Podcasts about duke professor

What if your thoughts were no longer private? This week, I'm joined by Nita Farahany, Duke Professor, TedX Speaker, Global Policy Advisor and Author of ‘The Battle for Your brain'. We dive into the urgent reality of neurotechnology where brain data can be tracked, emotions decoded and decision-making influenced by AI. Nita shares why mental privacy and cognitive liberty could become the next fundamental human rights.If you care about freedom, ethics and the future of technology, this episode will change the way you think. Tune in now, the battle for your brain has already begun.So why should you be listening in? You can hear Rob and Nita discussing:- The Numerous Benefits and Risks of Neurotechnology- Ethical Concerns Regarding Mental Privacy- Cognitive Liberty as a Crucial Human Right- Global Policies and Frameworks for Safeguarding Mental Privacy- The Future of Technology Redefining What it Means to be HumanConnect with Nita here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitafarahany

On the next Charlotte Talks, stories from eastern North Carolina's Lumbee Tribe about survival and resilience in the face of radical environmental change.

On the next Charlotte Talks, stories from eastern North Carolina's Lumbee Tribe about survival and resilience in the face of radical environmental change.

Do you feel like you're constantly adapting yourself to fit into spaces that weren't made for you?In a world that demands conformity, how do you lead authentically while navigating systemic challenges? Join Helena's powerful conversation with Sanyin Siang, Duke University Professor and Executive Director of the Coach K Center for Leadership & Ethics, as she unveils transformative strategies for embracing your strengths, and unique leadership potential.This episode is a masterclass in personal empowerment, designed for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider or struggled to find their voice in professional spaces. Sanyin breaks down the critical mindset shifts that transform self-doubt into confident, impactful leadership.In this conversation you will learn:How to Embrace Your True SelfHow to Overcome Self-Doubt and FearHow to Find Confidence Within YourselfHow to Turn Negative Thoughts into PositivityHow to Discover Your Inner StrengthHow to Set Boundaries for Self-CareHow to Be Kind to YourselfHow to Trust Your Own ChoicesHow personal and professional integrity is tested as a woman or member of a marginalized group.How to overcome feelings of non-nelongingHow to maintain integrity in leadershipHow to stay true to your values and leading with the concept of “the truth”How to identify and leverage unique strengths and superpowersHow to embrace vulnerability in leadershipHow to find your tribeHow to adapt to different company cultures while staying true to one's core values.Exercises and habits to better understand and embrace your true self, including the value of getting feedback from others.How engaging with different perspectives can enhance self-awareness and growth.Chapters:00:00 Welcome and Introduction 00:18 Sanyin's Background and Career Journey 01:16 Helena's Professional Challenges and Inequity 04:58 Maintaining Integrity and Values 07:34 Discovering and Embracing Superpowers 17:06 Navigating Fear and Uncertainty 26:39 How to lead Authenticity 31:22 The Power of finding your tribe, the concept of “Withness” and Collective Impact 36:34 Sanyin's exciting projectsConnect with Sanyin on Linkedin   resources

This is an excerpt from the full episode "The Art of Political Lying (and Why Republicans Do It More) (with Bill Adair)" Michael Steele speaks with Bill Adair, Duke Professor and founder of the fact-checking site PolitiFact about the epidemic of political lying and why Republicans do it more. Michael also discusses his time as RNC Chairman when he was asked to lie about the birtherism surrounding Former President Barack Obama. If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to leave a review or share it with a friend! Check out "BEYOND THE BIG LIE: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do it More, and How it Could Burn Down Our Democracy?" here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Beyond-the-Big-Lie/Bill-Adair/9781668050705 Follow Bill Adair @BillAdairDuke Follow Michael @MichaelSteele Follow the podcast @steele_podcast Follow The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline

Michael Steele speaks with Bill Adair, Duke Professor and founder of the fact-checking site PolitiFact about the epidemic of political lying, why Republicans do it more and how we can begin to make political lying unpopular and unacceptable. Michael also discusses his time as RNC Chairman when he was asked to lie about the birtherism surrounding Former President Barack Obama. If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to leave a review or share it with a friend! Check out "BEYOND THE BIG LIE: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do it More, and How it Could Burn Down Our Democracy?" here:  https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Beyond-the-Big-Lie/Bill-Adair/9781668050705 Follow Bill Adair @BillAdairDuke Follow Michael @MichaelSteele Follow the podcast @steele_podcast Follow The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline

For Tuesday's edition of “Closer Look,” we revisit Rose's conversations with Duke University professor of law and philosophy Nita Farahany and NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday host Ayesha Rascoe. First, Farahany discusses her book, “The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology.” The book explores neurotechnology and how its continuous evolution could potentially threaten your rights to privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination if companies have access to your brain data. Then, Rascoe discusses her book, “HBCU Made: A Celebration of the Black College Experience.” The book is a collection of essays about historically Black colleges and universities.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Subscribe to Bad Faith on Patreon to instantly unlock this episode and our entire premium episode library: http://patreon.com/badfaithpodcast Duke Professor of Public Policy, Economics, & African American Studies William Darity Jr. is probably the most cited scholar on the issue of the racial wealth gap and reparations. So what does he make of Kamala's agenda for Black America and the state of reparations discourse, post-2020? With more and more Arab and Muslim voters threatening to withhold  their votes over the siege in Gaza, why has there never been an "abandon Dems" movement over the party's broken promises to Black Americans? What types of policies would actually close the racial wealth gap, and why isn't the wealth tax discussed more frequently in these terms? Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod). Produced by Armand Aviram. Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

We continue our series on belief…by looking at misbelief. We're back with our expert, Dan are-ee-elly, to see what drives him. And we'll give special attention to the beliefs that drive him. Dan again is an Israeli-American professor and author who serves as a James B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. Ariely is the co-founder of several companies implementing insights from behavioral science. His latest book, and our muse for this series is MISBELIEF: WHAT MAKES RATIONAL PEOPLE BELIEVE IRRATIONAL THINGS. You can watch this full episodes on YouTube - just search for “What Drives You with Kevin Miller” What Drives You is brought to you by Ziglar, your premier source for equipping Life and Leadership coaches. Visit Ziglar.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance. *This podcast is rated clean but the subject matter is adult themed and may not be suitable or relevant for children or those with fragile belief systems. Head to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code KEVIN and depending on the model receive UP TO 39% off or UP TO $300 off! Sign up today at butcherbox.com/selfhelpful and use code selfhelpful to get free chicken wings for a year. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/kevin. Head to factormeals.com/whatdrivesyou50 and use code whatdrivesyou50 to get 50% off. Go to ShipStation.com and use code KEVIN today and sign up for your FREE 60-day trial. Visit Audible.com/whatdrivesyou or text whatdrivesyou to 500-500. Go to HelloFresh.com/drivefree and use code drivefree for FREE breakfast for life! Go to Seed.com/WHAT and use code WHAT to get 25% off your first month.  Go to AquaTru.com and use code “KEVIN” to receive 20% OFF any AquaTru purifier! Visit BetterHelp.com/WHATDRIVESYOU today to get 10% off your first month Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Interview with Pediatric Neurologist, Duke Professor, Pediatric Sleep Specialist: Dr Sujay Kansagra. Listen to this amazing episode on the science behind baby sleep, what Dr Kansagra does, and his thoughts on topics like sleep training, sleep regressions, and parent guilt

As the Israel-Hamas war continues, many people are still left with questions and confusion over the region and what's behind the war. To help explain, on this week's episode we are talking with someone who has actually tried to negotiate peace in the Middle East. Dr. Bruce Jentleson is a professor at Duke University, but he's had two stints in the U.S. State Department under former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. During our discussion, we'll focus on the backstory, why Americans should care and where it might go from here.

Nita Farahany is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law and Philosophy at Duke University and the founding director of the Duke Initiative for Science and Society. Farahany, who also served as the former commissioner on the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues during the Obama administration, joins “Closer Look to discuss her new book “The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eliot and Eric welcome back Duke Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the Program on American Grand Strategy, Peter Feaver, pinch-hitting for Meghan O'Sullivan (whose illness prevented her from joining us) to discuss Hand Off, a book that Peter and Meghan (along with SOTR guest Will Inboden) edited consisting of all the Bush 43 Administration's NSC transition memos prepared for the Obama Administration. They touch on Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and China and whether or not "the Freedom Agenda" serves as a coherent framing of the Bush Administration foreign policies, the opportunity costs with Russia and China that resulted from the focus on the War on Terror, and much more. https://www.amazon.com/Hand-Off-Foreign-Policy-George-Passed/dp/081573977X https://halbrands.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/12___20___2017_The-case-f.pdf Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eliot and Eric welcome back Duke Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the Program on American Grand Strategy, Peter Feaver, pinch-hitting for Meghan O'Sullivan (whose illness prevented her from joining us) to discuss Hand Off, a book that Peter and Meghan (along with SOTR guest Will Inboden) edited consisting of all the Bush 43 Administration's NSC transition memos prepared for the Obama Administration. They touch on Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and China and whether or not "the Freedom Agenda" serves as a coherent framing of the Bush Administration foreign policies, the opportunity costs with Russia and China that resulted from the focus on the War on Terror, and much more. https://www.amazon.com/Hand-Off-Foreign-Policy-George-Passed/dp/081573977X https://halbrands.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/12___20___2017_The-case-f.pdf Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Full Hour | In today's second hour, Dom Giordano leads off the hour by announcing that today is Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, explaining why we need to do a better job of framing police in a positive light. Then, after touching upon the side topic again, asking who has a weak or strong handshake, Dom offers up a story in the realm of sports, reading back a column in Scientific American by a Duke Professor that argues that black players are disproportionately affected by NFL violence because they're forced into the most dangerous positions. Then, Dom welcomes in Kathy Barnette, former Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, back onto the Dom Giordano Program to gather her thoughts about what went down between Republicans and the Freedom Caucus as congressional members voted for their next Speaker of the House. Kathy explains how this reflected on the rest of the Republican Party, telling of the changing dynamics in what voters want and the turbulence that comes with that as a Party decides what's best for them moving forward. Then, Dom and Barnette move into the realm of schools and education, with Barnette revealing her next form of political activism as she hopes to assist candidates for school boards as progressives continue to force their political will onto unsuspecting students. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)

Sea levels are rising. Storms are intensifying. And the world's sandy beaches and dunes are more important than ever for the protection of coastal environments. And yet sand mining is on the increase — much of it for beach nourishment. But is beach nourishment doing what we want it do? And is the public money used for beach protection actually preserving a public resource for the public good?

