Freakonomics Radio

Alison is an economist, it says here, and self-professed pension geek who writes for courts and is the author of the forthcoming book An Economist Walks into a Brothel and Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.

I have a new book. It's called Thanks A Thousand. And the idea is I went around the world and thanked a thousand people who had even the smallest role in making my morning cup of coffee possible.

It says here that you are a math teacher and author of the new book Math with Bad Drawings.

This was one of the most influential theses in the social sciences, but also one of the most controversial ones

Basically, he argued that the Protestant doctrine of self Determination would make people work harder

Weber also argued that discipline played a strong role that Protestantism tried to instill the discipline of the Catholic clergy into the Protestant laity

Max Weber had a very particular belief about Calvinist doctrine He believed that the doctrine of predestination meant that all Calvinists were radically insecure and That they desperately wanted to prove to themselves that they were saved but they didn't have any way of proving that

and this is exactly what we're talking about when we talk about, you know, the Protestant work ethic the old Protestant work ethic

I just had this thought, like, you know, what if I just went and worked there? What would I learn about this company?

What Gardner learned about the company is that just about everything Trader Joe's does outside of exchanging food for money is unorthodox for a modern grocery store.

I think the number one thing that struck me about Trader Joe's is that they almost don't advertise at all. They don't market. They have a pretty good website now, but for years, they had a rudimentary website. They had almost no social media presence. They had almost no kind of public relations. They didn't do a whole bunch of the things that I had spent my entire working life thinking, well, these are the things that you do when you build a brand.

Well, as you know, they're very, very secretive company. So they responded exactly the way I expected, which was with utter silence.

She's the author of Sugar, a Bittersweet History.

Thomas Aquinas, way back in the 13th century, and he pronounced sugar a medicine.

And then I started to finish I applied myself to finishing a book I'd been working on for 12 years called Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink

The book we are... I gather is real to the core Yes, everything in the book is you Yeah

And I'm also the author of The Economics of Sports, 6th edition, which is, I think, the top sports economics textbook in the world.

Mazzucato's latest book is called The Value of Everything, Making and Taking in the Global Economy.

Mariana Mazzucato is a professor in the economics of innovation at University College London, and she's the author of the books The Entrepreneurial State and The Value of Everything.

Her most recent book is called The Value of Everything.

I've defined choking as worse performance than you'd expect from an individual, given that there is high pressure or stakes associated with the situation.

Stefan Szymanski is one of many economists around the world who study soccer. He's co-author of the excellent 2009 book Soccernomics, nice title there, friendo, which has been updated for this World Cup, as well as a new ebook called It's Football, Not Soccer and Vice Versa.

Toby Moskowitz is co-author of a book called Scorecasting, which takes an empirical look at some of the standard decision making in sports.

...or how about this option? You can start making plans to attend the 2026 World Cup in America. That's right. It has just been announced that a joint bid by the US, Canada and Mexico has been selected by FIFA for the 2026 World Cup with 60 of the 80 matches to be played here in America. Anyone need a floor to sleep on in New York? Give me a shout. Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio, is innovation overrated? Should we be spending more time and more money on maintenance? People always think more about how new ground can be broken than they think about how existing institutions can be sustained or existing facilities can be maintained. In praise of maintenance. That's next time on Freakonomics Radio. Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Matt Frasica with help from Greg Rizalski, Joel Meyer and Eliza Lambert. Our staff also includes Allison Hockenberry, Stephanie Tam, Merritt Jacob, Max Miller, Harry Huggins and Andy Meisenheimer. The music you hear throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. Also check out our archive at Freakonomics.com. You can follow us on all the social media or write to us at radio at Freakonomics.com.

If you want to learn more about the Olympic bid and rebuilding New York, check out his book Greater than Ever, New York's big comeback.

You read a book in 1999 about Dow 36,000. What happened?

Sir, I think that one critic of mine once looked at that book and called it a youthful indiscretion.

And I think as youthful indiscretions go, it wasn't such a bad one.

Well, it's like there was a book, there was Hadrian Memoirs. That was a book about Hadrian speaking in his own words and so on and he had conquered and he described that I think very well.

In 1974, the Journal of Portfolio Management published a paper by the economist Paul Samuelson called Challenge to Judgment.

Samuelson's paper challenged the performance of active managers and suggested that, quote, at the least some large foundation should set up an in-house portfolio that tracks the S&P 500 index, if only for the purpose of setting up a naive model against which their in-house gunslingers can measure their prowess.

It strikes me that you might feel that some pieces of society, particular American society, have kind of gotten sheepish about Winning and that we pay too much attention to the disadvantaged.

Everybody gets a prize. Everybody gets a trophy. I couldn't be more against that than anybody alive.