Special Tez Talk with Dr Daryl Fairweather

For Juneteenth we had a special interview. Tez got to speak with Redfin Chief economist and author, Dr Daryl Fairweather about her new book "Hate The Game" which is all about game theory in economics and how she got to where she is. It's a wide ranging interview, funny yes, but also informative and truly compelling. Go pick up your copy of Dr Fairweather's book and tune in!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Brian, were you a video game guy? Wow?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
That was straight to the point. No, no notice. How you doing, Brian?
It's like no, it's are you a video game guy?
It's like, damn, this is why you got your wife.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Okay, I'm hey, Brian, how are you right? Is the
first time we're doing this type of ship man, We're
in a workshop this out and actually figure out what
this little side.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Quest of me on chip chat looks like in interviewing folks.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
But yeah, I am a uh let's say, I am
a gamer, but not like a full time gamer.

Speaker 5 (01:11):
I do.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I do play video games, so mostly lately it's been
like MLB the Show or a fight form of fighting game.
But I also have these app games as well, So.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah, MLB the Show. I was very thrilled one that
made its way to.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Xbox because I actually bought a PlayStation just for that
game because there was no decent.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Baseball game out there in any of these games. Do
you ever use any cheat codes? Uffe?

Speaker 5 (01:48):
I'm aware of the cheat codes.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
I am. Like back in the day, like back in
the like I would say, like I would say the eighties,
just like the days of Atari and stuff like that.
You hear about these Oh, if you do this type
of maneuver, you'll get unlimited whatever, or you get you know,

(02:11):
strength ten times, you know, more than you originally have whatever.
She could I tried not to do that. Either A
I tried. Yeah, I want to say, stand up, Jeneran.
It's like either A I tried it, they ever worked,
I felt, or I know about it and I don't

(02:31):
want to bother with it because I'm I'm like cool
with wherever level I'm trying to do, and I I
like the challenge, so like I mean it's I'm like
it's you're aware of it, but I'm I'm a challenge guy.
I like to you know, I'll go through the trials
and tri relations and the frustrations and breaking everything and

(02:54):
you know, to get to where I'm going. But all
on the end it's just like you know this, this
is what life is all about. That life shouldn't be easy,
like their life does not have a cheat code.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Well, see, I I almost would. And there's a lot
of famous cheeko I think I think of the Konami
cheek code. I don't know at the top of my
head anymore. I mean like up, up, down, down, like
a combinations of left and rights and sorry to elects,
all that type of stuff. The one I always really
enjoyed was uh Sonic two. There was one you could
do one in the sound stage that lets you get

(03:25):
all the levels that you could go to. I think
I remember that one super Sonic. I think after as
well too. If you get without getting all the emeralds,
you just have to get the rings.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
But he just said, it's not like you talk about life, right,
I think life is a game, and right, you know,
sometimes you might want a few cheat codes.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Todave, we got to kick it with doctor Darryl Fairweather,
who is the chief economist at Redfin but also she's
the author of the new book Hate the Game, Economic
cheat Codes for Life, Love and Work, And I right,
the economy touches all of our lives, and I found

(04:04):
that economists have a unique view on.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Some of the challenges we all face.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
And I think, as you guys listen today to doctor Fairweather, Uh,
she didn't disappoint.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
This book is really dope. I really enjoyed Hate the Game.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
I've shared it with a bunch of folks, and I
also hope I don't know what we're calling this again.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
But whatever, we're gonna end up calling this.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
I hope you all enjoy the conversation that I had
with doctor Fairweather, and I think without further ado, we'll
go ahead and we'll jump right into that.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, well before we jump into was it red fin
or rentsfin?

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Not rent rent redfin like the redfin that I don't
think I said red fin.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
It's not, no, it is.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
This would be the revelation of the if I it's
red and you got me, Tripps, Well.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
You know what, let's go.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
You got me thinking forever it was called rent fin,
which wouldn't make sense.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
I'm not gonna say that. It's not that far off,
but no, it is a red fin. Uh. You know what,
let's just get to the interview. Let's get.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Right Uh, Doctor Darryl Fairweather, we are really excited to
talk to you about hate the Game. So thank you
for joining us today. This is a little deviation of
what we usually do. I usually host the show with
my my good buddy Chip, but I really wanted to
talk to you and I've always, uh, one of my
goals in life was to talk to my favorite authors.

(05:46):
So this I'm really excited about this, So thank you
for joining us, to thank you for having men awesome.
I guess they just kick it off. Like, what influenced
you to write this book?

Speaker 6 (05:57):
Well, I, as you know from the book, when I
want to get my PhD in economics, I'm an economist,
but I always felt like the way that economics was
taught was not really for me. Like it almost felt
like I was listening in on a conversation between two
other people, but like I wasn't really supposed to be there,
they weren't really talking to me. So with this book,
I really wanted to write something that would resonate with

(06:18):
people that normally don't see themselves in the world of economics.
I use a lot of references to black popular culture.
I talk about examples from my own life, and I
hope that that opens up the world of economics to
more people.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
No, I felt that thoroughly throughout the book.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
I mean even in Becoming an Economist, Like there was
some like apprehension where I read and like your father
had some apprehension of that.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Can you jump into a little bit about that.

Speaker 5 (06:44):
Yeah, So I.

Speaker 6 (06:45):
Went to MIT for undergrad and MIT is known for
science and engineering, and my dad was super excited for
me to get into that school, and I was originally
supposed to study engineering, but he gave me the book
for Economics by the Economist to Stephen Lovitt right before
I went off to MIT. I read it on the
plane right there, and after reading it, I was like, oh,
this is actually what I want to do. Like I've

(07:06):
always been interested in people, but also I like math
and science, and it felt like economics, especially the way
that economics is presented in that book and taught at MIT,
fit perfectly with my interests. So I talked to my
daddy calls me up on the phone and he wants
to know how things are going at MIT, and I
tell him, like, great news, I'm majoring in economics, and

(07:27):
immediately he pushed back. He was like, wait a second,
like I sent you here to study engineering. Engineering is
like what MIT is known for. And I tried to
explain to him, like, no, MIT is actually really good
at economics as well. It's tied number one. This author
that you introduced me to went to MIT. He got
his graduate degree there, so I was like, this, this
is what's so bad about that? But he he really

(07:49):
felt like engineering was a safer choice because he himself
is a lawyer. He's a prosecutor, and he has to
deal with biased judges and juries all the time. He
knows that once to introduce people into something that's more subjective,
that's when you can really be at a disadvantage as
a person of color or as a woman in my case.
So he wanted me to go into engineering because they

