022: Rory Sutherland & Pete Dyson on planes, trains & automobiles

A Load of BS on Sport: The Behavioural Science Podcast with Daniel Ross and Liam Botham

Fellow BSers,

Welcome to the Christmas holiday episode of 'A Load of BS: The Behavioural Science Podcast'. This will be the last of 2021 and we are going out with a bang by welcoming back Rory Sutherland and co-author Pete Dyson to discuss their new book 'Transport for Humans: Are we nearly there yet?'

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And we’re off

Comfort break over, we're back on the road. Now you may have read my Monday BS piece a few weeks ago previewing today's conversation with a little riff on the wonders of the London Underground. Well today you get the full fat version and I can assure you that the cream has risen to the top; in fact it's spilling over and clogging the arteries like the M25 on Boxing Day. What fun!

This anniversary appetizer is bursting with flavour, celebratory abandon and indulgence; and since so many of us will be battling the motorways and trains to reach loved ones in the coming days, what more appropriate treat for today than transport design to keep you toasty.

I should introduce my guests. Rory is well-known to many of you as Global Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy, behavioural scientist, founder of Nudgestock festival, writer and the man responsible for making the Sevenoaks to London Blackfriars line fashionable again.

Pete Dyson is the Principal Behavioural Scientist at the Department for Transport. Pete established a new BS Team at DfT in 2020 to tackle the COVID response and recovery, and the impact of future transport technologies on behaviour.

Today is about the potential of behavioural science to design our transport systems for human, rather than engineers', consumption.

Today Rory and Pete tell us about:

• The fetishization of speed and punctuality
• Solving the conundrum (waste?) of HS2
• Who Homo Transporticus is
• How we actually understand what customers want
• Getting to Exeter when you're not in a rush
• Seat backed train tables
• Products which nobody wants un

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Podcast music: Tamsin Waley-Cohen's Mendelssohn's violin concerto