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In the Habit: Introduction to Changing our Behaviour

By: Ash Ranpura, Alice Fraser
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  • Summary

  • How can we change our behaviours? The first step is understanding our habits. For better or worse, habits are the invisible building blocks of daily life. Research suggests that about 40% of what we do is repeated almost daily and yet most of the time we aren't really aware of what's happening.

    In this series, neuroscientist Ash Ranpura and comedian Alice Fraser deep dive into the science of behaviour change. They want to find out how we can make good habits and how we can break bad ones. Along the way they meet the man who invented the science of habits, talk to a woman trying to change the world through figuring out how to make behaviour change stick and try out some of the latest tricks and techniques designed to help you change your own behaviours.

    This is the one series you should have in your headphones if you want to understand how to make positive changes in your life.

    This is an Audible Original Podcast. Free for members. You can download all 6 episodes to your Library now.ut 20 minutes.

    ©2019 Audible, Ltd. (P)2019 Audible, Ltd.
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Episodes
  • Ep. 1: The Power of Habit
    Jan 25 2019

    What exactly are habits? Why are they so important? And how long does it take to create them? Ash Ranpura’s wife starts by explaining what she’d like Ash to change about himself. He realises there is a lot he could change – he wants to exercise more, smoke less, drink more water, meditate more, even eat more healthily.

    Alongside him is the comedian Alice Fraser who actually has loads of really good behaviours. She runs, she meditates, she doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink. She explains to Ash a lot of this is because she has developed good habits that are automatic. She talks to the founding father of habit science, Larry Squire, about how his ground-breaking experiments on a patient called Eugene changed how we think about habits and memory.

    Then she talks to Pippa Lally, a habit expert at UCL, about how long it takes to create automatic habits and what this means for behaviour change.

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    21 mins
  • Ep. 2: The Willpower Muscle
    Jan 25 2019

    How important is willpower? And how can we strengthen our self-control? Ash talks to Martin, a drug addict, now trying to kick a really bad habit. One thing Martin has trouble with is self-control. And it turns out that self-control is key to this whole conversation about behaviour change.

    Ash talks to Terrie Moffit, a professor at Duke University. Terrie explains how her pioneering work on a thousand children in Dunedin, New Zealand, shows how self-control is just as important as intelligence when determining life outcomes. Does this mean we’re all doomed? Not according to John Tierney, the author of Willpower. He says willpower is like a muscle and can be strengthened like a muscle. To explain this he tells the story of the 19th century explorer Henry Stanley. Stanley developed a series of tricks and techniques to help build his willpower in the face of the hardships he found on his travels through Africa. These are the kinds of techniques we can apply to our own lives today.

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    24 mins
  • Ep. 3: Making New Habits
    Jan 25 2019

    This episode is all about the hacks and tricks you can use to form new habits and behaviours. Ash is ready to try and start a new habit. He decides he wants to exercise every day by bicycling. So Alice sets him up with the behavioural scientist and habit expert Katy Milkman. She’s a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and she’s come up with a specific technique for starting a new habit. It’s called temptation bundling.

    Basically, you have to combine a pleasurable thing like listening to a really suspenseful audiobook with something that requires a bit of willpower like exercise. Katy helps Ash make a plan for his bicycling habit. Ash tries it out at his home in Somerset.

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    22 mins

What listeners say about In the Habit: Introduction to Changing our Behaviour

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Outstanding

This is an excellent series in habit development and change. Worth every minute of listening! We’ll done!

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Okay this is a vibe

I haven’t even finished all 6 episodes yet but this guy is so funny. This should be interesting ☕️

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very fun, educative and knowledgeable!

This podcast has great information about habit forming from a scientific point of view.

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Ash and Alice are magic and I hope we get more series from them

Liked:

1) Charismatic hosts who bring insight and humor to the topics discussed.

2) Strong audio production, with good pacing and editing that maintains momentum and suspense even when a guest or topic becomes a bit dry or threatens to be repetitive.

3) Mostly good guests, all of whom benefit from (1) and (2) above. A legitimate and relevant survey of topical experts from the field of behavioral science (for better or worse!).

Dislikes:

1) Structurally, I will never understand why these Audible podcasts need to be broken up with intros and exits for each episode. I listened like I would listen to any chaptered audiobook, so I didn’t need to hear a production credit or host reintroduction every 25 minutes. That said, there are worse offenders in the Audible podcast library!

2) Scientifically, I think it’s fair to say the field of behavioral psychology has taken a bit of a reputation hit since this series came out. The hosts, especially Alice, express appropriate skepticism and conclude with needed caveats. This series is NOT grifters exploiting pseudoscience, and unfortunately it is a topic where that has become commonplace.

But I would have liked an episode — and I’d love a new series! — exploring what happens when these neat tricks stop working, and what that might mean. Maybe that would be less appealing for a self-help audience, but I think it would be more interesting and honest.

If Ash didn’t end up cycling more (and I kind of doubt he did!), maybe it would be worth examining what it means to “want” something verbally versus a more fundamental brain state. Then they could examine other topics where people act contrary to their verbal, or even rational, beliefs. There are many juicy examples to choose from!

Something like HYPOCRISY: WHY WE LIE. And then pay them truckloads to do as many episodes as they find value in doing.

Just an idea! And also a note of gratitude to whatever AI is summarizing this for the Audible executive team: you are picking great people, please keep experimenting. More Ash & Alice and if they’re up for it more Bill Bryson and Robert Krulwich and maybe make a run at Michael Palin. Something like the the Words & Music memoirs for great writers like the ones above would be amazing and evergreen.

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