I first met Peter Arcidiacano, professor of economics at Duke University, while I was a PhD student at the University of Georgia and I have followed his work since from a distance. I originally followed Peters work because he’d written several articles about sex from a two-sided matching perspective. I was struck by the fact that we both saw thinking about sexual relationships in terms of a matching problem. Two sided matching perspectives focus on the assignment mechanisms that bring people together, and when it comes to sexual relationships, the relative supply of possible partners and competition for those partners will in equilibrium result in pairings, some of which may become the most life sustaining and defining partnerships of those peoples lives. Peter’s work was gratifying to read, and I have often looked up to him for his successful merging of theory and econometrics to study topics I cared about. The economic way of thinking is not about topics, nor is it is not about data, even though economists tend to have particular topics they study intensely and use data usually to do so. The economic way of thinking does though typically involve careful study of allocation mechanisms, such as prices and markets, that bring the productive capacity of communities into existence. These things are important as they animate humans to work together, produce output that manages the production itself, and increasingly towards the end of history, left surplus for humans to enjoy. Who ends up in what activities doing what types of specialized work ultimately shapes that which is made, how much and how it is distributed. The allocations end up not only shaping our lives, but our children’s lives. Starting conditions can cast a long shadow lasting centuries even causing certain groups to creep ahead as more and more of the surplus mounts and accrues to them, while others watch as a shrinking part of the growing pie flows to them.In the United States, in the 21st century, one of the key institutions in all of this assignment of love and commerce has been the university. And within the university system, there are gradations of institutional pedigree and at the top of the pack sits elite institutions whose students seem practically destined to shape and receive the surplus. Given the path dependence in wealth, and how it has interacted with race, it is therefore no wonder that policymakers and economists have for decades sought to refine the rules by which schools can select high school applicants for admission. In many ways, our country’s fight over the use of race in selecting students into college is the old debates about capitalism and the self adjusting market system writ large. So it’s in this broader context about work, schools, matching and allocation mechanisms that I think of Peter and his scholarship. When I review the range of topics on Peters vita, I see the signature marks of the modern 21st century labor economist. Someone interested in markets and how they work to connect people into productive cooperation. Someone interested in institutions, someone concerned about inequality and discrimination, someone versed both in economic theory and econometrics, someone at home with a bewildering array of numbers in a spreadsheet. To me, it is natural that Peter has pivoted so fluidly between topics like sex, work, discrimination and higher education because in my mind these are all interconnected topics concerning the assignment mechanisms we use in America to organize society and maintain our collective standard of living.I invited Peter on the Mixtape with Scott as part of an ongoing series I call “economists and public policy”. The series focuses on how economics and economists think about and attempt to shape public policy. It includes people with a variety of perspectives, and even some who are critics of economics itself. Previous guests on the podcast in the “economists and public policy” series have been Sandy Darity, Elizabeth Popp Berman, Anna Stansbury, Mark Anderson, Alan Manning, Larry Katz, Jeremy West and Jonathan Meer. Peter has not only produced academic articles in some of economics’ most impactful outlets — he has recently served as expert witness in two major discrimination cases, one of which put him on the opposite side of the stand as David Card, winner of 2021 Nobel Prize in economics. You can read about the cases here. They involve the broader topic of race and affirmative action at universities. The cases more specifically involve whether Harvard and UNC Chapel Hill admissions criteria show signs of discrimination. One of the things about Peter’s involvement as expert witness that I want to highlight, though, is that his expert testimony was, at its core, an example of the role that econometrics can play in the shaping of public policy. It is more and more the case that economics’ role in the shaping of public policy in the 21st century will involve not merely economic theory, but also statistical analysis of complex datasets too, and I think it is worth pausing and noting that the economist shapes public policy oftentimes these days as much through interpreting data as her counterpart did using pure economic theory. I hope you find this discussion with Peter thought provoking and informative about both his work on these cases, but also about the role of economics and econometrics in forming public policy. But I also hope that the interview will give you a deeper insight into Peter and who he is. Scott’s Substack as well as The Mixtape with Scott are supported by user subscriptions. Please share this episode to people within and outside economics that you think might be interested. I love doing these interviews and using the substack to do deeper dives into econometrics and the lives of economists and if you find this work valuable, please consider subscribing and supporting it. Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptScott Cunningham:In this week's episode of Mixtape: the Podcast, I had the pleasure of talking with a professor at Duke University, named Peter Arcidiacono. I can never pronounce it correctly, no matter how many times I try. I first met Peter in graduate school. He was, probably then, an assistant professor at Duke, where he has spent his entire career. I was a PhD student at the University of Georgia. And he had a research paper on a topic that I was also working on, involving marriage markets. He's been an incredibly prolific producer in the area of labor economics and education, as well as affirmative action. And he uses tools in econometrics, that I largely never invested in, structural econometrics and discrete choice modeling. So when I read his work, I usually do it, both, because I'm interested in the paper and the paper topic, but also because I'm hoping that this will be a chance for me to open my mind a little bit more, and pick up on some of that econometric modeling, that I lack.Peter is also an expert witness in a high profile case, right now, involving affirmative action and racial discrimination at Harvard University, and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, both of which have been combined into a single case. As I understand it, it's going for the Supreme court soon. In this interview, we walk through a lot of big and small issues around society's preferences around poverty, inequality, as well as the role that higher education is playing in both. My name is Scott Cunningham, and this is Mixtape: the Podcast.Scott Cunningham:Okay. This is great. I don't know if you remember. So this is an interview with professor of economics at Duke University, Peter Arcidiacono. And we're going to be talking about a range of topics. But just to give the reader and the listener a little bit of background, Peter, could you tell me a little bit about yourself, and what your involvement is with a current case, going before the Supreme court, involving University of North Carolina and Harvard University?Peter Arcidiacono:Certainly. And thanks for having me on. I've been at Duke now, for over 20 years. This was my first job out of grad school, and stayed here ever since. And a lot of my work has been on higher education, both with regard to choice of college major, as well as affirmative action.And one of the really dissatisfying things about working on affirmative action, is that universities hide their data. So you can't really get a good sense of how the programs are working, because you typically don't have the data. And I think that that really matters, because to me, so much of the discussion about affirmative action, is in the binary. Either we have it, or we don't have it. But what it means to have it, is something, as economists, we would think about, that's something we would be optimizing over. And so, there's really a large space between race as a tiebreaker in admissions, and what somebody like Abraham Kennedy would advocate for, which would be more of a quota system.And so, thinking about where you stand on that, to me, I had this opportunity to work on these two cases, two lawsuits. One brought against Harvard, and one against UNC, on the role of race in these admissions processes. And for me, it was an opportunity to look behind the veil, and see how these programs actually operated.My intent was always to, a feeling as though, if I'm going to be an expert on affirmative action, I should know how these processes actually work. So my intent was always to use this for the purposes of research, as well. And we've written a number of papers out of the Harvard case. Four have been accepted now, and we just released a fifth one on racial preferences of both schools. And we'll see what happens with that. So those lawsuits, I testified in trial, at both those cases. My counterpart in the Harvard case was David Card, who recently won the Nobel Prize. I was wondering how I would respond to that. And actually, my response, I got to go up against a Nobel Prize winner.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:So those experiences were somewhat traumatizing. But both experts, David Card and Kevin Hoxby, are pillars in the field, and people who have been very helpful to me, and who I have a great deal of respect for.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:So these cases have now, in both those cases, the side I was on lost at the first round. In the Harvard case, they also lost at the appellate round.Peter Arcidiacono:In UNC, it didn't actually go through the appellate round, because-Scott Cunningham:Oh, so-Peter Arcidiacono:... supreme court merged the cases.Scott Cunningham:... Both the Harvard University case and the Chapel Hill case, were already decided, but not at the Supreme Court level.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:So the decision was appealed. It's now before the Supreme Court.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:I think the Supreme Court scheduled here, arguments in October, and then, we'll see when they release a decision.Scott Cunningham:Okay. So, and these are both cases involving affirmative action and racial discrimination amongst particular groups of people? Is that groups of students, is that right?Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. Though, in the UNC case, there's actually no claim of Asian American discrimination. So that actually, you only see that at Harvard. You don't see that at UNC. That doesn't mean, I think that Asian discrimination is unique to Harvard.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:I think it has to do with the fact of there not being that many Asian Americans in North Carolina.Scott Cunningham:North Carolina, right.Peter Arcidiacono:It's always been a bigger issue at the very top schools.Scott Cunningham:And you were called in, as an expert witness, for the plaintiff in both of those cases.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:Right. So David Card is the expert witness for Harvard, representing Harvard, against an accusation of, well, what exactly is the accusation against both of these institutions, and who brought these accusations against them?Peter Arcidiacono:So the group is called Students for Fair Admissions. And they basically got groups of students to, as their plaintiffs. Though, it's not about those particular students, in terms of remedies. And in Harvard, there's three claims. One, whether or not they're discriminating against Asian American applicants, relative to white applicants.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:Two, whether the size of the preferences given for underrepresented groups, is constitutional.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And three, whether there were race-neutral alternatives that they could have used. So the Supreme Court has said, "If there is a race-neutral alternative, you should use that."Scott Cunningham:Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:I'm not really involved at the race-neutral part. We had a different expert for that aspect.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:Though, in both cases, Card and Hoxby actually did the race-neutral part, as well.Scott Cunningham:What exactly does the constitution say a admissions committee can use, when drawing up a student cohort?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, so I'm not sure what the constitution has to say on it, but I can say what the history of this of the court challenges have been.Scott Cunningham:Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:So I think, it's Title VI of Civil Rights Act said, "You're not supposed to use race-"Scott Cunningham:Race.Peter Arcidiacono:"... in these types of things." And there are other categories too.Scott Cunningham:Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:But race is the focus of this one. Now, the reason they had that, was because of the history of ill treatment of African Americans.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And this is obviously going in the other direction-Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:... with regard to African Americans receiving preferences in the admissions process.Scott Cunningham:Mm. Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So, but then, the history was that the original decision, the Bakke case, said, "Look, you can't use race in admissions, because of reparations. You can only use it because of the benefits of diversity." So the state can have an interest in diversity. And that was a compromised position to get that swing justice, to sign onto it.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:Since then, there have been a number of cases. I think the ones that are most relevant right now, are the ones that came out of the Michigan cases.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And there was one at the undergraduate level, which they found that you could not use race as part of an explicit point system.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So you can get points for having a good SAT score, points for being a particular race, you add them up together, then you could rank the-Scott Cunningham:I see.Peter Arcidiacono:... applicant.Scott Cunningham:So there were schools that were doing a point system based on individual characteristics, like race. And that was, at that moment, it was unclear whether that would be legal. It was, I guess, or was it something that schools were, potentially, in a legal, bad situation, when they were using it? Or was it just not known?Peter Arcidiacono:I don't think it was clear. And that's where the court ruled. You cannot use it in that way.Scott Cunningham:Got it. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:At the same time, there was a case against Harvard's Law School. And on that one, they said that you could use race, holistically. As an economist, I can express anything as a formula. And then, the question is, whether you see all parts of the formula or not.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:So it gets a little tricky. And I think that, from my perspective, I would've rather had the ruling go in the exact opposite way.[inaudible 00:11:59] on if we're going to find in favor of one or the other.I would prefer a point system to a holistic one, because then, everything's clear.Scott Cunningham:Clear. Yeah. It seemed really precise-Peter Arcidiacono:[inaudible 00:12:09], to hide their data.Scott Cunningham:... Yeah. It seems like lots of times with the law, the imprecision of this language, as though it's a solution to the problem, is really challenging for designing policy.Peter Arcidiacono:I totally agree. Yeah.Scott Cunningham:So, okay. I want to set up the reader a little bit, oh, the listener, to know who you are before we dive into this, because I'm loving this thread, but I want people to know who you are. So before we get more into the case, can you tell me where you grew up, and why you got into economics? Your first, what was the touchstone that brought you into this field?Peter Arcidiacono:So I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. My first set of years were actually in Ellensburg, Washington, which is a town of 13,000. My dad was a math education professor.Scott Cunningham:Oh, okay. What university was he a professor at?Peter Arcidiacono:Central Washington University.Scott Cunningham:Okay. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:And then-Scott Cunningham:Hey, but what'd you say it was? What was it again?Peter Arcidiacono:... It was math education.Scott Cunningham:Math education.Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah. So he was teaching teachers how to teach math.Scott Cunningham:Oh. So you've always been, it's in the family to be interested in education?Peter Arcidiacono:Yes. And-Scott Cunningham:And even this math education part. That's another way of describing an economist that studies education.Peter Arcidiacono:... Right.Scott Cunningham:Math education.Peter Arcidiacono:Well, my parents actually met in linear algebra class, so.Scott Cunningham:Oh, that's romantic.Peter Arcidiacono:And I've got two brothers, and they were both math majors.Scott Cunningham:Oh, wow. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:I was the only non-math major.Scott Cunningham:Okay. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:But I came into college, and started out in chemistry. I think, Econ PhD programs are filled with former, hard science majors.Scott Cunningham:No joke. Yeah, yeah. They hit organic chemistry, and then, they changed their major.Peter Arcidiacono:Right. And I just couldn't stand the lab. It was too social. And one of my good friends, a guy who ended up being the best man at my wedding, was a couple years ahead of me, told me I should take an economics class.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:And it was amazing. I think that just the way of thinking, just worked naturally for me.Scott Cunningham:Well, so when you say way of thinking, the way of thinking that was, can you tell me what your 19 year old self would've been jarred by? What are the specific things, that economic way of thinking, that he was noticing?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, it just fit with a lot of how I operated. So I view economics as a great model of fallen man.Scott Cunningham:Uh-huh.Peter Arcidiacono:Fundamentally, I was the guy who always looked for the loopholes. So responding really well to incentives. I had a keen eye for how I could game the system.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And so, I think a lot about what economics is doing, is the dismal science, right? The reigns on the parade of well-intentioned policies.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:How are people going to get around the policies? Well, that's where I lived, was figuring out how I could game the system.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right. So you were, this idea of that rational choice paradigm, is that what you mean?Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:And that-Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:... that people would just simply, if they have goals, those goals don't just go away with a policy. They might just continue to try to achieve those goals at lowest cost, even then.Peter Arcidiacono:Exactly.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And the other studying thing, which I think, really affected why I ended up doing the research that I did, was, for me, the chemistry classes were just way harder-Scott Cunningham:Uh-huh.Peter Arcidiacono:... than economics classes.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And I'm not trying to say that any classes are easy.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:But there is definitely large differences-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... in every university, and what the expectations are-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... across fields.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And that distorts people's behavior.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So I view it, that most colleges are subsidizing students, to go into low paying fields. And how do they subsidize them to do that? They offer higher grades-Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:... and lower workloads, smaller class sizes. All those things work, so that lots of people come in wanting to major in well-paying fields, and switch in, and switch out.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And they do so because of the incentives the universities provide.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. So you got interested in economics, and that's like, you're describing some sort of price theory, microeconomics. But you've also have made a career out of being such a strong econometrician in this area of structural econometrics and discrete choice modeling. How did you get interested in those topics? What was your first reaction to econometrics?Peter Arcidiacono:I had a very strange econometrics background. So my first year econometrics, was taught by Chuck Manski.Scott Cunningham:Oh.Peter Arcidiacono:The whole year. And so, it was lots of bounds.Scott Cunningham:Uh-huh.Peter Arcidiacono:And then, my second year, it was all John Rust.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So a complete swing, right? So you go from the non-parametrics, what can you identify under the smallest number of assumptions?Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:To what can you identify, if you want an answer something really big.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:You got to make a lot of assumptions to make that.Scott Cunningham:Oh, boy. That's an interesting journey, right there.Peter Arcidiacono:So I actually never had the mostly harmless econometric-Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... at all.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And the econometrics has always been-Scott Cunningham:This was Wisconsin?Peter Arcidiacono:... That's right.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:What year was this?Peter Arcidiacono:In the econometrics, the advances were always more, because I needed to do something to estimate my models.Scott Cunningham:Right. This was mid nineties? This would've been the mid nineties, or late nineties?Peter Arcidiacono:I'd like to say late nineties. Yeah-Scott Cunningham:Late nineties? Okay. Yeah-Peter Arcidiacono:... [inaudible 00:19:10].Scott Cunningham:... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, keep going. Sorry.Peter Arcidiacono:So I was thinking about my own experience, in terms of choosing a college major, and thinking about, Well, people are learning over time. They start out those STEM classes, and figured out, wow, this is a little bit harder than I expected.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And then, moved through.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:So I had a mind, I actually had the idea for my job market paper, my first year. And had this idea of a forward looking model, of how people choose their college major.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And so, then, I go into John Rust's office, because he's my second year econometrics professor, and was describing this problem to him, that people are making decisions today, giving expectations about the future.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And he says, "Yeah, I think I can help you with that." And I was like, "No, you don't understand. This is a really hard problem." And of course, John Rust had written the [inaudible 00:20:13] paper about how to estimate these types of models-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... And he was fantastic with me. [inaudible 00:20:20]. He didn't say idiot. You could at least look at what I do, before you come to my office. He was fantastic with me.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And actually, the funny story about that too, is he's actually the only reason I'm an economics professor, because-Scott Cunningham:Oh, yeah?Peter Arcidiacono:... I only got into one grad school. Got rejected from much worse places in Wisconsin. It was the only place that accepted me.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:And the joke was that that was the year John rusted everybody in. So there were 53 of us to [inaudible 00:20:57].Scott Cunningham:That's awesome.Peter Arcidiacono:17 got PhDs.Scott Cunningham:Wow.Peter Arcidiacono:And if you look at another guy, one of my friends, I just actually found out we were actually at a conference in honor of John Rust, this past weekend.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And it turns out, that was the only place that admitted him, as well. And he's been incredibly successful too.Scott Cunningham:The John Rust fixed effect is filled with stories.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:That's really cool. That's really cool. I'm curious, thinking about what your, I want get to the Harvard and the Chapel Hill. But before we move on, you could imagine, had you gone to Princeton, or MIT, and worked with, or Berkeley, and worked with these, the treatment effects guys, like Imbens, and Angrist, and Card, and Kruger, and O'Reilly, and all these people. It's not just that your knowledge of econometrics would've been slightly different. Even the kinds of questions, that you would be asking, might be different. So I'm curious, what do you think your training and structural, under Manski and Rust, how has that shaped, not just the way you do your work, but even the types of questions that you ask, that you imagine, you might not have asked? For instance, just even thinking, modeling choice-Peter Arcidiacono:[Inaudible 00:22:40].Scott Cunningham:I'm sorry. I don't know. Did I lose you?Peter Arcidiacono:You froze on me.Scott Cunningham:Ah, I froze? Okay-Peter Arcidiacono:You're still frozen.Scott Cunningham:... I'm still frozen? Okay. There. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:Now, you're back. So you're asking about what types of questions.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. What kinds of questions do you think you ended up being really interested in, and working on? Not just the model that you wrote down, but even the actual topics. Because I'm curious, I'm wondering if listeners could really frame their understanding of this structural, versus this causal inference, tradition. Not just in terms of the technical pieces, but like this is practically how, the work a person ends up, that you think you ended up doing, versus if you had got Angrist as an advisor.Peter Arcidiacono:Oh, I think it has shaped me quite a bit. I am certain that if I'd gone to a place like Chicago, I would've probably ended up working with Steve Levitt. I am naturally attracted to some of those topics, that are more of a freakaconomics-type nature. And if you look at it, we actually had competing papers-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... on discrimination in the Weakest Link game show.Scott Cunningham:Uh-huh. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And I've written a couple of sports papers. So I have that in me, to think about those types of things. If I'm-Scott Cunningham:Topics, right? Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:I think that the Manski Rust combination did have a big effect on me, and, in the types of questions that I asked. Which is what structural brings to the table, is thinking about mechanisms.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So when you think about the effect of affirmative action on outcomes, understanding why the effect is what it is, matters.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:How it affects application behaviors. How is affects what majors issues. What would be those counterfactuals? And for that, I think you need some of these structural approaches.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:Now, one of the things about those structural approaches, to say, typically involve making some pretty big assumptions.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And I think that that's where the Manski influences had on me, because I also have papers that use subjective expectations data. And I think that that is actually an incredibly promising area of work.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:It's quite clear that people don't know as much as they should know, when they make important decisions. Certainly, higher education being a prime example of that.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:COVID really makes that clear, you know? How can it be that the people who are unvaccinated, are least likely to wear a mask? Clearly, they're operating under very different beliefs about-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... what's going to happen.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right. Right. Okay. So let's move into this Harvard Chapel Hill project. So setting it up, tell me, what is the first event that happens, that makes this a case against Harvard? Not counting alleged discrimination, but the actual historical event, that leads to a need for an expert witness.Peter Arcidiacono:Well, I think the need for the expert witness came about, because Harvard had to release their data, in the context of the trial.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So in the context of the lawsuit, the claim was there were some smoking guns that suggested the possibility, for example, of Asian American discriminationScott Cunningham:That would not fit this holistic criteria, that you mentioned earlier?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, so, it's an interesting question, right? So you can't have with the holistic criteria, you can take race into account, but the question is whether you could take race into account, in a way that penalizes a group, relative to white applicants?Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:So it might be one thing to say, "We're going to give a bump for African Americans, relative to whites."Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:Maybe another thing to say, "We're going to give a bump for whites, relative to Asian Americans."Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So they've had a lawsuit brought against Harvard. Harvard's had a lawsuit filed against them. What year is-Peter Arcidiacono:[inaudible 00:27:32]. Sorry, say it again.Scott Cunningham:What year would that have been?Peter Arcidiacono:Oh, man. I think it was back in 2015, or something like that.Scott Cunningham:2015. Did anybody see that coming? Or was this odd, this is just inevitable?Peter Arcidiacono:I think that, they were advertising for plaintiffs, students who had been rejected. So certainly, there was an intent to file such a lawsuit, for sure. And then, they had to weigh what universities to file it against. And they chose Harvard, because of the patterns on what were going on with Asian Americans. And I think UNC had more to do with the, there was some evidence in the record, from past cases, that race-neutral alternatives would work there.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm. Okay. So you get involved. How do you get selected as the expert witness? And what's your job, exactly, in all this?Peter Arcidiacono:So I think I get selected, I've written a couple of survey articles on affirmative action. And I view it that there are lots of nuances. So the fact that I would actually say there are nuances, as opposed to it being always good-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... made it attractive for them, I think.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And back in 2011, there was actually a protest here, at Duke, over one of my studies.Scott Cunningham:Oh, really?Peter Arcidiacono:Yes. So that one, we were actually using Duke data, and confronting a tough fact, which is lots of black students at Duke came in, wanted to major in STEM and economics, but switched out. In exploring why they were switching out at such a higher rate, relative to white applicants.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:So for men, it was very extreme.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:8% of white men switched out of STEM and economics-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... to a non-STEM, non-economics major. Over 50% of black males switched out. And you look at that, you think, that's a problem.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And once you account for the differences in academic background, prior to Duke, all those racial gaps go away. And I think what, the path to the protest to serve in the long run. So I won't get into all details of that, but I think that they didn't believe the fact at first.Scott Cunningham:And what was the fact exactly, that the racial discrimination, the racial bias, the racial differences vanished, once you conditioned on what, exactly?Peter Arcidiacono:I conditioned on academic background.Scott Cunningham:Oh, I see. