We are happy to announce a new online conversation series, “Frontiers,” where we’ll host live conversations with people who are pushing the boundaries of behavioral science. The series will showcase behavioral science perspectives on contemporary issues, cutting edge approaches to applying behavioral science, and conversations on the craft of behavioral science and design.
The Frontiers Conversation Series will run throughout 2025 (about once per month) and will feature:
- Rory Sutherland (May) — Don’t Forget the Human
- Cass Sunstein (May) — Exploring Behavioral Science and Current Events
- Siri Chilazi (June) — Pursuing Workplace Equality in an Era of Backlash
- Daron Acemoglu (July) — Technology on the Rise, Institutions on the Brink
- Emily Oster (September) — Parenting Better Through Data
- Piyush Tantia (October) — How Can We Continue to Innovate in Behavioral Design?
- Kristen Berman (November) — Silicon Valley Vibe Check: What’s the Latest at the Intersection of AI and Behavioral Design?
Conversations will be led by Behavioral Scientist Editor-in-Chief, Evan Nesterak, and will run for 45-60 minutes. Below, you’ll find a full preview for each conversation, as well as the complete schedule (dates, times, duration).
The conversation series is open to Supporters of Behavioral Scientist—readers with a paid monthly or annual subscription—or those who purchase a ticket. This financial support helps power our work as an independent, nonprofit magazine. Find out more about becoming a Supporter or purchasing a ticket here.
Those who register for the series can attend live and will receive recordings after the event. And Supporters get a plus one—you can give one colleague, friend, or family member full access to the event.
We hope you’ll join the conversation series. If you have any questions feel free to get in touch by emailing us at editor@behavioralscientist.org.
See you there,
Evan Nesterak, Editor-in-Chief
2025 Frontiers Conversation Series
Don’t Forget the Human
with Rory Sutherland on Wednesday, May 7
Rory Sutherland, Ogilvy’s witty adman, has a knack for noticing what others miss. And what frequently gets missed is the human side of a problem. Too often, Rory points out, we fall into the trap of turning everything into a “high school math problem,” where we think only of budgets, deadlines, and KPIs. We forget the human on the end of our product or service and think only of what we can track in a spreadsheet.
“I always ask the question,” Rory writes, “What would’ve happened if you hadn’t given the brief for High Speed 2 [a rail project in the UK] to a load of engineering firms who immediately focused on speed, time, distance, capacity? What if you’d given the brief to Disney instead? They would’ve said, ‘First of all, we’re going to rewrite the question. The right question for High Speed 2 is: How do we make the train journey between London and Manchester so enjoyable that people feel stupid going by car?’ That’s the right question.”
What do we gain by putting humans back into the equation? And how can we do it better? That’s what we’ll speak with Rory about. Questions made all the more urgent as the rise of AI threatens to push humans even further out of consideration.
Rory Sutherland is the vice chairman of Ogilvy in the U.K, where he established their behavioral science group in 2012. He is the author of Alchemy, a TED speaker, the creator of Nudgestock, an annual event at the intersection of behavioral science and marketing, and an accidental sensation on TikTok.
Read Rory Sutherland’s articles on Behavioral Scientist.
Exploring Behavioral Science and Current Events
with Cass Sunstein on Wednesday, May 28
Cass Sunstein is one of the few people who might be able to make sense of what’s going on right now. Sunstein is a professor at Harvard Law School with experience working in two government administrations, and an author who has written about policy tradeoffs, campus free speech, and how to make the government simpler.
Rapid changes in U.S. government policy, particularly in higher education and scientific research, have created a new landscape that businesses, nonprofits, and universities need to navigate. Cass’s work can help people do just that.
We’ll ask him about the issues that he sees as the most pressing, what he perceives as temporary versus permanent shifts, and his advice for those charting their course through these changes.
Cass Sunstein is a legal scholar and professor at Harvard University. He served in government under the Obama and Biden administrations. He is the author of a number of books, including Nudge (with Richard Thaler) and Noise (with Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony). He also edited Can It Happen Here?, a volume exploring the possibility of authoritarianism in the United States, and authored Simpler, which describes the ways the government can function more effectively based on his experience working in the Obama administration. He writes the newsletter, Cass’s Substack.
