Freakonomics Radio

Resch has been studying and writing about the art market for years His latest book is called How To Become A Successful Artist.

Shortcut is not a fast way to finish your journey But rather a stepping stone to beginning a new one It's a pathway cleared a tunnel dug a bridge Constructed to allow others to quickly reach the frontiers of knowledge so they can make their own journeys into the darkness

I wanted to make very clear that this wasn't about cutting corners I think when you hear shortcut that pejorative side is about Are you not doing it properly?

It's interesting to note that humans weren't the first To exploit the power of mathematics To assess the best way to tackle a challenge Nature has been using mathematical shortcuts To solve problems long before we arrived

Many of the laws of physics are based on nature always finding a shortcut Nature is lazy like humans And wants to find the lowest energy solutions It's extremely good at sniffing out shortcuts

Sometimes it's just as important to know when there are no shortcuts to the problem you're trying to crack Knowing that the long way around is the only way to your destination will prevent you from wasting time in the hope of finding the shortcut

In a book called Genius and Anxiety, How Jews Changed the World 1847 to 1947, the author Norman Lebrecht puts forth another possible explanation for the high level of Jewish achievement.

And then in 2019, you publish a book called Love Your Enemies, how decent people can save America from the culture of contempt.

And this book argues that we have reached a contempt crisis in the US and we need to fight it with kindness, essentially.

Reading your book, Love Your Enemies, it was so moving to me, especially the portions where you're describing the difference between contempt and anger.

Out of this research came his first book in 2006. It was called Who Really Cares? The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.

One of the things the poet Rilke taught me was part of being wise is accepting that you don't have all the answers right now.

Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language, he wrote in Letters to a Young Poet.

My first novel that I read was A Wrinkle in Time. Love that book.

And then after that, once I got into the NBA, I always thought it was fascinating how I started hearing the books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Cass Sunstein, Thaler's co-author on Nudge, has in fact just published a book called Sludge, What Stops Us From Getting Things Done and What to Do About It.

He ultimately wrote a book about the tragedy called Heatwave and this theme of people living alone and dying alone Was one of many themes in the book.

there was a little book that was popular a few years ago called 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the World.

Well, those are 50 simple things that you could do to feel self-righteous and none of them were going to save the world.

What percent of medical care in your opinion is Unnecessary? The average answer was 21%.

For 50 years, we've been told by hospitals, we can't give you a price.

But 60% of health care is shoppable. It's predictable and we can do a lot better.

A researcher who called a hundred and one Hospitals that do heart surgery in the United States and asked what's the price of a standard cabbage or coronary artery bypass surgery?

Only 53 could give him an answer... the price of the cabbage operation ranged from 44,000 to half a million dollars.

New York, New York, New York, Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation isn't your typical biography of a city.

It was one of the first sociological looks at the impact of corporate life and suburban life on American people.

He was once asked, what are your three favorite American cities? And then he said, New York, New York, New York.

The book scrupulously avoids simplistic good bad binaries.

Today I'm talking with Thomas Dija about his new book, New York, New York, New York, Four Decades of Success, Excess and Transformation.

Black people fled the horrors of the racist South for so-called liberal cities in the north and west Trading the devil they knew for the devil they didn't only to come to the painful realization that the devil is the devil as Julian Bond once put it America after all unscrambled spells I am race

I fear that black activism is creeping towards its own form of elitism a Way of building strata and hierarchy of the supposedly woke over the supposedly asleep.

Black colonization of the south Isn't a philosophy or an intellectual posture. It's an actual plan

I am talking about a grand generational undertaking a rescue mission for black America and That mission begins with the states which are the true centers of power in this country and as such Control the lion's share of the issues that bedevil black lives criminal justice judicial processes education health care economic opportunity and assistance.

We need a block of states a Region in which we and our children are equally conditioned to success support and safety We need a space in which black imagination is equally encouraged Where we recognize that black children dream to that they gaze upon the same stars as all others that adventure and invention are universally human traits that demand to be nurtured in all.

I realize that I am proposing nothing short of the most audacious power play by black America in the history of the country.