This is Planet Money from NPR.

Usually when we as humans are faced with a big problem and someone offers us a simple

solution, we're like, thank you so much and we just do that thing.

And in this huge problem we're collectively facing right now, this pandemic, we've been

trying some complicated solutions.

Workdowns, complicated vaccines, hard to produce, but one very simple solution has somehow

become controversial, just a small piece of cloth that you wear on your face.

Masks, so simple, achievable.

In fact, if we all wore masks, Goldman Sachs says that alone could have hurt $1 trillion

in economic loss by preventing future lockdowns.

More importantly, health experts say masks could save 33,000 lives by just October, a

whole stadium of lives saved.

If enough of us wear them, we are in the group project of our lives that we pass or fail

based on participation, but not everyone wants to participate.

Like some people just won't wear them, other people don't even believe that they work.

So as we approach month 9 of this pandemic, it might be a good moment to just step back.

Not to finger point, not to judge, just to ask with true curiosity and maybe a dose of

humility, why don't some people wear masks?

And is there anything we can do to convince them?

We actually have some good news.

There's an entire field of economists who study exactly this type of conundrum.

Why do humans sometimes choose not to do things that are in their own best interests?

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