Freakonomics Radio

The first one was called Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Adventures of a Curious Character.

His book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, a memoirish catalog of his adventures and misadventures, had been a bestseller.

Her latest is called Rebel Talent, Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life.

Her latest is called Rebel Talent, Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life.

Ariely has enjoyed the spotlight for many years, going back to his 2008 book, Predictably Irrational, the hidden forces that shape our decisions.

Ariely has enjoyed the spotlight for many years, going back to his 2008 book, Predictably Irrational, the hidden forces that shape our decisions.

Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop

Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop

I did not expect to like this book. I'm generally just not that interested in things that happened 200 million years ago or Even 10,000 years ago. I tend to be much more excited by modern Events. But in chapter after chapter, Kat Bohannon offers such a fresh and surprising perspective that I couldn't put the book down.

And over and over, I found myself bringing up these stories in conversation.

And I don't think as a writer, you could have hoped to do anything more than that.

I have to confess, I wasn't familiar with your work. The first description I found about you mentioned your PhD in Evolution of Narrative and Cognition. And of course, I didn't know what that meant. And then it mentioned that you'd published a wide range of essays and poems.

And it said you'd written a book about the female body. That was the sum of Everything I knew when I opened your book, that it was a book by a poet about the female body.

And can I honestly say, rarely have I been caught so off guard by a book because right from the beginning, it's clear that you have deep knowledge about an enormous range of scientific subjects.

And this isn't just a repackaging of the standard popular science stories on subject after subject that I thought I knew something about. You brought forth facts and ideas that were totally new to me, that were fascinating, and that changed my view of the world.

And you'll hear a fantastic conversation with Kat Bohannon, the author of Eve, How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.

I suppose if I thought that it was good for society, I wouldn't have called the book Plunder.

The book is called Plunder, Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America.

I'm hoping that this is a little bit of a blueprint for how we can get people who are really knowledgeable in government to talk publicly about these issues.

I suppose if I thought that it was good for society, I wouldn't have called the book Plunder.

I suppose if I thought that it was good for society, I wouldn't have called the book Plunder.

The book is called Plunder, Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America.

I'm hoping that this is a little bit of a blueprint for how we can get people who are really knowledgeable in government to talk publicly about these issues.

I suppose if I thought that it was good for society, I wouldn't have called the book Plunder.

The mission is first to make everyone aware that private equity is not alternative. It is mainstream. It's everywhere.

This is a 12 trillion dollar industry today. And I think going forward in the 2030s, this could be a 20 trillion plus industry.

The mission is first to make everyone aware that private equity is not alternative. It is mainstream. It's everywhere.

This is a 12 trillion dollar industry today. And I think going forward in the 2030s, this could be a 20 trillion plus industry.

You don't really know enough, probably as an individual, about Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR. These are the giants of the industry. And you should.

I would like to tell you about our new membership program. It is called Freakonomics Radio Plus.

To learn more about Freakonomics Radio Plus, search for Freak-o-nomics Radio on Apple Podcasts.

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I haven't met anyone who feels really good about failure, myself included. You have to force yourself to feel good about failure.

I think it's our upbringing, right? By the time you're in elementary school, there's such a strong emphasis on getting the right answer or succeeding, not failing.

I think of them as emotional, cognitive, and social. So emotionally, we're just spontaneously averse to failure, right? I don't like it. I don't want to have it. I don't want to look at it, right? It's immediate.

Cognitively, because we don't do a good job or don't have access to a simple framework to distinguish among kinds of failures, we then sort of decide to not like any of them.

And the fear part has to do with our concerns, very deep and deeply founded concerns of what other people think of us. So we don't want to be seen as having shortcomings. We don't want to be seen as associated with a failure.

So I'd like to read you a short passage from the book Leviathan, The History of Whaling in America by Eric J. Dolan. Of all the nations that have hunted whales, none has a more fascinating whaling history than does the U.S. From the moment the Pilgrims landed until the early 20th century, whaling was a powerful force in the evolution of the country. Much of America's culture, economy, and in fact its spirit were literally and figuratively rendered from the bodies of whales.

