On the ninth episode of “The Ethical Life," Richard Kyte and Scott Rada focus on the risks people face — some real and some overblown — and why people react the way they do.

First we’ll discuss how to understand the changing guidelines around COVID-19 and how people can hear the same advice but react so differently.

Then we’ll discuss the major threats we often hear about — from national disasters, to terrorism to climate change — and how we can try to not feel overwhelmed by worry and actually lessen their future impacts.

And, in the third segment, we’ll bring the talk about risk much closer to home and look at how parents have become much more protective of their children and what drove those changes over the past few generations.

Stories mentioned during the podcast:

Zero COVID risk is the wrong standard, by Jonathan Chait, New York magazine

Protecting America against catastrophe, by Felix Salmon, Axios

Idaho introduces ‘free-range parenting’ bill, by Katherine Martinko, Tree Hugger

What we’ve been reading:

Rick: Results of the Campus Expression Survey

Scott: America Is Not Made for People Who Pee, by Nicholas Kristof, an opinion writer with the New York Times

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