The Decision Education Podcast

How can we get better at receiving negative feedback? Mellody Hobson, Co-CEO and President at Ariel Investments and Chair of the Board of Starbucks, joins your host, Dr. Joe Sweeney, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education, to talk about her journey to becoming one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People,” and a nationally recognized voice on financial literacy. Mellody a...

What can we learn from ancient civilizations that can help us make better decisions today? Ryan Holiday, bestselling author and host of The Daily Stoic Podcast , joins your host, Dr. Joe Sweeney, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education, to talk about how Stoic philosophy can help us become more strategic decision-makers. Ryan and Joe discuss the critical role composure played in...

How do the world’s most influential technology companies think about decision-making? Google’s Chief Decision Scientist, Cassie Kozyrkov, joins your host, Dr. Joe Sweeney, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education, to talk about the science of decision-making in data-driven organizations, the pitfalls and possibilities for incorporating AI into the decision-making process, and how...

How can we make our unintentional habits work in our favor? Charles Duhigg, Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, and New York Times best-selling author, joins your host, Dr. Joe Sweeney, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education, to talk about the power of looking beyond binary choices, evaluating our own thinking, understanding our own “habit loops,” and building the most powerful hab...

How can we beat procrastination by doing more of the things we love? Dr. Katy Milkman, Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, celebrated author, host of the Choiceology podcast, and Alliance Advisory Council Member, joins your host, Dr. Joe Sweeney, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education, to talk about the power of nudges, the distorting lens of the p...

Season 3 of The Decision Education Podcast unveils decision-making tips from experts in habits, Stoicism, decision intelligence, and behavior change. Dr. Joe Sweeney, your host, engages our guests in fruitful discussions where they unpack their decision toolkits and share how the world might look different if we practiced decision-making  skills from a younger age. Tune in to listen!

How does embracing decision science lead to domination in the NBA? Daryl Morey, President of Basketball Operations for the Philadelphia 76ers and Co-founder of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference , joins our guest host Annie Duke, to talk about his unique basketball mindset and key decision-making insights learned from working at the very top of the professional game. Daryl and Annie discuss...

What can we learn from individuals who make life-and-death decisions in the most dangerous environments on the planet? Dr. Ken Kamler, Expedition Climber, Microsurgeon, and Extreme Medicine Doctor, joins our guest host Annie Duke, to talk about decision-making insights discovered on his perilous expeditions on Mount Everest, and to share his powerful account of the notorious 1996 Mount Everest Dis...

What do the NFL’s most legendary general managers do when making tough decisions at the highest level? Michael Lombardi, former NFL general manager and three-time Super Bowl winner , joins our guest host Annie Duke, to talk about decision-making insights learned from 3 decades in the game, working alongside coaching and general manager legends Bill Walsh of the San Francisco 49ers, Al Davis of the...

Does Rich Eisen’s suit slow him down in the 40 yard dash? Rich Eisen, NFL Network and The Rich Eisen Show Host , and Les Snead, General Manager of the Los Angeles Rams , talk with our guest host, Annie Duke about how to balance using analytics with intuition and past experience to make fast in-game decisions, how an NFL franchise can best work together and pool their judgments and information, and...

How can we have better conversations with people who have different beliefs from us? Andrew Berry, General Manager of the Cleveland Browns and Alliance Board Member, joins our guest host Annie Duke, to talk about how decision-makers can benefit from getting comfortable with uncertainty, how the pandemic highlighted overconfidence and the illusion of control, what it means for general managers to h...

How do we decide when to play it safe, and when to take the risk? Award-winning author, journalist, and professional poker player, Dr. Maria Konnikova , talks with our guest host, Annie Duke, about how poker parallels uncertainty in life, the hidden downside of avoiding risks, how to decide what to do next professionally, and how her fascinating career trajectory resembles a constellation more so...

Join us for Season 2 of the Decision Education Podcast, launching in  Summer 2021! In this season, our guest host is Alliance co-founder,  best-selling author, and celebrated speaker, Annie Duke ,  and we’re turning our attention to decision-making in the world of  high-performance sports.  These conversations with high-stakes sports  figures, discussing the biggest d...

How do we balance the tradeoff between spending more time on a decision and achieving more certainty about it? Best-selling author and decision strategist, Annie Duke, joins your host, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education, Dr. Joe Sweeney, for a Bonus Episode of The Decision Education Podcast, recorded in May 2020. In this episode from our archives, Annie and Joe discuss thing...

What can decision-making on the chessboard teach us about decision-making in the game of life? World Chess Champion and human rights activist Garry Kasparov , joins your host, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education, Dr. Joe Sweeney, to discuss Garry’s hunger for chess and analyzing his games, his experience facing fierce competition, the importance of making your decisions in th...

Can we count on our feelings to guide our decisions? Dr. Paul Slovic, Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon, joins your host, Dr. Joe Sweeney, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education, to discuss the three pillars of the arithmetic of compassion, how our feelings change as we consider one vs. dozens of people in danger, and how flawed thinking could have impacted dec...

How does our mood affect how cooperatively we act in a situation? Dr. Barbara Mellers, I. George Heyman University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania , joins your host, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education Dr. Joe Sweeney, to talk about the difference between judgments and decisions, studies on what happens when our desires and our sense of fairness are in conflict, a...

How can we draw the line between what is inside and what is outside the scope of our decisions? Eyas Raddad, Research Fellow and Decision Scientist at Eli Lilly and Company , joins your host, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education, Dr. Joe Sweeney, to talk about the importance of building the right frames for our decisions, the common attributes of the very best decision scienti...

Making predictions is part of everyday life, but how can we guard against being overly confident in our predictions? Ted Seides, host of the Capital Allocators podcast and author of a number of successful books on asset management, joins your host, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education Dr. Joe Sweeney, to talk about the uncanny power of premortems, the grave danger of overconfi...

Can people with different values sit around a table and make good decisions together? Lee Failing, Partner, Engineer and Decision Analyst at Compass Resource Management , believes that they can. Lee is an expert in group decision-making and works with government agencies and community groups brought together to face controversial complex social and environmental dilemmas. She joins your host, Exec...

How might our decision-making improve if we ask ourselves, “What happened when other people were in this situation before?” Michael Mauboussin, Head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global , joins your host Dr. Joe Sweeney, Executive Director of the Alliance for Decision Education, to discuss the importance of considering base rates and reference classes when making tough choices, the underv...

Season 1 of The Decision Education Podcast unveils decision-making tips from experts in finance, natural resource management, drug development, psychology, and chess. Dr. Joe Sweeney, your host, engages our guests in fruitful discussions where they unpack their decision toolkits and share how the world might look different if we practiced decision-making skills from a younger age. Tune in to liste...