(08:10):
thought that would be the safer bet. And also my
grandmother she was the first black woman to be a
licensed architect in the state of New York, and then
she did it again in the state of California. She
was the first black woman inducted into the American Institute
of Architects. So she had this career in this engineering
type field. I think architecture is engineering still, and she

(08:32):
was always like really pushing me into the sciences. So
she called me up too, but her reasoning was a
little bit different, Like she said all the same things
my dad said, but she was also like, you should
study engineering because engineers make better husbands, which was kind
of weird. But backstory on her is that she's been
married five times, so I think she knew what she
was talking about. But I stuck to my guns. I
wanted to study economics. It was like it really felt

(08:54):
like it was something for me. And I felt like
the hardest part about getting through Call is just finding
something that you're passionate about. And I had found my thing,
so I didn't care about the disadvantages that I might face.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah. I found that so powerful.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
Right, I have a daughter and like even making sure
to be conscious. I mean, she's only fixed now, but
years from now, whatever field she wants to choose, and
to like not like try to stifle that because you're
almost trying to protect, you know, because you know what,
you know what the world is at this point, and
like you know how cruel it can be. So I
just found that part of the book like really interested

(09:30):
and really inspiring for myself. Going back to the book,
can you break down what game theory is, because I
think it's essential to kind of understand as you like
progress through the book.

Speaker 6 (09:41):
Game theory is basically the building blocks of economics. Like economics,
it ranges from everything from the entire economy down to
just like two people negotiating over a transaction. And a
negotiation is a type of game that we model with
game theory. So if you want to understand why say,
home prices are the way that they are are going
down to the game theory level of a buyer negotiating

(10:03):
with a seller, and how do they come up with
that price? Is like how these prices end up getting
set throughout the entire economy. And it's not just about negotiations.
There are games about ultimatums, games about how to get promoted,
how to get a raise, these games that bosses and
employees play with one another. So I go through a
lot of these different games in the book to show you,

(10:24):
like here there are the places that they will show
up in your career.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
No.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
I it was kind of eye opening to me because
there was a show I guess was Max Hbo where
they're calling himself Bomani Jones called Game Yeah yeah, and
I know his background, Like, but I didn't. I never
really understood this concept until reading this book. So I
will never forget that now. And there's a lot of
things that I've learned in this book that I've applied

(10:50):
even recently to my career. So and I hope everybody
goes out again and purchases game. Hate the game, because
you could learn a lot from this. Again, you mentioned earlier,
Like there's a lot of like pop culture references, and
like I found that to be very relatable.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
What can I guess More's Chestnut and Vivica A.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Fox tell us about the Nash equilibrium as you talk
about that in the book from Them.

Speaker 6 (11:12):
Yes, so my first I like to say that my
first introduction to game theory was the movie two Can
Play That Game with Vivika Fox and Morris Chestnut that
came out in two thousand and one. It's the plot
of the movie is that Vivka Fox and Morris Chestnut
the're dating, but Morris Chestnut he starts acting a full
like stepping out on VIVIKAA Fox, flirting with other women,
and she needs to figure out what to do, like

(11:34):
how can she get the relationship back that she had
before that was so great. Now she's stuck with this
relationship that is inferior to the one that she had before.
And she talks about like how her girlfriends would handle
something like that, like they would fight with their boyfriends,
they would destroy their stuff, they'd cuss them out.

Speaker 5 (11:50):
But she was smarter than that. She knew that in.

Speaker 6 (11:53):
Order to get a better deal within the relationship, which
I call in game theory terms the inside option. She
needs to improve her outside options, So she goes out
and she starts flirting with other women just like Morris
just nut was, and flaunting these men in front of
him so that he knows that she has a real
chance of leaving him for someone better. That way, he

(12:14):
will work harder to keep her. And that seems to work.
I mean they like, I mean they learn in the end,
but they probably shouldn't play these games, which I talk
about later in the book, how like you really should
try to work with your partner instead of thinking about
things as transactional. But for all negotiations, that principle holds,
which is that you know, you can be in a
bad relationship and it still be an equilibrium. And Nash

(12:35):
equilibrium means that neither person has a reason to defect
to do something else. And but that doesn't mean that
you don't have a chance at improving the relationship. What
you need to do is create a real threat that
that equilibrium will be disrupted by creating a better outside
option for yourself, and that will encourage whever your negotiating

(12:55):
against to give you better terms in the inside option
of the relationlationship.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, I again something.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
I'm also glad that there was a glossary at the
end of this moor at to find go back to
some of these terms. You also there's another term I
guess is comparative advantage. Right, can you take and I
think you kind of explain this with your internship at
more than Stanley, if I remember, can you take us

(13:24):
through that?

Speaker 6 (13:25):
Yes, So, a comparative advantage means that a person or
it even could be a country.

Speaker 5 (13:31):
I'll go with person.

Speaker 6 (13:32):
Uh, they have a lower opportunity cost for engaging in
an activity, and that might mean that they're really good
at the thing that they're doing. Say this internship and
I'm working Stanley, I was doing a lot of spreadsheets,
Like if I was if I was the best at
doing spreadsheets, that would give me an advantage. But it
wouldn't really be a comparative advantage unless I was so

(13:53):
much better at doing spreadsheets than I was, and all
the other things I could be doing in my life,
like going back to grad school or getting another job,
or you know, laying about the house and just having fun.
And the thing to understand is that the people who
are going to be best suited for a job that
the employer is going to like the most are the
people who have these comparative advantages. And sometimes it comes

(14:13):
from being the best at your job, but sometimes it
means being the most willing to work hard at that
job because you don't have any other options except to
work hard. And that was the lesson I needed to
learn in this internship, that they were just people around
me who wanted it way more than I did. Like
they were willing to work way longer hours, being at
the office at seven am and not leave till, you know,

(14:33):
after like eight o'clock at night, Like literally spending more
than twelve hours a day at the office was what
these people were willing to do in order to get
into this investment banking world. And you know, maybe I
would have been smarter than them in like a school
setting or excelled and just the task of the job,
if you're just comparing it based on absolute advantage, But
the fact that they were willing to work harder than
me kind of meant that, like they were better suited

(14:55):
to it, and I should probably go find out what
my comparative advantage is out in the world, right.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
Because I think you make it clear it doesn't have
to be that way. There are options, right, and I
guess like depending on what individual's values. And I know,
work can be kind of a tricky thing because a
lot of folks from identity and work where I'm like,
work is cool, you know, I want to use work
to go.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Do other fun things outside.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
But yeah, I found that very interesting as well, that
you could it doesn't have to be this like rat
race and always.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Trying, and it can be for some folks, but you
don't have to choose that.

