Addiction, Faith, and the Limits of Willpower (with Meghan O'Gieblyn)

Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem, and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to econalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econalk.org. We'd love to hear from you. Today is September fourteenth, twenty twenty six, and my guest is author Megan O'Giblin. Her latest book, the subject of today's conversation. Is will and attention a memoir.

Megan, welcome to Econ Talk. Thanks so much. Happy to be here. Now this isn't an easy book to summarize. It is a memoir, but its themes go deep into questions of addiction, rationality, religion. What it means to lead a good life.

And just to set the stage, tell us a little bit about your personal story, which is the memoir part, which is the thread that runs Through the book. You've Had some interesting experiences. Yeah. So I was I guess the first thing to say is I I grew up in a very religious home. My parents were evangelical uh fundamentalists.

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