It's really hard to avoid because I think anytime that you sort of actually get into, you know, the political weeds, it's just so tempting to try to justify what you're doing in economic terms because it's so taken for granted that that's what you need to do. Welcome to the Death Panel.

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post about your favorite episodes, pre-order health communism, or request it at your local

library, and follow us at Death Panel underscore. So today, Phil and I are here with Elizabeth

Pop Berman. Beth is a sociologist and an associate professor of organizational studies at the

University of Michigan. And we have

Beth here today to talk about her brand new book, Thinking Like an Economist, How Efficiency

Replaced Equality in U.S. public policy. Beth, welcome to the death panel. It's so great to

finally have you on the show. Thanks. I'm really happy to be talking with you today.

Yeah, we've been waiting for this day for a very

long time. I've heard about this book project for a really, really long time. And this is, and I, you know, from the moment I heard about it, it's like, we have to get Beth on. This is like classic death panel content. I've been waiting for a very long time for it to be done, so we're all happy.

Yeah, no, and I'm so happy to have you here to talk about this book because, first of all,

it's fantastic and congratulations. I'm obviously biased. We're all biased here because there are a lot of common themes in your book that overlap with our interests on the show, especially

when it comes to, you know, thinking through

how the boundaries of reasonable policy are defined. And it's not just about bad actors,

but about the methods, the analysis, the norms, all of that stuff that's been naturalized.

And your book offers such a great look at a really under-examined and under-discussed angle

on how efficiency came to dominate as kind of the only rational measurement of what good policy is.

Anyways, there's so much to talk about, but to start us off, Beth, can you quickly set up for people

who might not know your work or who might not

...