The Economics of Scarcity and the UNC-Duke Basketball Game (with Michael Munger)

Duke University leaves millions of dollars on the table every year by giving away free tickets to the most sought-after game in college basketball. The bizarre ticket allocation system includes weeks of camping in tents, a 58-question trivia exam, border guards with air horns at 3 AM, and a 50-page student-written constitution with its own appeals court. In this special 20th-anniversary episode, EconTalk's Russ Roberts and returning favorite Michael Munger (appearance #51!) use the legendary Duke-UNC rivalry to explore the fundamental economics question: how do you deal with a world when there isn't enough of something to go around? Along the way, they ask why a university that squeezes students on every other margin, might deliberately forgo a fortune on ticket sales. The answer has everything to do with community, belonging, and the same psychology that bonds fighter pilots and elite military units.

What if humanity's capacity for cruelty was actually one of our greatest moral achievements? That's just one of the provocative ideas philosopher Hanno Sauer explores in this conversation about his book The Invention of Good and Evil with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. Sauer tackles a fundamental puzzle: in a Darwinian world of selfish genes, how did humans become so extraordinarily cooperative? Sauer traces a fascinating journey from small hunter-gatherer bands to modern civilizations, revealing surprising mechanisms along the way--including the systematic killing of the most aggressive tribe members over millennia, which made humans the "golden retrievers of the primate kingdom." The conversation ranges from whether agriculture was history's worst mistake, to a spirited debate about religion and morality between Sauer (a German atheist who doesn't know any believers) and host Russ Roberts (a person of faith living in Israel).

Introverts are underrated. So says Susan Cain in her conversation with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about her book, Quiet. She explains why introversion isn't the same thing as shyness and she speaks of the many benefits of solitude and silent contemplation. They also discuss why modern schools and workplaces' obsession with extroversion is problematic, and the reasons for the shift from a culture of character to our current culture of personality. Cain concludes by sharing how the book has changed her own life and helped other introverts navigate a world that can't seem to stop talking.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been dragging Saudi Arabia into the modern world over the last decade. Journalist and author Karen Elliott House lays out the Saudi leader's motivations, hopes, and contradictions. Listen as she and EconTalk's Russ Roberts explore the crown prince's mix of cultural liberalization and political dominance and where his balancing act might lead his country in the future. 

How did an industry survive a technology that should have made it obsolete? Aled Maclean-Jones explains to EconTalk's Russ Roberts how Japanese quartz watches nearly wiped out Swiss watchmaking with cheaper, more accurate alternatives--and how the Swiss redefined the value of a watch to recover market dominance. Maclean-Jones discusses the Japanese innovations that led to the Swiss industry's collapse; the brilliant decision by a pair of Swiss mavericks to change the narrative around mechanical watches; and the consolidation and standardization of Swiss watchmaking undertaken by Swatch founder Nicolas Hayek.

What does war look like when fought under the harshest scrutiny? Veteran soldier and military researcher Andrew Fox talks about his first-hand experience in Gaza with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. He and Roberts explore the challenges of reporting and understanding the war amid the challenges of disinformation, and why Fox believes that the IDF had few tactical alternatives to destroying infrastructure and buildings in the Gaza Strip. Fox also addresses the claims that Israel deliberately targeted Gazan children and wielded starvation as a weapon, and explains why he believes that Israel succeeded in achieving its strategic war goals.

Author Daniel Coyle talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts on the art of flourishing: why it's a natural phenomenon rather than mechanical; how taking life's "yellow doors"--or detours from a straight, expected path--is often the key to a flourishing life; and why true flourishing can only occur in the context of relationships. They also discuss how the basic principles of flourishing have empowered people--from men trapped in a Chilean mine to senior citizens reliving their youth--to achieve remarkable things. Finally, they offer an exercise you can do for recognizing the ways that others have helped us to thrive.

What happens when a writer discovers her "boring" great-grandfather was actually a household name across the Russian Empire who helped 10,000 Jews escape to Texas? Rachel Cockerell's The Melting Point traces this forgotten history through an audacious technique: she removed herself entirely, letting only primary sources--newspaper articles, diaries, letters--speak across time. Her journey uncovers great-grandfather David Jochelmann's partnership with Israel Zangwill, the "Jewish Dickens" and their ambitious Galveston Project to divert Jewish refugees from overcrowded New York to Texas. The conversation with EconTalk's Russ Roberts spans the early Zionist movement's schism over the right location for a Jewish homeland, 1920s New York experimental theater, and one family scattered across London, New York, and Jerusalem.

Are your genes your destiny? Despite famous studies of identical twins that seem to answer in the affirmative, mathematician David Bessis says: Not so fast. He and EconTalk's Russ Roberts take a deep dive into the "twins reared apart" literature, showing how multiple flaws in those studies undercut their claims about heritability. Bessis demonstrates why the natural experiments are never perfect, and why differences across people in a particular time and place are no guarantee of what will happen to any one human being. They also discuss psychologist Eric Turkheimer's three laws of behavior genetics, emphasizing the role of unique experiences in shaping who we become.

Philosopher and author Rebecca Newberger Goldstein discusses her new book, The Mattering Instinct, which argues that our lives are a quest to validate our inherent self-centeredness. Tracing this essential longing from physics and biology through to ethics and politics, she explains to EconTalk's Russ Roberts why material success alone can never satisfy our deep-seated need to matter. She describes the four ways people seek significance--through transcendence, social connection, excellence, or competition--and explains how the unmet need to matter is at the heart of some of the biggest problems afflicting modern societies: loneliness, extremism, and polarization.