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Today's story begins in 2012, on a vibrant and historic campus.

The University of Massachusetts is a beacon for creative minds with big ideas,

a training ground for those who one day hope to make their mark on the world stage.

It's maybe the single quickest way to get to the frontier of a field, right? You look at the

best current papers in that field and you learn how to cook them from scratch. That is Thomas

Herndon. He's an associate professor at the City University of New York.

But back then, he was a grad student who had just been set a challenge to work through a paper by some hot shot academics.

This project was for a class in applied econometrics.

It was the beginning of the semester,

and Thomas was unsure of himself,

because this particular subject wasn't exactly his strong suit.

You do need a little bit of math,

and those were some of the things that I struggled with

when I was first studying as a youth.

Of course, I had started experiencing a problem.

To his lecturers, Michael Ash and Bob Pollan, this student seemed to be stuck on something

elementary.

It wasn't wrapped in really complicated mathematics or high-tech statistics.

Kind of like if someone wanted to ask, who's taller at age 10, the boys or the girls in the class?

I just said, well, you're doing something wrong.

That wouldn't hurt. That definitely hurt.

...