had to explain their preferences overwhelmingly chose the kittens. And those who didn't have to explain themselves chose the impressionist posters. So what that says is the act of making you explain your preferences not only biased you in favor of something that you didn't actually want, it also made you change your preference away from something that was sophisticated and in favor of something that was unsophisticated. If you think about the whole universe of focus group testing and something, it determines all of the cultural products that get into our society, that makes you really stop and worry.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

We're putting people through a process that alienates them from their true needs and that biases them in favor of the unsophisticated. An overwhelming majority of the greatest and most successful movies or sitcoms, which, or television shows of all time tested badly. Almost by definition, the really breakthrough shows will test badly in focus groups. I actually saw the focus group results for Mary Tyler Moore show, which were devastating.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hate it.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Mary was abrasive. Rhoda was obnoxious. In the focus group testing of all in the Family, which got one of the lowest scores of any pilot tested cbs, the overwhelming majority of people who watch the show said that the only way to fix it was to turn Archie into a kind of cuddly, sensitive. You know, it's crazy. It's crazy. The only reason these shows ever make it on the air is that somebody at some point just says, you know what? Ignore that stuff. I like it.

[Robert Krulwich]

So the suggestion here is that because these snap judgments are, are mysterious, over explained, therefore corrected in the wrong direction, frankly, capitalism should have no cutting edge excitement, except that there are these occasional people who take the risk but the system. So that's one consequence. The other, though, is very, very interesting to me. If you can't know why you have a feeling in your gut and you can't explain why you have a feeling in your gut, and to some extent you can't control what's the feeling in your gut? You wonder who's in charge of the choices that you make. And there's a whole section of this book which is maybe the scariest. Which is about something called priming. Where external clues, things that you see, trigger biases inside you. So let me run you through some of those. There's a game you ask your readers to play. There are words in the game. And in one of the games you play, the words wrinkle, bingo and Florida appear matter of factly. What happens to people who see while doing something else? Wrinkle, bingo and Florida.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

They walk out of the room after the test is over. More slowly than they walked into the room.

[Robert Krulwich]

You ask people to play a game of Trivial Pursuit. Some of them you say first, before we play this game with the. So let's think about professors for a moment. And now we'll play Trivial Pursuit. Another group, you say, let's play Trivial Pursuit. But now let's think about soccer hooligans. And then we'll play Trivial Pursuit. What's the difference?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

If I make you think about professors first, your scores are substantially superior. You win. Basically. If I make you think about hooligans.

[Robert Krulwich]

You lose just thinking about them.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can we step away from the 92nd Street Y for just a moment?

[Robert Krulwich]

Sure.

[Jad Abumrad]

Cause this priming thing that you and Malcolm are discussing gets kind of eerie when you go actually beyond words like, here, why don't you have a sip of this coffee?

[Robert Krulwich]

This coffee here?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

Right now?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. Let's go ahead and have a sip.

[Robert Krulwich]

Why are you looking at me like that?

[Jad Abumrad]

Because I've just primed you.

[Robert Krulwich]

What do you mean?

[Jad Abumrad]

Because I've just primed you.

[Robert Krulwich]

You just what?

[Jad Abumrad]

Primed you. What do you mean? Alan, explain.

[John Barge]

Hi, I'm John.

[Jad Abumrad]

We talked to a psychologist.

[John Barge]

My name is John Barge and I'm a professor at Yale University in Psychology department.

[Jad Abumrad]

And John did an interesting experiment. Hey, check one, too. He and a grad student by the name of Lawrence Williams. Here's what they did. Lawrence went out into the world. He had a bunch of stuff with him. A briefcase, some coffee, some papers. So much stuff that he could barely carry at all.

[John Barge]

And he went out, went out into the. In front of the library or in town. And he would approach somebody and he'd say.

[Jad Abumrad]

Excuse me, sir, ma', am, would you mind taking this survey? It's just a minute of your time.

[John Barge]

They give their agreement to be in the study.

[Mike Pesca]

Great.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's a pretty simple survey.

[Robert Krulwich]

What kind of survey?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, it had a picture Of a guy on it and a description of the guy. The guy's name was Joe.

[John Barge]

So here's Joe.

[Robert Krulwich]

Joe.

[Mike Pesca]

Joe.

[John Barge]

Is these six traits.

[Jad Abumrad]

There's a little description of Joe right there on the paper. All I want you to do, he would say, all I want you to do for this survey is just tell me, gut feeling. What do you think of Joe? Do you like him?

[Robert Krulwich]

That's it.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Do I like him?

[John Barge]

How much do you like Joe?

[Robert Krulwich]

That's. That's the whole question?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[John Barge]

You mean, like, rate it 1 to 10. And everyone saw the same person described the same way. Everyone sees the same description.

[Jad Abumrad]

But there's one thing I haven't told you yet.

[Robert Krulwich]

What?

[Jad Abumrad]

Somewhere in this process, toward the beginning, you would ever so casually ask, can you just do me a favor? My hands are full. Can you hold this cup of coffee.

[John Barge]

Here, hold this just for a second. Thanks. And they just take it for a second.

[Jad Abumrad]

They were.

[John Barge]

It's all very natural. So it's not even seen as part.

[Jad Abumrad]

Of the experiment because it was just a second. Well, I should say, yeah. Not everybody got the same cup of coffee. In fact, he would hand half the people a cup of hot coffee, and he would hand the other half a cup of iced coffee, like I gave you. And it was always really fast.

[John Barge]

They only hold the cup for maybe a second at most.

[Jad Abumrad]

But that second, whether it was hot or cold, seems to have made a difference, because the hot coffee people, people.