Speaker 5 (15:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (15:27):
One thing I talk about a lot of the book
is just that, you know, I think people get really
caught up in whatever game they're playing. Like if you're
at one corporation and you see everybody going for the
same promotions, it can feel like that's the only goal.
But once you step outside of that and realize like
I could go work another job, or I could go
back to school, or I could you know, get some
other skill, then it feels like the prize maybe isn't
as valuable as it might have seemed at first.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (15:50):
Another thing that you talk a lot about in the
book is the game of chess, which I really enjoyed.
My mom is still beating me to this day, I'm
really not good at it, but I do enjoy the game.
Can you discuss kind of how it can be applied
I guess in various areas of life, and I'm thinking
a lot about like that skill versus luck, and then
maybe even like the starting position.

Speaker 6 (16:13):
Yeah, So one metaphor for truess that I talk about
is how even though chess is like the pinnacle of
a game of skill, like this is the game that
smart people face off agains to figure out who's the smartest,
there still is this baked and disadvantage where if you
are the black player, it means that you automatically go second.
If you're the white player, you automatically go first. So

(16:34):
in any game, one player is just going to start
out with this slight edge, but the edge it matters
somewhat in evenly matched games, like you can see that
there is this statistical advantage to going first. But if
you are in a game where you are just a
better player, like you have more skill, you have more practice,
it's easy to overcome that advantage because it only takes

(16:54):
the other player messing up one time, like basically throwing
away a turn for the person who went second to
kind of get the upper hand and start pulling ahead.
And I think this is similar to a lot of
games we play in life, Like me choosing to be
an economist, I probably did start out at an inherent
disadvantage because I'm like one of the very few black
women in this field. But it doesn't mean that I

(17:16):
can't succeed. It just means that I need to like
really focus on the skill.

Speaker 5 (17:19):
Aspect to get ahead.

Speaker 6 (17:21):
And then another thing that chess is really great at
illustrating is this concept of beginning game versus endgame, because
in game theory, you want to use backwards induction, which
means thinking about the anny game as you're making those
beginner moves, like thinking about what is the position that
I'm trying to get myself into that will result in
a checkmate, and kind of working backwards from those steps

(17:42):
to get there. This is what you should do, and
basically any game is think about the final the final
place you want to be, and kind of work your
way backwards, Like Okay, if I need to get promoted,
then that means I need to get my manager put
me up for promotion. And if I need to get
my manager to put me up for promotion, I need
to be a top performer on my team, and backwards
to all the steps that you need to take to

(18:03):
get that final goal. We'll create that path.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
You also use Big Brother season three to talk about this.
Can you if our listeners didn't watch that season? What
was unique about that season and what was the end result?

Speaker 6 (18:18):
Okay, so Big Brother is this reality competition where all
the players get into this house and they're basically competing
to be the last player standing, kind of like Survivor,
but without all of the deprivation.

Speaker 5 (18:32):
You don't have, you get to eat. Yeah, you're not
on a beach or anything or camping. You're just in
the house. So it's it's just about the strategy.

Speaker 6 (18:38):
And for the longest time, they didn't have any black
winners of Big Brother, even though statistically they probably should have.
I think there was only like a six percent chance
of there being no black winner before this season, given
how many black winners had participated, So the odds are
there was some inherent disadvantage to being a black player
in this game. And what changed I think it was

(18:59):
in twenty twenty one post the George Floyd writs, is
that all these TV companies they got really conscious about
race and they in one season casted six members of
the group that identified as black. And historically in this game,
usually the black players were the first to be voted
out because they would have to join an alliance that

(19:19):
was majority white, and then they would be at the
bottom of that tone and pole, where once the alliance
had a turn on themselves, they would immediately go for
the black player who wasn't as socially integrated as the
white players. But when the black players had enough people
to form a really strong alliance, a six person alliance,
every single black person made it to the end. So
six out of the six final contestants were black, and

(19:43):
it's because I think they knew that they had to
stick together. They were never going to turn on that
alliance because the outside option of aligning with one of
the other players, they knew that that would just result
in them getting kicked out even earlier. And it was
the first season that there was a black winner, because
obviously if all six make it to the final, then
one of them is going to be the final winner.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, it was just eye opening again to like, oh,
if you add more folks into the game, right, than
the likelihood of them working together and getting into the end,
like it just makes perfect sense. It might tie into
this a little bit, but can you share to our
listeners when you're at the University of Chicago, there was
this study group you had, right and just kind of

(20:25):
how the new study partner right for life for better word.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Almost kind of fucked the group up because he was
for Emma.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
Can you talk a little bit about that, because I
thought it was a very interesting Uh, the point you
made from that was very interesting.

Speaker 5 (20:38):
Yes.

Speaker 6 (20:38):
So I get to University of Chicago, was a first
year PhD student. I'm thinking, like, this is going to
be something that where I prove my skills, like chess,
for example. But part of it ended up being more
like Big Brother because immediately they told us we had
to pair off into study groups, and it wasn't really optional,
like if you weren't going to be able to do
the homeworks, if you didn't have a five person study group.

Speaker 5 (21:00):
But what happened I noticed is.

Speaker 6 (21:02):
That the people one of the people that I thought
I was going to be in a study group with,
he formed a study group with the other white American
men in the in our class. And I did the
math and there was only a one percent chance that
all the white American men would have teamed up in
this way if their decision about who to team up
with had nothing to do with being white American or

(21:23):
a man. Like it was very suspicious because sometimes it's like,
you know, these things happened to you, you experienced bias
in the world, but everyone's like, oh, it was just
a coincidence. Well, the chance of it being a coincidence
was less than one percent. So I did find a
study group. I ended up teaming up with three women

(21:43):
or sorry, two other women and a man.

Speaker 5 (21:45):
We were only a group of four at first, so
we were already at this.

Speaker 6 (21:48):
Disadvantage because every other study group was five people and
we were the forest dragglers. And then the first night,
the guy he invites me over to his apartment for
like a you know, a team bonding event. I get
there early, and I because I really wanted to play
a guitar. Hero was really into drumming, so I want
to just get on that drumming kit. And as I'm
drumming along, I even remember the song. It was seven

(22:09):
Nation Army. He's starting to like throw back drinks. And
I don't notice this until I'm done, and I turn around.
I'm like, he's already drunk, and he starts moaning about
how and love he is with one of our study
group members, Emma, and I'm like, oh my god, Like
this is the worst thing ever, Like he's going to
tell her that he loves her. She's already engaged, so
he has no chance. This is not going to work,
and it's just going to break up the study group

(22:29):
when we're already at this disadvantage. But I talked some
sense and to him. To his credit, he took my
device and he took his sites off of Emma and
just focused on the actual academic So, like by a hair,
we managed to get through this. And I researched like
why it's happening. And the research does show that when
there are fewer women in a graduate program, they have

(22:50):
a lower chance of graduating, and I think these kinds
of dynamics explain how that could happen.

