WEBVTT - Episode 14: The World’s Only Stand-Up Economist 0:00:06.320 --> 0:00:09.200 Welcome to another episode of Odd Thoughts. I'm Tracy Alloy, 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:12.840 Executive editor of Bloomberg Markets, and I'm Joe Wisenthal, Managing 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:15.560 editor of Bloomberg Markets. I want to let our listeners 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:18.680 in on a little secret. This isn't widely known outside 0:00:18.720 --> 0:00:23.040 the Bloomberg office, but Joe abhores fun in all its forms. 0:00:23.480 --> 0:00:27.000 He hates whimsy, he hates photos of cute animals and 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:32.720 anything related to general merriment. That's not true, No, no, yeah, right, 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:36.240 that's pretty much true, pretty much. I like having fun, 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:38.400 just I just don't like most people's definition of it. 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:42.160 I guess you have your own definition. Al right. Well, 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:44.839 on that note, I thought today, in an effort to 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.960 change Joe's mind about fun and humor in general, we 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:52.479 might embark on something a little different, something fun, but 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:55.720 obviously it still needs to be markets related. So Joe, 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:58.160 I'm really excited to say that we're going to have 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:02.000 today someone who bills himself as the world's first and 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:08.920 only stand up comedian economist. Wait, stand up economists, Yeah 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:13.360 it is. I'm skeptical, all right, So we're having your 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.319 embowman on. He has a PhD in economics from the 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:20.280 University of Washington. He also travels the country doing comedy 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:24.279 gigs at universities and economic conferences, making jokes about yield 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.840 curves and supply and demand and all that fun stuff. 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:32.600 I'm even more skeptical there's actually a circuit of going 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:36.319 around making jokes and comedy conferences and universities. I swear 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:38.320 there is. If you look at his website, he has 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:40.639 a list of every show that he's done, and he's, 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:48.960 as economists would say, very much in demand. Okay, convinced, Yeah, no, no, 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:51.160 I'm starting to get intrigued. Just to give you an idea, 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:53.160 We're going to have your um come on and at 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:55.400 the beginning he's going to do a short set for us, 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:57.840 and I've also brought in some of our Bloomberg colleagues 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.160 to be our guinea pigs and his audience. All right, well, 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:12.760 I'm looking forward to being convinced. Ladies and gentlemen, your 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:20.079 am Bowman. Thank you very much. It's it's a pleasure 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:22.760 me with all of you today. My name is Roon Bowman. 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.360 I appear before you as the world first and only 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:30.000 stand up economist. Yes, it's a it's a niche market. 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:32.920 I really only have one thing going for me as 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:36.800 a stand up economist, and that's low expectations. When I 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:38.000 told my father that I was going to be a 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:40.679 stand up economist, he said, Ronny said, you can't be 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:42.840 a stand up economist. And I said, why not? And 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:47.639 he said, because there's no demand a boom And I 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:50.120 was the first joke I ever told on stage. I said, 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:53.400 don't worry that I'm a supply side economist. I just 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:57.960 stand up and let the jokes trickle down. I believe 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:02.480 in laugher cur those are actually just my jokes that 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:05.520 how much economics everybody knows? And then I kind of 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:08.680 arranged the rest of your team accordingly. Uh you know, 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:10.959 I'm I'm happy to say that it's been a good 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:14.040 couple of years for economics comedy. A few years ago 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:16.440 I got to be on the PBS News Hour. And now, 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:17.679 I don't know how much you all know about the 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:19.639 world of stand up comedy, but let me just play 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:22.440 you this. In the world of stand up comedy, it 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:26.320 does not get any bigger than the PBS News Hour 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:30.840 with Jim Lair. It was pretty amazing. They interviewed three 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:34.119 economists on the show. They interviewed Robert Schiller who won 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:39.000 the Nobel Prize. They interviewed Joseph Stiglets, who won the 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:43.280 Nobel Prize, and they interviewed me. I felt like kind 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:48.120 of a self aware version of Sarah Palin And what 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:50.160 did they ask for my moment of TV fame when 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:52.080 the TVs News Hour they asked me if I'd ever 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:58.000 bombed on stage? A couple of things about this, right. 