Using Behavioral Science to Save Lives with Anurag Vaish,TheFinalMile

In this episode, we talk with Anurag Vaish, Co-Founder of TheFinalMile, one of the largest behavioral science consultancies in the world. TheFinalMile has offices in Mumbai and Chicago and we caught up with Anurag while he was in India in December of 2017.  Our conversation covered topics from how the unconscious influences our decision making, why organizations should do more testing of their ideas as well as the influence that Robert Cialdini, PhD had on Anurag.

We also discussed some of the projects that TheFinalMile has done – particularly the train safety project in Mumbai – which now saves thousands of lives every year.  It is a great example of the power that companies can have if they use good science and really focus on understanding what actually drives our behavior.  We followed some rabbit holes into how the human brain is lazy and the impact that environment and choice architecture have on our behaviors.  

NOTE: There are a few moments of bad internet connection where some words get jumbled; however, the majority is clear and we are grateful for that clarity being 10’s of thousands of miles apart when we spoke.