Speaker 5 (22:56):
There's also research that.

Speaker 6 (22:57):
Shows that in graduate programs, men experience more unrequited advances
than men do, and it puts them in an awkward
and like uncomfortable situation.

Speaker 5 (23:07):
So yeah, this is this is.

Speaker 6 (23:09):
Somewhat predictable based on the research, but I feel like
it still isn't acknowledged the way that women can be
immediately put out a disadvantage when they're in the minority
compared to men, right, and I.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
Think we're thinking of this. There's obviously a like ick
factor of like men doing that. But even like if
you're not able to kind of graduate or progress, I
feel like that hurts the economy overall, right, because we
don't have we don't We're not getting the best and
the brightest out there, and it's for no good reason.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
So again, I found the school. Yeah, the story was
like in a sense.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
Like very like predictable, but the numbers you kind of
put behind it, it's kind of like, oh no, this
is a real world uh, the sense that has real
world impacts, I guess.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
So.

Speaker 6 (23:56):
Yeah, especially with the whole conversation about DEI right now,
I feel like people have really lost the plot on
why these programs need to exist, Like why is that
women and minorities are underrepresented in the first place, and
how hard it is to be just like just being
in the minority is a hard position to be in,
regardless of what puts you in that minority.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Right, totally agree all right, because before Beyonce was like
this solo icon, she was part.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
Of a group. Right.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
This group is called Destiny's Child, right, and there were
four members of this and you use Destiny's Child Destiney
Child and the breakup.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
I guess to talk about a.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
Few things that I found interesting, like ultimatums and kind
of how they can backfire, but specifically, I guess they
can backfire when you don't have the right amount of information.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
Can you talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 6 (24:45):
Yeah, So, in behavioral economics and game theory, there's this
thing called the ultimatum game, and an ultimatum is basically
the take it early but offer, Like if I have
one hundred dollars, I can and I have an option
to give you some I can say like no, I'm
going to keep all the hundred dollars, or I could
give you like some amount, like I'm gonna give your
doll I'm gonna give you twenty dollars. And ultimatums came

(25:07):
up with Destiny's Child. I'll just tell the story. So
back in the early two thousands, Destiny's Child was breaking
out as a group. They had a couple of hits
from their first album, but they weren't like really on
a level where they were cemented in the industry. They
were still trying to prove themselves. And two of the members,
LaToya and LaTavia, felt like they weren't getting a good

(25:27):
experience in the group, that Matthew Knowles, the manager who
is Beyonce's dad, was giving preferential treatment to Beyonce. So
they went to the rest of the group members and said,
give them an ultimatum, like it's either us or it's
the manager. Take it or leave it. And I think
they thought that them breaking up the group would leave
the group with the zero, like an ultimatum, like we
either are going to be together or you get left

(25:48):
with nothing.

Speaker 5 (25:49):
But I think what they misunderstood.

Speaker 6 (25:51):
Was that the group would still survive without them, that
Beyonce really was a strong enough performer and the leader
where it didn't really matter who was singing behind her.
She was on the path being a superstar. And there's
this book called Rockanomics by Alan Krueger that talks about
this how the how about how a small minority of

(26:11):
artists get the lines share of revenue of attention of
streams because it's based on popularity and with popularity. That
means that somebody needs to recommend you to somebody else,
And once that chain starts going, you get exponential growth
in terms of how many people are following you. But
if you don't have that initial momentum, you're going to

(26:32):
be like left in the dust, way far behind. So
the fact that Beyonce was already at this early stage
breaking out meant that like she was going to end
up far exceeding the popularity of the other group members.
And I think Matthew Knowles knew this. He knew about
Diana how Yeah the Supremes turned into just Diana Ross
and how the Jackson's turned into just Michael Jackson. And
I think that that was his plan all along, but

(26:54):
he probably somewhat hit it from the other group members,
and yeah, hid that information, which is why I didn't
understand that it wasn't about the group. It really was
a vehicle for Beyonce to become Beyonce.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
I guess maybe it's not a great answer to this,
but how do you extract that information out, Like, if
you're in these type of situations.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Is there a way to do that or is it
kind of someone like luck or no.

Speaker 6 (27:18):
I think I think you just have to pay attention
and take and pay attention to what people care about,
because I ran into the same problem when I went
to go try and negotiate my salary with my first
boss that I thought, like, of course, what he cares
about is the project that I'm working on and pleasing
the client, and the client's going to be really, you know,
worried if the lead economist me quits halfway through the project.

(27:41):
So I thought that I thought I had him in
a tough position. But what I didn't realize was that
what he really cared about was being in control of
the company, being in control of his employees, and having
employees who wouldn't question things, who wouldn't raise their hand
and ask for more. And I think if you pay
attention to what people say, the way that they behave,
the things that they prioritize, you can get this information.

(28:03):
Like I mean, if they noticed that Matthew Knowles was
giving Beyonce preferential treatment, that probably should have been enough
to tell them like what where this was going? What
Matthew Knowles and Beyonce really were aiming for. But I
think that they maybe were just biased in a sense,
like seeing things to their own worldview instead of taking
on the worldview of the person that they're negotiating with.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
And even then they would have to make a choice, Right,
is the inside option better than the outside option?

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Right?

Speaker 3 (28:31):
So there's an't necessarily end there because I guess it
just depends on what they would really want for their career.

Speaker 6 (28:36):
Yeah, they could have done what Pelly did and like
staying on for a couple more years and try to
make connections and get on like other people's songs, and
still try to make a career for themselves, knowing that
the group or what Matthew Knowles was really promoting was Beyonce.
But I think that's a choice they had to make,
like are they going to be better off solo or
staying in the group as is? There really wasn't this
option that they were going for where Matthew where Beyonce

(28:59):
fires her dad this moment, was not ready to do that.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
It's interesting to bring up Kelly because now I want
to bring up the famous, the famous video in You
Being an Economist?

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Right?

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Why was she sending a message in excel in the
in her and Nelly? It was very It's always very
weird about that. If you haven't seen the video her
song I'm blacking on the name with with Yeah, yeah,
they're literally sending messages.