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:00.800 First of all, I am not a eight of failure, 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:06.240 all right, I'm an economist. Secondly, on professional comedian, right, 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:08.000 so it choke doesn't work. You just started keep throwing 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:10.440 stuff out there until you find something that six just 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:12.280 basically the same thing that the fat of the Treasury 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:15.640 didn't the last six or seven years. And finally had 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:17.479 to admit on the PBS News Hour and in fact 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:20.000 I had bombed on stage. The works show I ever 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:22.480 did was in October of two thousand and eight. I'm 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:24.880 sure you remember what was happening to the global economy 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:27.280 in the stock market in October of two thousand eight. 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:29.599 October two thousand and eight, I did a show in 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:34.240 Colorado Springs for a group of bankers. And commonly it 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:36.520 is kind of a violent business, right like if you're 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:39.440 doing well, then you're killing. If you're doing badly, then 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:42.680 you're bombing. And I totally bombed that show. And I 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:44.719 actually did so poorly that I spent a star any 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:47.560 time afterwards, sort of soul searchingly trying to figure out 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:49.960 where had I lost the connection with this audience of 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.120 bankers in Colorado Springs in October of two thousand and eight, 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:55.599 And I finally realized that I lost them on my 0:04:55.680 --> 0:05:00.160 opening line, that my opening line was, Hey, how was 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:06.480 it going? Maybe I'll close this set with some You 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:09.000 might be an economist if jokes so. You might be 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:11.120 an economists if you think that In America's next top 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:15.440 model should be a Dodginess growth model. Uh, it might 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:17.960 be an economist. If you don't read human interest stories 0:05:18.040 --> 0:05:22.440 because they don't interest you. You might be an economists 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:24.240 if you've ever gone to a bank or other financial 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:28.560 institution in the hopes of getting a date. If you 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:30.960 plan to have your children born in December instead of 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.599 January so you can maximize the discount of present value 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:39.000 of the child tax credit. And finally, you might be 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:41.520 an economist if be adamantly refused to sell your children 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:49.680 because you think they'll be worth more later. Thank you, 0:05:49.760 --> 0:06:00.800 right your I thought that was really funny. I'm a 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:03.560 big fan of puns. The first time I've ever done 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:07.880 a podcast show by telephone to a group of five people, 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:10.919 I'm trying to convince Joe that there can be humor 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.880 in economics. Um, on that note, can you tell us 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:17.440 how you actually had this idea and how you got 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:21.839 into this gig? Yeah, it was. It was basically a 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:24.840 random coincidence. So while I was in graduate school at 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.039 the University of Washington getting my PhD in economics, I 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:31.120 wrote a parody of the Ten Principles of Economics in 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:34.960 a popular textbook by Harvard professor Greg Mankiw And uh, 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:36.960 just kind of did that to blow up team, because 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:38.480 that's what you do when you're in graduate school. And 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:40.359 then one thing led to another. It got published in 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:43.320 this chinest humor journal called the Animals of Improbable Research, 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:45.719 and then they run a humor session every year at 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:48.440 this thing science convention that happened to be in Seattle. 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:51.400 So they invited me to present my paper and I 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:53.000 had so much fun. I kind of got into stand 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:55.760 up comedy as a hobby. And then, um, I guess 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:58.640 two things happened after that. One was my academic career, 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:00.920 to be perfectly honest, and didn't go quite as well 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:03.200 as I hoped. Uh. And then the other thing was 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:05.560 it turned out that people were interested in paying me 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:09.080 to do stand up comedy about economics. So ten years later, 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:12.120 this is now my my profession. So this is your 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:15.040 full time thing. This is so what's the circuit? Like, 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:18.720 how often do you perform uh in a year? One? 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:22.160 Are the common venues and so far? Yeah, so this 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:25.080 is sort of my this is my paid job. Nobody 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:26.760 believes me, but this is how I make a living. 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:29.000 I do stand up comedy about economics. I have kind 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:32.120 of a full time, unpaid job working on on carbon 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.680 taxes and a carbon tax ballot measure here in Washington State, 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:39.080 and climate change issues and tax reform and stuff like that. Um, 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.440 but it's all financed by the miracle of economics comedy. 