Our latest Cool Friend, Dan Ariely, is a behavioral economist. As such, he studies how people actually act in financial transactions. He observes behaviors such as buying (or not), saving (or not), ordering food in restaurants, and decision making under differing emotional conditions. He is author of the New York Times bestseller Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, and in our interview he calls the book the evil step-brother of Freakonomics. You can read his Cool Friends interview here, or visit his website, www.PredictablyIrrational.com.
In keeping with our recent Cool Friends posts, here is an MP3 with Three Things from Dan Ariely. Something new, however, we are counting the Cool Friends interviews, and we’re proud to say that Dan is #126 in our collection. [Addendum, 3 August 2008: Oops, I can’t count. This interview is #125, and I changed the title above.—CM]