This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. Here on the show there's a

fall tradition we love. It has nothing to do with pumpkin spice or Halloween,

although we love those too. What I'm talking about is the annual announcement of

the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

has decided to award the Sverius Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of

Alfred Nobel to Richard H. Thaler. Richard Thaler has played an outsized role in

shaping the field of behavioral economics. He also happens to be a great

conversationalist, so we thought we'd revisit our 2015 conversation with him.

It's till one of our favorites.

Richard Thaler's latest book is Misbehaving, The Story of Behavioral Economics. I spoke to him

before a live audience at NPR's Weekend in Washington, an event that brings together

public radio supporters from across the country.

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. 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 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

...