Hobbes was curious what life would be like without any government at all a condition philosophers call the state of nature He thought it would be awful. Indeed. He thought it would involve a war of every man against every man in the state of nature hub said life would be solitary poor nasty brutish and short

There is a Harvard psychologist named Dan Gilbert who studies, you know, Stumbling on Happiness was a book years ago.

Yeah.

He said he came to the conclusion that his life had been so like you said, blessed, fortunate, great experiences.

Of course, a lot of hard work and hardship, blah, blah, blah.

But that he felt full like you eat a good meal.

Stumbling on Happiness was a plain spoken but potent blend of psychological insight and common sense.

You write quite explicitly in the beginning of the book that Stumbling on Happiness is not a self-help book.

This is not a guide to being happy.

And that's probably the source of any bad review is people who are horribly disappointed because they expected one thing and got the other.

But by understanding more about how my mind works, it indeed has helped me achieve greater happiness and fulfillment in my life.

By some estimates, each new generation of jet engines has been about 20% more fuel efficient than the previous generation.

One thing that has been happening in the field of aircraft manufacturing is that aircrafts are becoming lighter thanks to the use of composite materials as opposed to the aluminum or aluminum.

Here is the economist Vladimir Blatkach, author of a book called The Economics of Airlines.

I go with Aristotle. He's my guy. He's my favorite philosopher. And he pointed out in the Nicomachean Ethics 2,300 years ago that to be happy requires the good benefit of having material needs met.

Aristotle knew this, right? Two books of his famous Nicomachean Ethics are devoted to friendship.

Most of us think that scalable ideas have some silver bullet feature, some quality that bestows a can't-miss appeal. That kind of thinking is fundamentally wrong. There is no single quality that distinguishes ideas that have the potential to succeed at scale from those that don't.

A pharmaceutical company develops a promising new sleep medication in its lab, but the drug doesn't live up to its promise in randomized trials. A small company in the Pacific Northwest successfully launches a product, then expands its distribution only to find that it sells poorly on the East Coast. These cases are all examples of a voltage drop.

So what I'm calling for here is to reverse the notion of evidence-based policy. When I talk about policy-based evidence, I'm saying at scale, with all of the flaws that the program or the institutions or the implementers will have, does my program still work?

We need to move from a mentality of creating and scaling to a mindset of scaling. We need to move from a mentality of creating evidence-based policy to one of producing policy-based evidence.

Voltage drops are what happens when the great electric charge of potential that drives people and organizations dissipates, leaving behind dashed hopes, not to mention squandered money, hard work, and time. And they are shockingly common.

The experimental economist John List, who's been on the show before, has just published a book called The Voltage Effect. How to make good ideas great and great ideas scale.

The most recent is David and Goliath.

The most recent is David and Goliath.

Her book is called The Art of Gathering.

businesses tend to, quote, run on a cult of positivity.

And in many cases, I mean, it's gather less.

Priya Parker again. Her book is called The Art of Gathering.

So it's our Monday morning staff meeting. It's our Wednesday afternoon sales meeting. That is not a purpose. That is a category.

Duhigg's most recent book, Smarter, Faster, Better combines old fashioned reporting and a survey of the academic literature to identify best productivity practices.

In the chapter on teams, you write at some length about the qualities of a good team, but particularly the qualities of a leader of that good team.

As I was reading Charles Duhigg's book about productivity, it's called Smarter, Faster, I had a rather unsettling realization, which I told Duhigg about.

Duhigg's new book, Smarter Faster Better Combines old-fashioned reporting And a survey of the academic literature To identify best productivity practices

In the first book, The Power of Habit Did the same for habit formation

I had assumed the second book Was sort of a continuation of the first But Duhigg sees it as the opposite

Jason Zinnamon is a theater critic for The New York Times and he's the author of a book called Shock Value, which is about the horror films of the 1970s.

And if you actually read The Origin Of Species, this is why he spends the first 70 plus pages on pigeons.

I think the real answer to your question is nobody's actually read The Origin Of Species.

If you just happen to have Charles Darwin at your university and he happens to write The Origin Of Species and sell a zillion copies, why wouldn't the university try to capitalize on it?

Rothstein is the author of The Color of Law, A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.

He's the author of The Color of Law, a forgotten history of how our government segregated America.

William Vogt's work inspired the first best-selling environmental book, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life?

William Vogt's work inspired the first bestselling environmental book, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.