The Behavioural Science Podcast
Cognitive Footprints
This is a regular podcast interviewing the world's leading behavioural scientists. Each episode takes their story and learnings into the decisions you make every day.
About the podcast
Why do you keep hitting snooze?
Why is a "20% off" sign so hard to walk past? Why does quitting a habit feel so much harder than starting it did?These are well-documented patterns. Behavioural science has been mapping them for decades. The research has already shaped how hospitals communicate risk, how pension schemes are structured, and how apps are built to keep you on them longer than you intended. The people being studied rarely get told any of this.Cognitive Footprints interviews the researchers doing this work and asks them to explain it in plain terms. What does the science actually say? Where does it get misused? And what would you do differently if you understood it?
Why we are making this
Behavioural science matters
Most of the advice people get about changing their behaviour - eat better, save more, exercise, sleep enough - ignores fifty years of research into why those things are hard.Behavioural science takes the gap between what people intend and what they actually do seriously, as a scientific problem worth solving. That gap turns out to explain a lot: why willpower-based approaches fail, why hospital appointment reminders work when they include a named nurse, why the order items appear on a menu affects what people order.
The Behavioural Scientist and the Tech Founder
Meet your hosts
Karolina has a PhD from the University of Manchester, where she studied how emotion regulation affects attention and memory. She has spent the years since applying behavioural science in clinical and commercial settings. Her motivation for this podcast is simple: the people who most need this knowledge are usually the last ones to hear about it.
Karolina Czarna, PhD
Damian is co-founder of Functionly and a board member of the European Organisation Design Forum. He has built products used by millions of people and spent his career thinking about how systems shape human behaviour at work. He comes to each conversation wanting to understand the psychology underneath the things he builds.
Damian Bramanis