Speaker 5 (29:24):
Maybe they were. She was an analyst of Morgan Stanley
sending the latest spreadsheet.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Please go watch that video if you've not seen that.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
It's very refreshed millennials, very funny. You have this chapter,
dreams of a Dream of Dream jobs, which I think
I mean chef's case. There's just a really great chapter.
And I don't think we can cover everything, because one
you should kind of go buy the book, write and
read yourself. But I would like to explore a few
parts of this.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
And I think it's.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
Around like selecting I think you mentioned like the optimal employer,
and then around creating resumes, and then I s like
playing that interview game.

Speaker 5 (30:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (30:03):
So the first choice when you're trying to apply for
a job is a citing like how many jobs am
I going to apply to? Which jobs am I really
going to focus on? And when you're early in your career,
you don't really have anything to distinguish yourself, to differentiate yourself,
as they say in economics, like you look identical to
the next person who's applying for a job. So I
think in that scenario, you really just want to cast

(30:25):
a wide net and send out as many resumes as
possible and hope that yours is one of the ones
that is kind of randomly picked from the pile. But
once you're a little further around along in your career
and you have skills that can match certain jobs, I
encourage people to use more of a predator mindset, like
a like a bird of prey, like a hawk. Like
a hawk doesn't go and like eat everything. They hone

(30:46):
in on one tasty animal and they pursue it and
they try to get it. And that's what I think
you should do once you're a little further along in
your career. But that means like really creating a strategy
for that one job that you really want, like maybe
three jobs, if you want to broaden a bit and
make sure that your resume perfectly matches what this job
is going for, because oftentimes at at a higher level,

(31:09):
they're really just trying to find the person whose skills
best match the job. So that might involve like going
and looking at the job at the job description, seeing
what words they use, and you putting those exact words
into your resume. Like, if they value somebody who is
a team player, talk about all the times that you
did teamwork on your resume, versus if they value somebody

(31:29):
who's an independent thinker, highlight those experiences on your resume.
It's I think having a different resume for each job
you're applying to really makes sense when you're trying to
get those specialized jobs. And then once you have your
stuff you want to put on your resume, I think
you should also arrange it in a way that makes
it shine, because that's part of the game too. You
can create like a bit of an optical illusion by

(31:50):
putting some of the experience that is most resonant with
the job up at the top. Like you don't necessarily
need to stick to that chronological order. You can use
bold text, or you can just in ways highlight the
thing is that you most want that job recruiter to see.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Another area that I really it really resonated with me
is the naming it and your name specifically, And I
think for me, right, like folks don't know, I can
go by Cortes, but my mother named me Nicholas Warmington, right,
which I was always very frustrated with that name because
they're in DC A lot a lot of kids, had
a lot of jokes a lot of.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Times, right, And the big one was always that your
name sounds white. Right. I always always like, all right, whatever.
I feel like there's black nickolaces out there, but whatever.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
But I think you talk a lot about kind of
your name, and like when you use your middle name
and then just in general your name is, you can't
really figure out who you might be talking to with
Darryl fair.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Well, can you talk about that a little bit?

Speaker 6 (32:51):
Yeah, So I was born in nineteen eighty eight, the
late eighties when there were.

Speaker 5 (32:55):
Really two famous Darryl's.

Speaker 6 (32:57):
There was Darryl Strawberry, the baseball player who had a
bit of a notorious history a black man, yes. And
there's Daryl Hannah, this white actress. She was in the
movie Splash with Tom Hanks. She was in Kill Bill two,
the volume two one for the people who are a
bit younger, but she was really big in the eighties.
And so even when I ever, whenever I meet another Daryl,

(33:18):
it's always either a black man or a white woman
or a non black woman. So when people hear my
name Darryl Fairweather, I know they either are assuming that
I am a black man or I am probably a
white woman. I even checked this on this website that
tells you what race or gender people probably are based
on their names. And when I put I know, when

(33:38):
I put Rose in my name, that's like a que
that I'm a woman. But because most women with the
name Darryl are not black, it also is a que
that I'm not black, and I in real life, I'm biracial.
I'm both black and white. But it's always like this
slemma whenever I'm introducing to my someone, whenever I'm introducing
myself online or in a resume or just in print,
like which Darryl are people visualizing when they see that Darryl.

(34:03):
Should I hint that I'm a woman because with the rose,
or should I keep it off and let people think that.

Speaker 5 (34:07):
I might be a man.

Speaker 6 (34:09):
And there's economics research on resumes that has broken this down,
like which resume names are most likely to get a
call back And unfortunately, black names are less likely to
get picked in a group of resumes compared to white names.
And even though there's like a small difference between men
and women, white women are more likely to get called

(34:30):
back for an interview than a black man. So I
put Darryl Rose Fairweather on my resume because I'm just
trying to get picked. I know once they meet me,
they're gonna find out what I.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
Now like to actually, but I need to get in
the door, right, Yes, yeah, get inside the door.

Speaker 6 (34:46):
Right because people's I think stereotypes are stronger before they
meet you. Like I can defy stereotypes once I'm talking
to you, I can show you how competent I am.
But if you're just seeing the resume and you're forming
these stereotypes, and that gives me a little bit less
of a shot. I know lots of people like I
have lots of friends who do this, like who use
initials for their name if they have an ethnic or

(35:07):
feminine sounding name because they don't want this discrimination. The
reason my mom named me Darryl was because she was
a freelance journalist with a feminine name, and she felt
like she was not getting jobs because of the feminine name.
But yeah, I don't think she really had like the
racial awareness to get the the Darryl part of it.
But yeah, that's a whole different story.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
That part of the book really resonated with me because
I've always found it interesting in like previous jobs, or
like you talk to folks on the phone and then
they meet you and they're like you're mm hmmm, seem
like yeah to me.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Okay, moving along.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
My favorite chapter, which was this workplace conflict and can
you tell our listeners about Jake and Jared who liked that?
I mean, they're truly like two dickwies to be honest,
and really, I guess specifically that situation and what people
need to consider when they're taking on like work bullies

(36:06):
or workplace conflict in general.

Speaker 6 (36:09):
Yeah, so also I'll tell the abbreviated version. So I
was working at this big tech company and I was
I was starting to like really make a name for
myself and do a good job. But I got this
really big project from our senior vice president to look
into why employees in some of our satellite offices in
India were saying that they didn't like mandatory overtime. One

(36:29):
of them told senior vice president on a visit that
this was a terrible policy. So he came to me,
and it was my job to analyze employee satisfaction in
its relationship to performance. So this was like a natural
project to me. I went and got the data from
the scheduling team and I analyzed it and the.