Read Cass Sunstein’s articles on Behavioral Scientist.
Pursuing Workplace Equality in an Era of Backlash
with Siri Chilazi on Wendesday, June 18
“Very few people are against fairness but we don’t all agree on what it entails,” write Siri Chilazi and Iris Bohnet in their 2025 book Make Work Fair. “Whatever you may think about the current DEI approaches being used in organizations, or however you feel about the current tenor of the public debate around DEI, we hope you share our ultimate goal: making work fair for everyone.”
Siri and Iris’s goal in Make Work Fair is neither to preach nor judge but to show “how we can (re)design work for real results based on the best evidence social science has to offer.”
In June, we’ll speak with Siri about this (re)design process and the science behind it. Siri helps lead the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School and works with organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups on equality. In her role, she has seen the good, bad, ugly, and transformative. Companies that are all talk and no action. Others that continue to rely on their “gut” when it comes to hiring and promotions. And organizations that have fully integrated equality into their structure.
When it comes to workplace equality, how can we distinguish what looks good from what actually works? Siri will fill us in.
Siri Chilazi is a senior researcher at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, where she advances gender equality in the workplace through research and research translation. She frequently collaborates with organizations ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies and leading professional service firms. She is the author of Make Work Fair (with Iris Bohnet), which offers an evidence-based approach to achieving workplace equality.
Read Siri Chilazi’s articles on Behavioral Scientist, including an excerpt from Make Work Fair.
Technology on the Rise, Institutions on the Brink
with Daron Acemoglu on Thursday, July 17
With Daron Acemoglu, we’ll get the big picture on where our world is headed. The 2024 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics has spent his career understanding how our social institutions and technology shape the world we live in today and the one we’ll live in tomorrow.
As governments, universities, and other social institutions around the world face threats from inside and out, AI grows ever more capable, and the companies that control AI become ever more powerful. With institutions on the brink and technology on the rise, what are the greatest risks and opportunities for individuals and societies today?
When it comes to AI, Acemoglu fears we might “squander the AI opportunity.”
“The risk is . . . that AI will undermine our ability to learn, experiment, share knowledge, and derive meaning from our activities,” Acemoglu writes. “AI will greatly diminish us if it ceaselessly eliminates tasks and jobs; overcentralizes information and discourages human inquiry and experiential learning; empowers a few companies to rule over our lives; and creates a two-tier society with vast inequalities and status differences. It may even destroy democracy and human civilization as we know it. I fear this is the direction we are heading in. But nothing is preordained.”
Daron Acemoglu is a professor of economics at MIT and the 2024 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. At MIT, he codirects MIT’s Shaping the Future of Work Initiative. He is the author of a number of books, including Why Nations Fail (with James Robinson) and Power and Progress (with Simon Johnson).
View Daron Acemoglu’s Nobel Prize lecture.
Parenting Better Through Data
with Emily Oster on Wednesday, September 10
The world of parenting is a noisy one (and not just because of the kids). Conflicting and confident advice on the news, social media, podcasts, articles, and books can breed uncertainty at a time when the stakes feel their highest. Not to mention the parade of (often unsolicited) advice from friends, relatives, and other parents.
What’s a parent to do? How should they navigate questions about vaccines, breast-feeding, sleep-training, birth control, IVF, and more?
Amid all the noise, Emily Oster has emerged as a clear signal. Through her books and her website ParentData, she offers data-backed guidance while conceiving, during pregnancy, for the earliest years, when kids start school, and beyond.
What’s most helpful about Emily’s approach is that her goal isn’t to tell people what to do, it’s to help them understand the data so they can make decisions for their families. In an age when Momfluencers sell silver bullets on the one hand, and parents feel like they’re being lectured at on the other, Emily’s work stands out. She seeks to inform, not sell, dictate, or guilt-trip.
At the start of the new school year, we’ll link up with Emily to find out what questions parents are asking, what the data has to say, and what she’s learned about helping parents make the decisions that are right for them.
