Economical Choices

I spent this past weekend in Iowa at my college reunion. One afternoon, after strolling through the library, I stopped in the bathroom, where I was reminded how much students like to procrastinate.

Just about every square inch was covered in graffiti, both profane and profound. There was a debate scrawled down the side of a stall about the merits of having bathrooms and dining halls in close proximity. There were declarations of existence: “I am!” “I am, too!” and “I could be if I tried.”

One woman had even taken the time to sketch out an economics-based model of romantic relationships inside a stall. The graph plotted out happiness over time and highlighted key moments including the first date, first fight, and diminishing marginal returns.

That graph had taken the five acts of Romeo and Juliet—and pretty much every other relationship on the planet—and boiled it down to a single curve. Brilliant.

The graph reminded me that economics, when applied to the things we actually care about, isn’t dismal at all. And it can often make us understand things in a whole new way.

That’s why Marketplace is almost always the first show I queue up when I head out for a run each morning. It’s a show about money, of course, so there’s plenty of talk about the price of oil, the stock market, and retirement accounts.

But there are also lots of fun and thought-provoking segments. There was one not too long ago about the way that product placements are affecting television and movies, including a hilarious bit about how the treacly 7th Heaven had an episode that incorporated a plug for Oreos in a wedding proposal. And there was a great profile of an entrepreneur who makes high-class cat furniture. Because, you know, that’s not an oxymoron. Or insane.


The half-hour daily show can get overwhelming if you subscribe but only listen to podcasts a couple times a week. And the talk about the swings in the market probably won’t be useful a month later. But Kai Ryssdal is a nimble host, and his clever wordplay during what would otherwise be the driest recitation of numbers gives the show a lift.

I hope that anonymous student ends up at a place like Marketplace, because then those clever graphs wouldn’t be procrastination tools. They’d be research.