Cass R. Sunstein has 10 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 8 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.1★ across 96 ratings. The most-rated is Nudge.

10 audiobooks
Cover art for Nudge

Nudge

88 ratings

Summary

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself. Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful "choice architecture" can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take - from neither the left nor the right - on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative audiobooks to come along in many years. Included in this recording are a bonus chapter and a Postscript that was added in the paperback edition. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2009 Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (P)2009 Gildan Media Corp

Narrator: Sean Pratt
Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Nudge

Nudge

4 ratings

Summary

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes can make us poor and unhealthy. We often make bad decisions about education, personal finance, health care, family, and the environment. Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that accepts that we are only human. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful "choice architecture" can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take - from neither the left nor the right - on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative audiobooks to come along in many years.

©2008 Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (P)2008 Gildan Media Corp

Narrator: Sean Pratt
Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The World According to Star Wars

The World According to Star Wars

3 ratings

Summary

"Star Wars is the ultimate mythological tale of our age, a hero's journey that is a tribute to the beauty of human freedom as well as an exploration of its dark complexities. In this gem of a book, the brilliant Cass Sunstein uses the series to explore profound questions about being a parent, a child, and a human. It will change the way you think about your own journey, and it might even make you pick up the phone and call your dad." (Walter Isaacson) A deeply original celebration of George Lucas' masterpiece as it relates to history, presidential politics, law, economics, fatherhood, and culture by a Harvard legal scholar and former White House advisor. There's Santa Claus, Shakespeare, Mickey Mouse, and the Bible, and then there's Star Wars. Nothing quite compares to sitting down with a young child and hearing the sound of John Williams' score as those beloved golden letters fill the screen. In this fun, erudite, and often moving book, Cass R. Sunstein explores the lessons of Star Wars as they relate to childhood, fathers, the Dark Side, rebellion, and redemption. As it turns out, Star Wars also has a lot to teach us about constitutional law, economics, and political uprisings. In rich detail, Sunstein tells the story of the films' wildly unanticipated success and what it has to say about why some things succeed while others fail. Ultimately, Sunstein argues, Star Wars is about the freedom of choice and our never-ending ability to make the right decision when the chips are down. Written with buoyant prose and considerable heart, The World According to Star Wars shines new light on the most beloved story of our time.

©2016 Cass R. Sunstein (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

Narrator: Kaleo Griffith
Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Too Much Information

Too Much Information

1 rating

Summary

The best-selling author and recipient of the 2018 Holberg Prize, Cass R. Sunstein, explores how more information can make us happy or miserable, and why we sometimes avoid it - but sometimes seek it out. How much information is too much? Do we need to know how many calories are in the giant vat of popcorn that we bought on our way into the movie theater? Do we want to know if we are genetically predisposed to a certain disease? Can we do anything useful with next week's weather forecast for Paris if we are not in Paris? In Too Much Information, Cass Sunstein examines the effects of information on our lives. Policymakers emphasize "the right to know", but Sunstein takes a different perspective, arguing that the focus should be on human well-being and what information contributes to it. Government should require companies, employers, hospitals, and others to disclose information not because of a general "right to know" but when the information in question would significantly improve people's lives.

©2020 Cass R. Sunstein (P)2020 Tantor

Narrator: Tristan Morris
Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
Available on Audible
Cover art for Choosing Not to Choose

Choosing Not to Choose

Summary

Our ability to make choices is fundamental to our sense of ourselves as human beings and essential to the political values of freedom-protecting nations. Whom we love; where we work; how we spend our time; what we buy: such choices define us in the eyes of ourselves and others, and much blood and ink has been spilt to establish and protect our rights to make them freely.  Choice can also be a burden. Our cognitive capacity to research and make the best decisions is limited, so every active choice comes at a cost. In modern life the requirement to make active choices can often be overwhelming. So, across broad areas of our lives, from health plans to energy suppliers, many of us choose not to choose. By following our default options, we save ourselves the costs of making active choices. By setting those options, governments and corporations dictate the outcomes for when we decide by default. This is among the most significant ways in which they effect social change, yet we are just beginning to understand the power and impact of default rules.  Many central questions remain unanswered: when should governments set such defaults, and when should they insist on active choices? How should such defaults be made? What makes some defaults successful while others fail? Cass R. Sunstein has long been at the forefront of developing public policy and regulation to use government power to encourage people to make better decisions. In this major new book, Choosing Not to Choose, he presents his most complete argument yet for how we should understand the value of choice and when and how we should enable people to choose not to choose.  The onset of big data gives corporations and governments the power to make ever more sophisticated decisions on our behalf, defaulting us to buy the goods we predictably want or vote for the parties and policies we predictably support. As consumers we are starting to embrace the benefits this can bring. But should we? What will be the long-term effects of limiting our active choices on our agency? And can such personalised defaults be imported from the marketplace to politics and the law? Confronting the challenging future of data-driven decision-making, Sunstein presents a manifesto for how personalised defaults should be used to enhance, rather than restrict, our freedom and well-being. 

