How does one trick one's self into doing what’s right or, at the very least, avoiding what’s wrong?
This episode, originally aired more than a decade ago, attempts to answer one question: how do you win against your worst impulses?
Zelda Gamson tried for decades to stop smoking, but the part of her that wanted to quit couldn’t beat the part of her that refused to let go. Adam Davidson, a co-founder of the NPR podcast, talked to one of the greatest negotiators of all time, Nobel Prize-winning Economist Thomas Schelling, whose tactical skills saw him through high-stakes conflicts during the Cold War but fell apart when he tried them on himself in his battle to quit smoking.
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