How Daniel Kahneman Pioneered Behavioral Economics, How Public Defenders Came About

We look at the legacy of the late psychologist Daniel Kahneman. The Princeton University Nobel Laureate changed our understanding of how we make decisions.

Air Date: April 3, 2024

FILE - President Barack Obama awards psychologist Daniel Kahneman with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Nov. 20, 2013, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Kahneman, a psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in economics for his insights into how ingrained neurological biases influence decision making, died Wednesday, March 27, 2024, at the age of 90. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

The late Princeton University psychologist Daniel Kahneman changed our understanding of how we make decisions, especially financial ones, proving that we are far more irrational than we think. Kahneman pioneered the field of behavioral economics and won a Nobel Prize for his work tying psychology to economics. He liked to point out that he never took an economics class. Kahneman died last week at the age of 90 years. We look at his groundbreaking work and how it has shaped how we understand judgements, motivation and intuition. Our guests are Katy Milkman, professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Eldar Shafir, Inaugural Director of Princeton’s Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science and Public Policy.

We also talk about the history of public defenders. We look at the landmark decision that led to the creation of public counsel programs around the country and why Pennsylvania programs are so poorly funded. We’re joined by Keisha Hudson, chief defender with the Defender Association of Philadelphia, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary this week

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