Richard Thaler
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
628. Sludge, Part 2: Is Government the Problem, or the Solution?
If you make things harder, I call that sludge, kind of a fun word for stuff that's the opposite of fun.
Freakonomics Radio
628. Sludge, Part 2: Is Government the Problem, or the Solution?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Freakonomics Radio
628. Sludge, Part 2: Is Government the Problem, or the Solution?
Thank you. Thank you.
Freakonomics Radio
628. Sludge, Part 2: Is Government the Problem, or the Solution?
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Freakonomics Radio
627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
If you make things harder, I call that sludge. Kind of a fun word for stuff that's the opposite of fun. Name, please. Richard Thaler. I'm a professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.
Freakonomics Radio
627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
For anyone who's had the ill fortune to have not read Nudge, how would you describe it? It's a book about how to make life better through what we call choice architecture. which means arranging the environment in which we make decisions to make it easier to navigate. A nudge in that context is what exactly? Nudge makes things easy, right? It's the WD-40 of life. But sludge is the opposite.
Freakonomics Radio
627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
I certainly think I did. Apparently, there are others who have also made that claim, but they haven't written a book that rhymes with it.
Freakonomics Radio
627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
Let's start with a category that I'll call inadvertent and or incompetent sludge. It comes because somebody didn't think about it. My favorite example of that is due to a guy called Don Norman.
Freakonomics Radio
627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
There are doors that have handles that are called pulls. From that name, you know just what they look like, right? They're tall and often chrome or something. Given the name... You know what that thing is designed to do. Not be pushed, you're saying. Not be pushed, right. And no matter what is written on that door, your brain just wants to pull it.
Freakonomics Radio
627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
There are some architects who I think should go to a special place in hell where every door is designed in order to get you to do the wrong thing. Let's clarify what we want to say about these. It's not that somebody designed them to make fools of people. This was just incompetence.
Freakonomics Radio
627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
You just didn't think that if you put a pole on a door that needs to be pushed, you're really making life harder than it need be.
Freakonomics Radio
627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
A simple example is what I call the unsubscribe trap. where with one click, you can sign up for some service or subscription, but then to unsubscribe, they make you jump through hoops. You have to call, you have to wait, and then they try to sell you something. That's sludge.
Freakonomics Radio
627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
I think that one is clearly intentional. They know it's inconvenient because they are consumers also of other services. There are stories of gyms during COVID that would make their members come to the gym to quit, the gym that they're not allowed to go to. Nobody's designing that innocently.
Freakonomics Radio
627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
There are some big subscription-based companies that I've personally tried to convince to stop doing this, and somebody has told me, no, that would cost us too much money. Are there any good estimates of sludge as a share of GDP or the overall cost of sludge? No, not that I've seen. And part of the problem is so much of it is time. But, I mean, if we think about the U.S.
Freakonomics Radio
627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
medical system, the sludge has to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Joe said, no, no, no, this is not a good idea. I don't want to do this. We talked him into a conversation with somebody else.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Yes. And they got along like a house of fire. And then Joe said, well, let me do some research.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
I have gone to hundreds of these, not of mine, but colleagues. At the end of it, if people leave right away and say, thank you very much, congratulations, it's really nice, let's be in touch, that tells you one thing about what they saw. If they stay around for an hour and
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
and talk to each other and talk to the cast to the point that the producer has to say, ladies and gentlemen, I'm really sorry. Our rental of this room ends in three minutes. Could you please leave? Well, that's what happened on Friday. You were there. I was there. I was the one who had to say, folks, our rental is over in three minutes. People don't hang around at the end if it's not great.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Yes, and that should have been a hit too. I was a co-producer on that.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
One wrong decision. You're dead and you don't know it. To what will someday be the end.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Richard Winkler, general partner of Three Summers of Lincoln. This was our idea from the very inception. It all has to start with the idea and the art, and then you figure out how to finance it.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
I met hundreds of producers. who I didn't think had very good taste and spent money in stupid, ridiculous ways, I kept thinking that I wanted to be a producer. When I turned 60 and had this realization that I don't want to be in the theater till midnight anymore, I said, well, I'm going to try this.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
To which I said, those two words do not belong in the same sentence.
Freakonomics Radio
629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?
Lincoln and musical? I just didn't think they did.