How Your Situation Shapes You (with Angela Duckworth)
2026-10-26
Sure, you can use willpower or grit to break bad habits and build new ones. But maybe the key to success is simpler: change your situation. Psychologist Angela Duckworth explains to EconTalk's Russ Roberts why the people and places around us shape our behavior more than we realize--and why we're hard-wired to resist that idea. Listen as they discuss the three-box framework for understanding human behavior, why creating friction to avoid temptation is itself an act of agency, and how the cultures we choose to join end up shaping who we become.
EconTalk
Russ Roberts- No. of episodes
- 1,074
- Latest episode
- 2026-11-02
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EconTalk: Conversations for the Curious is an award-winning weekly podcast hosted by Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford's Hoover Institution. The eclectic guest list includes authors, doctors, psychologists, historians, philosophers, economists, and more. Learn how the health care system really works, the serenity that comes from humility, the challenge of interpreting data, how potato chips are made, what it's like to run an upscale Manhattan restaurant, what caused the 2008 financial crisis, the nature of consciousness, the conflicts and history of the Middle East, and more. EconTalk has been taking the Monday out of Mondays since 2006. All 1000+ episodes are available in the archive. Go to EconTalk.org for transcripts, related resources, and comments.