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:46.960 Mostly I do colleges and corporate events, and um, you know, 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:50.520 the colleges are sort of all over and then the 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:54.040 corporate events some of them are financial firms, but also 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:59.000 just trucking executives on the banks of the Arkansas River. Uh, 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:01.520 you know, the floor to bankers associate. How many gigs 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:05.960 do you do a year, Probably maybe fifty or sixty. So, 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:08.280 you know, a lot of people think of economics as 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.680 a really dry subject. Do you think something like that 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:15.200 lends itself to humor. Well, like those jokes that I 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:17.720 told you know that you might be an economist if jokes. 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:19.680 The reason those jokes work is because you have a 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:22.520 stereotype that you can play against. And so anytimes you 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:25.160 have stereotypes, you can kind of do comedy. And you know, 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:28.240 there are these obvious stereotypes about economists being sort of 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:32.560 hyper rational and focus on money and uh. And so 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:35.120 when you have that, then then then there's an opportunity 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:37.720 to do comedy. And the fact that the fact that 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.600 everybody has such low expectations makes it all the easier. 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.319 Like I've often found that low expect having low expectations 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:47.400 is one of the one of the great assets in life. 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:50.040 That's one reason why I like being an economist, because 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:51.960 I think there are a lot of people in the 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:54.800 world who tend to think that that other people should 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:57.920 be good people at heart, and then they're you know, 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:00.720 often disappointed when when people let them down. Own where 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:03.400 you study economics, and then you go into the world 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:04.800 thinking that everybody is going to be kind of a 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:07.560 self interested jerk, and it turns out that people are 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:12.560 oftentimes much better than that, Right, so you're pleasantly surprised. Yeah, 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:15.600 you get the benefits of low expectations. Yeah, I've never 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:18.600 really thought about that. That The sort of first building 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.880 block of economics is the assumption that everyone is going 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:25.679 to be selfish and cool and uh self, you know, 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:29.079 self maximizing all the time. But then as you learn more, 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:31.960 of course, and most economists don't really believe that, but 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:35.600 that as you learn more, the what happens is humans 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:38.760 surprise you to the to the upside. So that is 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:41.360 a kind of a nice thing about the economic worldview. 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:43.360 I've never really thought of it that way before. Yeah, 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:45.199 I mean, well, the way that I have a couple 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:50.400 of cartoon economics books that I co authored with illustrated 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:52.320 Grade de Klin, and the way we say it is 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:55.920 that is an economists assume that people are optimizing individuals, 0:09:56.400 --> 0:09:58.800 and so that doesn't necessarily mean that they're optimizing just 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:02.920 for themselves, right No, Um, No, economists would say that 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:05.400 people just care about themselves and don't care about friends 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:07.719 or family or even people in other parts of the 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.920 world or animals or whatever. But you know, there are 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:13.640 a lot of cases where doing the economic models and 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:15.520 start of thinking through how the analysis works makes a 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:17.400 lot more offense when you when when you kind of 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:19.760 simplify things and say, okay, people are are kind of 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:24.319 basically self interested. Do you have counterparts and other academic fields? 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:27.800 Like is there a physics comedian, a chemistry comedian, Like 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:30.880 have you found those other other types? Yeah? You know, 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.080 for a while, we thought about putting together like a university, 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.240 like a comedy university, which I still think would be 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:40.080 an awesome idea, but it's never gone anywhere. Let's see, 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:42.480 who do I know. There's just the fellow whose website 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:46.560 is science comedian Brian Mallow, who's a former astronomer. He 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.079 talks about how he started in the comedy instead of 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:54.400 astronomy because they put him on the dayshift. Uh. There's 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:57.280 a fellow who actually gotta peach the neurobiologies means tim 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:00.920 Lee very funny. His website I his comedy of tim 