Aaron Barnes is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Louisville College of Business. He studies how persuasion, branding, and consumer–brand relationships differ between cultures. In our conversation, we talk about Aaron's story and some of his research on how the influence of calling a product "top-rated" versus "best-selling" depends on culture (Barnes & Shavitt, 2024).

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David Halpern is the President & Founding Director of the Behavioral Insights Team. It started as a "nudge unit" in the British government but has gone on to become its own company with offices around the world. We talked to David in 2021 when we were gathering interviews for our podcast series, They Thought We Were Ridiculous: The Unlikely Story of Behavioral Economics. But he had a lot of great insight on the role of behavioral science in public policy, so I wanted to share our full conversation as a standalone episode.

Several years ago, David wrote a great book about the Behavioral Insights Team and what it's learned about applying behavioral science at scale. That book is: Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference (and I really enjoyed it).

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Daniel Kahneman was a titan in social science. He transformed our understanding of decision-making, he taught a generation about social psychology, he won a Nobel prize. It's hard to overstate his influence. He passed away last week, and the field is mourning the loss. Along with the hosts of the podcast Behavioral Grooves, I interviewed Kahneman back in 2021, and we used that interview as a foundation of our podcast series, "They Thought We Were Ridiculous: The Unlikely Story of Behavioral Economics."

I had already been considering releasing the full interview as a standalone episode of Opinion Science, and under the circumstances, it felt like sharing it now was a nice tribute to the man who had contributed so much. I hope listening to this is a comforting and warm reminder of his impact on behavioral science.

This isn't a typical Opinion Science episode, though, because the interview was mostly for research and pulling soundbites. We didn't set out for it to be a polished standalone interview. As a result, we go down rabbit holes, get technical, assume shared knowledge, etc. So, I make no promises that you'll follow every moment of the interview if you're not already familiar with Kahneman's work, but it might still be a fun listen anyway.

Thanks again to Danny Kahneman for reminiscing about the early days of his career with us.

For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.