Freakonomics Radio

He does media and PR training for CEOs, athletes, artists, even the best men at weddings. His company is called Clarity Media Group, and he wrote a book called Pitch Perfect, how to say it right the first time, every time.

He wrote a book called Pitch Perfect. How to say it right the first time, every time.

McGowan says, some people say that's a great question to serve as what's called a bridge.

The bridge is what happens when the person interviewing you or asking you questions wants to go down one conversational road.

It was recorded in September, soon after Nadella published a book called Hit Refresh, the quest to rediscover Microsoft's soul and imagine a better future for everyone.

If anything, you know, my entire purpose of this book at least was, look, this process is a continuous process of renewal. It's not a destination that one reaches.

I was not a board or director at Microsoft.

When I took over our fledgling cloud business in 2011, analysts estimated cloud revenues were already multi-billions of dollars with Amazon in the lead and Microsoft nowhere to be seen.

Amazon was leading a revolution and we had not even mustered our troops.

I don't think Google would have existed but for the PC browser. Microsoft enabled Google to build a toolbar for our Internet Explorer.

It's much more costly for someone to not detect a pattern That's Nassim Taleb, the author of Fooled by Randomness and the Black Swan

It's much more costly for someone to not detect a pattern.

It's much costlier for us as a race to make the mistake of not seeing a leopard than have the illusion of pattern and imagining a leopard when there is none.

My name is Vivek Murthy and I was trained as an internal medicine physician and recently served as Surgeon General of the United States...Murthy had recently served as Surgeon General in the Obama administration from 2014 to 2017 and now he is back in that role under President Biden. Murthy is also the author of a recent book about loneliness. It's called Together.

Loneliness places us in a threat state...Whenever you're in a state of threat you are concerned about self-preservation. Morty believes this is how chronic loneliness can lead to bad health outcomes.

Number one it turns out is that Service serving other people is a powerful backdoor if you will out of loneliness.

Murthy is the author of a forthcoming book about loneliness. It's called Together.

Henrich recently followed that book with another one called The WEIRDest People in the World. How the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous.

And the case I make is it's been highly unsuccessful to just pick up institutions that evolved in Western societies and transport them to drop them in Africa or the Middle East or places like that, because there needs to be a fit between how people think about the world, their values, worldviews, motivations and the affordances of the institution.

Henrich recently followed that book with another one called The WEIRDest People in the World. How the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous.

I am the author of the book, The Psychology of Money, and I'm a partner at The Collaborative Fund.

He published The Psychology of Money in 2020, too late, as it turns out, to be included in the top 50 personal finance books that James Choi analyzed. Otherwise, it would have been included.

We've spent the last two years struggling to keep it in stock. We just can't print enough.

My general response to the paper was it's based off of this idea that economists can have the quote-unquote right answer to these problems, that they know the right thing to do with their money, and then they can therefore compare right versus what's actually out there. And that is an idea that I fundamentally disagree with.

There's not the equivalent of two plus two equals four in personal finance. You cannot read a paper or look at a spreadsheet and change the amount of dopamine and cortisol in your brain. You can't do it.

I am the author of the book, The Psychology of Money, and I'm a partner at The Collaborative Fund. ... He published The Psychology of Money in 2020. Too late, as it turns out, to be included in the top 50 personal finance books that James Choi analyzed.

The Limits to Growth, all these great environmental classics all stem directly from his work.

books like, you know, the Population Bomb and Al Gore's first book, Earth in the Balance, Limits to Growth, all these great environmental classics all stem directly from his work.

Roy Baumeister and John Tierney have written two books together. The first, called Willpower, was published in 2011. More recently, they've published a book called The Power of Bad, how the negativity effect rules us and how we can rule it.

In a book called Markets, Minds, and Money why America leads the world in university research, Urquiola charts the development of these institutions.

You know, I was just reminded of, you know, the days when Charles Dickens used to publish his novels in serial form. And there'd be people standing, Londoners standing on the docks waiting for the latest chapters of The Old Curiosity Shop to be delivered because they were dying to know, like, is little Nell going to be all right?

You know, I was just reminded of, you know, the days when Charles Dickens used to publish his novels in serial form and there'd be people standing, Londoners standing on the docks waiting for the latest chapters of The Old Curiosity Shop to be delivered because they were dying to know, like, is little Nell going to be all right?

That bit he mentioned about ed schools in Finland, he was citing Amanda Ripley, who wrote a book called The Smartest Kids in the World and how they got that one.

To get into education college in Finland is like getting into MIT in the United States.

That bit he mentioned about ed schools in Finland, he was citing Amanda Ripley who wrote a book called The Smartest Kids in the World and how they got that one.

David Epstein is a science journalist and author of a book called The Sports Gene.

That's David Epstein, a science journalist and author of The Sports Gene.

I'm a linguist. I write about language and I'm the author of Highly Irregular about why English is so weird.

Why Tough, Through and Doe Don't Rhyme and Other Oddities of the English Language.

It's certainly the case in language that negativity heightens emotion and it heightens the impact of what you're saying.

Well, we have more ways of being negative. We have a lot of words for types of bad feelings. We have guilt. We have shame. Those are very specific. They're different from sad. They're different from down and depressed.

But the vocabulary you have for it, there aren't very specific ones that are like that particular type of joy you feel when you sit down to a meal that looks really good or something very specific like that.

Why Tough, Through and Doe Don't Rhyme and Other Oddities of the English Language.

His latest is Adapt and it's about how success often starts with failure.

He's written a book called Sonic Boom, How Sound Transforms the Way We Think, Feel and Buy.

He's written a book called Sonic Boom, how sound transforms the way we think, feel and buy.

Mary Pilon, the author of The Monopolis, a book about the secret history of the board game Monopoly.

Mary Pilon, the author of The Monopolist, a book about the secret history of the board game Monopoly.

In 2008 we've anticipated the financial crisis by thinking differently and that got a lot of attention and I was faced with the choice of letting it be misunderstood or I put them out.

They were downloaded three and a half million times.

I just want to be clear. What my aspiration here is to make clear how effective principled level thinking in general is.

Wouldn't you like to know Elon Musk's Principles? Wouldn't you like to know Bill Gates' Principles? Wouldn't you like to know Einstein's Principles or whoever that is? Because they're the recipes for success.

And it's explained in greater depth in the book.

I don't know if you've seen the new book by Ray Dalio.

Yeah. I think it's a hell of a book. Now, he may be an extreme, but we're both asking for truth.

He's been my hero since I was 11.

So when the idea of a book came up, he said, here's how it would happen. It's not ghostwritten, it's not co-written, it's not authorized. It's your book.

And he said, when I see authorized on a book, I know it's bullshit. It's whitewashed.

So you write it. All I ask is the opportunity to read it when it's finished and respond to that which I feel the need to respond to.

Warren Zanes's new book, Petty, tells the whole story.

Hey podcast listeners, I've been reading this book called Petty. It's a biography of Tom Petty written by Warren Zanes

His latest book is called Popular Crime.

And books like, you know, the Population Bomb and Al Gore's first book, Earth in the Balance,

books like, you know, the Population Bomb and Al Gore's first book, Earth in the Balance, Limits to Growth, all these great environmental classics all stem directly from his work.