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:04.679 Lee dot com. Uh. There's a guy, Bill Santiago who 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:08.520 wrote a book called Pardon My Spanglish, and he does 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:10.560 he actually does a stand up comedy in both English 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:12.720 and Spanish. He's of I think he's from New York, 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:15.839 but as of Puerto Rican descent, and he's he's super 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.200 funny and does a lot of comedy about language. So 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:20.160 I think it would be totally possible to do that, 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:25.160 to put together like a whole academic curriculum, uh, just 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:29.080 based on comedy. So, um, when you go off to 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.840 economic conferences and you do your stand up, do you 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.600 ever get economists who are just having none of it, 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:39.560 who are just completely humorless. I do occasionally get people 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:42.440 who think that, um, you know, I'm making fun of 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:45.960 a serious subject and maybe their socks were pulled on 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.840 too tight or something like that. But for the most part, 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.840 people appreciate that that you know, it's public education, and 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:56.200 it's it's Uh. I've taught high school as well as college, 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:59.079 and when you teach high school, one of the things 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:02.360 you learned is that motivate engine is incredibly important. Right 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:04.760 that that it's not that the students don't have the 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:07.400 book or don't have access to the materials, it's that 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:11.240 you know, they're lacking the uh. Sometimes they're they're they're 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:14.160 lacking the impetus to actually read the book, and um, 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:16.199 you know, and that's why I worked on these cartoon books. 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:18.640 And that's why, um, that's why I do some of 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:21.480 the comedy is is to motivate people to pick up 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:24.319 the book and maybe economics, it's kind of interesting who 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:28.280 are some of the funniest economists out there? Doesn't Austin 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:31.599 Goldsber do stand up? Other Austin all of us is 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.440 out there that who back meets of Chicago does stand up? 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:36.719 They're actually one of some the humor sessions that I 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:40.200 put on the American Economic Association meetings. It's usually me, 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:43.160 and then there's like four or five others, uh, folks 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:48.400 who just give they write papers on various things. Um. 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:50.760 The most recent one there's a Felling who presented the 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:53.640 paper on you know. The economists will sometimes do like 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:56.040 what's called non market valuation to try to figure out, 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:58.640 like how much do we value having you know, stam 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:04.000 in in the the Sacramento San Jachim river system. And 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:07.240 this paper was about using those same economic techniques to 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.360 figure out the value that salmon put on having salmon 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:12.920 in the river system, uh, and the values of the 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:17.640 sam having humans in the river system. Presumably salmon's value 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:21.640 being in the river greatly right. Well, it terms out 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:25.000 that they value their own lives quite highly. Yet, but 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:28.319 their value for for Smoltz for juvenile salmon is actually 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:31.839 relatively low and roughly comparable. I learned to their valuation 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:36.240 for juvenile human, which was it was determined by showing 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.240 salmon a picture of the Brady Bunch. Those were the 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:43.000 juvenile humans that they picked. U. It was a funny 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:46.080 papers on that topic. You're One of the reasons we 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.560 stumbled upon you was because we read this uh listical 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.040 I guess that you did, called the top eleven funniest 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.120 papers in the history of economics, and some of them 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.040 I had heard before, but some of them I had haven't. 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:00.559 And um I got to read out of the names 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:05.200 of these papers, the theory of Interstellar Trade by Paul Kirkman, uh, 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:09.400 the Effective Prayer on God's Attitude toward mankind, and what 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:15.000 is possibly my favorite is Japan's Phillips curve looks like 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:19.160 Japan by Gregor Smith. I love that one tell us 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:22.280 about these papers and why you think economists decide to 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:26.280 do them. So I've edited for a number of years 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:28.720 now the humor section of an economics journal, a real 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:32.840 economics journal called Economic Inquiry. Uh. So they published series 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:35.320 papers and then every quarter or every issue they try 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:38.280 to publish of what they call a miscellany piece, which 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:40.520 just serve a funny piece. So many of those papers, 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:44.280 including the Paul Cregman paper he's a Nobel prizewinner, the 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:49.480 Jim Heckman paper also in Prizewinner. We're published in Economic Inquiry. UM. 