Captain Sig Hansen joins Jon Stewart’s Daily Show to discuss life on an Alaska fishing boat. Hailed as the deadliest job in America, Hansen and his crew can earn tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of days so long as the crew is willing to risk their lives. Jon discusses safety on the boats and the motivation for why an individual would risk their lives.
Mitch Hedberg has spent a lot of time becoming a good comedian, but as soon as he gets to Hollywood, people start asking him to do other things that he isn’t (comparatively) good at like acting or writing. He compares this to spending time becoming a great cook and then being asked if you could farm. People should specialize in what they have a comparative advantage in and if Mitch Hedberg spent is time writing or acting then he’d be giving up a lot of income as a good comedian.
You can see the full clip on Comedy Central.
Stephen Colbert interviews economist Tim Harford about his then-recent book, Logic of Life. Harford and Colbert discuss a number of items that people may consider irrational, but actually turn out to be rational like voting, unprotected sex, and smoking. The entire discussion focuses on the central idea of the definition of rationality.
Stephen Colbert interviews Harvard economist Roland Fryer about his pay-for-learning system in Chicago, Washington DC, and New York City. Fryer discusses the incentive mechanism that his team developed in order to encourage learning across those three cities.
Wanda discusses insider trading in her comedy bit and notes that everyone participates in some form of insider trading. While Martha Stewart may have been sent to jail for insider trading, her cousin who works at Walmart will call her and tell her not to buy certain products because they’ll go on sale next week.
Christian Finnegan knows he isn’t in the best shape so he’s decided to join a gym. He figures that at least if he never goes to the gym then he can consider the gym membership a form of fat tax. This framing adjustment could still have the same impact as working out since he now has to internalize his decision to eat unhealthy foods.
Wanda moved to New York and her family told her to go out and a buy a particular type of gun, one that would end up costing her $400. Falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy, Wanda feels like if she spends $400 on a gun then she needs to make sure that it gets used, even if it means using it on friends that she invites over.
Wanda Sykes describes how she tests her husband when he doesn’t even know he’s being tested. She’s okay with a sink of dirty dishes one or two days, but if it continues for much longer than she’ll extract her revenge (later in the clip she talks about how all the fury comes out when they’re having sex). This tit-for-tat behavior where one party waits for the other one can turn into a situation where both parties are eating off of napkins and no one is cleaning anything.
Ron White describes how his state is different than California and one of those ways is through the use of the death penalty. In other states, they may be trying to cut back on the use of the death penalty for heinous crimes, but Texas appears to be trying to put in an express lane. The death penalty, while controversial, is often used by states as a credible threat and a deterrence mechanism in order to reduce future crime.
Wanda Sykes describes how she treats her nephews is much different than how she would treat her own kids. She’s not interested in making sure they eat healthy or go to bed at a decent hour because they aren’t her children. This is a great illustration of the principle-agent problem in that the two agents, Wanda and her sibling, don’t have the same motives.