13. Yul Kwon: “Don't Try to Change Yourself All at Once.” (UPDATE)

People I (Mostly) Admire

Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2026

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

He has been a lawyer, an instructor at the F.B.I. Academy, the owner of a frozen-yogurt chain, and a winner of the TV show Survivor. Today, Kwon works at Google, but things haven’t always come easily for him. Steve Levitt talks to Kwon about his debilitating childhood anxieties, his compulsion to choose the hardest path in life, and how Kwon used game theory to stage a victory on Survivor. This episode originally aired in two parts on January 29th and February 5th, 2021 and was updated on April 4th, 2025.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's episode is an encore presentation of a conversation I had with Yule Kwan way back in January
0:10.3	2021, not long after I started the podcast. It was such a good conversation that we turned it
0:16.5	into two episodes, the first time we'd ever done that. Today, we've condensed those two episodes
0:22.3	back into one, keeping just the very best. I hope you enjoy it. Yule is an absolutely
0:28.3	amazing human being. My guest today, Yule Kwan, has done a little bit of everything.
0:40.5	He's got a law degree from Yale, taught courses at the FBI,
0:43.9	hosted television shows on PBS and CNN,
0:47.1	started a frozen yogurt chain, and dealt high-level jobs at Facebook and Google.
0:51.5	He even won season 13 of the TV show Survivor.
0:56.1	You don't want to tell people that you're using game theory,
0:59.3	because then that starts freaking people out.
1:00.8	They're like, oh, no, what's it going on?
1:02.3	Like, oh, you're manipulating me.
1:07.1	Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.
1:12.1	I first met Yule a few years back. A mutual friend introduced us saying Yule was the smartest person she had ever met.
1:19.3	We said hello. You'll ask me what I was working on. And I told them about a new project using GPS technology in the criminal justice system.
1:27.7	Just so happened that Yule had worked for two years on GPS, and he gave me great advice that
1:32.7	really shaped that project. Then he asked me what else was I working on, and I mentioned
1:37.1	another project. You will just happen to know exactly the right person to help me get that
1:42.0	project implemented. A third project? Yule had thought
1:45.0	about that issue as well, and he had three great reasons why the project was going to fail.
1:50.4	He convinced me to drop the project. So since then, I make it a point to run all my new projects
	...

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