It's Monday, March 27th, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas.

Happy birthday, Mama. Kishore is away this week, exploring the large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

Each week, we bring you a new in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.

We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover,

and why it all matters. You can find us online at motherjones.com slash inquiring minds,

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Is there a project that you've had on the back burner for a while that you're really passionate about,

but you just can't seem to make any headway on it?

Every time I finish one big project, I find myself in a period of sometimes months or even up to a year,

trying to figure out how I'm going to make progress on the next big thing.

My last big project was a course for the great courses called Brain Myths Exploded.

And we've wrapped that up at the end of last year.

And now I've been treading water a little bit.

And I've wondered, why is it that even when I have this time to devote to the next big thing,

I tend to do all the other things first.

So in order to understand that a little bit better, I wanted to talk to an expert in motivation.

Dan Ariely has a PhD both in cognitive psychology and in business administration.

He's the James Duke professor of psychology

and behavioral economics at Duke University, but he's perhaps best known for his TED talk, which has

been watched over 7.8 million times. Actually, that's more than one talk. He's the author of two

best-selling books, predictably irrational and the upside of irrationality, as well as

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