Behavior Gap Radio

In this episode, Carl explores what happens when families avoid difficult conversations about money in an effort to avoid conflict. Through the example of inheritance, he looks at how silence can quietly turn into secrecy, scorekeeping, stories, and resentment—creating the very conflict everyone hoped to prevent. Carl offers two simple rules for bringing these conversations into the open and prote...

In this episode, Carl explores the hidden cost behind the things we admire and want to build. A beautiful business, creative project, or seemingly successful life can look very different once we understand the trade-offs happening behind the scenes. Carl reflects on why it’s not enough to ask what we want to create. We also have to ask what it will require from us, and whether we’re willing and ab...

In this episode, Carl shares an unexpected discovery from a simple experiment in taking more time to rest. As his mind settles, his body seems to have something else to say, raising questions about the patterns our nervous systems may carry long after our thinking has changed. It’s a personal exploration of rest, risk, and what we can learn when we get quiet enough to notice what’s happening benea...

In this episode, Carl explores the value of intentionally putting ourselves in situations where we don’t quite know what to do next. Through stories from the mountains, travel, and unexpected career changes, he considers how small, safe encounters with uncertainty can build something far more useful than having all the answers: trust in our ability to figure things out. Want more from Carl? Get th...

In this short episode, Carl explores a deceptively simple question: What if more isn’t always the answer? Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/

In this short episode, Carl explores the difference between understanding risk in theory and actually experiencing it. What changes when risk stops being an idea and suddenly becomes real? Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap...

In this short episode, Carl explores what it might actually mean to live a meaningful life. What if it’s less about finding one big answer and more about what we choose to do with the resources we have? Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https...

In this short episode, Carl explores the tension between keeping your options open and actually choosing a life. When does flexibility stop being freedom and start getting in the way? Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/...

In this short episode, Carl shares his favorite part of real financial planning. Before the numbers and plans, there’s a simpler question: What is all this money for? Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/  

In this episode, Carl continues his reflections on commitment and thresholds through one fascinating word: cleave . It can mean to hold tightly together, but it can also mean to split apart—a beautiful accident of language that captures something essential about meaningful commitments. Whether we’re entering a marriage, leaving a career, or choosing a new path, something is joined while something...

In this episode, Carl continues his reflection on thresholds, exploring the tension between leaving and arriving as his daughter prepares to get married. Some opposites aren’t problems to solve but polarities to hold, where each side gives meaning to the other. A threshold gives us space to honor what is ending and welcome what is beginning, but eventually, we have to cross it, allowing the old re...

In this episode, Carl reflects on threshold moments as his daughter prepares to get married. These moments resist simple categories: they can be happy and sad, an ending and a beginning, a leaving and an arriving, all at once. Rather than rushing across the threshold, Carl explores what it means to stand there for a moment, honoring what is changing while welcoming what is becoming possible, and r...

In this episode, Carl reflects on how differently we can interpret the world when we’re tired, emotionally depleted, or “in the basement.” A harmless comment, a credit card statement, or a letter in the mail can suddenly feel threatening, even when nothing is actually wrong. Carl explores the growing space between stimulus and response, and why simply noticing our own state a little sooner may be...

In this episode, Carl continues his exploration of a different approach to marketing with a simple question: Where are you still smoking? Before worrying about SEO, websites, content, or the latest marketing tactic, he argues that we should fix the boring basics first: return the email, call people back, show up on time, do what you said you would do, and say thank you. It’s a reminder that some o...

In this episode, Carl begins an exploration of marketing with a provocative claim: most marketing advice is just success porn—a tidy story built after the fact about why something worked. After decades of chasing tactics, formulas, funnels, and experts, he offers a different approach he calls “the offering.” Instead of asking how to get more clients or capture more attention, what if marketing beg...

In this episode, Carl explores the “normalization of deviance,” the unsettling way risky behavior can slowly begin to feel safe simply because nothing bad happened. From investing to riding motorcycles, repeated success outside our normal safety boundaries can teach us exactly the wrong lesson: we got away with it, so it must be okay . Carl offers a simple reminder worth carrying with us: Getting...

In this episode, Carl explores one of the most dangerous lessons we can learn about risk: nothing bad happened last time. Whether in investing, backcountry skiing, or everyday life, repeated exposure to risk without consequences can slowly convince us that we were safe all along. Carl reflects on how the absence of consequences can masquerade as evidence of safety, and why one of the most importan...

In this episode, Carl brings together many of the ideas he’s been exploring around risk, options, commitment, capital, and meaning to ask one central question: How do we come to know what matters enough to reorganize our lives around? He explores why discovering what matters may require more than introspection, how small experiments and meaningful risks can reveal what we truly care about, and why...

In this episode, Carl reflects on an unexpected physical response to hearing about the deliberate constraints that shaped the life of Herbert Simon. Despite an extraordinarily expansive intellectual life, Simon simplified everyday decisions around clothes, food, home, and routine, and something about that made Carl’s whole nervous system settle. It’s an exploration of constraints, freedom, and the...

In this episode, Carl explores one more possibility behind our desire to keep our options open: maybe we’re simply avoiding the feeling of letting something go. Whether it’s an old project, another career, a place we might someday live, or a different version of ourselves, closing the door can feel like a real loss. Carl reflects on the hidden cost of keeping those possibilities alive and asks a u...

In this episode, Carl explores a hidden cost of keeping our options open: it keeps comparison alive. Drawing on research showing that people often become happier with choices they can’t undo, he considers how an open door can leave us endlessly wondering whether something else might have been better. Sometimes, the thing that allows us to become satisfied with a decision is simply making it, closi...

In this episode, Carl challenges the familiar advice to “keep your options open.” While optionality can be valuable, he explores the situations where refusing to choose may actually be the greater risk, because commitment itself creates possibilities, information, relationships, mastery, and meaning. The real question isn’t whether options are valuable, but what kind of terrain you’re in: one wher...

In this episode, Carl explores a surprising cost of keeping our options open: the energy required to keep wondering what else we could be doing. Inspired by an idea shared by David Epstein about the freedom that comes from commitment, Carl considers whether what we call “freedom” is sometimes just an exhausting collection of unmade choices. What if real freedom comes from choosing? It’s a thoughtf...

In this episode, Carl explores a distinction that has changed the way he thinks about work: Are you an entrepreneur or an artist? While entrepreneurs are often taught to make themselves less essential to the business, Carl wonders whether the opposite is true for artists and craftspeople, where the goal may be to put more of yourself into the work, not less. It’s a thoughtful look at delegation, c...