Speaker 5 (36:46):
Results were very clear.

Speaker 6 (36:47):
Although the satisfaction scores were slightly higher for the people
on mandatory overtime, what was really happening is they were
quitting earlier. And everybody loves their job like the first
month in, and they tend to like get less satisfied
the more the time goes on. So it was actually
the fact that they were quitting earlier that was hiding that.
But once you start controlling, once I controlled for how

(37:08):
long they had been in the job, it.

Speaker 5 (37:10):
Was super obvious that they were less satisfied.

Speaker 6 (37:12):
So I said this on to my boss and my
and my manager's manager and the scheduling team manager, and
I thought like, oh, this is just a slam dunk,
like I'm done here. But then I get asked to
meet with these two people on the scheduling team. They
have some questions for me, and at first I went in like, okay,
I can answer these questions. I explained the economics of
what was going on, I drew charts, I had all

(37:33):
my tables ready, but they were still being really dense
about it, like still pushing me on it, and once
they found out that I had only analyzed data from
one of the locations in India, they were like, oh,
that's not good enough. You need to go get data
from all these locations.

Speaker 5 (37:48):
I'm like, okay. So I went back to their analyst
on their.

Speaker 6 (37:50):
Team, got the data, analyzed it again, got the exact
same result, sent it out again, and still they wanted
to meet with me again. And I was like, I
don't understand why I'm having this meeting over and over again,
Like we went through everything before I did what they
asked me. I talked to my director about this, who
was the youngest woman to be promoted to that position
at the company, and immediately she was like, Oh, they

(38:10):
don't respect you because you're a woman. I don't know
what was going on with her at that point, maybe
she had just experienced something, yeah, but she was like, yeah,
this is what's happening. You need to stand up for yourself.
She wasn't trying to solve the problem for me, but
she was telling me, like, you need to go and
make sure that that they know not to mess with you.
So I took another meeting with them. They go into
the same line of questioning all over again. And I'm

(38:32):
starting to get frustrated at this point that they keep
harassing me even though I do did everything they asked me,
So what They kind of let it slip at one
point when they said that, like, do you realize how
much work this is going to create if we have
to eliminate mandatory overtime? And I was like, and that's
when I realized, Oh, this is about like you're you
not wanting the extra work that you're this is going

(38:55):
to create more work for you to redo all the
schedules if the vice president decides to eliminate many overtime.

Speaker 5 (39:00):
So that's when I got pissed and.

Speaker 6 (39:03):
Kept pressing me, like you need to be absolutely sure,
and I was like, well, I'm ninety nine percent sure
because I know there's only a one percent chance that
my results are statistically false. And that really pissed them
off more, and they said and then they then they
honed in on like oh, I only had three months
of data. They're like, you need data for the entire year.
And I kept pressing back like why why Because in

(39:23):
economics you don't want to overtest. It's called because if
you keep looking for a different answer. Eventually you'll find
it even if it's the wrong answer. So I was
digging in and then the other guy, Jared, he like
exploded on me.

Speaker 5 (39:36):
He was like, you don't know that.

Speaker 6 (39:37):
And he's like thaying his fists on the on the table.
And the other guy, I think he was like more
of the good cop. He looked terrified, like, oh my god,
he blew my cover.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
What are we doing here?

Speaker 5 (39:46):
Yeah, and I just wait.

Speaker 6 (39:47):
I was like, okay, like, I'm just gonna wait for
your apologize to apologize. No apology came, so I just
told them like, look, I'm going to get one more
set of data from your analyst, and then I'm going
to send the results directly to the vice president and
you can talk to him about if you don't like
the results. So I got the new data, results came
back exactly same. I sent it directly to the vice president,
who eliminated the mandatory overtime, so they ended up having

(40:07):
to do all the schedules over again.

Speaker 5 (40:09):
Haha.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
I also, you shared this quote about a dog in
the picture of the dog.

Speaker 5 (40:17):
Oh yeah, sorry. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (40:19):
So he was asking me to go get more data,
which was really frustrating to me because it was like
I was looking at like when I was looking at
the table of results, I could clearly see the results.
It was so obvious, like anybody who knew how to
read these results would see that this was irrefutable.

Speaker 5 (40:34):
But he wanted me to.

Speaker 6 (40:34):
Get more data, and I was trying to explain it
to him, like why I don't need more data? And
I said, it's like I'm looking at a picture of
a dog, like I can see its ears, I can
see it's fur, I can see its floppy tongue. But
you're saying my picture isn't good enough. I need to
go get an HD photo. I need more pixels. But
I don't need more pixels to know I'm looking at
a dog, Like just because I go get a hire's photo,
the dog isn't going to suddenly disappear. I don't need

(40:55):
to like zoom in on the drool dripping off of
his tongue right to know that I'm looking at a dog.
And that's what really set him off when he like
banged his fist and started yelling at me.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
It's a really good point for me, you know.

Speaker 6 (41:05):
Yeah, I think he got mad that I just I
got them you didn't have an answer for.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
It, right, But one another part of is that it
was really like not eye opening because I've seen this
in the workplace. But so of the stats you put
out there, I guess, when women express anger in the
workplace versus men, can you bring that down a little bit.

Speaker 6 (41:25):
Yeah, So there's research that's been published in economics journals.
There was one study that looked at financial advisors who
were being punished for being like reprimanded for doing something wrong.
And when you compare men and women who did the
exact same bad behavior, like maybe they were investing in
stocks they shouldn't have they in, or didn't tell their
clients something they shouldn't have, the women ended up getting

(41:46):
much harsher punishments than the men for the same thing.
And the explanation was that like, well, men just made mistakes,
but like women, there's something like inherently bad about them
when they do something wrong. And the same thing is
true for aggressive behavior. When women act like aggressive in
a workplace, they are stereotyped as just being angry women,
but when men do it, they're like, oh, something was

(42:08):
going on with them, there was a bad day, or
there's something wrong with the person that they were talking to,
like it's explained a way more so as a woman,
you have to be really careful and not like show
that outward aggression or be really careful about when you
show it, because you will get punished more for it.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah, just the number again.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
I think one thing that your book does really well
is like taking things that people are feeling or that
you probably might be observing, but.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Actually putting the data behind.