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:Course and such like that. But I think even the original effect, they were surprised by, which was that the switch out rates were so different.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And at that time-Scott Cunningham:But why is that a protest against you? What does that have to do with you, if you're just documenting facts?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, I think that the negative press headline said, potentially racist study says black students are taking the easy way out. And so-Scott Cunningham:Potentially racist study.Peter Arcidiacono:Potentially racist study. Yes.Scott Cunningham:This study was racist.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. And I think that the issue, it actually makes a lot more sense now, than it did to me at the time. And economists thought this was crazy at the time. It's actually interesting, because I got attacked from people all over the country. It didn't make a major news flash, but within certain circles, it did. And actually, one of the people who wrote about it at the time, was Abraham Kendi. This was before he changed his name. He's not the, he wasn't famous in the same way that he is now. But the fact that I wasn't pointing the finger at the departments, I was pointing the finger, I think it was interpreted as victim blaming. It's their fault that they're switching out because they're not prepared. That's never how I would want to frame it. I would want, to me, this is, the issue is that you're not prepared-Scott Cunningham:You think you framed it?Peter Arcidiacono:No, I don't think so. But the way economists talk about things is different.Scott Cunningham:I know. I think that something, I think we're, a generous view is that we can't, we don't know what we sound like or something. I get into this a lot with my work on sex work, and I've, I work really hard to try to be very factual. And it, the use of words can be so triggering to a group of people. And I can never, I still can't quite articulate what exactly it is, in hindsight, that I, what word I used that was so wrong. But you feel like you would write that paper differently now?Peter Arcidiacono:Knowing that non economists would read it? Yes.Scott Cunningham:What would you do differently?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, I think, you have to be much more, when I say, it counts for the differences in switching behavior.Scott Cunningham:Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:The way other people hear that, is I'm able to explain why every single person switches their major, and has nothing to do with other factors. That's the reductionist claim against economists, as opposed to, on average, this is occurring.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So I did a radio interview at the time, and one of the people on the show was a blogger from Racialicious, who was a regular on the show. And-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... I didn't really know anything about the show, going in.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And she spent, so she got to go first, and she talked about how problematic my study was. And the way she described it, were ways that I did not think was consistent.Scott Cunningham:With what the the study was.Peter Arcidiacono:Right. And so, my response to that, really, by grace-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... was to say, if I thought that was what the paper was saying, I'd be upset too. And then, was able to pivot into, look, we're actually on the same side on this. We want black students at Duke to succeed in the majors that they're interested in. And to that point, we need to identify the barriers that are affecting that, and what resources we can provide, to make it so that that would not be the case.Scott Cunningham:So what are you going to say to your old, let's say you could go back in time, 10 years to that young economist, writing this paper. Without telling him exactly what specifically to say, you can only say a general principle. As you think about writing this, I want you to think about writing it in a different way. What exactly should you be? I guess, what I'm getting at, is how would you pause, what is, what pedagogically should we be communicating to young economists, about language and audience, that we haven't been doing historically, so that we are not unnecessarily tripping people up and creating confusion?Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really tricky, because on a lot of things, it's just very hard to have a discussion where the emotions are not involved.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:So when you speak about things related to race, and you talk about things in a very matter of factual way-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... that can be heard as you don't care.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:You are not interested in fixing the problem at all. You're just explaining away why we don't need to do anything.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And that's how, there's actually this marriage book, I really like, which is, again, I'm going to say this, it's going to come across as stereotyping. This is obviously distributions overlap, but it's called Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti. And the ideas is that men compartmentalize everything. So we're talking about this specific issue, not seeing how it relates to the broader picture.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:The advice, the marriage advice I always give now, is don't try to solve your wife's problems. That's always a mistake.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And, but that's effectively, as economists, exactly what we do. We are working in the little waffle box.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:Focused on this particular problem.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And I don't know how to change that with regard to economics papers. I really try to be very nuanced in my language and such.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:Maybe in how you motivate the paper, recognizing the racial inequities and the historical discrimination.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:But there is a sense in which it will not be enough.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. There's this, I can't, I just now drew a blank on the, I teach it all. I can see the slide in my deck, but there's a famous computer scientist. And he says, this principal about writing code, and he says, "Be conservative in what you do, and be liberal in what you accept from others." And it's this principle of code writing, which I guess is like, he's basically saying, "When you write code, it needs to be, the noise to signal ratio needs to be very, very low. You need to be very clear in what it's doing, in a very efficient choice to minimize this, these unnecessary errors." But when you're receiving the code, either from your earlier part of the code, or for some other foreign source, you have to change your viewpoint in that sense, because really, the goal, when you're on the receiving end of the code, it seems like your goal is to be this antenna.Scott Cunningham:And this antenna is trying to extract information from any meaningful information from the noise. And so, you have to have, as a listener, a certain amount of grace that tolerates that this other person may make mistakes, doesn't say it all right, goes really, really to great lengths to try to, you go to great lengths, to try to figure out exactly what the message is, and what it isn't. And it does seem like, successful communication is a, about a sender who is being clear, and a receiver that is being charitable in what they're going to allow the sender to say, unless the goal is conflict.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:If the goal is conflict, then obviously, you don't do that. What you do with conflict, is you find the most bad, then, it's just bad faith. It's just like, trap a person, win the debate. And sometimes, many of us don't realize who we're talking to. We don't know if we're talking to a good faith or a bad faith person. But there's limits, I think, to what an economist or anyone can do, if the person they're talking to really is not interested in connecting.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. And it's interesting, because I think when I either speak publicly, or even giving seminars to economics audiences, the first part is building trust.Scott Cunningham:Totally.Peter Arcidiacono:We have the same goals.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:We may have different views about how to get there. And I've got some information that may change your mind on this.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And the issue is whether they can hear the information I say, or if it's going to be ruled out because I'm a bad person.Scott Cunningham:Right. Well, let me ask you something. So these tests for, okay, so you correct me where my thinking is wrong. Testing for racial discrimination in admissions. I could imagine econometrics one, I get the data set from Harvard, and I run a regression of admit onto a race dummy.Peter Arcidiacono:Right.Scott Cunningham:And then, I interpret the statistical significance on the race dummy. And then, I add in more observables. In what sense is this, philosophically, what we are trying to do in the United States, legally, to detect for whatever it is that's violating the constitution. And in what sense is it a big fat failure, that's not what we're trying to do? Can you elaborate that as a multivariate regression-Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah. So I think, how to interpret that beginning coefficient, I don't think that coefficient has much of an interpretation, particularly in admissions, because of who applies. And that was, one of the papers that we published on this, is about Harvard's recruiting practices.Scott Cunningham:... Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:And Harvard, they recruit a lot of people. And particularly, African Americans, who simply have no chance of admission. And so, you could make it. And that could be part of the reason, right, would be, we want to appear as though when you do just that one regression with that one variable-Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:... through affecting my applicant pool, I can always make it so that coefficient-Scott Cunningham:So what happening? So if I've got a university, just in real simple sense, let's say a university, if they're white, they span their, they basically task to the university, to whoever, and they say, "Get a pool of white applicants, use this rule. Get a pool of black applicants, use this rule." And it's just very, very different rules.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:Okay. If I then run a regression, how in the world am I going to detect racial preference in admission, when racial preference was used in the drawing up of the application in the first place?Peter Arcidiacono:So I think that's where, I think one of the principles that, it's not randomization for sure.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:But one of the key principles, is how do you think about selection on observables versus unobservables?Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right, right.Peter Arcidiacono:And so, if you can account, in the case we just described, if it was differences in test scores alone, once you account for test scores, then you could see how they were treated differently. Conditional on those test scores.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And typically, the way that works, is that when you add controls, the coefficient on the discriminated group typically goes down, because there was, because of history discrimination, that there was going to be differences in those things. That was why you had the program in the first place.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:But what's interesting in the case of Asian Americans, is it tends to go in the opposite direction. Right? So they're stronger on a lot of the observables.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:You add controls, it looks like the coefficients becomes more negative. For African Americans-Scott Cunningham:The coefficient, as in, the, so if I did a regression of admit onto an Asian dummy, nothing else, it'll be positive?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, it depends. So it would be positive if you had nothing else, and you excluded legacies-Scott Cunningham:Legacies.Peter Arcidiacono:... and athletes.Scott Cunningham:Okay. So I dropped the legacy and the athletes. I regress admit onto an Asian dummy. Asians are more likely to... So when does the, so what-Peter Arcidiacono:When it's slightly positive and insignificant.Scott Cunningham:... Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:As soon as you add anything related to academic background-Scott Cunningham:So then, I put in high school GPA and zip code, and I start trying to get at these measures of underlying academic performance, observable. And that's when it flips?Peter Arcidiacono:Oh yeah. Yeah. This is something I just did not appreciate before the Harvard case, is how incredibly well Asian Americans are doing academically.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:If you did admissions based solely on academics, over half would be Asian American. That is a stunning number. All groups would go down, and Asian Americans would be the only group that went up.Scott Cunningham:Okay. Say that again. I didn't quite follow. So what will astound me? What would it?Peter Arcidiacono:So Asian Americans, they're in the low twenties, in terms of their share of admits, or something like that.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:When you look at typical applicants.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:If you had admissions based solely on academics-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... with some combination of test scores and grades-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... they would be over half of Harvard's.Scott Cunningham:I see. Got it. They're just, it's just such an incredibly selective group. Selective, in terms of the measures of probable performance and success, and all these things. They are, as a group, high... What's the right word? How do you, this is one of these things, we're using the languages, is really careful. I was going to say, I know economists, we have models that say high type, low type. And obviously, it's like, what's the right way to start talking about these young people? These are young people at the beginning of their, everybody comes at a difference. So what's the right, what's the loving, charitable, honest way of talking about people with these underlying differences?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, I think that, what happened to them before college, was such, that on average, you see tremendous differences-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... in the skills that have been accumulated-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... prior to college.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. So there appears to be, one way you could describe it, is to say, there appears to be differences in human capital.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. But I think human capital, I guess-Scott Cunningham:Unobservable human capital appears to be different, but it's like showing up on these observable dimensions.Peter Arcidiacono:... That's right.Scott Cunningham:Got it.Peter Arcidiacono:And for me, that doesn't, in any way, point the finger, and say there's something wrong-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... with the groups that aren't doing well on that.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. No.Peter Arcidiacono:And in fact, there's some people who argue, look, the differences in test scores, the reason African American score worse on the tests, is because of stereotype threat.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And that idea is that everybody expects them to do poorly. And so, they do poorly.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:To me, that's giving the K through 12 education system a pass. There are real differences-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... in the K through 12 education experience-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... for African Americans.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:That's what we need to fix.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:We can't shy away from the real issue. And that's actually one of my big concerns with places like the UC system, saying, "We don't want standardized tests anymore." We're just going to ignore that there's a serious deficiency.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:Not that the people are deficient, that the educational system was deficient-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... for these students.Scott Cunningham:It's interesting. It's like, one of the papers I teach a lot, is, I know you're familiar with, is Mark Hoekstra's review of economics and statistics article, on the returns to attending the state flagship school. I've always thought-Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:... that this really interesting study, it feels relevant to what you're working on with Harvard and UNC, because it's about, I feel like when I was in graduate school, I came away from my labor courses, just realizing attending college is crucial. College is an anti-poverty program, as far as I can tell. You could see it in my work on crime, with the, you and I actually have some similar backgrounds. We're both interested in sex ratios and marriage markets.Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:But you could see the incarceration rate of African American men just plummeting, with college attainment, levels of college enrollment. But so, it's like, I graduated thinking, "Oh, well, the returns to college are important." But then, it's like, Mark's paper highlighted that there was this heterogeneity, even there. Even in these, in terms of the flagship school and Harvard.Peter Arcidiacono:Right.Scott Cunningham:And the reason why this stuff is important, I feel like it gets into these complicated things with regards to how we've decided to organize America, because the United States, we purchase goods and services using, goods and services go into the utility function. In many ways, that's the, trying to get utility functions that are virtuous and correlated with a life that's worth living, is the big goal. But we buy those goods and services at market prices, using labor income. And so, then, it always wraps back into this issue about something like Harvard or Chapel Hill, which is, some of these schools have imbalanced returns that affect labor income and quality of life, or might arguably, subjective wellbeing, as it's measured by utility. And I guess I'm just sitting here thinking to myself, if you have a group of people who are just for historical, it's not even historical accident, because they were historically discriminated against in the United States.Scott Cunningham:But at this point, it's a stock. African Americans have come to the table with this different kind of human capital, that's going to end up shaping all of their labor income. It's going to have massive impacts on labor income, where they go to college. It's like, I don't see how you can separate out the fact that there, we've got to decide, collectively, what exactly is the goal for these different groups of people that live here in the United States, and that one of the existing mechanisms for income, is college. And it all wraps back into this whole issue, about what exactly should the composition of the student body be, given these ridiculously imbalanced returns to each of these individual schools?Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. But I think that some of those things could be balanced more, if we were doing the things that were actually successful in changing the human capital-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... upfront. And so, one of the most, it was really disappointing, in my mind, when, after Floyd, I think KIPP Charter schools decided that their motto was no longer appropriate. Be nice, work hard. And I say that, mainly because no excuse charter schools, which no excuse, that's something that you can't really say quite the same way now.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:These schools were incredibly successful at closing the achievement gap.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:They were actually very successful.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:We could be doing that. That's where the resources ought to go.Scott Cunningham:Right, right.Peter Arcidiacono:Instead, what you see in California now, is they're getting rid of advanced classes. There's two ways to deal with an achievement gap, right? You can bring the people who aren't doing as well, up.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:Or you could bring the people who are doing well, down. The getting rid of the advanced classes, is not bringing, in my mind, those students up.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And if anything, it's providing huge advantages to people of means, because you cripple the public education system, take the path out for them to develop that human capital.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And then, the people with resources send their kids to private schools, so that stuff isn't going to go on.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And that's where I think a lot of the discussion, we can talk about affirmative action at Harvard. At the end of the day, that's really about appearances. The people are going to Harvard are all, most of them are coming from an incredibly rich backgrounds.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:Regardless of what race. There are differences across the races. But that's where the action is.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And that's what we typically focus on in education. But where we really need to be doing more, is for the lower income kids.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And COVIDs is going, we're starting to see that that's going to be a train wreck. Our education for this kids who went to-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... public schools.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's certain elasticities, that I think COVID highlights, which is that there's a, there are groups of students who, probably, their ability to substitute to the best case scenario in a very difficult situation, was really, they had a very high, they were able to do it. It may not have been, it wasn't a perfect substitute. They were able to continue to do it. And I think for some groups of students, it was a train wreck.Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Just their ability to make those substitutions to whatever was required, could be anything ranging from the access to physical resources, like computing, computers, and wifi that's stable, and all these things, to, just simply, the way your brain works. Just being able to be present. I definitely think that COVID cut a mark through the students, that, it did in our family, completely cut a mark through students in weird jagged way, for sure.Peter Arcidiacono:But within your family, you're able to substitute in ways that other families cannot.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And that's the catch. And I think that, I don't work a lot in the K through 12 space, so this is a non-expert opinion on that. But if my read on the studies, is if you find positive effects of, say, charter schools, Catholic schools, smaller class size, if you're going to find positive effects for anyone, it's going to be inner city African Americans. And I think that the reason that you see that, is the way family substitutes, that they're not, their families are not in as good of a position to substitute-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... the way my family is. My kid has a bad teacher, we're going to do the bad effects.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:So you're going to think, "Oh, the teacher's fine." But no, we even did the effects of that teacher, in ways that other families cannot.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right. So what do you think is the smoking gun evidence, that that Harvard University has to... What's the smoking gun fact, that's evidence for, that's the most damning evidence for racial discrimination in admissions, that-Peter Arcidiacono:So racial discrimination against Asian Americans, I think that there's a, there's so many damning facts. Well, I'll start with the first one, which is Harvard's own internal offices. They have their own internal research teams. They estimated models of admissions, and consistently found a penalty against Asian Americans.Scott Cunningham:... Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:You could look at that. You'll hear people say, "Well, those are simplistic models." The fit of those models was incredibly high.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:I think. So they were explaining-Scott Cunningham:I think people underestimate the shoe leather sophistication that goes on in these admissions office, with developing their own internal models.Peter Arcidiacono:... Well, and what was striking, is Harvard's defense of this was, "Well, we really didn't understand the model."Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:Well, what was interesting, is that those models also had whether or not you were low income, in it.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:And they were confident that those models, the same model, showed that they were giving a bump to low income students.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:It's like, you're going to interpret the coefficient one way when it's the result you like, and another way, when it's the result you don't like.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. So their own models showed, so what was the penalty? What was it? It was a dummy, a coefficient on a binary indicator for Asian American, or Asian?Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. That's right.Scott Cunningham:How big was it?Peter Arcidiacono:And then, also, it even had stuff on the personal rating. You can see, there was charts from their office that shows, what do you know, Asian Americans on all of Harvard's ratings, are scoring either much better than whites-Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:... or the same as whites, even on the alumni personal rating. So Harvard has these alumni interview, the students, and even on that, Asian Americans are doing similarly to whites.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And then, you see their own personal rating, based, not on meeting with the applicants. They do much, much worse.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, so what does Harvard have to prove?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, I think typically, in something like discrimination cases, well, what they have to prove, probably depends on the judge, I suppose-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... is the catch. What they were able to say at trial, were things like, "Well, the teachers must be giving them poor ratings. We don't think that Asian Americans are deficient on personal qualities, but maybe the teachers are scoring them poorly." How that is an excuse. I don't-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. I don't see what they're trying to... This is, I guess, where it's frustrating, because I'm struggling to know exactly what the objective function for Harvard is, in their own stated goals. What is their objective function? To create a particular kind of cohort? What is the cohort?Peter Arcidiacono:... Well, I think you'd get a lot of gobbledygook when it comes to that-Scott Cunningham:That's what I was wondering. Yeah. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:... Yeah. So, but I think it is also interesting to think about the counterfactual of, if this case was not associated with affirmative action at all-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... would it have played out the same way? And to me, I think the answer is no. Honestly, I don't think Card even takes the case.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:I think it would've been a much better... Your worse look for Harvard than it was. I think that it was a bad look for Harvard as it was, but because of who brought the case, and because of its ties to affirmative action, that gets back to that waffle analogy, right? If you look at it in the context of the waffle, there's just simply no argument in my mind, for the way they're treating Asian Americans.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:It's a clear cut discrimination case.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:And if you just put it in a different context, it would just be completely unacceptable. Imagine Trump Towers having a discrimination suit brought against them by black applicants. And the defense being, "Look, it's not that we're discriminating against black applicants. They just happen to score poorly in our likability rating."Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:That would be outrageous.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:There would be protests. This is because it's tied to that third rail of affirmative action.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:But to me, the judge could have ruled, "Look, you can have affirmative action, but you got to stop discriminating against Asian Americans relative to whites.Scott Cunningham:So then, if you could fill up half of Har... So is this what the thing is? Harvard, as a university, collectively, however this ends up being decided, collectively, they have a preference over their student composition.Peter Arcidiacono:Right.Scott Cunningham:And that preference is discriminatory.Peter Arcidiacono:Their preference, I think, lines up with Kendi's in some sense. They would like to have their class look like the population.Scott Cunningham:They would like to have it look like, that they would like 13% African American, whatever percent, what is it, Asian American is what, five, is single digit?Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. And they would like to have a balanced portfolio of Americans.Peter Arcidiacono:And, but even that, I think, is giving Harvard too much credit, in the sense that, what we choose to balance on, we choose to balance on skin color.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:You're not balancing on income.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:You're not balancing on parental education.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:A whole bunch of other things you could've balanced on. Why-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. There's like an infinite number of character. Every person is a bundle of, just almost an infinite number of characteristics. And it's not practically... Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... If you really want a representative class, then you do a lottery among high school graduates.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.Peter Arcidiacono:That would be the only way.Scott Cunningham:That would be the only way, the only way it would be to have a randomized student body. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:Do you feel like ask this about, was by somebody from a class at Duke, about how would you make the admissions process more equitable?Scott Cunningham:Uh-huh.Peter Arcidiacono:And I'm like, it's a selective admissions process. I don't even know what that-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... means. Even a process where you did the lottery, why is that equitable, because you've got the winners and the losers? The lottery. We're not equalizing outcomes for everybody. We're equalizing X anti.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. It's like, this is all this comp, this is this deep collective choice, social preferences questions about... And it's weird. I guess we're talking about this at Harvard, because we believe that Harvard University will literally change a kid's life, more than going to University of Tennessee, Knoxville, or something like that. Right? That's why we're having this conversation.Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah. I think that that's the perception, that it will literally change their kids' lives.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:I'm not totally convinced that of there being massive gains-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... relative to the counterfactual for-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... at that level.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:I think, when you're at the margin of going to college or not-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... that's the big margin.Scott Cunningham:That's the big margin. Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:College quality effects, I think get undone a little bit by college major effects.Scott Cunningham:Right, right, right.Peter A

