0:01

NPR. Hey,

0:13

Hey Wayland, what you reading there? Oh hey

0:15

Adrian, you know I'm just engaged in my

0:17

usual summer diet of thrillers and romance novels.

0:20

And what about you guys? I want to hear what

0:22

you're reading. Anything related to the show? Oh, like

0:25

do I have a summer reading recommendation

0:27

with an economic bent to it? Exactly.

0:30

I mean, after all, this is

0:32

The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm

0:34

Wayland Wong. I'm Adrian Ma. And

0:37

I'm Darren Woods. Today on the

0:39

show, Summer Reading Recs. We'll talk

0:41

about some books we've loved reading

0:43

this summer. We've got a touch

0:45

of magical realism, how a little

0:47

statistical formula explains the entire world,

0:50

and the joys of being a generalist.

0:53

After the break. Support

0:56

comes from our 2024 lead sponsor

0:58

of The Indicator from Planet Money,

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2:00

2024, Weilam Wong, you have your book

2:02

out already, so tell us about it.

2:04

It is a novel called Exit West

2:07

by Mohsen Hamed, and it's

2:09

a novel that takes place in

2:11

what seems like the very near

2:13

future, although there's no specific year

2:15

mentioned. And it's about a young

2:17

couple from an unnamed, conflict-torn city,

2:20

and this young couple discovers that

2:22

there are these doors that when

2:24

you step through them transport you

2:26

to another place in the world,

2:28

like another city, another country. So

2:31

in an effort to kind of escape

2:33

this very dangerous situation they're in,

2:35

they step through a door and

2:37

they become migrants. That sounds amazing

2:39

and very timely. It really is. This

2:42

novel is about what it means

2:44

for society and for economic systems

2:46

when huge numbers of people are

2:48

becoming migrants, whether it's like for

2:50

climate reasons or economic reasons or

2:52

geopolitical reasons or all of the

2:54

above, because we know these things

2:56

are really intertwined and getting more

2:58

intertwined. And for

3:00

me, this is an econ read because as

3:03

the people in the novel figure out

3:05

which doors lead where, you start to

3:08

see things like, oh, the doors to

3:10

the more desirable cities are really well

3:12

guarded, and then other doors that

3:15

go to maybe less desirable places are

3:17

left wide open. So it's kind of

3:19

like, what is the economic system to

3:22

allocate access to these doors for

3:24

migrants? And then there are other

3:26

econ threads to follow, like how

3:28

the migrants find work opportunities and

3:31

how they organize themselves into communities

3:33

with their own systems of taxation

3:35

and infrastructure. It's really interesting and

3:38

really beautiful. And I cried buckets.

3:40

Wow. You got me. I mean, even though I

3:43

cried so much in this novel, it's

3:45

ultimately for me, like a hopeful story.

3:47

It's like a reminder that our economic

3:49

systems, they are not permanent. They are

3:51

not inevitable. They can break down. They

3:53

can be changed. People are resilient and

3:55

people who are looking for the right

3:57

to be a part of the world.

4:00

better lives can build them in community

4:02

with the people they find, you know?

4:04

Yeah, that message of hope that systems

4:06

can change is super important. Alright, so

4:08

that is my pick for this summer,

4:10

Exit West by Mohsen Hamed. Darien,

4:13

what do you have? My beat

4:15

read is Everything is Predictable, how

4:17

Bayesian statistics explain our world. It's

4:19

by Tom Chivers. That sounds like

4:21

top shelf nerd reading right there.

4:24

It is peak nerdery. For those

4:26

who don't know, Bayesian statistics is

4:28

this kind of revel form of

4:30

understanding numbers in the world. It's

4:33

this approach of looking at new

4:35

statistical information and applying what

4:37

we already know to how we

4:39

calculate it. Wait, so if I

4:41

took statistics in undergrad, I didn't

4:43

learn Bayesian statistics, I learned something

4:45

else. You probably learned frequentist statistics,

4:47

and there are these two opposing kinds. What?

4:50

Never heard of that either. Yeah, yeah. The dominant

4:52

form of statistics out there is frequentists. So this

4:54

is making up words, dude. And they are at

4:57

war with each other. This is very dramatic. Yeah,

4:59

but a basic example is, is the sun going

5:01

to rise tomorrow? And based on what I already

5:03

know about the world, it is 99.99999999999% chance that

5:09

it will happen again. What's disturbing about that

5:11

example is you're saying there's a chance it

5:14

might not rise tomorrow. Yeah. But

5:17

another example that kind of blew my mind is in the

5:19

health sector. So COVID's been

5:21

up a bit recently. Let's

5:24

say you take a COVID test and it has

5:26

a 99% accuracy rate,

5:29

a 1% chance of a false positive, and

5:32

you get a positive result. So what's the

5:34

chance that you really have COVID? Uh, I

5:36

mean... Oh

5:41

no, Adrian, I was showing how bad of

5:43

math we are. Our listeners will never learn.

