Behavioral Economics with Michael Lewis
Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger
Audacy
4.6 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2017
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sometimes a host has to do what a host has to do to land the interview. You could say that was the case with the one and only Michael Lewis, our guest this week on Better Off. It was a few months back that I ran into Michael in the CBS This Morning Green Room and immediately started working my mojo to get him on the podcast. Although it took weeks and weeks of emails to finally make it happen, it was worth the wait. Lewis is such a prolific writer that you’ve probably picked up at least one of his books, including Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short or Flash Boys. In this interview, we discuss his latest work, The Undoing Project. The Undoing Project explores the roots of behavioral economics, a topic that has always fascinated me. I love trying to understand why people make the decisions they do. Trying to figure out how the human mind works. And that’s what this book is all about. It’s starts with the partnership between Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Forty years ago, the pair wrote a series of original studies questioning our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind systematically erred, when forced to make judgments in uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine and led to a new approach to government regulation. We also touched on many other topics including the financial industry, the current political climate and what he plans to work on next. Which means you’ll likely hear Michael again on this podcast sometime down the road...hopefully I won’t have to tackle him again in the Green Room! “Better Off” is sponsored by Betterment. We love feedback so please leave us a rating or review in iTunes. "Better Off" theme music is by Joel Goodman, www.joelgoodman.com. For a recap of every episode, visit https://www.betterment.com/resources/topics/inside-betterment/better-off-podcast/. Connect with me at these places for all my content: http://www.jillonmoney.com/ https://twitter.com/jillonmoney https://www.facebook.com/JillonMoney https://www.instagram.com/jillonmoney/ https://www.youtube.com/c/JillSchlesinger https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillonmoney/ https://soundcloud.com/jill-schlesinger http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/jill-on-money http://betteroffpodcast.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/better-off-jill-schlesinger/id431167790?mt=2
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi it's Jill Schlesinger and today's episode author Michael Lewis. What a treat. His most recent book is called The Undoing Project. |
| 0:14.1 | Explores how behavioral finance entered the lexicon |
| 0:18.0 | of the financial world. |
| 0:19.4 | What Wall Street has done forever |
| 0:21.8 | is tell people's stories to eliminate the uncertainty and make people feel like |
| 0:25.8 | they're not in an uncertain situation where I would say if you have any kind of |
| 0:29.3 | money you're managing you're much better off just accepting the fact you have the discomfort of |
| 0:33.5 | uncertainty. If you do anything to remove it, likely what you're doing to remove it |
| 0:37.7 | is going to make the situation even worse. |
| 0:40.3 | Welcome to the Better Off podcast sponsored by Betterment, the smarter way to invest your money. |
| 0:47.0 | Well, you know, it happened again. I tackled somebody in the CBS This Morning green room to try to wrangle an interview and it worked. |
| 0:57.4 | This time one of my favorite authors, Michael Lewis, his recent project called The Undoing Project is really cool. It tells a story of |
| 1:08.0 | behavioral economists and we're going to get into that in the interview but you know you probably know Michael Lewis from maybe his earlier works like Liars poker or money ball or flashboys or the big short. I mean the guy is so prolific it's fantastic but what I've really found |
| 1:25.7 | so fascinating about talking to Michael was that he's got a really good sense of |
| 1:32.0 | how to look at a financial story or a complicated issue, find these |
| 1:38.5 | fantastic characters, draw you |
| 1:45.0 | something along the way. It's like this spoonful of sugar really makes the medicine go down. |
| 1:49.0 | And it's really exciting for me to be able to have him on the program after reading him for so long, but also to have him on to talk about the undoing project because it has such resonance for me because it's a has such resonance for me because it's a you know obviously the story behind |
| 2:07.0 | the fathers of behavioral economics so right now let's get into it |
| 2:12.0 | it's Michael Lewis here on Better Off. |
| 2:15.0 | You are listening to Better Off with Jill Schlesinger. |
| 2:19.0 | Okay, time for the big interview segment of Better Off and today special guest author Michael |
... |
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