I first met Peter Arcidiacano, professor of economics at Duke University, while I was a PhD student at the University of Georgia and I have followed his work since from a distance. I originally followed Peters work because he'd written several articles about sex from a two-sided matching perspective. I was struck by the fact that we both saw thinking about sexual relationships in terms of a matching problem. Two sided matching perspectives focus on the assignment mechanisms that bring people together, and when it comes to sexual relationships, the relative supply of possible partners and competition for those partners will in equilibrium result in pairings, some of which may become the most life sustaining and defining partnerships of those peoples lives. Peter's work was gratifying to read, and I have often looked up to him for his successful merging of theory and econometrics to study topics I cared about. The economic way of thinking is not about topics, nor is it is not about data, even though economists tend to have particular topics they study intensely and use data usually to do so. The economic way of thinking does though typically involve careful study of allocation mechanisms, such as prices and markets, that bring the productive capacity of communities into existence. These things are important as they animate humans to work together, produce output that manages the production itself, and increasingly towards the end of history, left surplus for humans to enjoy. Who ends up in what activities doing what types of specialized work ultimately shapes that which is made, how much and how it is distributed. The allocations end up not only shaping our lives, but our children's lives. Starting conditions can cast a long shadow lasting centuries even causing certain groups to creep ahead as more and more of the surplus mounts and accrues to them, while others watch as a shrinking part of the growing pie flows to them.In the United States, in the 21st century, one of the key institutions in all of this assignment of love and commerce has been the university. And within the university system, there are gradations of institutional pedigree and at the top of the pack sits elite institutions whose students seem practically destined to shape and receive the surplus. Given the path dependence in wealth, and how it has interacted with race, it is therefore no wonder that policymakers and economists have for decades sought to refine the rules by which schools can select high school applicants for admission. In many ways, our country's fight over the use of race in selecting students into college is the old debates about capitalism and the self adjusting market system writ large. So it's in this broader context about work, schools, matching and allocation mechanisms that I think of Peter and his scholarship. When I review the range of topics on Peters vita, I see the signature marks of the modern 21st century labor economist. Someone interested in markets and how they work to connect people into productive cooperation. Someone interested in institutions, someone concerned about inequality and discrimination, someone versed both in economic theory and econometrics, someone at home with a bewildering array of numbers in a spreadsheet. To me, it is natural that Peter has pivoted so fluidly between topics like sex, work, discrimination and higher education because in my mind these are all interconnected topics concerning the assignment mechanisms we use in America to organize society and maintain our collective standard of living.I invited Peter on the Mixtape with Scott as part of an ongoing series I call “economists and public policy”. The series focuses on how economics and economists think about and attempt to shape public policy. It includes people with a variety of perspectives, and even some who are critics of economics itself. Previous guests on the podcast in the “economists and public policy” series have been Sandy Darity, Elizabeth Popp Berman, Anna Stansbury, Mark Anderson, Alan Manning, Larry Katz, Jeremy West and Jonathan Meer. Peter has not only produced academic articles in some of economics' most impactful outlets — he has recently served as expert witness in two major discrimination cases, one of which put him on the opposite side of the stand as David Card, winner of 2021 Nobel Prize in economics. You can read about the cases here. They involve the broader topic of race and affirmative action at universities. The cases more specifically involve whether Harvard and UNC Chapel Hill admissions criteria show signs of discrimination. One of the things about Peter's involvement as expert witness that I want to highlight, though, is that his expert testimony was, at its core, an example of the role that econometrics can play in the shaping of public policy. It is more and more the case that economics' role in the shaping of public policy in the 21st century will involve not merely economic theory, but also statistical analysis of complex datasets too, and I think it is worth pausing and noting that the economist shapes public policy oftentimes these days as much through interpreting data as her counterpart did using pure economic theory. I hope you find this discussion with Peter thought provoking and informative about both his work on these cases, but also about the role of economics and econometrics in forming public policy. But I also hope that the interview will give you a deeper insight into Peter and who he is. Scott's Substack as well as The Mixtape with Scott are supported by user subscriptions. Please share this episode to people within and outside economics that you think might be interested. I love doing these interviews and using the substack to do deeper dives into econometrics and the lives of economists and if you find this work valuable, please consider subscribing and supporting it. Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptScott Cunningham:In this week's episode of Mixtape: the Podcast, I had the pleasure of talking with a professor at Duke University, named Peter Arcidiacono. I can never pronounce it correctly, no matter how many times I try. I first met Peter in graduate school. He was, probably then, an assistant professor at Duke, where he has spent his entire career. I was a PhD student at the University of Georgia. And he had a research paper on a topic that I was also working on, involving marriage markets. He's been an incredibly prolific producer in the area of labor economics and education, as well as affirmative action. And he uses tools in econometrics, that I largely never invested in, structural econometrics and discrete choice modeling. So when I read his work, I usually do it, both, because I'm interested in the paper and the paper topic, but also because I'm hoping that this will be a chance for me to open my mind a little bit more, and pick up on some of that econometric modeling, that I lack.Peter is also an expert witness in a high profile case, right now, involving affirmative action and racial discrimination at Harvard University, and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, both of which have been combined into a single case. As I understand it, it's going for the Supreme court soon. In this interview, we walk through a lot of big and small issues around society's preferences around poverty, inequality, as well as the role that higher education is playing in both. My name is Scott Cunningham, and this is Mixtape: the Podcast.Scott Cunningham:Okay. This is great. I don't know if you remember. So this is an interview with professor of economics at Duke University, Peter Arcidiacono. And we're going to be talking about a range of topics. But just to give the reader and the listener a little bit of background, Peter, could you tell me a little bit about yourself, and what your involvement is with a current case, going before the Supreme court, involving University of North Carolina and Harvard University?Peter Arcidiacono:Certainly. And thanks for having me on. I've been at Duke now, for over 20 years. This was my first job out of grad school, and stayed here ever since. And a lot of my work has been on higher education, both with regard to choice of college major, as well as affirmative action.And one of the really dissatisfying things about working on affirmative action, is that universities hide their data. So you can't really get a good sense of how the programs are working, because you typically don't have the data. And I think that that really matters, because to me, so much of the discussion about affirmative action, is in the binary. Either we have it, or we don't have it. But what it means to have it, is something, as economists, we would think about, that's something we would be optimizing over. And so, there's really a large space between race as a tiebreaker in admissions, and what somebody like Abraham Kennedy would advocate for, which would be more of a quota system.And so, thinking about where you stand on that, to me, I had this opportunity to work on these two cases, two lawsuits. One brought against Harvard, and one against UNC, on the role of race in these admissions processes. And for me, it was an opportunity to look behind the veil, and see how these programs actually operated.My intent was always to, a feeling as though, if I'm going to be an expert on affirmative action, I should know how these processes actually work. So my intent was always to use this for the purposes of research, as well. And we've written a number of papers out of the Harvard case. Four have been accepted now, and we just released a fifth one on racial preferences of both schools. And we'll see what happens with that. So those lawsuits, I testified in trial, at both those cases. My counterpart in the Harvard case was David Card, who recently won the Nobel Prize. I was wondering how I would respond to that. And actually, my response, I got to go up against a Nobel Prize winner.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:So those experiences were somewhat traumatizing. But both experts, David Card and Kevin Hoxby, are pillars in the field, and people who have been very helpful to me, and who I have a great deal of respect for.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:So these cases have now, in both those cases, the side I was on lost at the first round. In the Harvard case, they also lost at the appellate round.Peter Arcidiacono:In UNC, it didn't actually go through the appellate round, because-Scott Cunningham:Oh, so-Peter Arcidiacono:... supreme court merged the cases.Scott Cunningham:... Both the Harvard University case and the Chapel Hill case, were already decided, but not at the Supreme Court level.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:So the decision was appealed. It's now before the Supreme Court.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:I think the Supreme Court scheduled here, arguments in October, and then, we'll see when they release a decision.Scott Cunningham:Okay. So, and these are both cases involving affirmative action and racial discrimination amongst particular groups of people? Is that groups of students, is that right?Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. Though, in the UNC case, there's actually no claim of Asian American discrimination. So that actually, you only see that at Harvard. You don't see that at UNC. That doesn't mean, I think that Asian discrimination is unique to Harvard.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:I think it has to do with the fact of there not being that many Asian Americans in North Carolina.Scott Cunningham:North Carolina, right.Peter Arcidiacono:It's always been a bigger issue at the very top schools.Scott Cunningham:And you were called in, as an expert witness, for the plaintiff in both of those cases.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:Right. So David Card is the expert witness for Harvard, representing Harvard, against an accusation of, well, what exactly is the accusation against both of these institutions, and who brought these accusations against them?Peter Arcidiacono:So the group is called Students for Fair Admissions. And they basically got groups of students to, as their plaintiffs. Though, it's not about those particular students, in terms of remedies. And in Harvard, there's three claims. One, whether or not they're discriminating against Asian American applicants, relative to white applicants.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:Two, whether the size of the preferences given for underrepresented groups, is constitutional.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And three, whether there were race-neutral alternatives that they could have used. So the Supreme Court has said, "If there is a race-neutral alternative, you should use that."Scott Cunningham:Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:I'm not really involved at the race-neutral part. We had a different expert for that aspect.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:Though, in both cases, Card and Hoxby actually did the race-neutral part, as well.Scott Cunningham:What exactly does the constitution say a admissions committee can use, when drawing up a student cohort?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, so I'm not sure what the constitution has to say on it, but I can say what the history of this of the court challenges have been.Scott Cunningham:Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:So I think, it's Title VI of Civil Rights Act said, "You're not supposed to use race-"Scott Cunningham:Race.Peter Arcidiacono:"... in these types of things." And there are other categories too.Scott Cunningham:Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:But race is the focus of this one. Now, the reason they had that, was because of the history of ill treatment of African Americans.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And this is obviously going in the other direction-Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:... with regard to African Americans receiving preferences in the admissions process.Scott Cunningham:Mm. Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So, but then, the history was that the original decision, the Bakke case, said, "Look, you can't use race in admissions, because of reparations. You can only use it because of the benefits of diversity." So the state can have an interest in diversity. And that was a compromised position to get that swing justice, to sign onto it.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:Since then, there have been a number of cases. I think the ones that are most relevant right now, are the ones that came out of the Michigan cases.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And there was one at the undergraduate level, which they found that you could not use race as part of an explicit point system.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So you can get points for having a good SAT score, points for being a particular race, you add them up together, then you could rank the-Scott Cunningham:I see.Peter Arcidiacono:... applicant.Scott Cunningham:So there were schools that were doing a point system based on individual characteristics, like race. And that was, at that moment, it was unclear whether that would be legal. It was, I guess, or was it something that schools were, potentially, in a legal, bad situation, when they were using it? Or was it just not known?Peter Arcidiacono:I don't think it was clear. And that's where the court ruled. You cannot use it in that way.Scott Cunningham:Got it. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:At the same time, there was a case against Harvard's Law School. And on that one, they said that you could use race, holistically. As an economist, I can express anything as a formula. And then, the question is, whether you see all parts of the formula or not.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:So it gets a little tricky. And I think that, from my perspective, I would've rather had the ruling go in the exact opposite way.[inaudible 00:11:59] on if we're going to find in favor of one or the other.I would prefer a point system to a holistic one, because then, everything's clear.Scott Cunningham:Clear. Yeah. It seemed really precise-Peter Arcidiacono:[inaudible 00:12:09], to hide their data.Scott Cunningham:... Yeah. It seems like lots of times with the law, the imprecision of this language, as though it's a solution to the problem, is really challenging for designing policy.Peter Arcidiacono:I totally agree. Yeah.Scott Cunningham:So, okay. I want to set up the reader a little bit, oh, the listener, to know who you are before we dive into this, because I'm loving this thread, but I want people to know who you are. So before we get more into the case, can you tell me where you grew up, and why you got into economics? Your first, what was the touchstone that brought you into this field?Peter Arcidiacono:So I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. My first set of years were actually in Ellensburg, Washington, which is a town of 13,000. My dad was a math education professor.Scott Cunningham:Oh, okay. What university was he a professor at?Peter Arcidiacono:Central Washington University.Scott Cunningham:Okay. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:And then-Scott Cunningham:Hey, but what'd you say it was? What was it again?Peter Arcidiacono:... It was math education.Scott Cunningham:Math education.Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah. So he was teaching teachers how to teach math.Scott Cunningham:Oh. So you've always been, it's in the family to be interested in education?Peter Arcidiacono:Yes. And-Scott Cunningham:And even this math education part. That's another way of describing an economist that studies education.Peter Arcidiacono:... Right.Scott Cunningham:Math education.Peter Arcidiacono:Well, my parents actually met in linear algebra class, so.Scott Cunningham:Oh, that's romantic.Peter Arcidiacono:And I've got two brothers, and they were both math majors.Scott Cunningham:Oh, wow. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:I was the only non-math major.Scott Cunningham:Okay. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:But I came into college, and started out in chemistry. I think, Econ PhD programs are filled with former, hard science majors.Scott Cunningham:No joke. Yeah, yeah. They hit organic chemistry, and then, they changed their major.Peter Arcidiacono:Right. And I just couldn't stand the lab. It was too social. And one of my good friends, a guy who ended up being the best man at my wedding, was a couple years ahead of me, told me I should take an economics class.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:And it was amazing. I think that just the way of thinking, just worked naturally for me.Scott Cunningham:Well, so when you say way of thinking, the way of thinking that was, can you tell me what your 19 year old self would've been jarred by? What are the specific things, that economic way of thinking, that he was noticing?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, it just fit with a lot of how I operated. So I view economics as a great model of fallen man.Scott Cunningham:Uh-huh.Peter Arcidiacono:Fundamentally, I was the guy who always looked for the loopholes. So responding really well to incentives. I had a keen eye for how I could game the system.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And so, I think a lot about what economics is doing, is the dismal science, right? The reigns on the parade of well-intentioned policies.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:How are people going to get around the policies? Well, that's where I lived, was figuring out how I could game the system.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right. So you were, this idea of that rational choice paradigm, is that what you mean?Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:And that-Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:... that people would just simply, if they have goals, those goals don't just go away with a policy. They might just continue to try to achieve those goals at lowest cost, even then.Peter Arcidiacono:Exactly.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And the other studying thing, which I think, really affected why I ended up doing the research that I did, was, for me, the chemistry classes were just way harder-Scott Cunningham:Uh-huh.Peter Arcidiacono:... than economics classes.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And I'm not trying to say that any classes are easy.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:But there is definitely large differences-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... in every university, and what the expectations are-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... across fields.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And that distorts people's behavior.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So I view it, that most colleges are subsidizing students, to go into low paying fields. And how do they subsidize them to do that? They offer higher grades-Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:... and lower workloads, smaller class sizes. All those things work, so that lots of people come in wanting to major in well-paying fields, and switch in, and switch out.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And they do so because of the incentives the universities provide.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. So you got interested in economics, and that's like, you're describing some sort of price theory, microeconomics. But you've also have made a career out of being such a strong econometrician in this area of structural econometrics and discrete choice modeling. How did you get interested in those topics? What was your first reaction to econometrics?Peter Arcidiacono:I had a very strange econometrics background. So my first year econometrics, was taught by Chuck Manski.Scott Cunningham:Oh.Peter Arcidiacono:The whole year. And so, it was lots of bounds.Scott Cunningham:Uh-huh.Peter Arcidiacono:And then, my second year, it was all John Rust.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So a complete swing, right? So you go from the non-parametrics, what can you identify under the smallest number of assumptions?Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:To what can you identify, if you want an answer something really big.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:You got to make a lot of assumptions to make that.Scott Cunningham:Oh, boy. That's an interesting journey, right there.Peter Arcidiacono:So I actually never had the mostly harmless econometric-Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... at all.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And the econometrics has always been-Scott Cunningham:This was Wisconsin?Peter Arcidiacono:... That's right.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:What year was this?Peter Arcidiacono:In the econometrics, the advances were always more, because I needed to do something to estimate my models.Scott Cunningham:Right. This was mid nineties? This would've been the mid nineties, or late nineties?Peter Arcidiacono:I'd like to say late nineties. Yeah-Scott Cunningham:Late nineties? Okay. Yeah-Peter Arcidiacono:... [inaudible 00:19:10].Scott Cunningham:... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, keep going. Sorry.Peter Arcidiacono:So I was thinking about my own experience, in terms of choosing a college major, and thinking about, Well, people are learning over time. They start out those STEM classes, and figured out, wow, this is a little bit harder than I expected.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And then, moved through.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:So I had a mind, I actually had the idea for my job market paper, my first year. And had this idea of a forward looking model, of how people choose their college major.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And so, then, I go into John Rust's office, because he's my second year econometrics professor, and was describing this problem to him, that people are making decisions today, giving expectations about the future.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And he says, "Yeah, I think I can help you with that." And I was like, "No, you don't understand. This is a really hard problem." And of course, John Rust had written the [inaudible 00:20:13] paper about how to estimate these types of models-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... And he was fantastic with me. [inaudible 00:20:20]. He didn't say idiot. You could at least look at what I do, before you come to my office. He was fantastic with me.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And actually, the funny story about that too, is he's actually the only reason I'm an economics professor, because-Scott Cunningham:Oh, yeah?Peter Arcidiacono:... I only got into one grad school. Got rejected from much worse places in Wisconsin. It was the only place that accepted me.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:And the joke was that that was the year John rusted everybody in. So there were 53 of us to [inaudible 00:20:57].Scott Cunningham:That's awesome.Peter Arcidiacono:17 got PhDs.Scott Cunningham:Wow.Peter Arcidiacono:And if you look at another guy, one of my friends, I just actually found out we were actually at a conference in honor of John Rust, this past weekend.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And it turns out, that was the only place that admitted him, as well. And he's been incredibly successful too.Scott Cunningham:The John Rust fixed effect is filled with stories.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:That's really cool. That's really cool. I'm curious, thinking about what your, I want get to the Harvard and the Chapel Hill. But before we move on, you could imagine, had you gone to Princeton, or MIT, and worked with, or Berkeley, and worked with these, the treatment effects guys, like Imbens, and Angrist, and Card, and Kruger, and O'Reilly, and all these people. It's not just that your knowledge of econometrics would've been slightly different. Even the kinds of questions, that you would be asking, might be different. So I'm curious, what do you think your training and structural, under Manski and Rust, how has that shaped, not just the way you do your work, but even the types of questions that you ask, that you imagine, you might not have asked? For instance, just even thinking, modeling choice-Peter Arcidiacono:[Inaudible 00:22:40].Scott Cunningham:I'm sorry. I don't know. Did I lose you?Peter Arcidiacono:You froze on me.Scott Cunningham:Ah, I froze? Okay-Peter Arcidiacono:You're still frozen.Scott Cunningham:... I'm still frozen? Okay. There. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:Now, you're back. So you're asking about what types of questions.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. What kinds of questions do you think you ended up being really interested in, and working on? Not just the model that you wrote down, but even the actual topics. Because I'm curious, I'm wondering if listeners could really frame their understanding of this structural, versus this causal inference, tradition. Not just in terms of the technical pieces, but like this is practically how, the work a person ends up, that you think you ended up doing, versus if you had got Angrist as an advisor.Peter Arcidiacono:Oh, I think it has shaped me quite a bit. I am certain that if I'd gone to a place like Chicago, I would've probably ended up working with Steve Levitt. I am naturally attracted to some of those topics, that are more of a freakaconomics-type nature. And if you look at it, we actually had competing papers-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... on discrimination in the Weakest Link game show.Scott Cunningham:Uh-huh. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And I've written a couple of sports papers. So I have that in me, to think about those types of things. If I'm-Scott Cunningham:Topics, right? Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:I think that the Manski Rust combination did have a big effect on me, and, in the types of questions that I asked. Which is what structural brings to the table, is thinking about mechanisms.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So when you think about the effect of affirmative action on outcomes, understanding why the effect is what it is, matters.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:How it affects application behaviors. How is affects what majors issues. What would be those counterfactuals? And for that, I think you need some of these structural approaches.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:Now, one of the things about those structural approaches, to say, typically involve making some pretty big assumptions.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And I think that that's where the Manski influences had on me, because I also have papers that use subjective expectations data. And I think that that is actually an incredibly promising area of work.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:It's quite clear that people don't know as much as they should know, when they make important decisions. Certainly, higher education being a prime example of that.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:COVID really makes that clear, you know? How can it be that the people who are unvaccinated, are least likely to wear a mask? Clearly, they're operating under very different beliefs about-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... what's going to happen.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right. Right. Okay. So let's move into this Harvard Chapel Hill project. So setting it up, tell me, what is the first event that happens, that makes this a case against Harvard? Not counting alleged discrimination, but the actual historical event, that leads to a need for an expert witness.Peter Arcidiacono:Well, I think the need for the expert witness came about, because Harvard had to release their data, in the context of the trial.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So in the context of the lawsuit, the claim was there were some smoking guns that suggested the possibility, for example, of Asian American discriminationScott Cunningham:That would not fit this holistic criteria, that you mentioned earlier?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, so, it's an interesting question, right? So you can't have with the holistic criteria, you can take race into account, but the question is whether you could take race into account, in a way that penalizes a group, relative to white applicants?Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:So it might be one thing to say, "We're going to give a bump for African Americans, relative to whites."Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:Maybe another thing to say, "We're going to give a bump for whites, relative to Asian Americans."Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So they've had a lawsuit brought against Harvard. Harvard's had a lawsuit filed against them. What year is-Peter Arcidiacono:[inaudible 00:27:32]. Sorry, say it again.Scott Cunningham:What year would that have been?Peter Arcidiacono:Oh, man. I think it was back in 2015, or something like that.Scott Cunningham:2015. Did anybody see that coming? Or was this odd, this is just inevitable?Peter Arcidiacono:I think that, they were advertising for plaintiffs, students who had been rejected. So certainly, there was an intent to file such a lawsuit, for sure. And then, they had to weigh what universities to file it against. And they chose Harvard, because of the patterns on what were going on with Asian Americans. And I think UNC had more to do with the, there was some evidence in the record, from past cases, that race-neutral alternatives would work there.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm. Okay. So you get involved. How do you get selected as the expert witness? And what's your job, exactly, in all this?Peter Arcidiacono:So I think I get selected, I've written a couple of survey articles on affirmative action. And I view it that there are lots of nuances. So the fact that I would actually say there are nuances, as opposed to it being always good-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... made it attractive for them, I think.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And back in 2011, there was actually a protest here, at Duke, over one of my studies.Scott Cunningham:Oh, really?Peter Arcidiacono:Yes. So that one, we were actually using Duke data, and confronting a tough fact, which is lots of black students at Duke came in, wanted to major in STEM and economics, but switched out. In exploring why they were switching out at such a higher rate, relative to white applicants.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:So for men, it was very extreme.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:8% of white men switched out of STEM and economics-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... to a non-STEM, non-economics major. Over 50% of black males switched out. And you look at that, you think, that's a problem.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And once you account for the differences in academic background, prior to Duke, all those racial gaps go away. And I think what, the path to the protest to serve in the long run. So I won't get into all details of that, but I think that they didn't believe the fact at first.Scott Cunningham:And what was the fact exactly, that the racial discrimination, the racial bias, the racial differences vanished, once you conditioned on what, exactly?Peter Arcidiacono:I conditioned on academic background.Scott Cunningham:Oh, I see. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:Course and such like that. But I think even the original effect, they were surprised by, which was that the switch out rates were so different.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And at that time-Scott Cunningham:But why is that a protest against you? What does that have to do with you, if you're just documenting facts?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, I think that the negative press headline said, potentially racist study says black students are taking the easy way out. And so-Scott Cunningham:Potentially racist study.Peter Arcidiacono:Potentially racist study. Yes.Scott Cunningham:This study was racist.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. And I think that the issue, it actually makes a lot more sense now, than it did to me at the time. And economists thought this was crazy at the time. It's actually interesting, because I got attacked from people all over the country. It didn't make a major news flash, but within certain circles, it did. And actually, one of the people who wrote about it at the time, was Abraham Kendi. This was before he changed his name. He's not the, he wasn't famous in the same way that he is now. But the fact that I wasn't pointing the finger at the departments, I was pointing the finger, I think it was interpreted as victim blaming. It's their fault that they're switching out because they're not prepared. That's never how I would want to frame it. I would want, to me, this is, the issue is that you're not prepared-Scott Cunningham:You think you framed it?Peter Arcidiacono:No, I don't think so. But the way economists talk about things is different.Scott Cunningham:I know. I think that something, I think we're, a generous view is that we can't, we don't know what we sound like or something. I get into this a lot with my work on sex work, and I've, I work really hard to try to be very factual. And it, the use of words can be so triggering to a group of people. And I can never, I still can't quite articulate what exactly it is, in hindsight, that I, what word I used that was so wrong. But you feel like you would write that paper differently now?Peter Arcidiacono:Knowing that non economists would read it? Yes.Scott Cunningham:What would you do differently?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, I think, you have to be much more, when I say, it counts for the differences in switching behavior.Scott Cunningham:Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:The way other people hear that, is I'm able to explain why every single person switches their major, and has nothing to do with other factors. That's the reductionist claim against economists, as opposed to, on average, this is occurring.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:So I did a radio interview at the time, and one of the people on the show was a blogger from Racialicious, who was a regular on the show. And-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... I didn't really know anything about the show, going in.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And she spent, so she got to go first, and she talked about how problematic my study was. And the way she described it, were ways that I did not think was consistent.Scott Cunningham:With what the the study was.Peter Arcidiacono:Right. And so, my response to that, really, by grace-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... was to say, if I thought that was what the paper was saying, I'd be upset too. And then, was able to pivot into, look, we're actually on the same side on this. We want black students at Duke to succeed in the majors that they're interested in. And to that point, we need to identify the barriers that are affecting that, and what resources we can provide, to make it so that that would not be the case.Scott Cunningham:So what are you going to say to your old, let's say you could go back in time, 10 years to that young economist, writing this paper. Without telling him exactly what specifically to say, you can only say a general principle. As you think about writing this, I want you to think about writing it in a different way. What exactly should you be? I guess, what I'm getting at, is how would you pause, what is, what pedagogically should we be communicating to young economists, about language and audience, that we haven't been doing historically, so that we are not unnecessarily tripping people up and creating confusion?Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really tricky, because on a lot of things, it's just very hard to have a discussion where the emotions are not involved.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:So when you speak about things related to race, and you talk about things in a very matter of factual way-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... that can be heard as you don't care.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:You are not interested in fixing the problem at all. You're just explaining away why we don't need to do anything.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And that's how, there's actually this marriage book, I really like, which is, again, I'm going to say this, it's going to come across as stereotyping. This is obviously distributions overlap, but it's called Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti. And the ideas is that men compartmentalize everything. So we're talking about this specific issue, not seeing how it relates to the broader picture.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:The advice, the marriage advice I always give now, is don't try to solve your wife's problems. That's always a mistake.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And, but that's effectively, as economists, exactly what we do. We are working in the little waffle box.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:Focused on this particular problem.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And I don't know how to change that with regard to economics papers. I really try to be very nuanced in my language and such.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:Maybe in how you motivate the paper, recognizing the racial inequities and the historical discrimination.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:But there is a sense in which it will not be enough.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. There's this, I can't, I just now drew a blank on the, I teach it all. I can see the slide in my deck, but there's a famous computer scientist. And he says, this principal about writing code, and he says, "Be conservative in what you do, and be liberal in what you accept from others." And it's this principle of code writing, which I guess is like, he's basically saying, "When you write code, it needs to be, the noise to signal ratio needs to be very, very low. You need to be very clear in what it's doing, in a very efficient choice to minimize this, these unnecessary errors." But when you're receiving the code, either from your earlier part of the code, or for some other foreign source, you have to change your viewpoint in that sense, because really, the goal, when you're on the receiving end of the code, it seems like your goal is to be this antenna.Scott Cunningham:And this antenna is trying to extract information from any meaningful information from the noise. And so, you have to have, as a listener, a certain amount of grace that tolerates that this other person may make mistakes, doesn't say it all right, goes really, really to great lengths to try to, you go to great lengths, to try to figure out exactly what the message is, and what it isn't. And it does seem like, successful communication is a, about a sender who is being clear, and a receiver that is being charitable in what they're going to allow the sender to say, unless the goal is conflict.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:If the goal is conflict, then obviously, you don't do that. What you do with conflict, is you find the most bad, then, it's just bad faith. It's just like, trap a person, win the debate. And sometimes, many of us don't realize who we're talking to. We don't know if we're talking to a good faith or a bad faith person. But there's limits, I think, to what an economist or anyone can do, if the person they're talking to really is not interested in connecting.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. And it's interesting, because I think when I either speak publicly, or even giving seminars to economics audiences, the first part is building trust.Scott Cunningham:Totally.Peter Arcidiacono:We have the same goals.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:We may have different views about how to get there. And I've got some information that may change your mind on this.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And the issue is whether they can hear the information I say, or if it's going to be ruled out because I'm a bad person.Scott Cunningham:Right. Well, let me ask you something. So these tests for, okay, so you correct me where my thinking is wrong. Testing for racial discrimination in admissions. I could imagine econometrics one, I get the data set from Harvard, and I run a regression of admit onto a race dummy.Peter Arcidiacono:Right.Scott Cunningham:And then, I interpret the statistical significance on the race dummy. And then, I add in more observables. In what sense is this, philosophically, what we are trying to do in the United States, legally, to detect for whatever it is that's violating the constitution. And in what sense is it a big fat failure, that's not what we're trying to do? Can you elaborate that as a multivariate regression-Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah. So I think, how to interpret that beginning coefficient, I don't think that coefficient has much of an interpretation, particularly in admissions, because of who applies. And that was, one of the papers that we published on this, is about Harvard's recruiting practices.Scott Cunningham:... Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:And Harvard, they recruit a lot of people. And particularly, African Americans, who simply have no chance of admission. And so, you could make it. And that could be part of the reason, right, would be, we want to appear as though when you do just that one regression with that one variable-Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:... through affecting my applicant pool, I can always make it so that coefficient-Scott Cunningham:So what happening? So if I've got a university, just in real simple sense, let's say a university, if they're white, they span their, they basically task to the university, to whoever, and they say, "Get a pool of white applicants, use this rule. Get a pool of black applicants, use this rule." And it's just very, very different rules.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right.Scott Cunningham:Okay. If I then run a regression, how in the world am I going to detect racial preference in admission, when racial preference was used in the drawing up of the application in the first place?Peter Arcidiacono:So I think that's where, I think one of the principles that, it's not randomization for sure.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:But one of the key principles, is how do you think about selection on observables versus unobservables?Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right, right.Peter Arcidiacono:And so, if you can account, in the case we just described, if it was differences in test scores alone, once you account for test scores, then you could see how they were treated differently. Conditional on those test scores.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And typically, the way that works, is that when you add controls, the coefficient on the discriminated group typically goes down, because there was, because of history discrimination, that there was going to be differences in those things. That was why you had the program in the first place.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:But what's interesting in the case of Asian Americans, is it tends to go in the opposite direction. Right? So they're stronger on a lot of the observables.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:You add controls, it looks like the coefficients becomes more negative. For African Americans-Scott Cunningham:The coefficient, as in, the, so if I did a regression of admit onto an Asian dummy, nothing else, it'll be positive?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, it depends. So it would be positive if you had nothing else, and you excluded legacies-Scott Cunningham:Legacies.Peter Arcidiacono:... and athletes.Scott Cunningham:Okay. So I dropped the legacy and the athletes. I regress admit onto an Asian dummy. Asians are more likely to... So when does the, so what-Peter Arcidiacono:When it's slightly positive and insignificant.Scott Cunningham:... Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:As soon as you add anything related to academic background-Scott Cunningham:So then, I put in high school GPA and zip code, and I start trying to get at these measures of underlying academic performance, observable. And that's when it flips?Peter Arcidiacono:Oh yeah. Yeah. This is something I just did not appreciate before the Harvard case, is how incredibly well Asian Americans are doing academically.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:If you did admissions based solely on academics, over half would be Asian American. That is a stunning number. All groups would go down, and Asian Americans would be the only group that went up.Scott Cunningham:Okay. Say that again. I didn't quite follow. So what will astound me? What would it?Peter Arcidiacono:So Asian Americans, they're in the low twenties, in terms of their share of admits, or something like that.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:When you look at typical applicants.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:If you had admissions based solely on academics-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... with some combination of test scores and grades-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... they would be over half of Harvard's.Scott Cunningham:I see. Got it. They're just, it's just such an incredibly selective group. Selective, in terms of the measures of probable performance and success, and all these things. They are, as a group, high... What's the right word? How do you, this is one of these things, we're using the languages, is really careful. I was going to say, I know economists, we have models that say high type, low type. And obviously, it's like, what's the right way to start talking about these young people? These are young people at the beginning of their, everybody comes at a difference. So what's the right, what's the loving, charitable, honest way of talking about people with these underlying differences?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, I think that, what happened to them before college, was such, that on average, you see tremendous differences-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... in the skills that have been accumulated-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... prior to college.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. So there appears to be, one way you could describe it, is to say, there appears to be differences in human capital.Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. But I think human capital, I guess-Scott Cunningham:Unobservable human capital appears to be different, but it's like showing up on these observable dimensions.Peter Arcidiacono:... That's right.Scott Cunningham:Got it.Peter Arcidiacono:And for me, that doesn't, in any way, point the finger, and say there's something wrong-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... with the groups that aren't doing well on that.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. No.Peter Arcidiacono:And in fact, there's some people who argue, look, the differences in test scores, the reason African American score worse on the tests, is because of stereotype threat.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And that idea is that everybody expects them to do poorly. And so, they do poorly.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:To me, that's giving the K through 12 education system a pass. There are real differences-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... in the K through 12 education experience-Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:... for African Americans.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:That's what we need to fix.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:We can't shy away from the real issue. And that's actually one of my big concerns with places like the UC system, saying, "We don't want standardized tests anymore." We're just going to ignore that there's a serious deficiency.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:Not that the people are deficient, that the educational system was deficient-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... for these students.Scott Cunningham:It's interesting. It's like, one of the papers I teach a lot, is, I know you're familiar with, is Mark Hoekstra's review of economics and statistics article, on the returns to attending the state flagship school. I've always thought-Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:... that this really interesting study, it feels relevant to what you're working on with Harvard and UNC, because it's about, I feel like when I was in graduate school, I came away from my labor courses, just realizing attending college is crucial. College is an anti-poverty program, as far as I can tell. You could see it in my work on crime, with the, you and I actually have some similar backgrounds. We're both interested in sex ratios and marriage markets.Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:But you could see the incarceration rate of African American men just plummeting, with college attainment, levels of college enrollment. But so, it's like, I graduated thinking, "Oh, well, the returns to college are important." But then, it's like, Mark's paper highlighted that there was this heterogeneity, even there. Even in these, in terms of the flagship school and Harvard.Peter Arcidiacono:Right.Scott Cunningham:And the reason why this stuff is important, I feel like it gets into these complicated things with regards to how we've decided to organize America, because the United States, we purchase goods and services using, goods and services go into the utility function. In many ways, that's the, trying to get utility functions that are virtuous and correlated with a life that's worth living, is the big goal. But we buy those goods and services at market prices, using labor income. And so, then, it always wraps back into this issue about something like Harvard or Chapel Hill, which is, some of these schools have imbalanced returns that affect labor income and quality of life, or might arguably, subjective wellbeing, as it's measured by utility. And I guess I'm just sitting here thinking to myself, if you have a group of people who are just for historical, it's not even historical accident, because they were historically discriminated against in the United States.Scott Cunningham:But at this point, it's a stock. African Americans have come to the table with this different kind of human capital, that's going to end up shaping all of their labor income. It's going to have massive impacts on labor income, where they go to college. It's like, I don't see how you can separate out the fact that there, we've got to decide, collectively, what exactly is the goal for these different groups of people that live here in the United States, and that one of the existing mechanisms for income, is college. And it all wraps back into this whole issue, about what exactly should the composition of the student body be, given these ridiculously imbalanced returns to each of these individual schools?Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. But I think that some of those things could be balanced more, if we were doing the things that were actually successful in changing the human capital-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... upfront. And so, one of the most, it was really disappointing, in my mind, when, after Floyd, I think KIPP Charter schools decided that their motto was no longer appropriate. Be nice, work hard. And I say that, mainly because no excuse charter schools, which no excuse, that's something that you can't really say quite the same way now.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:These schools were incredibly successful at closing the achievement gap.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:They were actually very successful.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:We could be doing that. That's where the resources ought to go.Scott Cunningham:Right, right.Peter Arcidiacono:Instead, what you see in California now, is they're getting rid of advanced classes. There's two ways to deal with an achievement gap, right? You can bring the people who aren't doing as well, up.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:Or you could bring the people who are doing well, down. The getting rid of the advanced classes, is not bringing, in my mind, those students up.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And if anything, it's providing huge advantages to people of means, because you cripple the public education system, take the path out for them to develop that human capital.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And then, the people with resources send their kids to private schools, so that stuff isn't going to go on.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And that's where I think a lot of the discussion, we can talk about affirmative action at Harvard. At the end of the day, that's really about appearances. The people are going to Harvard are all, most of them are coming from an incredibly rich backgrounds.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:Regardless of what race. There are differences across the races. But that's where the action is.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:And that's what we typically focus on in education. But where we really need to be doing more, is for the lower income kids.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:And COVIDs is going, we're starting to see that that's going to be a train wreck. Our education for this kids who went to-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... public schools.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's certain elasticities, that I think COVID highlights, which is that there's a, there are groups of students who, probably, their ability to substitute to the best case scenario in a very difficult situation, was really, they had a very high, they were able to do it. It may not have been, it wasn't a perfect substitute. They were able to continue to do it. And I think for some groups of students, it was a train wreck.Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Just their ability to make those substitutions to whatever was required, could be anything ranging from the access to physical resources, like computing, computers, and wifi that's stable, and all these things, to, just simply, the way your brain works. Just being able to be present. I definitely think that COVID cut a mark through the students, that, it did in our family, completely cut a mark through students in weird jagged way, for sure.Peter Arcidiacono:But within your family, you're able to substitute in ways that other families cannot.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And that's the catch. And I think that, I don't work a lot in the K through 12 space, so this is a non-expert opinion on that. But if my read on the studies, is if you find positive effects of, say, charter schools, Catholic schools, smaller class size, if you're going to find positive effects for anyone, it's going to be inner city African Americans. And I think that the reason that you see that, is the way family substitutes, that they're not, their families are not in as good of a position to substitute-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... the way my family is. My kid has a bad teacher, we're going to do the bad effects.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:So you're going to think, "Oh, the teacher's fine." But no, we even did the effects of that teacher, in ways that other families cannot.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. Right. So what do you think is the smoking gun evidence, that that Harvard University has to... What's the smoking gun fact, that's evidence for, that's the most damning evidence for racial discrimination in admissions, that-Peter Arcidiacono:So racial discrimination against Asian Americans, I think that there's a, there's so many damning facts. Well, I'll start with the first one, which is Harvard's own internal offices. They have their own internal research teams. They estimated models of admissions, and consistently found a penalty against Asian Americans.Scott Cunningham:... Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:You could look at that. You'll hear people say, "Well, those are simplistic models." The fit of those models was incredibly high.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:I think. So they were explaining-Scott Cunningham:I think people underestimate the shoe leather sophistication that goes on in these admissions office, with developing their own internal models.Peter Arcidiacono:... Well, and what was striking, is Harvard's defense of this was, "Well, we really didn't understand the model."Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:Well, what was interesting, is that those models also had whether or not you were low income, in it.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:And they were confident that those models, the same model, showed that they were giving a bump to low income students.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:It's like, you're going to interpret the coefficient one way when it's the result you like, and another way, when it's the result you don't like.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right. So their own models showed, so what was the penalty? What was it? It was a dummy, a coefficient on a binary indicator for Asian American, or Asian?Peter Arcidiacono:That's right. That's right.Scott Cunningham:How big was it?Peter Arcidiacono:And then, also, it even had stuff on the personal rating. You can see, there was charts from their office that shows, what do you know, Asian Americans on all of Harvard's ratings, are scoring either much better than whites-Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:... or the same as whites, even on the alumni personal rating. So Harvard has these alumni interview, the students, and even on that, Asian Americans are doing similarly to whites.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:And then, you see their own personal rating, based, not on meeting with the applicants. They do much, much worse.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, so what does Harvard have to prove?Peter Arcidiacono:Well, I think typically, in something like discrimination cases, well, what they have to prove, probably depends on the judge, I suppose-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... is the catch. What they were able to say at trial, were things like, "Well, the teachers must be giving them poor ratings. We don't think that Asian Americans are deficient on personal qualities, but maybe the teachers are scoring them poorly." How that is an excuse. I don't-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. I don't see what they're trying to... This is, I guess, where it's frustrating, because I'm struggling to know exactly what the objective function for Harvard is, in their own stated goals. What is their objective function? To create a particular kind of cohort? What is the cohort?Peter Arcidiacono:... Well, I think you'd get a lot of gobbledygook when it comes to that-Scott Cunningham:That's what I was wondering. Yeah. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:... Yeah. So, but I think it is also interesting to think about the counterfactual of, if this case was not associated with affirmative action at all-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... would it have played out the same way? And to me, I think the answer is no. Honestly, I don't think Card even takes the case.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:I think it would've been a much better... Your worse look for Harvard than it was. I think that it was a bad look for Harvard as it was, but because of who brought the case, and because of its ties to affirmative action, that gets back to that waffle analogy, right? If you look at it in the context of the waffle, there's just simply no argument in my mind, for the way they're treating Asian Americans.Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:It's a clear cut discrimination case.Scott Cunningham:Mm.Peter Arcidiacono:And if you just put it in a different context, it would just be completely unacceptable. Imagine Trump Towers having a discrimination suit brought against them by black applicants. And the defense being, "Look, it's not that we're discriminating against black applicants. They just happen to score poorly in our likability rating."Scott Cunningham:Mm-hmm.Peter Arcidiacono:That would be outrageous.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:There would be protests. This is because it's tied to that third rail of affirmative action.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:But to me, the judge could have ruled, "Look, you can have affirmative action, but you got to stop discriminating against Asian Americans relative to whites.Scott Cunningham:So then, if you could fill up half of Har... So is this what the thing is? Harvard, as a university, collectively, however this ends up being decided, collectively, they have a preference over their student composition.Peter Arcidiacono:Right.Scott Cunningham:And that preference is discriminatory.Peter Arcidiacono:Their preference, I think, lines up with Kendi's in some sense. They would like to have their class look like the population.Scott Cunningham:They would like to have it look like, that they would like 13% African American, whatever percent, what is it, Asian American is what, five, is single digit?Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. And they would like to have a balanced portfolio of Americans.Peter Arcidiacono:And, but even that, I think, is giving Harvard too much credit, in the sense that, what we choose to balance on, we choose to balance on skin color.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:You're not balancing on income.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:You're not balancing on parental education.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:A whole bunch of other things you could've balanced on. Why-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. There's like an infinite number of character. Every person is a bundle of, just almost an infinite number of characteristics. And it's not practically... Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... If you really want a representative class, then you do a lottery among high school graduates.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.Peter Arcidiacono:That would be the only way.Scott Cunningham:That would be the only way, the only way it would be to have a randomized student body. Okay.Peter Arcidiacono:Do you feel like ask this about, was by somebody from a class at Duke, about how would you make the admissions process more equitable?Scott Cunningham:Uh-huh.Peter Arcidiacono:And I'm like, it's a selective admissions process. I don't even know what that-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... means. Even a process where you did the lottery, why is that equitable, because you've got the winners and the losers? The lottery. We're not equalizing outcomes for everybody. We're equalizing X anti.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. It's like, this is all this comp, this is this deep collective choice, social preferences questions about... And it's weird. I guess we're talking about this at Harvard, because we believe that Harvard University will literally change a kid's life, more than going to University of Tennessee, Knoxville, or something like that. Right? That's why we're having this conversation.Peter Arcidiacono:Yeah. I think that that's the perception, that it will literally change their kids' lives.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:I'm not totally convinced that of there being massive gains-Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:... relative to the counterfactual for-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... at that level.Scott Cunningham:Right.Peter Arcidiacono:I think, when you're at the margin of going to college or not-Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:... that's the big margin.Scott Cunningham:That's the big margin. Yeah. Yeah.Peter Arcidiacono:College quality effects, I think get undone a little bit by college major effects.Scott Cunningham:Right, right, right.Peter Arcidiacono:So yeah. I think that's a real valid question, about whether it