Emily Oster is a professor of economics at Brown University. She is also the founder and CEO of ParentData, a data-driven guide to pregnancy, parenting, and family life. Her books also bring data-informed decision-making to pregnancy and raising a family and include Expecting Better, Cribsheet, The Family Firm, and The Unexpected (with Nathan Fox).
Read an interview with Emily Oster on Behavioral Scientist.
How Can We Continue to Innovate in Behavioral Design?
with Piyush Tantia on Wednesday, October 8
“Could we put good behavioral design in the hands of ordinary people, empowering them to improve their lives, homes, workplaces, and more?” Piyush Tantia asks in a recent article.
In the article, Piyush explored whether we could create a “pattern language” for behavioral design—identifying a set of “context patterns [that] allow us to apply a behavioral lens to broader problems and entire systems more easily.”
For 15 years, Piyush has been at the forefront of behavioral design. The founding executive director of ideas42 and its chief innovation officer, he led the development of their behavioral design process, which has been applied to hundreds of projects reaching millions of people—projects dealing with financial inclusion, charitable giving, global health, higher education, the justice system, and more.
With Piyush, we’ll explore how we can continue to innovate in behavioral design, including the possibility of creating a pattern language, how to develop a context mindset, and why he thinks the way we teach behavioral design needs an upgrade.
Piyush Tantia is the former founding executive director and chief innovation officer at ideas42. For fifteen years he helped ideas42 develop into a leading applied behavioral science organization. He has been a visiting lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and frequently lectures at Harvard, Wharton, and Columbia. He was also a 2021-2022 fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where he explored the intersection of behavioral science and design.
Read Piyush Tantia’s articles on Behavioral Scientist.
Silicon Valley Vibe Check: What’s the Latest at the Intersection of AI and Behavioral Design?
with Kristen Berman on Wednesday, November 5
When I need a vibe check for what’s happening at the intersection of technology and behavioral science, I talk to Kristen Berman. For a decade and a half, Kristen, the CEO and founder of Irrational Labs has been integrating behavioral insights into some of the most familiar tech products from companies like Google, Microsoft, Lyft, Bumble, and LinkedIn.
I spoke with Kristen earlier this year to get a better sense for what’s happening at the frontlines of AI and behavioral science in Silicon Valley. We’ve scheduled a follow-up for this November. We’ll chat about the latest advances in AI, how companies are integrating it into their products and workplaces, and the ways users and employees are responding.
We’ll also chat about the instances where hype is moving faster than the actual tech, what she’s most skeptical about, how AI is impacting behavioral design, and her predictions for the year ahead.
Kristen Berman is the CEO and founder of Irrational Labs, a behavioral design firm based in the Bay Area that helps companies build behavioral insights into their products and services. She is also the author of the Product Teardowns newsletter and host of The Irrational Mind podcast. Before all of this, she worked on financial inclusion at Common Cents Lab and helped Google start its behavioral science team. She also brings behavioral design into her personal life, starting the communal living environment Radish in Oakland, CA.
Read our interview with Kristen Berman and her articles on Behavioral Scientist.
Full Event Series Details
Dates (2025):
- Wednesday, May 7: Rory Sutherland — Don’t Forget the Human
- Wednesday, May 28: Cass Sunstein — Exploring Behavioral Science and Current Events
- Wednesday, June 18: Siri Chilazi — Pursuing Workplace Equality in an Era of Backlash
- Thursday, July 17: Daron Acemoglu — Technology on the Rise, Institutions on the Brink
- Wednesday, September 10: Emily Oster — Parenting Better Through Data
- Wednesday, October 8: Piyush Tantia — How Can We Continue to Innovate in Behavioral Design?
- Wednesday, November 5: Kristen Berman — Silicon Valley Vibe Check: What’s the Latest at the Intersection of AI and Behavioral Design?
Start time (for all events): 9:00 am San Francisco | 12:00 pm New York | 5:00 pm London | 6:00 pm Berlin
Duration (for all events): 45 – 60 minutes
Register: Reserve your spot here
