Today's episode of Rationally Speaking is sponsored by Givewell, one of my favorite nonprofits.

They do rigorous research to quantify how much good a given charity does, how many lives

does it save, or how much does it reduce poverty per dollar donated?

You can read all about their research, or just check out their short list of top recommended

evidence-based charities to maximize the amount of good that your

donations can do. Check them out at give well.org. Welcome to rationally speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I'm your host, Julia Galeith, and today I'm talking with Professor Danny Roderick.

Danny is an economist at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

He is the author of many books, including The Globalization Paradox, and most recently,

Economics Rules, the Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science.

Danny, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you. Nice to be with you.

I've been following your work and reading your blog for years, but the impetus for me inviting

you on the show just recently was that I just finished reading economics rules, which several

of my very smart friends had highly recommended to me. And I really liked it. I thought it was

an admirably nuanced take on how economics works

and that you did just such a great job of pointing out some of the limitations or flaws in

economics, but also defending ways in which it's maybe misunderstood by people outside of the field.

And regular listeners of rationally speaking know that admirably nuanced is like the highest praise

for me.

So I thought we could start by talking about one of the ways that you point out that people kind of misunderstand

the point of economics, that they often think that economics is trying to be a science in the way

...