[John Barge]

Who saw who had touched or held.

[Jad Abumrad]

The hot coffee, when they were asked, do you like Joe? The majority said, yeah, exactly, they liked Joe. Whereas the cold coffee people, by and.

[John Barge]

Large, they didn't like him.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, come on. Is that right? Just bank.

[Jad Abumrad]

I kid you not. They have repeated the study many, many times. Always the same result. People who hold the hot coffee are more pro Joe than the people who hold the iced coffee. In other words, something happens in that second when they hold the cup, Some sort of mistranslation in their brain, where warm cup becomes warm Joe, real warm. This physical sensation gets confused with the metaphor.

[John Barge]

People are all the same temperature, usually 98.6 degrees. We're not different in warm joint and cold physically, but we talk about people that way. It's very important to us. If you hear somebody who's warm, you immediately like them. If you hear a person's cold, you know, you don't want to be their friend, you don't want to hire them. Warmth and coldness psychologically, is all about trust. It's all about, are you a friend Or a foe.

[Robert Krulwich]

So why would. Why would.

[Oliver Sacks]

If that.

[Robert Krulwich]

But if that's true, why is it true? Like, why.

[Jad Abumrad]

Why the confusion? Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

Why does it boil down to something as dumb as that?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, John Barge and his team have actually been asking that question, doing some neuroscience to see if maybe inside the brain they can see something that would explain it.

[John Barge]

And it seems that the area of the brain that records temperature that's responsive to actual physical temperature is also the same area of the brain that is the location of where trust. The same little part of the brain has got both of those things going on.

[Jad Abumrad]

And he thinks that there is a good reason for that. Temperature and trust are in fact linked, particularly when you're a little baby.

[John Barge]

As infants, our first learning about the world is usually in terms of what we can see and what we can touch. We don't have much memory and we can't think very well. So it's all about our immediate experience. Well, a huge important area of experience for a little baby is to. Is to keep close to the caretaker and to stay warm. I mean, this is something that's so critical when they're so tiny and helpless. If they don't maintain closeness, if they don't maintain warmth, they don't survive.

[Robert Krulwich]

So.

[John Barge]

I guess the point is if you're hiring somebody and you really want to hire the right person and don't have any coffee around, but the first step is to accept the possibility. And very few people believe me. I try to explain to my family and my friends what I do, and they never believe any of these things are really true of them because we don't have any awareness of them. I can't remember one time that ever happened to me. Well, yeah, you won't remember one time because it's never going to be in your memory. It's never going to be in your awareness.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

No.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

It's time. Why is it so hard for us to. To concede that a huge part of our own motivations are mysterious?

[Robert Krulwich]

We are back now at the 92nd Street Y again with Malcolm Gladwell. I have to say there was a part of our conversation where this whole thing got a little scary to me. It had to do in part with race, because instead of using hot and cold as the metaphor, suppose you use black or white.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right.

[Robert Krulwich]

And he said very flatly, there are stereotypes that we have that seem to be beyond our ability to control. In fact, he took a test to measure the unconscious feelings that he had in him about black and white people.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

I score on an unconscious. It turns out I have a moderate preference for whites on an unconscious level.

[Robert Krulwich]

And he is, by the way, half black.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. Which is not unusual for black people, by the way. Nor is it unusual for, you know, Jews to have a moderate unconscious preference for Gentiles over Jews or for any kind of. With blacks. It's most striking. My unconscious attitudes towards blacks are a function of the society in which I live. My unconscious is just basically collecting impressions and thoughts and biases and stuff from the world I live in, amassing this massive database in a very kind of unfiltered way. Right. Well, my unconscious database about race has more negative things about blacks in it than positive things. Right. I live in, you know, the United States. Of course it does.

[Robert Krulwich]

Of course.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

How can that not affect me, you know?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, but yeah, it's just. It's horrible. Or maybe just put it this way, that, that, that you can't really purge yourself of things that would bother you if you could spy on them, and that you are, in some sense a prisoner of your culture in a way that makes you, in some way ungovernable. You can't quite get on top of yourself.

[Jad Abumrad]

No.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

The more you push. I mean, I don't push this issue that far in the book because it gets really troubling really quickly.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, it does.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

The more you push it. You're right. It's deeply disturbing. And there's a book written by a guy named Daniel Wegner at Harvard called the Illusion of Conscious Will. And it's a very difficult book. But if you're. He pushes this as far as you go and, you know, at the end, if you go through all of this research that's been done recently in psychology, you do end up with the position that the notion of conscious will is an illusion. It's just we make up stories that make it make us feel good about the decisions we make, but in fact, we're not really as nearly as in charge as we think we are.

[Robert Krulwich]

That was Malcolm Gladwell talking with me at the 92nd Street Y. His new book is called Outliers.

[Jad Abumrad]

Anything you heard this hour, you can hear again on our website, Radiolab.org while you're there, send us an email RadiolabNYC.org address I'm Chad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks for listening. Radiolab is produced by Soren Wheeler and Jad Abumrad. Our staff includes Lulu Miller, Jonathan Mitchell, Ellen Horn, Amanda Arancheck and Jessica Benko, with help from Anna Boyco Wevera and Ike Siskenda. And Ike Sriskandaraja going to do it again.

[Robert Krulwich]

Thanks to Mike Pesca, Dan Ariely, John ollera and the 92nd Street Yisroel Tyler and Semi.

[Jad Abumrad]

OK.

[Jonah Lehrer]

This is NPR, National Public Radio.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, that was actually pretty thrilling to do.