©2015 Cass R. Sunstein (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd

Narrator: Peter Marinker
Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Cost-Benefit Revolution

The Cost-Benefit Revolution

Summary

Why policies should be based on careful consideration of their costs and benefits rather than on intuition, popular opinion, interest groups and anecdotes. Opinions on government policies vary widely. Some people feel passionately about the child obesity epidemic and support government regulation of sugary drinks. Others argue that people should be able to eat and drink whatever they like. Some people are alarmed about climate change and favour aggressive government intervention. Others don't feel the need for any sort of climate regulation.  In The Cost-Benefit Revolution, Cass Sunstein argues our major disagreements really involve facts, not values. It follows that government policy should not be based on public opinion, intuitions or pressure from interest groups but on numbers - meaning careful consideration of costs and benefits. Will a policy save one life or one thousand lives? Will it impose costs on consumers, and if so, will the costs be high or negligible? Will it hurt workers and small businesses, and, if so, precisely how much?  As the Obama administration's "regulatory czar", Sunstein knows his subject in both theory and practice. Drawing on behavioural economics and his well-known emphasis on "nudging", he celebrates the cost-benefit revolution in policymaking, tracing its defining moments in the Reagan, Clinton, and Obama administrations (and pondering its uncertain future in the Trump administration).  He acknowledges that public officials often lack information about costs and benefits and outlines state-of-the-art techniques for acquiring that information. Policies should make people's lives better. Quantitative cost-benefit analysis, Sunstein argues, is the best available method for making this happen - even if, in the future, new measures of human well-being, also explored in this book, may be better still.

©2018 Cass R. Sunstein (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd

Narrator: Peter Marinker
Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Ethics of Influence

The Ethics of Influence

Summary

In recent years, 'nudge units' or 'behavioral insights teams' have been created in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and other nations. All over the world, public officials are using the behavioral sciences to protect the environment, promote employment and economic growth, reduce poverty and increase national security.  In this book, Cass R. Sunstein, the eminent legal scholar and best-selling coauthor of Nudge (2008), breaks new ground with a deep yet highly listenable investigation into the ethical issues surrounding nudges, choice architecture and mandates, addressing such issues as welfare, autonomy, self-government, dignity, manipulation and the constraints and responsibilities of an ethical state.  Complementing the ethical discussion, The Ethics of Influence: Government in the Age of Behavioral Science contains a wealth of new data on people's attitudes towards a broad range of nudges, choice architecture and mandates.

©2016 Cass R. Sunstein (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd

Narrator: William Hope
Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Nudge (German edition)

Nudge (German edition)

Summary

Nudge - so heißt die Formel, mit der man andere dazu bewegt, die richtigen Entscheidungen zu treffen. Denn Menschen verhalten sich von Natur aus nicht rational. Nur mit einer Portion List können sie dazu gebracht werden, vernünftig zu handeln. Aber wie schafft man das, ohne sie zu bevormunden? Wie erreicht man zum Beispiel, dass sie sich um ihre Altervorsorge kümmern, umweltbewusst leben oder sich gesund ernähren? Darauf gibt Nudge die Antwort. Das Konzept hat bereits viele Entscheidungsträger überzeugt, darunter US-Präsident Barack Obama. Anschaulich und unterhaltsam präsentieren der Wirtschaftsnobelpreisträger Richard Thaler und Cass Sunstein einen neuen Ansatz der Verhaltensökonomie, der schon heute das Denken und Handeln in Politik und Wirtschaft prägt.

©2009 Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH (P)2019 Audio Verlag München

Narrator: Peter Wolter
Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Noise

Noise

Summary

From the best-selling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, the co-author of Nudge, and the author of You Are About to Make a Terrible Mistake! comes Noise, a revolutionary exploration of why people make bad judgments, and how to control both noise and cognitive bias. Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients - or that two judges in the same courthouse give markedly different sentences to people who have committed the same crime. Suppose that different interviewers at the same firm make different decisions about indistinguishable job applicants - or that when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to answer the phone. Now, imagine that the same doctor, the same judge, the same interviewer, or the same customer service agent makes different decisions depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical. In Noise, Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein show the detrimental effects of noise in many fields, including medicine, law, economic forecasting, forensic science, bail, child protection, strategy, performance reviews, and personnel selection. Wherever there is judgment, there is noise. Yet, most of the time, individuals and organizations alike are unaware of it. They neglect noise. With a few simple remedies, people can reduce both noise and bias, and so make far better decisions. Packed with original ideas, and offering the same kinds of research-based insights that made Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge groundbreaking New York Times best sellers, Noise explains how and why humans are so susceptible to noise in judgment - and what we can do about it. Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2021

©2021 Daniel Kahneman , Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein. Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2021 (P)2021 Random House Audio

Available on Audible
Cover art for Simpler

Simpler

Summary

Simpler government arrived four years ago. It helped put money in your pocket. It saved hours of your time. It improved your children's diet, lengthened your life span, and benefited businesses large and small. It did so by issuing fewer regulations, by insisting on smarter regulations, and by eliminating or improving old regulations. Cass R. Sunstein, as administrator of the most powerful White House office you never heard of, oversaw it and explains how it works, why government will never be the same again (thank goodness), and what must happen in the future. Cutting-edge research in behavioral economics has influenced business and politics. Long at the forefront of that research, Sunstein, for three years President Obama's "regulatory czar" heading the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, oversaw a far-reaching restructuring of America's regulatory state. In this highly anticipated book, Sunstein pulls back the curtain to show what was done, why Americans are better off as a result, and what the future has in store. The evidence is all around you, and more is coming soon. Simplified mortgages and student loan applications. Scorecards for colleges and universities. Improved labeling of food and energy-efficient appliances and cars. Calories printed on chain restaurant menus. Healthier food in public schools. Backed by historic executive orders ensuring transparency and accountability, simpler government can be found in new initiatives that save money and time, improve health, and lengthen lives. Simpler: The Future of Government will transform what you think government can and should accomplish.

©2013 Cass Sunstein (P)2013 Recorded Books

Narrator: Joel Leffert
Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
Available on Audible