Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner.

One thing I love is going through the Freakonomics Radio archive and resurfacing some of our favorite episodes and some of our favorite people, like Richard Thaler.

The episode you're about to hear was first published in 2021.

We've updated facts and figures as necessary.

I hope you enjoy it. And if not,

you can blame Thaler.

I know we're talking about Nudge, but I also know that you like what you like and you don't like what you don't like. And you can be a little, no offense, you can be a little tetchy sometimes. Touchy? You call me touchy? No, no, no, not touchy.

Tetchy. What? I don't even know what word you're saying. Sensitive?

We could go with sensitive, but maybe the best word to describe the man on the other microphone

today is cranky, at least situationally cranky.

He's pleasant enough most of the time, but in certain circumstances, he becomes a bit of

a crankopatomus, especially when something isn't working the way it's

supposed to. Like, when you go to pay your taxes or get a mortgage, and you're suddenly tossed

into a quagmire of fine print and red tape, or think about navigating the health care system,

or managing your retirement savings. There's so much low-hanging fruit because so many

things are done so stupidly. I should probably tell you the name of this situationally cranky man.

It's Richard Thaler. He's an economics professor at the University of Chicago. For years, he collaborated

with the pioneering psychologists

Danny Connman and Amos Tversky, helping create what has come to be called behavioral economics.

Connman was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2002. It would have been shared with Tversky at he not died young.

Thaler would go on to win his own Nobel Prize in 2017. Back in 2008,

Thaler published a book called Nudge, Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

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