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 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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