Segment 1: Sultan Meghji, Former Chief Innovation Officer (CIO), Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC); Duke Professor and Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, joins John to talk about the Fed’s rate hike, if the Fed should have acted sooner to take on inflation, the likelihood we see a recession, and when we might […]

We tackle social media's effect on political polarization with Dr. Chris Bail, author of Breaking the Social Media Prism, Duke professor, and director of the Polarization Lab. According to Dr. Bail, most of the population of America isn't actually polarized; social media only gives us that perception. Topics Discussed- The myth of echo chambersHow vocal and extreme, social media users influence our view of political polarizationWhat do you mean by "the social media prism?"Breaking the social media prism How to bring the moderates back to social mediaHow future tech will shape our perception of politicsFake news - who shares itHow do we fix tech in order to crack this perception?Chris Bail is Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Duke University, where he directs the Polarization Lab. He studies political tribalism, extremism, and social psychology using data from social media and tools from the emerging field of computational social science. His widely acclaimed 2021 book, Breaking the Social Media Prism, was featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and described as “masterful,” and "immediately relevant" by Science Magazine.Our Website: https://www.aimingforthemoon.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aiming4moon/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Aiming4MoonYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6-TwYdfPcWV-V1JvjBXk

MHP Podcast Episode 12: Dr. Becker Interview In this episode, we interview Dr. Charles Becker, a Duke University professor of economics and leading expert on the national economics of mobile homes and the mobile home park industry. As always, this episode is hosted by Maxwell Baker, co-founder of The Mobile Home Park Broker, and brought to you by our proprietary Community Price Maximizer. With our system, we at MHP Broker guarantee you a higher price when you later sell your mobile home or RV community. Here Are The Show Highlights: Duke University professor Charles Becker was introduced as a leading national mobile home park industry expert and author of academic articles on park evaluations, zoning and other factors that influence rents. He's the man! (Max, 0:22) Becker's recent and extensive research has shown the following trends: Mobile home parks thrive in less populated areas where there's less zoning, and that's where tenant rents are lower. (Dr. Becker, 1:54) While the South follows that pattern of still being able to base mobile home parks in less populated regions, rents are slowly escalating here. (Max, 3:38) Another cost factor is the climate. In the South, housing doesn't have to be as high quality construction because insulation costs are lower and there's no high volume of snow being dumped on roofs. (Dr. Becker, 4:16) The reduced need for higher quality construction has led to more mom and pop mobile home parks in the South because the cost of entry in the industry is lower than it would be in harsher weather conditions. (Max, 5:43) There are big qualitative differences in parks even in the same regions. (Dr. Becker, 6:40) There's a trend for some parks being converted into tiny home communities. These seem to have more appeal to a more educated market than mobile home parks. (Max, 7:21) Many metro areas are booming post-COVID while nearby rural areas are suffering. That's been a boon for city-based mobile home parks as a way of providing housing for those urban dwellers who can't afford higher apartment or stick housing rents. (Dr. Becker, 11:39) Becker sees a trend in which the quality of mobile home housing rises and the stigma against the communities is reduced as more people need the rent relief this housing provides. (Dr. Becker, 21:42) Want to know more about trends in the mobile home park industry? Just drop me a line at info@themhpbroker.com or give me a call at 678-932-0200. Power Quotes From Max and Dr. Becker on Episode 12:  “...facts, probabilities, and variables. Those are the three things that we are concerned about when it comes to evaluating risk on these mobile home communities. “(Max, 1:18) “It's a real tight market, it's very responsive in the areas around especially thriving cities. Then you have, you know, on the other side, you have fairly remote small towns and rural areas, especially up north where population is beginning to drain out.” (Dr. Becker, 1:54) “Up in the Midwest and up north a lot rents are higher up there organically, it seems. And I was reading in your paper that it has to do with just the unavailability of land in causing rents to rise because of zoning…” (Max, 3:38) “...(lower rents are) because of the availability of land and the lack of zoning down here” (compared to higher rents up north) (Max, 3:38) “…all kinds of housing is going to be lower, because structures don't have to be as well insulated and you (don't) have tons of snow falling on your roof.” (Dr. Becker, 4:16) “...here in Georgia, 80% of the mobile home communities are going to be 30 units and below. And it's just the majority of them are mom and pops.” (Max, 5:43) “(Metro) areas are experiencing economic growth that we could not have imagined until fairly recently. But it's sucking the life out of some of the rural counties surrounding it.” (Dr. Becker, 11:39) “You have small mom and pop manufactured home parks all over and demand for those has to be rising because normal folks can't afford the central city rents that have taken off as these areas have experienced booms.” (Dr. Becker, 11:39)  

The most beautiful thing that happened in Indonesia, by the way, which was a polarized society along religious lines more than anything else, was that by the end of the proceedings, everybody knew what everybody else's problems were, what everyone else's constituencies wanted. They knew if X noticed that Y was making a demand, before long X figured out what was behind the demand and why Y had to make it and whether it was a real demand or whether it was made just for the sake of being on record.Donald HorowitzA full transcript is available at www.democracyparadox.com or a short review of Constitutional Processes and Democratic Commitment here.Donald Horowitz is the James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science Emeritus at Duke University. Key Highlights IncludeAccounts of constitutional formation in Tunisia, Indonesia, and MalaysiaThe role of consensusThe challenges of negotiated constitutionsThe need for an inclusive processWhy citizen participation is not always beneficialKey LinksConstitutional Processes and Democratic Commitment  by Donald Horowitz"Ethnic Power Sharing: Three Big Problems"  by Donald Horowitz in the Journal of DemocracyReconsidering Democratic Transitions Francis Fukuyama, Donald Horowitz, Larry Diamond on YouTubeDemocracy Paradox PodcastAldo Madariaga on Neoliberalism, Democratic Deficits, and ChileHélène Landemore on Democracy without ElectionsMore Episodes from the PodcastMore InformationDemocracy GroupApes of the State created all MusicEmail the show at jkempf@democracyparadox.comFollow on Twitter @DemParadoxFollow on Instagram @democracyparadoxpodcast100 Books on Democracy

Meet Kristen Berman, a top researcher in the field of behavioral economics. She's the co-founder of Irrational Labs, which designs products that are evidence-based in the behavioral sciences. Her co-founder, Dan Ariely, is the James B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, and one of the most famous behavioral economists in the world. Here are some of the (counterintuitive!) ideas that Kristen shares: Habits are overrated. Automate instead Budgeting doesn't change your spending behavior Commit in advance Forget about the outcome Focus on the process You need accountability Think about the Three B's: behavior, barriers and benefits Tune into this episode to hear Kristen elaborate on these research-backed, evidence-based ideas about how to improve our spending, saving and investing habits. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode337 *Note: This interview originally aired in October 2019.

Dr. Ken Poss is the James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology and Head of the Duke Regeneration Center at Duke University. His lab investigates the initial morphogenesis and injury-induced regeneration of several tissues in zebrafish. He is also President of the newly-founded International Society for Regenerative Biology.

Covid Protocols WRECK NC State Lineup Versus Vandy  Go to mydrhank.com/clay and signup to receive 50% off your first subscription order Jalen Rose Blatant Racism; ‘Token White Guy' Go to GAINFUL.COM/CLAY & get $20 off your personalized supplements. Mumford and Sons Guitarist Left Band For Enjoying Conservative Book Canada Covid Madness Britney Spears Should Be Free To Make Own Decisions  Get 20% OFF @manscaped + Free Shipping with promo code DBAP20 at MANSCAPED.com! #ad #manscapedpod Week One of Clay and Buck Show Recap Duke Professor Polls Students About Honesty Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan Ariely is a renowned behavioral economist, author, entrepreneur, and investor.  He is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight.  Dan is the author of six books, most of which have the word “Irrationality” in the title and has a weekly column in the The Wall Street Journal called “Ask Ariely.” Dan’s TED Talks have been downloaded more than 10 million times. Dan also is a Founding Partner of Irrational Capital, an investment firm that identifies and quantifies the nuanced relationship between companies and their employees, and invests in human capital factors that are linked to long-term stock price performance.  Last month, Irrational Capital announced a strategic partnership with Jeff Ubben’s ValueAct Capital, a firm that shares their belief in the importance of the impact of corporate culture on long-term enterprise value. Our conversation starts with Dan’s journey studying pain and intuition and turns to applications of his research in the corporate setting.  We discuss his research process, measurement of human capital, applying experiments to an investment strategy, employee motivation and compensation schemes as investment factors, and constructing a portfolio of factors based purely on human capital.  We close by touching on Dan’s projects in government and with start-ups. Learn More Discuss show and Read the Transcript Join Ted's mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast

Dan Ariely is a leading behavioral economist, author, entrepreneur and the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. Dan is a founding partner of Irrational Capital, an investment research firm that quantifies the impact of corporate culture and employee motivation on financial performance.    My initial conversation with Dan two years ago has been one of the most downloaded episodes of the show, and a recent research piece by JP Morgan entitled The Human Capital Factor that highlights his work got me excited to catch up with him again.   Our conversation covers many aspects of his continuing research to identify positive human capital practices and performance in the workplace, including data collection and assessment, gender differences, goodwill, ESG, and changes during Covid. We then turn to the practical application of the research in the capital markets through two indexes and customized research.  We close by talking about Dan’s new research projects and some of his favorite recent answers to his Ask Ariely column in the WSJ.   Learn More Subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google   Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe Monthly Mailing List  Read the Transcript 

IT'S TACO TUESDAY!! On The Pat & Aaron Show, the goons get into the Rays and their Spring Training and who will have the most impact on getting the Rays to the post season. Dan Dakich in hot water after a debate with a Duke Professor and what did Tom Brady the day after Super Bowl LV. Plus Not Pick to Click, Situation Men w/ @DJTUNEY_D (Derrick DuBose) and The Blender.

The stock market falls as interest rates rise. Airbnb reports a big loss but shares rise on stronger than expected revenue. Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Square slip on growth concerns. Etsy rises on earnings. Papa John’s and Domino’s don’t. Beyond Meat makes two big deals. And Door Dash declines in its debut quarter as a public company. Motley Fool analysts Andy Cross and Ron Gross discuss those stories, weigh in on Amazon and Chewy, and share two stocks on their radar: Curiositystream and ResMed. Plus, Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics Dan Ariely talks risk, luck, and how to navigate market declines.

It was December 14th, 2020, 1:50 pm, when I turned on my laptop and signed into Zoom for my chat with Bob. Bob, who, you might ask? Well, it's the one and only Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D., 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he shared with Dr. Brian Kobilka. Bob doesn't really need an introduction since his reputation precedes him. Before we pressed record, I asked if I could call him Bob, and he answered that only his mom used to call him Robert, especially when she was upset with him. I then pressed record, and we chatted for almost 2h about Bob's career, discoveries, difficulties (yes, he's had some too), Nobel week, and his memoir that he just published in collaboration with Dr. Randy Hall. Bob is James B. Duke Professor of Medicine and Professor of Biochemistry, Chemistry, and Pathology at the Duke University Medical Center. He began his career in the late 1960s and has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1976. His legacy lies in the numerous discoveries he and his team made in the GPCR field and in all those who trained in his laboratory and went on to pursue stellar scientific careers. I very much enjoyed chatting with Bob, and I hope you'll enjoy learning more about him as well. http://www.drgpcr.com/episode-27-dr.-robert-j-lefkowitz/

Stephanie is joined by Dan Ariely – a behavioral economist and the James B. Duke Professor of psychology at Duke University – to discuss how human behavior and motivation played a role in our response to Covid, and why the nation needs an official Covid memorial day.   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

On this week’s Power Hour Alex Epstein interviews Adrian Bejan, a Duke Professor and Benjamin Franklin Medal recipient renowned for identifying “constructal law.” The topic is how physics, specifically thermodynamics, can help us better understand life, including our use of energy, our environmental impact, and the need for freedom. Topics covered include: - How Bejan escaped communism, immigrated to the US, and studied MIT. - How Bejan identified “constructal law.” - The universality of thermodynamics. - Why humans impacting our environment is natural. - Bejan’s predictions of our energy and climate future.

Kathryn interviews James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy, Duke University Dr. Allen Buchanan, author of “Our Moral Fate: Evolution and the Escape from Tribalism.” Is tribalism - the political and cultural divisions between Us and Them - an inherent part of our basic moral psychology? Dr. Buchanan offers a counterargument: the moral mind is highly flexible, capable of both tribalism and deeply inclusive moralities, depending on the social environment in which the moral mind operates. Kathryn also interviews Pediatrician & Founding Director, National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Earth Institute Irwin Redlener MD, author of “The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean for Twenty-First-Century America.” He examines our nation's health care safety nets and special programs that are designed to protect and nurture our most vulnerable kids. Dr. Redlener communicates with leadership in US Departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security.

Kathryn interviews James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy, Duke University Dr. Allen Buchanan, author of “Our Moral Fate: Evolution and the Escape from Tribalism.” Is tribalism - the political and cultural divisions between Us and Them - an inherent part of our basic moral psychology? Dr. Buchanan offers a counterargument: the moral mind is highly flexible, capable of both tribalism and deeply inclusive moralities, depending on the social environment in which the moral mind operates. Kathryn also interviews Pediatrician & Founding Director, National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Earth Institute Irwin Redlener MD, author of “The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean for Twenty-First-Century America.” He examines our nation's health care safety nets and special programs that are designed to protect and nurture our most vulnerable kids. Dr. Redlener communicates with leadership in US Departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security.

Today I am so excited to introduce you to Dr. Wendy Wood. Her fantastic new book Good Habits Bad Habits (which I mentioned last week was voted book of the year in the Habit Weekly Awards) is just one of the many amazing things she has contributed to the field of habits. Much of what we know about habits is thanks to Wendy’s research. The things we now know about how habits work and what they’re doing in the brain is in large part because of her. Wendy is a social psychologist whose research looks into the ways habits guide behavior and why they are so difficult to break. She is provost professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California and has been Associate Editor of Psychological Review, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Review, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and a founding member of the Society for Research Synthesis.  Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, and Rockefeller Foundation. Prior to joining USC, Professor Wood was James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Professor of Marketing at Duke University, and she is just a lovely person whom I really enjoyed talking to.  Show Notes: [00:42] Today I am so excited to introduce you to Dr. Wendy Wood. Her fantastic new book Good Habits Bad Habits is just one of the many amazing things she has contributed to the field of habits.  [02:47] Wendy is a social psychologist whose research looks into the ways habits guide behavior and why they are so difficult to break. [04:52] Habits are part of our unconscious. They are a way our brain learns by connecting what we’ve done in a given context that got us a reward.  [05:20] All mammals have a habit learning system.  [07:05] With a habit you are repeating what you have done before while your mind is off solving other problems.  [08:41] A habit frees our mind to do other things. When the habit is disrupted, we are stuck back having to make decisions. (Brain doesn’t like that!) [09:45] COVID has disrupted all of our habits and we had to start making decisions about things we don’t usually have to think about.  [10:36] Wendy recommends not expecting as much from yourself during the uncertainty of the pandemic.  [11:05] Once we are removed from our habits, sometimes we end up finding things that work better. (Be open to that possibility!) [14:25] Research found that for habitual runners the place where they typically ran activated thoughts of running. Those thoughts perpetuate their behavior.  [16:08] The context in which you typically perform the behavior can trigger thoughts of that behavior. (Reinforcing it.) [17:30] Context activates habits and we usually act on those habits in mind. Goals are what drive the more occasional behaviors that we have to make a decision to do.  [19:01] If you do an activity in the same way every time, you are more likely to form a habit. You also want to be able to repeat it regularly. Also, look for what makes it rewarding to you, as we are more likely to repeat behaviors that we find rewarding. [20:42] Research has shown that it is important to find ways to perform the habit easily. You will do something more if it is easier. We can often set up our environment in a way that would make it more likely that we will perform the habit.  [23:15] There is a lot of science behind the importance of making good habits easy for us.  [24:15] Along with making the desired behavior easier, you want to make the things that are more problematic (those you want to avoid or stop doing), more difficult.  [26:04] Wendy recommends reverse engineering what your environment is pushing you to do.  [27:38] If you can incorporate the desired behavior into your daily routine it is so much easier to get yourself to do them. Anything that adds to the hassle makes it more likely you will not do it.  [30:01] Wendy shares her favorite study (which also happens to be the one she is currently working on).  [32:01] They found that social media revenue is closely tied to habitual use. [33:26] Thoughts and tips for marketers on using habits for good.  [35:52] Product manufactures have to take habits seriously.  [36:47] The trick is keeping up with current development while also taking advantage of the cues that already keep your habitual customers coming back.  [39:01] Weight loss programs, in general, don’t benefit from you losing weight and keeping it off. Their model revolves around repeat customers.  [41:09] If you want to change your behavior, the way you typically go about it is not the most effective. We focus on our conscious decision-making self while our habits run in the background.   [43:31] If you can make it easier in your life to do the right thing and harder to do the thing that is being a problem. You will make it easier to change your behavior.  [46:23] Don’t forget to take advantage of the year-end sale going on now. Thanks for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Android. If you like what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes and share what you liked about the show.  Let’s connect: Melina@TheBrainyBusiness.com The Brainy Business® on Facebook The Brainy Business on Twitter The Brainy Business on Instagram The Brainy Business on LinkedIn Melina on LinkedIn The Brainy Business on Youtube More from The Brainy Business: Master Your Mindset Mini-Course BE Thoughtful Revolution - use code BRAINY to save 10% Get Your FREE ebook Melina’s John Mayer Pandora Station! Listen to what she listens to while working. Special Year-End Sale

We’d like to welcome Roger Duke to the podcast.Roger is project management professional that works out of Augusta Georgia. He is a professor of project management at Augusta University. He is also very involved in his local Project Management Institute chapter and has just finished serving 2 terms as its president. Roger has devoted his time to help military active and veteran soldiers improve their civilian career opportunities by translating their military skills into project management skills.Listen to Roger share his personal stories and lessons-learned to help soldiers and their families have a better life.  Topics:His personal story  – how his father’s situation affected him and his family Challenges Deciding Career Path, Connecting and Networking with Employers, Translating Skills  Why project management is the perfect career for soldiers Impact of planning early Planning 6 months ahead results in:  Having a job when retiring Increased starting salary Certifications Govt expectations that contractors have PMPsOpportunities for veterans with CAPM certification alsoImportance of PMI and networking with local chapters For more information, feel free to reach out to Roger directly at: rogerduke@dukep3m.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.You can learn more about PMI in general at www.pmi.org In the Detroit area, you can visit www.pmiglc.org or you can check out your local chapter by consulting the main PMI website Also, the Great Lakes Chapter of PMI will be hosting a full day career planning opportunity for veterans to develop their career strategy, learn more about project management and connect with some potential employers on January 16, 2021. For more information, go to the following website and select the "contact us" option for more information on this event and any of the other initiatives that might be of interest to you:  https://tinyurl.com/VetsandRC Good luck. 

Dan Ariely (@danariely) is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and bestselling author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations. What We Discuss with Dan Ariely: How does the What the Hell effect keep us making bad decisions even when we know they’re bad? Are we ever truly rational, unbiased, or impartial? What’s the best time to appear before a judge? How transparency in our lives can often backfire. How motivation works (and doesn’t work) and how we can use our own psychology against ourselves. And so much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/417 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!

