Freakonomics Radio - 499. Don't Worry, Be Tacky

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

The British art superstar Flora Yukhnovich, the Freakonomist Steve Levitt, and the upstart American Basketball Association were all unafraid to follow their joy — despite sneers from the Establishment. Should we all be more willing to embrace the déclassé?

I grew up in a place called Norfolk, which is a very rural part of the UK. That is Flora Yuknovich. Her mother was a teacher. Her father was in the Navy. From a young age, Flora wanted to be an artist, but she was also pragmatic. So rather than studying fine art at university, she studied graphic design. And then after that, because I really missed painting, I went to the Heatherley School of Fine Art and did a portrait course for two years. And then I thought I'd be a portrait painter

and I did not like it and I wasn't good at it. Why did she want to be a portrait painter if she didn't like it and wasn't good at it? It just seemed like it was a viable job and that it would be a reasonable living and that I'd be able to paint all the time. But after her portrait course, she went in for more art training at Sidion Guilds of London Art School, one of the oldest art schools in England. There, she studied art history and theory, and she steeped herself in aesthetics, essentially learning which artists were worth emulating.

Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud were like very important to me. Auerbach and Freud were giants of 20th century figurative painting. They both made intense, moody pictures in somber colors and earth tones. It was like this group of mythical geniuses that you could only aspire to be like. They filled my head with the idea of what an artist was, this sort of tortured genius alone in the studio. So when you say that Auerbach and Freud were important to you, do you mean in that everybody knew that they were important

and that they established a standard of taste that people were supposed to embrace or that you actually loved their work and wanted to create like them? Probably both. They became the things that you were supposed to look at, and there were things that you weren't supposed to look at. The things you're supposed to look at and the ones you aren't. In any field, not just art, there are clear hierarchies of value. These hierarchies are established by critics, tastemakers, influencers. They determine whether a given object or idea

is considered high class or, God forbid, de classe. In French, de classe means downgraded. It implies that something once was worthy of admiration but has now lost its status. Is there anything sadder than that? The way we use the word déclassé today, however, it doesn't have that fallen-from-grace quality. Déclassé simply implies lowbrow, tacky, not worthy of serious attention. If you happen to embrace an artist or idea that's considered de classe,

you're thought to be either ignorant or, worse, incapable of exercising good taste. Flora Yuknovich understood this. She understood that if she were to become the kind of painter she wanted to be, there were artists she should look to for inspiration and those she should avoid. But she was also a bit stuck. I had been disappointed by my work, so I really wanted to inject a playfulness and a joy back into making. So I started looking at Disney cartoons and wallpaper designs. As if wallpaper and Disney cartoons weren't bad enough,

she stumbled across a book in the art school library with the paintings of Jean-Honoré Fragonard. He was an extraordinarily skillful painter and a master of the Rococo style, whose popularity peaked in the 18th century, just before the French Revolution. Rococo paintings were opulent, colorful, flowery, often playful and slightly naughty or erotic. It was a style that was most appreciated by some of the elites

who, during the revolution, would meet the guillotine. Rococo henceforth became déclassé, and to this day, most art critics either dismiss or ignore it, despite the indisputable skill of an artist like Fragonard. Flora Yuknovich would have known all this when she came across that Fragonard book in the library. And this wasn't the first time she'd encountered his work. I probably saw it for the first time when someone showed it to me being like, look how awful this is, or look how frivolous or how kitschy this is. Did you feel that yourself about Fragonard when you first saw it, or were you impressionable and this person said, oh yeah, this is so tacky, and then you just agreed? I think the latter.

You were how old at that time? I was probably 17 or 18. And how cool were you then? Um, not. But I would still try my best. So at 17, you decided Fragonard was what? I guess kitsch and like chocolate boxy. Do you remember which Fragonard piece you saw back then?

The Swing. The Swing is Fragonard's most famous back then? The Swing. The Swing is Fragonard's most famous painting. It is housed in the Wallace Collection in London. Here's how the Wallace describes The Swing. A young woman dressed in pink is sitting on a swing in a park, which an older man on the right is keeping in motion. She kicks off her slipper as a sign to a younger man hidden in a bush underneath her. The lush, almost overpowering vegetation underlines the sexually charged character of the scene. Even as a teenager, Yukanovich knew this was not the kind of painting an aspiring artist should admire. I felt like I should dislike it immediately.

There was just too much color. It's designed to please, and I was aware of that and suspicious of it. What made you suspicious of that notion? When I was trying to learn what is good and what is bad, something being challenging was a good thing. And you wanted to educate yourself to the point where you could enjoy something that is challenging. In other words, a challenging piece had class. A painting designed to please was necessarily déclassé.

