And

I had been doing one pilot in one school, PS70 in the Bronx.

And it was the lowest fidelity pilot you could ever imagine.

Not really a pilot.

They had some subjective metrics for the kids.

The teachers thought they met the metrics.

They called me up and I ordered pizza for the kids.

You just know it works and you're trying to reproduce the cocktail in a different location.

Um-

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I grew up in schools like that where, where I also was behind, but, but I think it's less about us and more about our responsibilities or choices as parents, and I don't, um, I have zero judgment on, on her choice.

You know, I've, I've never met her.

I know, I know some of her ideas and some of her writings.

She's actually a really-- I, I envy how good she is as a writer, uh, relative to, you know, economists like me.

Um, and I too have, have-- feel like I've spent the last 23 years trying to, trying to make life better for every Black kid too.

I, I just made a different choice than she did.

Yeah

Mm-hmm.

Um, or the junior faculty member who says, "Well, maybe I should get tenure first before I say this," what have you.

I wanna provide direct financial incentives, uh, for them to be courageous.

I, I don't want a contrarian prize.

I'm not trying to produce contrarians.

What I'm trying to say is, if you're worried about your reputation or career, et cetera, on the margin, well, let it be known that there are a lot of people out here who support the very type of thinking and inquiry that you're interested in, and we're gonna put our money where our mouth is.

And, and so I wrote something a- like this a couple years ago in my, uh, biweekly journal column, and lo and behold, Bill Ackman reached out to me, um, and said, "Can I come visit [chuckles] you in your office in, in Boston?" "Sure." And we talked about this.

Hmm

People are making a big

deal about it.

Thank you for coming.

People are making a big deal about it.

Look, the issue is not that the jobs have walked away from the teens, but the teens have walked away from the jobs.

Because doing other things in the summer has just gotten a lot more valuable.

The research lab, the SAT tutor, et cetera.

That's a back story.

And how would this realistically change the way a state's congressional district looks?

Well, in many states, a tremendous amount.

For example, Tennessee is one of the states where it would have the biggest effect, but also New York, Louisiana, etc.

And it's not just how they look on a map.

The issue I'm worried about is not a liberal or conservative view.

It's about democracy.

When you draw the maps correctly, like you have up, then votes matter more.

How would your method protect against that?

[laughing]

Hip hop is everywhere.

I collected data-- We collected data, a team of us, collected data on every radio station in America.

And for every radio station, we know the genre of the song.

Now, to collect the data, first, we went and got literally every radio handle, and for every radio handle, we have the broadcast frequency and range from each one of them.

And then we have the genre.

And then for some of the radio stations, we actually have the playlists that were on the radio.

[laughing]

Talk a little bit about what it is that works.

Yeah.

Well, let, let me give a little bit of background because we all know there are charter schools and some public schools out there that are doing phenomenal things for kids who are in very challenging circumstances, and we see these one-off artisans.

Eva Moskowitz in New York, Geoff Canada in the Harlem Children's Zone, and the list goes on and on.

However, the average charter school is no better than the average public school.

And so you can do the intuition right away.

If there are great ones, there must be bad ones if the average is zero.

Hm.