Speaker 3 (42:34):
It, which I really respect, just because sometimes you're wondering,
like is this actually happened, as you mentioned earlier, but yeah,
the numbers are out there and it's clearly that it's
it's clear that it's happening. Another thing you talk about
is kind of like why we shouldn't really beat ourselves up,
like if we're not saving as much, right, And I

(42:57):
think I guess what you're what you were talking about
in this section of the book was kind of I
guess tolerance risk.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Do you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 6 (43:04):
Yeah, so, or tolerance for risk basically describes like how
willing you are to make a bet. Like some people
are always making bets on just about everything and they're
really seeking out that risk. But most people have a
bit of a distaste for risk that if you offer
them a fifty to fifty bet and you know, they
would rather just keep the money than engage in the
bet because they don't want to risk losing it. And

(43:26):
this can come up in investing where maybe you don't
want to put your money in the stock market because
you have like just an aversion to that risk, or
maybe you don't want to like apply for that new
job because the job that you're in is more safe.
So it's good to like at least be conscious of
your tolerance for risk, and you can also like do
things to reduce your risk. So diversifying is one way,

(43:47):
like not putting all your eggs in one basket. You
can do this with your investments if you invest in
much different stocks instead of just one. You can also
do this with your income streams, like having a side
hustle is just a way to make sure that even
if you lose one job, you still have an income
source in another job.

Speaker 5 (44:02):
And one thing I talk.

Speaker 6 (44:03):
About with saving too, is that some people are spending
all the money that that's coming in, and it's not
because they're like a moral that they don't have discipline
to save. It's because perhaps they're focusing on earning more
money so they can get to a point where they
can save. When you're when you're living constantly on the edge,
you can have this scarcity.

Speaker 5 (44:25):
It's harder. It's like literally harder to make decisions.

Speaker 6 (44:27):
There's a book called Scarcity by Central Mola Nathan about
how people just by virtue of having less money, it
makes it harder for them to make decisions about money
because they're just so stressed out.

Speaker 5 (44:38):
So I think if you.

Speaker 6 (44:39):
Are in that position where you're simply stressed, too stress
to save, then it makes sense to just focus on, Okay,
how can i get to get myself to a place
where I'm earning enough money that at least i have
a little bit of breathing around not again.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
There, because right if I don't have if I'm living
paycheck to paycheck right now, there's a need to pay
the things that are in front of me. And I
I've found that even in my careers out of advanced
it's like, oh, I've seen started making a little bit more.
It's definitely easier to set something aside right when you're
able to pay for everything that you need. But I
thought I thought that was huge because I think sometimes

(45:12):
you hear folks are always like you need to save,
you need to save, But are you.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Really in the actual position to save? I think is
what you.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Absolutely the one thing I didn't miss that I want
to kind of go back to.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Did you talk a lot about meritocracy? Right? And I
almost like why that's a myth?

Speaker 3 (45:29):
And I guess specifically around like I think you were
talking through like advocating for a promotion. It's like it
might not be the person who's doing the most, like
the hardest work that actually gets the promotion. And they're like,
you gave us some like ways to actually achieve promotion.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Can you talk about that?

Speaker 6 (45:46):
Yeah, so getting promoted. There's this problem in economics called
the principal agent problem where a boss wants you to
do certain things. They want you to work as hard
as you possibly can, and the hours that you're at work,
they don't want you like, you know, taking bathroom.

Speaker 5 (46:01):
Breaks or looking at your phone or whatever, yees memes.

Speaker 6 (46:06):
But as a worker, you really want to like make
as much money as you can without you know, killing
yourself with the job. Yeah, you'll put an effort, but
you need a little bit of time for yourself. So
there's this natural tension between what a boss wants and
what a worker wants, and bosses can do certain things
to encourage workers to work harder. They can tell them

(46:26):
that they are going to measure their performance. I give
big example of again going back to spreadsheets, putting a
data in a spreadsheet. They might say, I'm going to
pay you based on how many spreadsheets you complete. But
even then it's not perfect because like the boss doesn't
really know how hard.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
The job is.

Speaker 6 (46:41):
Maybe there's a bunch of copy pasted information that makes
it super easy to do it really fast, and then
the worker can just slack off once they finish it
really fast and not tell the boss how long it
took them. Or maybe it's really hard. They get a
bunch of typos and it's taking them extra long, longer
than the boss anticipated because the work is just more
complicated than it really is. So even if you try
to pay on performance, it doesn't exactly work out, And

(47:04):
so that makes it really hard to determine like who
is most qualified for a higher pay or who is
most qualified for promotion. The boss can only observe so much,
and if they start focusing on one thing, like I
want you to finish this as quickly as possible. The
worker is probably not going to focus on quality. But
if the boss tells them I want this done perfectly,

(47:24):
and the worker is going to not focus on doing
things quickly, They're going to focus on doing it exactly right.
So who ends up getting promoted can be subjective because
the criteria, like the boss might not be stating in
the proper criteria to get promoted. And also a lot
of times there is a game involved. Like when I
got promoted, I did the backwards induction thing where I

(47:46):
was trying to figure out, like, what are all the
steps to me getting promoted?

Speaker 5 (47:49):
And I figured out that the way you.

Speaker 6 (47:51):
Get promoted, at least at this company was my manager
would have to put you up for promotion. My name,
along with the names of all the other managers in
the organization, would go the directors. The directorctors would winnow
down the list, so even if I was put up
for promotion by my manager, I wouldn't necessarily be on
the list, and then the list would finally go to
the vice president who would make a final call. So
based on that, I was like, Okay, what I really

(48:12):
need to do is I need to make sure the
vice president likes me and is impressed by me. But
I also need to make sure the directors see that
the vice president is impressed by me, so that they'll
know that if my name isn't on the list, that
the vice president will be suspicious of them, because the
vice president of this company was like super suspicious of
everything the directors did, thinking they were like, I mean,

(48:33):
they had the same principal agent model. The vice president
wanted the directors to do their job, but he was
worried that they weren't really doing their job. So I
needed to like get to this place where the directors
knew that the vice.

Speaker 5 (48:43):
President liked me.

Speaker 6 (48:44):
And that's what I did by volunteering to speak and
meetings where they would they would all be present and
getting like compliments from the vice president in front of
the directors, and that did actually end up working. That's
how I ended up getting the job, was by using
that strategy.

Speaker 3 (48:59):
Yeah, it's weird because it feels like in reading this book,
I was able to kind of do some of these
things in my career, but not really understand Like again,
you put a lot of like words behind things like oh,
all right, well, I kind of know, if I want
to go any higher, Like, there's a few people who
make these decisions. How do I get in front of

(49:19):
them to make sure that they're sending my praises? Because
right usually and everybody else will fall in line because like,
well the boss kind of likes that. Yeah, I kind
of look crazy deviating from.