But now, nearly a decade after first seeing The Swing, Yuknovich saw it again. By now, she was a serious art student preparing work for her final show. And this time, she had a different response to the Fragonard painting. I had all these ideas buzzing around in my head, but I hadn't known how to put them together. And then I found this book when I was trying to work out what to do. It made me feel so weird. I recognized it and I enjoyed it. It's like I'd undone some of that prejudice.

Do you remember what it was like seeing the book on the shelf and pulling it off? Were you a little sheepish? Not really. It was photocopying stuff and putting it on my studio wall that felt more embarrassing. Her studio was in a big industrial building, side by side with other students' studios. There were no doors. Everyone could see what you were working on. It had this weird element of being on display the whole time you're trying to create.

And how did that feel? Like, oh, I've been here literally being trained to have good taste. And then this is what I love. How did that feel to you? Weirdly exciting. When I was making the first paintings looking at it, it was just like I had never really worked with color like that. It was just so pleasurable standing in front of a canvas and making it like beautiful colors. I had been doing stuff that was very brown and looking at Rembrandt.

So then I started working with bright turquoises and bubblegum pinks. And yeah, it just felt wild. And I was like, oh God, I'm so naff, but this is so fun. I don't know. So Flora Yuknovich decided to embrace the De Classé. And how has that worked out? I'm going to sell it here with another world record auction price for the artist. And should you be more inclined to follow what pleases you rather than what the tastemakers say?

Don't worry about what other people want you to be. Just study what you want. It was a cultural shock to people as much as anything else. It lights up. It sings, it's quite an experience. Today on Freakonomics Radio, the surprising power of the De Classe in art, in sports, in academia. That's coming up right after this. This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Rex King is a writer who grew up in Washington, D.C., and now lives in New York.

This is a great opportunity to reveal that I love Rococo painting. Anything big and over-the-top and maximalist, that's an aesthetic that has always felt really warm and right to me. It was super popular in a flash-in-the the pan kind of way. And as soon as its popularity was over, everybody acted embarrassed, like they couldn't believe they had loved something so silly. And that right there is a big part of my own interest in so-called trash culture. In 2021, King published a book of essays, a very good and funny book called Tacky Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer. She writes in praise of the reality TV show Jersey Shore, of the super caloric restaurant chain, the Cheesecake Factory, of the Florida rock band Creed. So how does King define tacky? It's the stuff that people are embarrassed to like, but that they still like. Tacky is campiness without the wink in it.

It's campiness that can't find that secondary level of enjoyment that legitimizes something. It's something that is enjoyable much to your shame. When I think of trash TV, what I think of is something that makes the viewer worse if they watch too much of it, according to someone else. How about schlock? Ooh, schlock I really like. Schlock is something that, how do I want to put this? It's not just Yiddish or tacky, quite.

No, no, it's taken on a life of its own. It's something that's tacky, but also sugary sweet, like a Hallmark movie. How about déclassé? That's just a highfalutin word for tacky. You're not going to sit there and make me learn French just to say something's bad. Tacky, trashy, déclassé. They all point to things you know you should be embarrassed to enjoy, like those Fragonard

paintings that Flora Yuknovich put up on her studio wall for inspiration, and yet you enjoy them nonetheless. It is a category best identified not by strict definition, but rather a feeling. I think that's how people tend to make those sorts of aesthetic judgments about whether something is tacky or whether something is highbrow or whatever. It's not so much in accordance with articulated principles most of the time. People know it when they see it. So let's imagine now we are not thinking about art or culture, but about ideas for academic research. How tacky would you call these topics?

Sumo wrestling, real estate agents ripping you off, baby names, discrimination on the TV game show The Weakest Link. That is Steve Levitt, my Freakonomics friend and co-author. He also hosts our spinoff podcast, People I Mostly Admire. I'm an economist who loves data and who approaches problems in simple ways using common sense. But that's not how Levitt saw himself years ago when he started graduate school at MIT. Well, I wish I could say that I went to MIT and I saw immediately the tachy path and that was the one for me and that was going to lead to success, but I didn't. He wanted to be a macroeconomist, one of the serious people who show up on the news telling you how global markets are moving or why inflation is rising.

It's just not something anybody really has intuition for. Well, that's what I thought until I got to MIT. And shockingly, people had intuition for that. And as soon as I realized that, I said, oh my God, I am not going to be a macroeconomist. So he had to shift his focus, but he still wanted to be serious. I thought, well, I'm going to figure out what the highest prestige activity is. And I'm going to do that because you might as well try to be the best of the best. And that was theory. Theory is the most abstract

branch of economics. No real world data, just lots of math and theoretical formulations. And oh my God, was I a poor fit. I was bad at that. There's no chance. By now, he had just about exhausted his options. And the smartest thing I ever did was to say, what is it I actually like? I was sitting on my old blue couch, I'm sure. And I'm sure the TV was going in the background and cops, the TV show cops was on. Well, I like cops. I always watch cops every day. And I said, maybe I should study crime. And it wasn't something that anyone else was doing. And I went and did it and I loved it. And God, it's such a blessing when you love what

you do. There's nothing more fun for me to do than to learn about crime, to get the data on crime, because the two things I loved in life were cops and I loved data. And now I had put those two together and it led to a series of papers that really made my career. Those papers about crime included Levitt's landmark paper on the relationship between the legalization of abortion and crime. From there, he went on to write about cheating teachers and colluding sumo wrestlers, about the finances of a Chicago gang that sold crack cocaine.