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:51.920 Japan's Phillips curve looks like Japan was actually published in 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:54.120 the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and it's almost 0:14:54.120 --> 0:14:56.800 certainly the funniest paper ever published in the Journal of Money, 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:00.200 Credit and Banking. UM. I think people do it kind 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:03.640 of on a on a on a lark um. Either 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:06.400 something you know, naws at them, which is kind of 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:07.960 where I ended up with this parody of the Ten 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:10.920 Principles of economics, or a lot of times they just 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:15.000 come across hath hazardly something something that that that triggers 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:17.720 this idea. So Japan's Philip curve looks like Japan. Right 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:19.840 at the background is the Philips curve. Was this idea 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:21.880 from the fifties and sixties, and there's a trade off 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:25.400 between inflation and unemployment, you have high inflation and low 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:29.640 unemployment or the opposite. But the idea was that you 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:32.240 were always on that Phillips curve line. And so what 0:15:32.360 --> 0:15:35.000 this economist was doing he was actually looking at Philips 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:38.800 curve data for Japan and and graph to Philips curve 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.440 data for Japan between h I think it was like 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:46.280 thousand and five, and when he looked at the graph, 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:49.720 it just happened to look like a map of Japan. 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:53.240 Uh So he wrote this paper. There's actually a link 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:54.840 on his website of the paper and the link so 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:57.720 that the title of this paper is also the abstract 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:00.720 and frankly most of the text which is which is 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.800 pretty great. So that was what led him to write 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:07.160 that paper. There was another paper called the Efficiency of 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:09.720 a C d C and looked at the rock group 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:12.960 a C D C. And uh, I don't know how 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:14.320 they give a fan you are of a c DC, 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:17.200 but they had two front men, two main singers, Von 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:20.200 Scott and Brian Johnson. And apparently there's been a debate 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.520 among mel heads ever since about which of them was 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:25.920 the better front man for a C d C. And 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:30.400 so there was this economist, Rob Oxby in Canada who 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.440 was doing his research who was doing serious research. His 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:38.120 research was about how background music affects people's decision making, 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:42.600 and so some of the songs that he had his 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:44.840 graduate students or whatever playing the background were some of 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:46.640 these A C d C songs and they were trying 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:48.920 to figure out whether the background music affected like when 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:52.560 people were negotiating, how does it affect that outcome of negotiations? 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:56.840 And it turned out that the graduate student kind of 0:16:56.880 --> 0:17:00.360 accidentally played two different A c DC songs during some 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.520 of these experiments, and that ruined the data for the 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:08.159 actual paper, but it gave him this idea for this 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:11.399 joke paper where you can use the results because the 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:13.480 two A c DC songs one was a Brian Johnson 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:15.680 fil one was a Bond scott You can use those 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:18.679 results to figure out that Brian Johnson. In fact, if 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:21.000 you're negotiating, you want to listen to the Brian Johnson 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:23.719 A CDC songs and not the Bond Scotland. Yeah. Can 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:25.480 I just read from the abstract of that A C 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:28.280 d C paper It says we use tools from experimental 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.320 economics to address the age old debate regarding who was 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:33.159 a better singer in the band A c d C. 