Speaker 6 (49:29):
That exactly exactly, But I think a lot of people
that just focus on their manager, and I wonder why
their manager maybe didn't stick their neck out for them.
And just because your manager has different priorities, like sometimes
you got to go above them to make sure that
your manager's priorities are aligned with your own.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
Okay, I'm gonna throw a few fun questions before we
kind of close out here.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
Do you have a favorite video game?

Speaker 6 (49:55):
I really like this game called Tropico, which is like
an old video game but they still are putting out
different editions. You get to play the dictator of an island.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
It's like kind of like Cuba, and it's oh my god,
my other coat if he heard this, he would lose
his mind.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
He's always talking about being this benevolent dictator, which I
find it.

Speaker 5 (50:16):
Oh yeah, no, it's great. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (50:18):
I love that game because it because that's your like
role playing as this dictator who's just trying to hold
onto power.

Speaker 5 (50:23):
But you have to keep the economy going.

Speaker 6 (50:25):
You do have to like invest in businesses and make
sure there's enough food for people, or else you're you're
the people on the island will start protesting you and
take you out of power.

Speaker 5 (50:34):
But it's it's fun.

Speaker 6 (50:35):
That's a great soundtrack too, it has all this Cuban
and Caribbean music in it.

Speaker 3 (50:39):
I'm going to find this, uh this this game Tropica. Yeah,
I'm definitely looking for that sounds really awesome. Obviously, we're
talking about your book. Are you reading anything dope currently?
And I guess a follow up question that is, what's
been like the most impactful book you've read.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
I think I have an idea that you might already
said it, but.

Speaker 6 (50:58):
Oh yeah, well, freaking freaking On was definitely the book
that got me into economics that I didn't exactly model
my book after, but I did read it a whole
bunch of times to figure out, like what made that
book as good as it is, And I think it's
it's the accessibility and the relatability of the story. So
I definitely like pulled some of that from it. So
I studied the housing market in my regular job. There's

(51:20):
this great book called Fixer Upper by Jenny Schitz. If
you want to learn about why housing is so unaffordable,
I'd recommend that. There's also this I've been rereading a
lot of my old favorite books, and there's this author
named Max Shulman from the nineteen fifties who's like a
comedy writer, and I've been rereading his stuff because I
think he's just a really great writer. Again, trying to
figure out, like, what what is it that I like

(51:40):
so much about these books? And and what, yeah, what
can I learn from it?

Speaker 3 (51:45):
I appreciate your sharing. I want to go check those out.
And then here's a very fun one, where do you
see the economy in six months.

Speaker 6 (51:53):
I'm there's there's an uncomfortable probability that we will be
in a recession. I there's there were some jobs numbers
that came out just today that make it seem like
maybe we're not going to enter into recession just yet.
Maybe it's just going to be, you know, a bit
of stagnant economic growth.

Speaker 5 (52:09):
But it's not great. I don't think.

Speaker 6 (52:10):
Anybody's really happy, especially people who are just out of
college hoping to get a new job. Not a lot
of entry level workers are being hired nowadays.

Speaker 5 (52:18):
You can blame AI. You can blame the high interest rates.

Speaker 6 (52:21):
Interest rates are high, which makes it more expensive to
borrow to buy things like a home or a car,
So your money is not like going as far because
you have to pay more to borrow for.

Speaker 5 (52:31):
These kinds of things. So I think that it's not
it's not.

Speaker 6 (52:36):
A catastrophe yet, but it still doesn't feel great, especially
knowing that we could have had a much stronger economy
right now than what we.

Speaker 5 (52:44):
Have right now.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Yeah, right, yeah, it seems a lot of self inflicted wounds.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
And right we're in graduation season, and I think we
both probably can have immense empathy for the graduates because
living through two thousand and eight and everything that happened
after that, and obviously, I mean that was also kind
of man made, I guess in a sense. But it
doesn't feel like the economy. It feels like coming after

(53:08):
out of COVID, like we almost landed the plane perfectly,
Like yeah, I think power, yeah, yeah, in history for
what he was able to do after that and shout
out to the I think the American consumer for keeping
it moving. But everything we are feeling right now is
completely self inflicted.

Speaker 6 (53:26):
So yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it makes me said because
remember we were originally forecasting ten percent growth in home
sales and now home sales are down. So it definitely
feels like man like we could have we could have
been coming out of this, We could have like had
this recovery that would have been strong, but now we're
just kind of like middling along. And it's yeah, the
terrorift like going back and forth on the terariffs. It

(53:47):
doesn't help anybody to like have that uncertainty. Uncertainty is
really bad for the economy because people like to know
if they're going to make an investment in a factory
or hiring workers that the economy is still going to
be basically in a good position. But I think a
lot off businesses are worried just about like how do
they pivot if things go bad.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
I feel like uncertainty is going to be with the
time word of the year. How big that on that one?
I guess to wrap this up, remind folks why you
name this book Hate the Game, because I think that
message was really powerful and I think especially for anybody,
but especially for like the youth.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Right, can you explain why you name it hate the game?

Speaker 6 (54:27):
So the full expression is don't hate the player, hate
the game. And that's that's really the advice I want
to give to young people who feel like the economy
is unfair, they feel like it's not set up for them.

Speaker 5 (54:38):
That's fine.

Speaker 6 (54:39):
You can be mad at the economic structures, but it
doesn't mean that you shouldn't play, Like, don't hate yourself
because of it, for participating in it, because it is
just the game's fault, and you should still try to play,
because it's really important for people who are aware of
the ways that the economy is unfair to get to
a position of power where they can actually start changing

(54:59):
some of the rules. It doesn't really help you or
help anybody by by opting out of playing. That's, if anything,
what the winners want. They want less competition. So play hard,
and yeah, use your use your hate. Just focus on
like exploiting the ways that the economy is broken in
a way that advantage is that gives you an advantage.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
No, I thought it was a very powerful message because
a lot of folks are like, well, I this is
so terrible it's so unfair. I want to check out,
but we really can't check out of it, right, I mean,
the economy touches everything and it just if you don't
play it, you're just gonna lose, right yeah.

Speaker 6 (55:35):
Yeah, And it goes back to that chess metaphor, like,
just because you start a disadvantage doesn't mean that you
can't win. You just need to be aware of where
all the pitfalls are and and find a way around them.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
Yes. No, this has been amazing. Please everybody go out
now and.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
Grab a doctor their affair with his new book, Hate
the Game, Economic Cheek Codes for Life, Love and Work.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
I have it right here obviously, here's one again.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
It's always close. I will reference this for the rest
of my life. But thank you so much for joining
us today. This is a really dope conversation.

Speaker 5 (56:05):
Thank you for having me. It's great talking to you.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Awesome