5:46

Wait, don't think about it too hard. Neither

5:50

of you are right. Trick question. It's

5:53

a counterintuitive answer, but yeah, it's not 99%. It's

5:56

not 1%. So you need

5:58

to take into account how many... people you think

6:00

actually have COVID in your area right now. So

6:02

let's say it's one in 100 people. That

6:06

means for every 100 people taking the test, you

6:08

would expect one person to really have COVID, but

6:10

given the 1% false positive rate,

6:13

one person would get false positives. So your

6:15

odds of really having COVID with that positive

6:17

test result are actually about one to one,

6:19

or roughly 50%. Oh,

6:22

and so this is what Bayesian statistics

6:24

tells us. Yeah, you've got to incorporate

6:26

that base rate. Like, how many people out

6:28

in the world do you think actually have

6:30

COVID? And so it shows how important it

6:32

is to keep in mind all that background

6:34

knowledge. And the cool thing about the Bayes

6:36

theorem is it can be applied to almost

6:38

any indicator. Things like unemployment, inflation, GDP, all

6:40

these new surveys that come out, you

6:43

don't need to treat them as gospel.

6:45

You can instead apply what you previously

6:47

knew, use it as

6:49

information to incrementally improve your understanding of

6:51

the world. Amazing. And now,

6:53

Adrienne, it is your turn. What's your

6:56

summer read? So the book is

6:58

by David Epstein, who used to be a ProPublica

7:00

reporter. And the title

7:02

is Range, How Generalist Triumph in

7:04

a Specialized World. So basically,

7:06

where it starts is it talks about

7:08

how we have this narrative in our

7:10

culture that the way to find success

7:12

and fulfillment in life is to specialize.

7:15

You pick a thing, you put in

7:17

your 10,000 hours of practice, you stick

7:19

with it until you have mastered this

7:21

thing. And this

7:24

could be described in a way like the

7:26

Tiger Woods model of success. You just pick

7:28

a thing early and you never let it

7:30

go. But David Epstein in

7:32

this book is basically making the argument

7:35

that most things in life are not

7:37

like playing golf, where the rules are

7:39

really simple and the feedback is instantaneous.

7:41

And a lot more things in life

7:43

are really, the path

7:45

to success is not so clearly defined.

7:47

And that is where being a generalist

7:49

is actually an advantage. And

7:51

Adrienne, would you count yourself as a generalist or

7:54

a specialist? I think

7:56

I would be a generalist, because I always

7:58

talk about journalism as like my f- third

8:00

and a half career attempt. You

8:02

know, the classic advice that you

8:05

hear at graduation speeches to students

8:07

is like, find your passion and

8:09

never give up. And he's

8:11

essentially arguing like, people should quit

8:13

things more, right? They should try things and if

8:15

it isn't quite right for you, try another thing

8:17

and try another thing. And he's

8:20

arguing for like intellectual permiscuity. Spicy. And

8:24

I think what makes this an econ read to

8:26

me is it kind of cuts against this idea

8:29

of like in economics that everybody should specialize and

8:32

people in the labor market should figure out

8:35

what they do well and just focus on

8:37

that. But he's sort of

8:39

saying that like figuring out what that is, is not

8:41

a straightforward process. Are we talking

8:44

about being a generalist only in a

8:46

work context or is it more broadly

8:48

about being a generalist in a well-rounded

8:50

context? Like you might specialize in something

8:52

for your job, but then you have

8:54

diverse interests outside of your job. Yes.

8:57

He's basically saying that like having interest outside

8:59

of your job can actually enhance, you

9:02

know, your ability to excel at your job.

9:04

Okay. That I can see. And

9:06

it seems more doable than just saying, oh,

9:09

we shouldn't specialize as a society when we're

9:11

organizing our labor markets. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You

9:14

know, because if you think about things, the structure of

9:16

our jobs will be what they are, but then you

9:18

encourage people to find things they might like to do

9:20

outside of a job. Yeah. I

9:23

think he's saying that like the world needs

9:25

both specialists and generalists. So he's not saying

9:27

generalists are superior to specialists, but he's just

9:29

saying generalists have sort of been underappreciated as

9:31

a way to find what you're good

9:34

at and what you're into

9:36

in life. Well, what I

9:38

tell my kid is you are allowed to quit

9:40

in activity you're not enjoying unless I've already paid

9:42

for the full session of the park district, in

9:44

which you will finish the next

9:47

four weeks. And then they come back

9:49

to you and say, sung-cast fallacy, wylin' sung-cast

9:51

fallacy. I know. I know. Yeah.

9:54

And that's my third instrument to really get into music. And

9:56

I'd say my earlier begrudging piano

9:58

lessons helped me. the slide whistle

10:00

that finally did it for you, Darien. What was

10:02

instrument three? Excuse me, it's the penny whistle. Yes.

10:05

Yes. Yes. As

10:08

you can tell, we love to read. We

10:10

could talk about this all day. If you

10:12

have a book recommendation for us, please email

10:14

us at indicator at npr.org. Again,

10:17

that is indicator at npr.org. This

10:21

episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with

10:23

Engineering by Robert Rodriguez. It was fact

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checked by Cooper Katz-McKim. Kate Kincannon

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