Welcome to Hidden Brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantan.
This week we're going to bring you.
A conversation I had in front of a live audience with Richard Thaler, taped on Halloween at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, DC.
Richard is a professor of behavioral sciences and economics at the University of Chicago and is a well known author.
His latest book is called the making of behavioral economics.
I want to start by asking Richard a real softball question.
You have a friend whose name is Daniel Kahneman.
He won the Nobel Prize in economics some years ago.
World famous psychologist, brilliant author.
And Danny Kahneman was once asked to describe Richard Thaler to a journalist, and he said that Richard's dominant characteristic, the thing that makes him stand out, is that Richard is lazy.
Can you tell me, Richard, why Danny said that?
And also why he insists that this was a compliment?
Yeah.
What's worse is a, Danny is my best friend, and b, he said this was my best quality.
To this day, Danny defends this and that.
He defends a, and that it's true, and b, that it's a compliment because he says that it means I'm only willing to work on things that are important.
The truth is I'm only willing to work on things that are fun.
And that's why I'm here today, because I think we're going to fund.
I think that's exactly right.