In this episode, Dane Stangler, a research manager at the Kauffman Foundation, talks with Dan Ariely, author and professor. They discussed Ariely's perspective on behavior economics, which quantifies how people actually act in the marketplace, often very different than what conventional wisdom dictates. Ariely tells how irrational behavior can be both positive and negative. For example, when calorie counts are posted in fast food restaurants, consumers put all logic aside and ignore the numbers. On the plus side, Ariely says, our society benefits from entrepreneurship, even though the risks of starting a business would make it seem an irrational idea.

Ariely is the author of the New York Times Bestseller "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions" and of "The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Ways We Defy Logic at Work and at Home."

He is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University, where he holds appointments at the Fuqua School of Business, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, the School of Medicine, and the department of Economics.

He earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Tel Aviv University, his master's and doctorate degrees in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina, and a doctorate in Business Administration from Duke University.

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In this episode, Paul talks with Dean Kamen, entrepreneur, inventor and founder of FIRST, a non-profit organization inspiring young people's interest in science and technology. They talked about the conflicted relationship between entrepreneurship and education; why all companies shouldn't be judged by the speed by which .com startups launch; and why, contrary to popular conception, the FIRST program isn't primarily about building robots.

Kamen's roles as inventor and advocate are intertwined -- his own passion for technology and its practical uses has driven his personal determination to spread the word about technology’s virtues and by so doing to change the culture of the United States.

As an inventor, he holds more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents, many of them for innovative medical devices that have expanded the frontiers of health care worldwide. While still a college undergraduate, he invented the first wearable infusion pump, which rapidly gained acceptance from such diverse medical specialties as chemotherapy, neonatology and endocrinology. In 1976 he founded his first medical device company, AutoSyringe, Inc., to manufacture and market the pumps. At age 30, he sold that company to Baxter International Corporation. By then, he had added a number of other infusion devices, including the first insulin pump for diabetics.

Following the sale of AutoSyringe, Inc., he founded DEKA Research & Development Corporation to develop internally generated inventions as well as to provide R&D for major corporate clients. An advanced prosthetic arm in development for DARPA should advance the quality of life for returning injured soldiers. Other notable developments include the Hydroflex^TM surgical irrigation pump for C.R. Bard, the Crown^TM stent, an improvement to the original Palmaz-Schatz stent, for Johnson & Johnson, the iBOTTM mobility device, and the Segway® Human Transporter.

In the year 2000, Dean was awarded the National Medal of Technology. Presented by President Clinton, this award was in recognition for inventions that have advanced medical care worldwide, and for innovative and imaginative leadership in awakening America to the excitement of science and technology. He was also awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2002, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2005.

In addition to DEKA, one of Dean's proudest accomplishments is founding FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization dedicated to motivating the next generation to understand, use and enjoy science and technology.

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In this episode, Paul talks with Steve Blank about the founding of Silicon Valley, and the reasons behind the region's continued success; they also touched on Blank's thoughts on lean startups, and how to teach entrepreneurship.

Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur and has been a founder or participant in eight Silicon Valley startups since 1978, including two semiconductor companies, Zilog and MIPS Computers; a workstation company, Convergent Technologies; a consulting stint for a graphics hardware/software spinout Pixar; a supercomputer firm, Ardent; a computer peripheral supplier, SuperMac; a military intelligence systems supplier, ESL; and a video game company, Rocket Science Games. He co-founded his last company, E.piphany, in his living room in 1996.

After he retired in 1999, he wrote Four Steps to the Epiphany, a book about building early stage companies. He has taught entrepreneurship to both undergraduate and graduate students at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University and the Columbia University/Berkeley Joint Executive MBA program. The "Customer Development" model that he developed in his book is one of the core themes for these classes. In 2009 he was awarded the Stanford University Undergraduate Teaching Award in the department of Management Science and Engineering. The same year, the San Jose Mercury News listed hin as one of the 10 Influencers in Silicon Valley. In 2010, he was awarded the Earl F. Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award at U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business.

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In this episode, Paul talks with journalist and author Kathryn Schulz. They discussed Shulz's recently released book, "Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error." They talked about Schulz's premise that we're all wrong, all the time, and how the inability of politicians and business leaders to admit to mistakes can be devastating. On the other hand, the ability to learn from our mistakes can have personal benefits.

Schulz's freelance writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Nation, Foreign Policy, and the Huffington Post, among other publications. She writes “The Wrong Stuff,” a blog on Slate (magazine), and contributes to the Freakonomics blog at The New York Times. Schulz began her career in journalism writing for the now-defunct Feed Magazine, one of the earliest online magazines. She is the former editor of the online environmental magazine Grist, and a former reporter and editor for The Santiago Times, of Santiago, Chile, where she covered environmental, labor, and human rights issues. She was a 2004 recipient of the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism (now the International Reporting Project), and has reported from throughout Central and South America, Japan, and, most recently, the Middle East. A graduate of Brown University and a former Ohioan, Oregonian, and Brooklynite, she currently lives in New York's Hudson Valley.

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In this episode, Paul talks with Paul Romer, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Center for International Development and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. They discussed Romer's path as an academic turned entrepreneur, who returned to Stanford to explore how the startup dynamic could potentially be applied at the level of developing countries.

Romer's contributions to the field of economics include being the primary developer of New Growth Theory, which reduces the traditional emphasis on the scarcity of objects and directs attention to the power of new ideas. His theory has brought renewed optimism about the potential for growth in both advanced and developing economies.

For his work on the economics of ideas, Romer was named one of America’s 25 most influential people by TIME magazine (1997), elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000) and awarded the Horst Claus Recktenwald Prize in Economics (2002). He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. Prior to his current Stanford University position, he taught in the university’s Graduate School of Business as the STANCO 25 Professor of Economics and was honored with the Distinguished Teaching Award (1999). Before moving to Stanford, Romer taught economics at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago and the University of Rochester. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.

In addition to his career in teaching and research, Romer founded Aplia, Inc., which is now part of Cengage Learning. Aplia, which develops and applies technologies to improve student learning, grew out of his conviction that it is possible to use information technology to raise productivity in education. This lesson has important implications for how societies keep up with the growing demand for highly educated workers—a demand that is driven by the use of new technology in all other sectors of the economy.

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Kling is an independent scholar who writes about a wide variety of economic issues. He was an economist on the staff of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1980-1986, and served as a senior economist at Freddie Mac from 1986-1994. In 1994, he founded Homefair.com, one of the first commercial sites on the World Wide Web. Kling is the author of several books, most recently From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities and The Lasting Triumph over Scarcity and Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care, published by the Cato Institute.  Kling received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980.

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