Wendy Wood - Habits to Automatically Improve Your Running   Is running a habit for you? If yes, do you believe your running is a conscious choice? If no, how long would it take you to form a running habit? (Hint: A lot longer than you probably think.) What are habits anyway, and how can they benefit you as a runner?    Psychologist Wendy Wood literally wrote the book on habits, appropriately called Good Habits, Bad Habits, and she shares with Coach Claire some of the knowledge she’s gained during her 30-plus years of researching habit-related behavior. She discusses how habits form and how they overcome your intentions, how you can create friction to make your bad habits less attractive, and how good habits can pave the way to expanding your goals and increasing your creativity.    Wendy is Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California, where she also served as Vice Dean of Social Sciences. A 2008 Radcliffe Institute Fellow, and 2018 Distinguished Chair of Behavioral Science at the Sorbonne/INSEAD in Paris, Wendy has advised the World Bank, the Centers for Disease Control, and industries such as Procter & Gamble and Lever Bros. Wendy completed her graduate degree in psychology at the University of Massachusetts. She went on to be the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Having published over 100 scientific articles, she received numerous awards for her research and teaching. For the past 30 years, her research has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, and the Templeton Foundation.   Questions Wendy is asked:   3:55 You are a research psychologist who has devoted the last 30 years to understanding how habits work and you are also a runner, so when I heard about your work and read your book Good Habits Bad Habits, I knew I wanted to have you on the show.  First off, what got you started in studying our habits?   5:54 In your book you said, "Intentions are no match for our habits."  Can you describe this and basically define what a habit is?   8:16 A running habit, for example, I can use my own experience. I can tell you the first year that I was a runner, I hated every second of it, and then eventually it became just a part of my identity, who I am. It’s obviously my job now, but it took forever for it to be something that I really identified with. Is that really a common experience for most people that you’ve found?   10:10 Does it take a lot less time to establish a running habit for example if you reduce decisions, like run at the same time every day, always have the same pair of shoes, always run the same routes? Is there a shortcut to getting a good habit?   12:46 We crave things that are new. We want to do new and exciting things. But you’re also saying that the repetition, the doing the thing over and over and over again is also what we crave?   16:48 I would love to talk about goals and how they relate to habit. You’ve said that when you’re forming a habit at the beginning a goal is absolutely critical, but as the habit becomes more established, you might not need the goal quite as much or perhaps not at all. And how that relates to running, especially this year so many of our running races, our big goals, have been canceled, and some of the runners react in one way and they completely stop training or almost stop training, and other runners just seem to find brand new goals, other ways to motivate. I would love to hear your thoughts on that and how these two groups are different.   21:30 One thing that I would love to get your thoughts on are how do you establish a habit that isn’t daily, like for example, strength training? I often tell my athletes that they should strength train, lift some weights twice a week or three times a week, and for some people that’s a lot harder than doing it every single day. How do we get ourselves to do more intermittent things on a regular basis, just not on a daily basis?   25:07 You’ve said that bad habits are not that different from good habits as far as the way the brain works. One study that you referenced in your book was the famous marshmallow study, which everybody has heard about where little kids are given a marshmallow, and if they don’t eat it within a certain period of time, they’ll get a second marshmallow. And of course all hilarity ensues and these poor little kids end up eating the marshmallow in most of the occasions, except for some very resilient little kids who end up getting both. What I wanted to ask about, you talk about hiding the marshmallow, hiding the temptation, getting it out of sight, out of mind. Can you talk a little bit about how we can change our bad habits?   31:28 Now that you’re a researcher and you’ve studied all of this about habits, does that mean you do everything perfectly in your life now that you know all this information?   34:01 Another great thing that I learned from your books is If you "remove the friction,” that is what can help you develop much better habits. Can you talk a little bit about the friction?    37:44 Another lesson from your book is that we need to take our thinking brains out of the picture. Is that what you’re saying?    39:19 Wendy, what’s next for you? What questions are you researching now? Questions I ask everyone:   41:13 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you first started running, what advice would you give yourself?   41:42 What is the greatest gift that running has given you?   42:46 Where can listeners connect with you?   Quotes by Wendy:   “I had two sons and like many women experienced a weight gain and I was very uncomfortable after they were born. I didn’t like being that heavy. And so I would try all kinds of different things to get myself out running, and it took about a year of trying different things to figure out exactly what was the right approach for me.”   “Once you become a habitual runner, it’s as if you can use that pattern in the service of a whole bunch of different goals.”   “We all have self control. It’s just self control is much more in our environment. It’s much more around us than in us.” Take a Listen on Your Next Run Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel Mentioned in this podcast:    Email Wendy Wendy Wood at USC Good Habits Bad Habits Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community RunnersConnect Facebook page claire@runnersconnect.net   Follow Wendy on:   Twitter We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top. The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use. The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

“In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and snap, the job’s a game!” So says Julie Andrews’ character in the Disney film Mary Poppins before she launches into the famous musical number “A Spoonful of Sugar.” In this episode of Choiceology with Katy Milkman, we look at the science behind the intuitive strategy of making difficult or boring things easier by adding that “element of fun.” But while Mary Poppins was focused on making the tedious task of cleaning a room a bit more enjoyable, you’ll see that this approach isn’t limited to housework.You’ll hear Nancy Strahl’s dramatic story of a life-threatening medical event. Her prognosis was grim, but thanks to grit, determination, and some pioneering work in gamifying rehabilitation by Professor Lynne Gauthier, Nancy made a remarkable recovery.Lynne Gauthier is an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and director of the Neurorecovery and Brain Imaging Laboratory. Next, Dan Ariely recounts an incredibly difficult long-term treatment that he was able to endure and complete, thanks to a strategy known as temptation bundling (a term coined by Katy Milkman through her research into the phenomenon).Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, and the author of several bestselling books, including Predictably Irrational.Finally, Ayelet Fishbach joins Katy to discuss research into myriad ways that adding enjoyable elements to difficult or tedious tasks can improve outcomes in everything from math education to exercise to job satisfaction. Ayelet Fishbach is the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.Choiceology is an original podcast from Charles Schwab. For more on the series, visit schwab.com/podcast.If you enjoy the show, please leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating or review on Apple Podcasts.Important Disclosures:All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice in reaction to shifting market conditions.The comments, views, and opinions expressed in the presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the views of Charles Schwab.Data contained herein from third-party providers is obtained from what are considered reliable sources. However, its accuracy, completeness or reliability cannot be guaranteed.(0520-0DAP)

#257: “The checking account is like the trash can of personal finance.”   Today’s podcast guest, the famed behavioral economist Dr. Dan Ariely, is not a fan of checking accounts. Or supermarket end caps. Or anything that distracts us from our financial goals.   In this episode, he explains why.   Dan Ariely is one of the world’s most renowned behavioral economists. He’s the James B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University.   His TED Talks have been viewed more than 15 million times. In 2018, he was named one of the 50 most influential living psychologists in the world.   He’s the New York Times bestselling author of many books, including Predictably Irrational, a book that challenges our assumptions about our ability to make rational decisions. He also wrote Dollars and Sense, a book about our cognitive biases, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, a book about how we lie to everyone, including ourselves.   For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode257

On episode 41, we welcome philosopher Owen Flanagan to discuss using Buddhist philosophy to reduce suffering, the importance of detaching ourselves from our thoughts for political unity, redefining anger to create more compassion, and how our rigid self-conceptions make behavioral changes difficult. The link to his newest book is down below!  Owen Flanagan, Ph.D. is the James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University. Flanagan has done work in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, ethics, contemporary ethical theory, moral psychology, as well as Buddhist and Hindu conceptions of the self. Leon Garber is a philosophical writer, contemplating and elucidating the deep recesses of man's soul. He is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor/Psychotherapist — specializing in Existential Psychotherapy, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, and Trauma Therapy — and manages a blog exploring issues of death, self-esteem, love, freedom, life-meaning, and mental health/mental illness, from both empirical and personal viewpoints.  Alen D. Ulman is a content creator and life long auto-didact. Alen manages the page Ego Ends Now which is a growing community for expanding consciousness with vital information about science, medicine, self actualization, philosophy, psychology and methods to overcome identification with compulsive thought. The purpose of Ego Ends Now is to make sure to give everyone in it's community every tool available to add levity in their own lives, making it a very real possibility for them to create a life of their own design, and help impact the world and our global community positively. Find us on:  Twitter: https://twitter.com/seize_podcast  O4L: https://o4lonlinenetwork.com/seizethe...  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seizethemom...  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SeizeTheMome...  We are also everywhere podcasts are available!  Where you can follow Owen Flanagan's Work:  Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525566147/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_GrzsEb6MH4VK2

Dan Ariely LIVE! Unraveling the Mysteries of Human Behavior Recorded live in Atlanta on February 9, 2020 Renowned behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely presents cutting edge research to help make sense of the irrational things people do. Dan Ariely is an Israeli-American James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight, and the author of three New York Times best sellers. Ariely is a prolific speaker whose TED talks have been viewed over 15 million times. In 2018 he was named one of the 50 most influential living psychologists in the world.

Sensible Living with Dan Ariely In this episode, I share with you my interview with one of my favourite authors and economist, Dan Ariely. Having read a few of his books and other work I was stocked to have him accept my invitation to come on the podcast. We discuss resolutions, goal setting and the techniques and strategies to improve. We also talk about his book Dollar and Sense, a conversation about how we can think and use the money better. Guest Bio Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He is dedicated to answering questions to help people live more sensible – if not rational – lives. His interests span a wide range of behaviours, and his sometimes unusual experiments are consistently interesting, amusing and informative, demonstrating profound ideas that fly in the face of common wisdom. He is a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, co-creator of the film documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies, and a three-time New York Times bestselling author. His books include Predictably Irrational, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, Irrationally Yours, Payoff and Dollars and Sense.

In an episode of the television series Seinfeld, Jerry does a standup bit where he talks about staying up too late at night. He says, “I’m Night Guy. Night Guy wants to stay up late,” to which he then replies, “What about getting up after five hours of sleep?” The answer? “That’s Morning Guy’s problem.” This illustrates a challenge that we all face: How do you stick to positive long-term goals in the face of negative short-term temptations? In this episode of Choiceology with Katy Milkman, we look at strategies to help keep Night Guy in check, so that Morning Guy can wake up well-rested.The episode begins with two short tales of temptation. The first is the mythical story of Ulysses (Odysseus) avoiding the tantalizing but dangerous songs of the sirens. The second is an account of Victor Hugo’s struggles to complete his novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the face of his own procrastination. In both stories, the protagonist employs a clever strategy to reach his goals.For another illustration, we turn to Dean Karlan. Dean is a founder of StickK, a website and app that helps people commit to achieving goals using contracts with real stakes. The idea for StickK came about through Dean’s personal struggle to lose weight. He decided to leverage what he’d learned about human behavior as an economist. He drew up a contract with a friend--someone who was also struggling with his weight--that would oblige each of them to pay the other thousands of dollars if they failed in their quest to shed pounds.Dean Karlan is a professor of economics and finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He is also the co-author of More Than Good Intentions: Improving the Ways the World’s Poor Borrow, Save, Farm, Learn, and Stay Healthy.To look at the science behind commitment strategies, Katy is joined by behavioral economist and best-selling author Dan Ariely. You’ll hear how commitment devices can be used to help people overcome procrastination, save money for the future, and eat more vegetables. You’ll also hear about some of Dan’s favorite studies, in which these commitment devices improved post-operative outcomes for heart surgery patients and helped students better manage their workloads.Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He is also the author of Predictably Irrational and The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty.Choiceology is an original podcast from Charles Schwab. For more on the series, visit schwab.com/podcast.If you enjoy the show, please leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating or review on Apple Podcasts.Important Disclosures:All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice in reaction to shifting market conditions.The comments, views, and opinions expressed in the presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the views of Charles Schwab.Data contained herein from third-party providers is obtained from what are considered reliable sources. However, its accuracy, completeness or reliability cannot be guaranteed.(1219-9PPT)

October 18, 2019 Steven and Nate talk about Patrick Mahomes' knee injury with Dr. Selene Parekh who is a Duke Professor, Orthopaedic surgeon, Fantasy Doctor, Sports injury & tech commentator. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Grey Lady shows her true colors. Bagel Boss to box Mets legend. And Nick examines millennial pop music.

  You know the saying bad things come in threes?   The dishwasher stops working. You get in a car accident. Your credit card gets stolen.   Well, when it comes to our plants; like us, they can be experiencing a constellation of problems as well.   Yet, we often see plants as far less complex; minimizing their needs to a singular solution.   "It just needs more sun."   "Better drainage will do the trick."   Instead of just trying one solution, consider that maybe multiple changes are needed.         Brevities #OTD On this day in 1820, President James Monroe signed a bill granting “a tract of public land in the City of Washington, not exceeding five acres" for the America's botanic garden. Monroe genuinely liked the idea and he agreed to let them place the botanic garden on property adjacent to the Capitol on the west. Work was started to clear and drain the soggy land, and trees were planted. By 1827, Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush circulated a letter to foreign dignitaries calling for, "all such trees and plants from other countries not heretofore known in the United States, as may give promise, under proper cultivation, of flourishing and becoming useful... .” The letter included detailed instructions for preparing seeds and plants for travel so that they couldbe propagated in the Botanic Garden. In 1856, Congress officially named the United States Botanic Garden and established regular funding to nurture its growth.   #OTD It's the birthday of botanistEmil Christian Hansen, born today in 1842.     Prior to Hansen, brewing was a volatileexperiment and batches could easily get infected with disease. Hansen forever changed the brewingindustry with his discovery of way to separate pure yeast cells from wild yeast cells.     Hansen's method was created while he was working for the Carlsberg Laboratory.  Carlsberg Labs did not patent the process.  instead, they decided to publish it.  They shared a detailed explanation so that brewers anywhere could build propagation equipment and use the method.   Hansen named the yeast after the lab– Saccharomyces Carlsbergensis – and samples of Carlsberg No. 1 (as it was called) were sent to breweries around the world by request and free of charge.  Within 5 years, most European breweries were using Carlsberg No. 1.  By 1892, American breweries, Pabst, Schlitz and Anheuser-Busch, were manufacturing their beers with pure yeast strains.   Hansen was a renaissance man. At various points in his life, he attempted careers an actor, a portrait artist, a teacher, an author, (he wrote under a pseudonym). And it was Emil Hansen who made the first Danish translation of Charles Darwin’s Voyage of The Beagle.     #OTD On this day in 1904 botanist Paul J. Kremer was born. Kremer spent his childhood on a farm in Ohio and he got his advanced degrees atOhio State getting his M.S. (1929) and Ph.D. (1931) degrees in plant physiology. At Ohio State he learned ofthe importance of the relationship between plants and water relations. After graduating, Dr. Kramer joined the faculty of Duke University. He taught at Duke his entire career until his retirement in 1974. Kremer served as the James B. Duke Professor of Botany. Kramer influenced the careers of more than 40 graduate students and authored more than 200 publications. Building on his studies at Ohio State, Kramer developed a leading research center on plant water relations and tree physiology. Kramer recognized the difficulty of studying environmental stresses on plants because the variables are so interconnected Light, temperature, and humidity being so interdependent that a change in one affects the others. This lead Kramer to establish a controlled-environment laboratory to study and quantify plant responses. He set up labs for this purpose atthe University of Wisconsin and at Duke and North Carolina State University. Kramer's efforts were part of a growing trend in curiosityabout theeffects of environmental stresses on plants - an ongoing concern as scientists study climate change. #OTD On this day in 2014, the Veggie Plant Growth System was activated on the International Space Station.   “Veggie”  was the first fresh food production system and it was developed by Orbital Technologies Corp. (ORBITEC) in Madison, Wisconsin, and tested at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.The purpose of Veggie is to provide a self-sufficient and sustainable food source for astronauts as well as a means of recreation and relaxation through therapeutic gardening.   In 2018 one of the goals of the Veggie-3 experiment  was to grow food for crew consumption. Crops tested included cabbage, lettuce, and mizuna. "I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored." "There are some four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. Four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive." "I can't pretend that I got involved with filming the natural world fifty years ago because I had some great banner to carry about conservation - not at all, I always had a huge pleasure in just watching the natural world and seeing what happens." "I don't run a car, have never run a car. I could say that this is because I have this extremely tender environmentalist conscience, but the fact is I hate driving." "About 70 or 80 men jumped onto the track, brandishing knives and spears. To say I was alarmed is to put it mildly… I walked towards this screaming horde of men, I stuck out my hand, and I heard myself say 'good afternoon.' "   Today's Book Recommendation:Gardenlust:  A Botanical Tour of the World’s Best New Gardens by Christopher Woods Tonight the Northwest Horticultural Society in Seattle Washington will host Christopher Woods as part of their Wednesday Evening Lecture Series starting at 6:45pm at the Center for Urban Horticulture. Members: $5.00 Non-Members: $10.00 Gardenlust:  A Botanical Tour of the World’s Best New Gardens by Christopher Woods is a fascinating read. The cover shows a garden that's at the Golden Rock Inn in Nevis. The gardens were designed by Miami-based designer Raymond Jungles under the stewardship of New York artists Helen and Brice Marden, the owners of Golden Rock.  After a long career in public horticulture, Chris Woods spent three years traveling the world seeking out contemporary gardens and he found fifty of the best.  His book is a botanical tour of the world's best new gardens - public, private, and corporate. Chris focuses on the gardens around the world that had been created or significantly altered -this century the 21st century.  Chris views the gardens through a variety of themes including beauty, conservation, architecture - plant and landscape, as well as urban spaces. Chris's book was published in late September, and it's such a great reminder for us to get out of our own gardens and go see and learn from other gardens - especially public gardens. Gardens Illustrated called it An extraordinary collection of 21st-century gardens that will arouse wanderlust… Whether you are a garden globetrotter or an armchair explorer, this book is definitely one to add to your collection. With wit and humor, he describes the most arresting features in public parks in exotic locations like New Delhi and Dubai, mission-redefining botanic gardens in Chile and Australia, and the most enviable details of lavish private estates and gemlike city yards. Throughout, he reveals the fascinating people, plants, and stories that make these gardens so lust-worthy. If you're in Seattle tonight, don't miss the opportunity to learn about the most intriguing, beautiful gardens around the world. Doors open at 6PM for plant sales and socializing with the presentation beginning at 6:45 PM.      Today's Garden Chore Plant Angelica archangelica.   Also known as Angelica root (Angelica archangelica) is the herb used to flavor Dubonnet, Bénédictine, and Vermouth. Quite honestly, if we were bees, we'd need a license to sell it; bees and pollinators go positively mad for it.   It has so much natural sugar, that Martha Washington once shared a recipe for how to candy it.   One explanation for the archangelica part of it's name is that according to folklore it blooms on this day - the day of Michael the Archangel and it was believed to be a preservative against evil spirits and witchcraft.   All parts of the plant were believed efficacious against spells and enchantment. It was held in such esteem that it was called 'The Root of the Holy Ghost.'     Something Sweet  Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart It's rhubarb time! Here's a delightful rhubarb pudding recipe from The Boston Globe from June 3, 1912.   Rhubarb Pudding   Arrange in layers and a buttered baking dish:   2 cups of breadcrumbs which have been soaked in water   2 cups of rhubarb   The grated rind of 1 lemon   Half cup of scalded raisins   1 cup of sugar   2 tablespoons of butter cut into tiny bits   Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the top   Sprinkle with buttered crumbs   Cover and bake 1 hour in a moderate oven       Thanks for listening to the daily gardener, and remember: "For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."  

