Welcome to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vidantan.

This week we're going to bring you a conversation I had in front of a live audience with Richard

Thaler, taped on Halloween at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, DC.

Richard is a professor of behavioral sciences and economics at the University of Chicago

and is a well-known author.

His latest book is called Misbehaving, the Making of Behavioral Economics.

I want to start by asking Richard a real softball question.

Your friend, whose name is Daniel Coniman, he won the Nobel Prize in Economics some years

ago, a well-famous psychologist, brilliant author.

And Danny Coniman was once asked to describe Richard Thaler to a journalist.

And he said that Richard's dominant characteristic, the thing that makes him stand out, is that

Richard is lazy.

Can you tell me Richard, why Danny said that?

And also why he insists that this was a compliment?

Yeah, what's worse is a Danny is my best friend and B. He said this was my best quality.

To this day Danny defends this and that he defends A and that it's true and B, that it's

a compliment because he says that it means I'm only willing to work on things that are

important.

The truth is I'm only willing to work on things that are fun.

And that's why I'm here today because I think we're going to fun.

I think that's exactly right.

So I first started talking to Richard maybe about 10 years ago.

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