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:37.520 These results may have important implications for settling drunken music 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:42.840 debates and environmental design issues and organizations. I love that. Yeah, 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:45.919 there's There was a follow up humor piece which was 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:49.600 that after this, uh, after he released this on his 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:51.480 website or posted the paper on his website, it was 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:53.560 picked up. It was, it was. It wasn't the newspapers 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:55.600 like in Australia, right, which is where a c DC 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:58.000 comes from. So it actually got a ton of press, 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:00.480 and then Steve Levitt picked it. I blew it as 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.280 the universe of Chicago. He's one of the authors of Freakonomics, 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:06.199 and he wrote a blog post about it. But he 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:09.840 didn't realize that the paper was a joke, so he 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:11.600 wrote a blog post about it that was called this 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:13.919 is what happens to economists and they listen to too 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.480 much a c d uh. You know. He wrote, like, 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:20.240 I hope for this guy's sake that he has tenure 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:22.639 in rawbos to be excited to post a comment on 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:25.119 his blog on Steve Lennart's blog saying, first of all, 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:26.840 I already have tenures, thank you very much. And the 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:31.119 second of all, the papers a joke, So what are 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.400 you up to now. You mentioned the carbon text thing. 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:38.560 But outside of your stand up, what what occupies your time? 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:43.480 I am, um working on another cartoon book. So my 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:46.240 co author and I have two cartoon books about economics. 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.240 We have a cartoon instruction to climate change and we 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:53.560 are working on a cartoon introduction to calculums. So the 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:57.120 cartoon books are really fun. And you know, in America especially, 0:18:57.400 --> 0:18:59.480 I think cartoon books have kind of a little bit 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:02.040 of a bad People think that they're quote unquote just 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:04.919 for kids. But I've actually come to really appreciate them 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:08.720 as a way to convey information to audiences of all ages. 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:10.600 I mean, they're very accessible, they provide a way to 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:13.159 do humor, and when you do a cartoon book, you 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:15.240 don't have to, um, I feel like you need to 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:18.520 put footnotes on everything and say two hundred pages what 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:22.240 you can say in uh, you know, in twenty pages. Uh. 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:24.400 And then I'm spending a lot of time working on 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:28.840 this carbon tax reform campaign here in Washington State. It's 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:32.320 actually a ballot measure, Initiative seven thirty two, which just 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:35.560 qualified for the ballot. We Are campaign gathered three hundred 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.760 and sixty three thousand signatures last year and it's a 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:41.720 pretty neat campaign. The idea is that, you know, we 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:44.359 have a moral responsibility to take action on climate change, 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:45.679 and the way to do it is to have a 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:48.560 carbon tax, use market instruments, so you have a carbon tax, 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:50.960 and then use the revenue from the carbon tax to 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:54.160 reduce existing taxes. So we cut the state sales tax 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:57.240 by a point um uh and reduce some other taxes 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:00.320 for businesses and for low income households. Then that was 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:02.520 actually the idea that that brought me into economics in 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:04.200 the first place. So it's kind of this idea of 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:06.840 environmental text re form, that we can use the tools 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:09.880 of economics and the power of capitalism to protect the environment. 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:12.840 It's a big thing that that that's in my life 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:15.000 right now, in addition to my wife and my eighteen 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:17.960 months old baby. Well, our producers are signaling that we 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:20.920 need to cut the fun short. So one last thing 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:23.280 before you go, can can you tell us one final 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:26.040 economics joke, like a one liner that we can use 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:30.199 in our daily lives. Let's see, do I have a 0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:33.879 good joke? I mean, I can tell you the oldest 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:36.600 economics joke in the world if you want. Yeah, the 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:39.560 oldest economist joke in the world is about a physicist, 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:42.439 the chemist, an economist who are stranded on a desert 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:44.159 island and they don't have any food, and then a 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:46.800 can of beans washes up on the shore, but they 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:48.600 don't have a way to open the can of beans, 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:50.560 and the physicists as well, we'll just crack it against 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:53.119 the rock here and do some calculations and we use 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:55.320 this velocity and then the canna beans will open. And 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:57.439 the chemist says, no, no, no, that's too complicated. We'll 0:20:57.480 --> 0:20:59.240 put the Canadians in the salt water and it will 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:01.399 corrode and that it as much time. You know, we 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:03.720 can eat two Cannabians. And the economist is not, it's 0:21:03.720 --> 0:21:06.160 just too hard. Let's just assume we have a can opener. 0:21:07.080 --> 0:21:08.840 I love that joke. I've heard that before, but I 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:11.320 think it's a great joke. Yes, this is this is 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:14.960