We are  very pleased to have my longtime friend and incredible musician John Brown join us on the show tonight...Bassist, composer, educator and actor John Brown is a native of Fayetteville, North Carolina, and currently resides in Durham, NC. He is a graduate of the School of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the School of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He currently serves as Director of the Jazz Program and Associate Professor of the Practice of Music at Duke University, and has served on the faculties of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Central University and Guilford College (NC).When he was very young, John took piano lessons from Frances Hunter (a close family friend), and began studying the bass when he was just 9 years old with his beloved teacher, Susan Ellington. He has been performing ever since. John began performing with the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra (NC) at age 13, and he was playing Principal Bass with that orchestra and performing with the Florence Symphony (SC) while still in high school.As a student at UNC-Greensboro, he performed with the Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Roanoke (VA) Symphony Orchestras.John has since performed in the United States and abroad with artists like Wynton Marsalis, Elvin Jones, Nnenna Freelon, Diahann Carroll, Rosemary Clooney, Nell Carter, Slide Hampton, Nicholas Payton to name a few. John also has a Grammy nomination for his performance and co-writing on Nnenna Freelon’s 1996 Concord release, Shaking Free. His extensive experience includes performances at many notable venues and festivals like Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and the Playboy Jazz Festival and  Montreal Jazz FestivalEqually gifted in other areas of performance, John has performed for theatre, Television, and FIlm

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. He is the best-selling author of Irrationally Yours, Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the I’m Not Joking community today: petermcgraw,.org Peter McGraw Twitter Peter McGraw LinkedIn

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. He is the best-selling author of Irrationally Yours, Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty.   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s […]

Dan Ariely is a renowned behavioral economist, author, entrepreneur, and investor.  He is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight.  Dan is the author of six books, most of which have the word “Irrationality” in the title and has a weekly column in the The Wall Street Journal called “Ask Ariely.” Dan’s TED Talks have been downloaded more than 10 million times. Dan also is a Founding Partner of Irrational Capital, an investment firm that identifies and quantifies the nuanced relationship between companies and their employees, and invests in human capital factors that are linked to long-term stock price performance.  Last month, Irrational Capital announced a strategic partnership with Jeff Ubben’s ValueAct Capital, a firm that shares their belief in the importance of the impact of corporate culture on long-term enterprise value. Our conversation starts with Dan’s journey studying pain and intuition and turns to applications of his research in the corporate setting.  We discuss his research process, measurement of human capital, applying experiments to an investment strategy, employee motivation and compensation schemes as investment factors, and constructing a portfolio of factors based purely on human capital.  We close by touching on Dan’s projects in government and with start-ups. Learn More Discuss show and Read the Transcript Join Ted's mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast

Duke professor Laurent Dubois joins Grant to talk about his new book "The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer." Dubois, who teaches a popular class at Duke called Soccer Politics, explains how he approached organizing, researching and writing his new book, which draws from a wide variety of cultural sources around the world, including both the men's and women's games, to explore the language and meaning of the world's most popular sport. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During this episode, Dan Ariely and Michael Barbera discuss the hallmark of humanity: bad financial decisions. Humans are great at messing up their financial lives. Thinking a lot about money would be fine if by thinking more about it, we were able to make better decisions. Dan and Michael’s discussion covers the pains of paying, opportunity costs, saving for retirement and many of the great (and terrible) things money will do for us. Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He is dedicated to answering questions to help people live more sensible – if not rational – lives. His interests span a wide range of behaviors, and his sometimes unusual experiments are consistently interesting, amusing and informative, demonstrating profound ideas that fly in the face of common wisdom. He is a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, co-creator of the film documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies, and a three-time New York Times bestselling author. His books include Predictably Irrational, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, Irrationally Yours, Payoff and Dollars and Sense.

It’s the beginning of a new year, and for many of us, that means following up on resolutions to shed those extra pounds. Today, on this edition of Smart Nutrition, Monica Reinagel, the Nutrition Diva, joins Tom in Studio A to talk about a few weight loss strategies. They also check in with Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely about a strategy he’s developed to ease the angst of weight reduction.Then, Monica and Tom discuss CRISPR-Cas9, a powerful new tool for genetically altering our foods, a new ranking of the best diets for 2018, and which ones might be worth trying.Monica Reinagel is an author and a licensed, board-certified nutritionist. She blogs at nutritionovereasy.com and she joins Midday for our Smart Nutrition segment every other month. Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight and co-founder of BEworks, Timeful, Genie and Shapa.

Dr. David Fitzpatrick is Chief Executive Officer, Scientific Director, and Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. When David isn’t hard at work at Max Planck, he spends his time hiking, biking, kayaking, and immersing himself in nature. He has also become a keen photographer, capturing captivating photos of the natural world and memorable moments in his life. Scientifically speaking, the brain important for so many aspects of our daily experiences, including what we perceive, what we think about, how we move, the decisions we make, and more. However, we still know relatively little about how the brain works and how it develops. David’s goal is to dive deep into these basic science questions of how the brain works and how it develops. David received his B.S. degree in Biology from Pennsylvania State University and his PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience from Duke University. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Medical University of South Carolina and then returned to Duke University as a member of the faculty. Before accepting his current positions at the Max Planck Florida Institute, David was the James B. Duke Professor of Neurobiology and Director of the Institute for Brain Sciences at Duke University. David has received numerous awards and honors over the course of his career for his outstanding research and teaching, including the 2011 Ellis Island Medal of Honor from the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Award, the Cajal Club Cortical Discoverer Award, the McKnight Neuroscience Investigator Award, and the Excellence in Basic Science Teaching Award from Duke University School of Medicine. David joined us for an interview to share his experiences in life and science.

Why does spending money sometimes feel almost physically painful? Why are we comfortable overpaying for something again just because we’ve overpaid for it once before? Dan Ariely, professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, steps forward to answer these intriguing questions about our spending psychology. He shares the stage with his co-author Jeff Kreisler—Princeton educated lawyer turned award-winning comedian—to share their book Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter. The pair provides an enlightening and witty view into our irrational behavior and how it often interferes with our best intentions when it comes to managing our finances. Ariely and Kreisler take us deep inside our own minds to expose the hidden habits and motivations secretly driving our financial choices. Dan Ariely is the author of New York Times bestselling book Predictably Irrational. He is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and is the founder of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and elsewhere. Ariely’s co-author Jeff Kreisler began as a Princeton educated lawyer before trying his hand as a comedian, author, speaker, TV pundit, speechwriter, and advocate for behavioral economics. Recorded live at Rainier Arts Center by Town Hall Seattle on Sunday, November 12, 2017. 

Today’s guest is one of my favorite authors on the planet. He’s provided me with so much invaluable insight throughout the years, as I’ve been working in the field of personal finances. Dan Ariely is our special guest. He is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationalityand The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. I actually tapped Dan for his expertise just recently for my Oprah column about ways to combat money myths and save better.  Dan and I were two of the keynote speakers at the Northern California Financial Planners Association gathering. Such an honor to be in his company. A little more about Dan: He is a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight and a Chief Behavioral Economist with a new savings app, Qapital. He’s a multiple-time TED talker, whose speeches have been viewed millions of times. He is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics. For more information visit www.somoneypodcast.com.

If you've ever wanted more motivation in your life, then do we have the show for you! Today I'll be talking with Dan Ariely, Ted Talker Extraordinaire, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University, a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, and a new favorite book on Motivation, Payoff. And that's just what I want to talk with him about, about the hidden logic that shapes our motivations, and how in the world to find more of it! Science of Motivation Self-Improvement and Self-Help Topics Include: What happened to Dan Ariely in a fire? How was he burned over 70% of his body? What's a pain person? What did the nurses have to do daily? How and why did Dan try to negotiate with them? What was his working hypothesis? What would happen to Dan when the scars began to shrink? What did he learn about short term pain vs. longer term pain? What ideas did Dan discover were false? Why was Dan interested in studying motivation? What's irrational thought and why did it intrigue him? What can we learn about irrational thought? How do we motivate ourselves more? Can we motivate anyone? How do we set people up for success? How do we make getting things done easier? What are the unintended consequences of our environments? How do we change the environment to change our motivation? How do we help kids to be more motivated? What is gameification and how does it help kids? What are the challenges of modern technology and distraction? How do we view time and how does that skew our decision-making abilities? What's the importance of helping others? What's the importance of meaning? To Find Out More Visit: DanAriely.com Dan Ariely, PhD On How To Find Motivation, Overcome Incredible Hardships & Step Forward Toward Your Dreams!!! Health | Fitness | Inspiration | Motivation | Spiritual | Spirituality | Inspirational | Motivational | Self-Improvement | Self-Help | Inspire For More Info Visit: www.InspireNationShow.com

We repeatedly and predictably make wrong decisions throughout, and in many aspects, of our lives. Dan Ariely wants to make the concepts of behavioral economics more accessible by describing them in non-academic terms so that more people will learn about this type of research and get excited about using some of the insights to enrich their own lives. Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. As a researcher in behavioral economics, Dan wants to make the subject more accessible by working to describe it in plain language.

Dan Ariely: Payoff Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. His books include Irrationally Yours, Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, and his most recent book, Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations. Key Points The things that motivate us are about accomplishment and achievement, not day-to-day happiness. Most people realize that they themselves are not truly motivated by money, but they still assume other people are completely motivated by it. Figure out a way to pay people that adds to the development of a long-term relationship, not a short-term transactional one. It is important to find a way to connect people’s jobs to the final outcome of their work, because many people don’t feel connected to their organization’s main purpose. Resources Mentioned Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations* by Dan Ariely Predictably Irrational* by Dan Ariely Drive* by Daniel Pink www.danariely.com Book Notes Download my highlights from Payoff in PDF format (free membership required). Activate Your Free Coaching for Leaders Membership Get immediate access to my free, 10-day audio course, 10 Ways to Empower the People You Lead. Give me 10 minutes a day for 10 days to get the most immediate, practical actions to become a better leader. Join at CoachingforLeaders.com. Related Episodes CFL84: Daniel Pink on To Sell is Human CFL181: Create the Best Place to Work CFL251: What to Do When Somebody Quits CFL253: New Management Practices of Leading Organizations CFL276: Employee Engagement With Management 3.0 Next Episode Bonni and I return for the monthly question and answer show. Submit your question for consideration next week or for the first question and answer show the first Monday of every month at http://coachingforleaders.com/feedback Thank You Thank you to Greg Hall and Chase Batt here in the States and Lynn Wang in Hong Kong for the kind reviews on iTunes. To leave a rating or review, visit http://coachingforleaders.com/itunes

Dan Ariely: Payoff Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. His books include Irrationally Yours, Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, and his most recent book, Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations. Key Points The things that motivate us are about accomplishment and achievement, not day-to-day happiness. Most people realize that they themselves are not truly motivated by money, but they still assume other people are completely motivated by it. Figure out a way to pay people that adds to the development of a long-term relationship, not a short-term transactional one. It is important to find a way to connect people’s jobs to the final outcome of their work, because many people don’t feel connected to their organization’s main purpose. Resources Mentioned Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations* by Dan Ariely Predictably Irrational* by Dan Ariely Drive* by Daniel Pink www.danariely.com Book Notes Download my highlights from Payoff in PDF format (free membership required). Activate Your Free Coaching for Leaders Membership Get immediate access to my free, 10-day audio course, 10 Ways to Empower the People You Lead. Give me 10 minutes a day for 10 days to get the most immediate, practical actions to become a better leader. Join at CoachingforLeaders.com. Related Episodes CFL84: Daniel Pink on To Sell is Human CFL181: Create the Best Place to Work CFL251: What to Do When Somebody Quits CFL253: New Management Practices of Leading Organizations CFL276: Employee Engagement With Management 3.0 Next Episode Bonni and I return for the monthly question and answer show. Submit your question for consideration next week or for the first question and answer show the first Monday of every month at http://coachingforleaders.com/feedback Thank You Thank you to Greg Hall and Chase Batt here in the States and Lynn Wang in Hong Kong for the kind reviews on iTunes. To leave a rating or review, visit http://coachingforleaders.com/itunes

This month, AMA Journal of Ethics theme editor Jacquelyn Nestor, a fifth-year MD/PhD student at Hofstra-Northwell School of Medicine, interviewed Allen Buchanan, PhD, about how we can safely explore cutting-edge biomedical enhancements. Dr. Buchanan is the James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy at Duke University.

In this episode we discuss one of the most interesting results ever found in the psychological research of education, why pleasure maximization is a flawed model for human understanding, we go deep into a number of research examples, discuss the massive (and counterintuitive) difference between motivating top performers and bottom performers, and much more with Dr. Dan Ariely!     Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at  Duke University and is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight and also the co-founder of BEworks. Dan's talks on TED have been watched over 7.8 million times. He is the author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, both of which became New York Times best sellers, and he has a newly released book Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations.  How being badly burned and spending 3 years in the hospital radically changed Dr. Dan Ariely's lifeHow good intentions can go terribly wrong in changing behaviorThe two flawed models of motivation and why neither worksI get interviewed by Dr Dan Ariely - he turns the mic on me and starts grilling me!The difference between momentary joy and lasting purposeThe critical importance of creating, meaning, improvement, and having an impactHow money can demotivate and skew your motivationWe get into the weeds on some fascinating experiments Dr. Dan Ariely has conducted about how money (doesn’t) motivate usWhy bonuses don’t actually workThe massive (and counterintuitive) difference between motivating top performers and bottom performersWhy it’s much better to analyze the BARRIERS to good performance and remove themOne of the most interesting results ever found in the psychological research of educationWhy pleasure maximization is a flawed model for human understandingWe dig into the the science of motivation itselfThe difference between social norms and market norms (and why it’s important)Why you would rather move a couch for free, than get paid $5 to do itIdeas for how we can use psychology to change America’s education systemWhy suicide rate among physicians are climbing rapidly The Crazy Day Care Story (and why its important) How effort and complexity create affinity for things you work onWhy Dr. Dan Ariely and I both love legos! We go through half a dozen hilarious and very counter-intuitive findings from Dr. Dan Ariely's researchWe discuss the quest for symbolic immortality (and why it matters to you) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan Ariely is one of my favorite authors on the planet. He's provided me with so much invaluable insight throughout the years, as I've been working in the field of personal finances. He is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. I actually tapped Dan for his expertise just recently for my Oprah column about ways to combat money myths and save better.  Dan and I were two of the keynote speakers at the Northern California Financial Planners Association gathering. Such an honor to be in his company. A little more about Dan: He is a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight and a Chief Behavioral Economist with a new savings app, Qapital. He's a multiple-time TED talker, whose speeches have been viewed millions of times. He is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics. We discuss the pros and cons to technology and the digital age we live in when it comes to personal finance. We also talk about the ways we can change our irrational tendencies when it comes to saving and investing. Plus, how to avoid expensive cravings and how to feel more grateful for what we have. For more information visit www.somoneypodcast.com.  

Buchanan is James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. In this inaugural workshop, professors from Duke University presented papers in Oxford in June 2015. This talk, presented by Allen Buchanan, is based on a paper co-authored with Russell Powell.

In this episode, I discuss Mitt Romney vs Evander Holyfield, Bonding over Music, Lupus Awareness, Beating your children, Other People's Podcasts, Filming instead of Stopping Police Harassment, and a Duke Professor that blamed Baltimore riots on black names. I also apologize for my previous thoughts on minimum wage. Thank you to @Evo_08 for his voicemail. DeShawn's Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/deshawn-young-6 Video of police harrassing young ladies: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/watch-all-hell-breaks-loose-when-bystanders-stop-ny-cop-from-arresting-girl-who-argued-with-him/ Duke Professor: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/duke-professor-blacks-riot-because-theyre-lazier-than-asians-and-have-strange-un-american-names/ Twitter: @SingleSimulcast, @Rashanii, @TheDr3amTeam, @SinandSolace Voicemail: 916-572-9016 Email: SingleSimulcast@Gmail.com Music: I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson - The Fresh Prince Brown Sugar (Fine) - Mos Def Lacrimosa - Mozart Lacrimosa - Tech N9ne Point the Finga - 2Pac Coast Trippin' - Killa Tay ft Set Shakur Inner City Blues - Marvin Gaye Speedom (WWC 2) Tech N9ne ft Kriss Kaliko & Eminem YNO - Rae Sremmurd ft Big Sean

Mark Anthony Neal sits down with Karla FC Holloway to talk about her new book, 'Legal Fictions: Constituting Race, Composing Literature', interdisciplinarity within the academy, President Obama and John Hope Franklin. Professor Holloway is the James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. She also holds appointments in the Law School, Women's Studies and African & African American Studies. Professor Holloway's book, 'Legal Fictions' is available online: https://www.dukeupress.edu/Legal-Fictions/ http://www.amazon.com/Legal-Fictions-Constituting-Composing-Literature/dp/0822355957/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412604294&sr=1-1&keywords=legal+fictions

An aging Zen master and bicycle repairman confronts his mortality and looks for a successor in this new novel by Duke Professor, and longtime Buddhist practitioner, David Guy. In this episode, the Durham author explores the Zen landscapes of Jakes Fades, acknowledged as a low-key tale of meditation, mentoring, and mouth-watering baked goods.

An aging Zen master and bicycle repairman confronts his mortality and looks for a successor in this new novel by Duke Professor, and longtime Buddhist practitioner, David Guy. In this episode, the Durham author explores the Zen landscapes of Jakes Fades, acknowledged as a low-key tale of meditation, mentoring, and mouth-watering baked goods.

Emotional Intelligence skills are essential to your happiness and to the success of your relationships. Having higher emotional intelligence skills will help you improve your support network and have more confidence in your capacity to develop healthy relationships.Join Dale and me as we explore this exciting and stimulating topic.A successful entrepreneur, speaker, trainer, and creative visionary all rolled into one, Dale is a powerful ally to doers and dreamers alike. As a life coach, she has the ability to inspire and motivate individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds. She has worked with married couples as well as single people searching for answers to their relationship questions.Dale is certified as a Strategic Interventionist and is credentialed in Relationship & Marriage education. Dale has furthered her studies under Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University studying Behavioral Economics, and with Richard E. Boyatzis, Distinguished University Professor, and a Professor in the Departments of Organizational Behavior, Psychology, and Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University studying Emotional Intelligence.

Hundreds of students pursuing advanced degrees at UNC-Chapel Hill have the hood of the Commencement regalia conferred by their advisers or dissertation committee chairs. Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, is the speaker for the ceremony.

Host: Indre Viskontas There is no doubt that our world is populated with cheats and liars. Most of us, slaves to the availability heuristic, think of major cheaters like Bernie Madoff, Tiger Woods, and Barry Bonds as inflicting the most damage onto society. But just how honest are we, with others and with ourselves? The surprising finding from several studies conducted by Dan Ariely and his collaborators is that we all cheat. What's worse, the consequences of these little everyday deceptions can sometimes far outweigh the ill effects of even the biggest lies. Following up on his previous books demonstrating our irrationality, this week on Point of Inquiry Dan walks us through his account of the irrational forces that determine whether or not we behave ethically. Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, with appointments at the Fuqua School of Business, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, the Department of Economics, and the School of Medicine. Dan earned one PhD in cognitive psychology and another PhD in business administration. He is the founder and director of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. His work has been featured in many outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and others. His two previous New York Times best-selling books are Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality.

Poet Nikky Finney, winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry, reads from her latest book, "Head Off & Split". Following the reading, Finney has a conversation with Thavolia Glymph, Duke Professor of African and African American Studies and History and Michael Taussig, Columbia University Professor of Anthropology.

Abstract: This talk will explore the properties of physical theories in space-times with two time dimensions. I show that the common arguments used to rule such theories out do not apply if the dynamics associated with the additional time dimension is thermal or chaotic and does not permit long-lived time-like excitations. I discuss several possible realizations of such theories, including holographic representations and the possibility that quantum dynamics emerges as a consequence of a second time dimension. Dr. Mueller is J. B. Duke Professor of Physics at Duke University. Dr. Mueller research currently focuses on nuclear matter at extreme energy density. Quantum chromodynamics, the fundamental theory of nuclear forces, predicts that nuclear matter dissolves into quarks and gluons, the constituents of nucleons, when a critical energy density is exceeded. He and his collaborators are studying the properties of this quark-gluon plasma from the theoretical point of view. They are also developing the theory of the formation of a quark-gluon plasma and its possible detection in high-energy nuclear collisions. His lecture was given on February 4, 2011.

Abstract: My lecture will describe what is now known from experiments about the properties of strongly interacting matter at the highest accessible energy densities. The important pieces of evidence include: large collective flow, strong quenching of jets, and characteristic differences in the emission features of mesons and baryons. The matter produced in nuclear collisions thus reveals itself as a nearly inviscid fluid ("perfect liquid") of extreme SU(3)-color opaqueness. I will explain how these properties are related to each other and discuss what they may imply for the internal structure of the matter produced at RHIC. The lecture will conclude with a brief discussion of the main open questions to be addressed in future experimental and theoretical investigations. Presented April 20, 2007 Dr. Mueller is J. B. Duke Professor of Physics at Duke University. Dr. Mueller's research currently focuses on nuclear matter at extreme energy density. Quantum chromodynamics, the fundamental theory of nuclear forces, predicts that nuclear matter dissolves into quarks and gluons, the constituents of nucleons, when a critical energy density is exceeded. He and his collaborators are studying the properties of this quark-gluon plasma from the theoretical point of view. They are also developing the theory of the formation of a quark-gluon plasma and its possible detection in high-energy nuclear collisions.