How irrational are we?

Academic models often built on the assumption of how rational utility-maximising individuals would behave. But as behavioral scientists have long pointed out, real people don’t actually behave that way. Does that mean that we behave irrationally, and if so why? Or is our behavior actually more rational than it may appear? In this special episode, we present Chicago Booth’s Richard Thaler, an economics Nobel laureate, in conversation with Harvard’s Steven Pinker.