A Spoonful Of Sugar

Love Letters

The Boston Globe

Love Tips, Breakups, Dating, Relationship Tips, Love, Dating And Relationships, Love Advice, Advice, Dating Tips, Marriage Advice, Breakup Advice, Relationship Advice, The Boston Globe, Boston, Society & Culture, Love Letters, Meredith Goldstein, Dating Advice, Letters, Relationships, Boston Globe

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Economist and Wharton professor Katy Milkman has spent a lot of time figuring out why people decide to change – and how they actually do it. Through a great conversation about everything from friendships to the power of “Twilight,” Milkman gives Meredith an honest take on what we can expect from ourselves, and how we can help others evolve ... when they want to. Meet Milkman, author of "How To Change." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.
0:05.7	I'm Meredith Goldstein. You might remember that in the third episode of this season, I went to talk to an expert about change.
0:42.6	It was a Broad Institute brain expert, and he told us his take on whether change is possible.
0:49.6	Basically, he said it's hard to change after a certain age because our brains are just wired a certain way by that point.
0:55.7	And of course that means it can be hard to make positive changes in our relationships.
1:00.2	Today I'm talking to a different kind of expert.
1:02.7	A scientist who's more interested in behaviors than in how we change the hardwiring in our brains.
1:08.3	A bit like the difference between nature and nurture. And let's face it, many of us aren't going to change how our brains, a bit like the difference between nature and nurture.
1:11.7	And let's face it, many of us aren't going to change how our brains work,
1:15.5	but perhaps we can work on being better to ourselves and in our relationships,
1:19.6	and that can just become the new normal.
1:22.2	Today's conversation gave me a lot of hope because I stubbornly believe that people can change, even though I
1:28.5	pull the same stuff over and over and over again. Let me introduce you to Katie Milkman.
1:34.3	She's an instructor at the Wharton School of Business, and she literally wrote a book called How to
1:39.0	Change. First of all, thank you for doing this, because this is a, I like to talk to people about change.
1:49.1	That's what we're doing this season.
1:50.4	And yet I am not sure I know what it is.
1:53.6	So that's why I want to talk to someone like you because we're trying to answer this question in this season about like can people change and of course
2:01.6	we're a relationship podcast so it's usually in the context of that but it has occurred to me in
2:06.6	hearing people stories of change that they're all defining that really differently like changing
2:11.3	who you are versus what you do uh external things versus internal things habits versus like essential parts of your being. So when I say
2:22.4	change, like how do you define change yourself? I define change as a, I'm a behavioral scientist,
	...

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