These are not the kind of topics that usually show up in the best economics journals. In addition to the subjects that I study, I also use methods which are low status within the profession. What do you mean by that? When someone comes to give a lecture of their research, perhaps the most predictive factor is if nobody in the audience has any idea what they're talking about. There's just an incredible taste for, wow, that guy did some math. I've never even heard of that math before. Now, I've never

been attracted to that. I always think it's a bad sign if someone can't explain to you what they're doing in a way you can understand it. And so as much as the topics I chose when I've been derided, it's because I take really simple methods. Can I describe the data as clearly and carefully and thoughtfully as possible? And people might disagree with your interpretation, but I always try to make it transparent so everyone can understand the set of facts from which we begin. And that's also not common. And I think it's seen as lowbrow. But the lowbrow approach has worked for Levitt. He has been published in the best journals for years. Among the awards he's won is the John Bates Clark Medal, the most prestigious award a young American economist can win. It was Levitt's lowbrow research that first caught my attention, too. And that's what led to

our writing the Freakonomics books together. And I mean, we called the book Freakonomics. How tacky is that? Our publisher certainly thought it was tacky, and they only went along with it when they couldn't come up with anything better. So I guess I too am drawn to the De Classé, like Steve Levitt and Rex King and Flora Yukonovich, especially when it allows you to explore ideas that the tastemakers overlook. One of Levitt's research projects, which I got to help out on, was an economic analysis of breakfast foods. Paul Feldman was a former economist who had retired and taken up a new business delivering bagels and donuts to office parks. This was in the Washington, D.C. area. Feldman had contracted

with all sorts of firms who wanted to give their employees a chance to buy breakfast on site. Pretty smart, if you think about it. Gets them to work faster. So Paul Feldman would get up very early and drive his delivery van very fast from office to office to office, leaving behind dozens of bagels and donuts, a price list, and a lockbox for the cash. The key here was that payments were on the honor system.

And he was meticulous. He kept a spreadsheet that had all the information that was relevant to the situation. Information like the rate of payment at each firm, how payments differed according to type of firm, as well as day of week, time of year, and so on. Also, how many bagels and donuts went unsold at each location on a given day. He offered those data to maybe a half dozen, a dozen economists, all of whom would say, well, why would I want data on bagels or donuts? But then Paul Feldman reached out to Steve Levitt. I immediately sensed that these could be interesting data.

Interesting because why? Economists who study the firm really struggle because the key input into a lot of the decisions of the firm is the marginal cost. And it turns out it's really hard to observe marginal cost for firms. Marginal cost is the price of producing or selling one additional unit, one more donut or bagel, as opposed to the average cost, which is easier to measure. I recognized that in Paul's data, I had the ability to see marginal cost. I felt like in this completely trivial setting, I could actually answer real questions about how firms behaved. Now, I understood that people are going to be very dismissive of what I do,

because who cares about a firm that has one guy? But the way in which he chose quantities, he was amazingly good at it. Levitt used this data to write up a research paper, which he presented in a seminar for his peers at the University of Chicago. As I started the seminar, a prominent economist, Luigi Zingales, was in the audience. And he said, this is stupid. I don't even know why I'm sitting here. What could I possibly learn from one guy with bagels and donuts? And I said, I don't know, but I learned something. Tell me at the end what you think. And he sat through it. And at the end, he said, I can't believe it, but I think you actually taught

me something about economics. I would say that was one of the biggest single successful seminars I've ever given. I changed his priors and probably others in a way that nobody imagined I couldn't. So how has Levitt benefited from pursuing the topics that interest him, even if his elders and peers may see such topics as lowbrow. I feel like I've developed a good sense, a good intuition around everyday human behavior. Faced with almost any problem, I'm able to have a decent idea of how people will react. And if we were to intervene in some way, how might their behavior change? The writer Rex King said something similar about lowbrow culture, that it can give you

true insight into people more than an ivory tower view can give. When you look at what adds color and texture to someone's day by day, the average person is frying an egg for breakfast. And when they get hungry at 11, they throw back a handful of Cheez-Its. That's just tacky food. And when they get home after work, they're firing up a marathon of something they don't have to pay real close attention to because it's not too emotionally, intellectually taxing. If you're going to think in terms of centuries of knowledge, then sure, great art is the way to go.

But if you're going to think in terms of what people are really like in the day-to-day of their lives, you're going to have to turn to tacky, trashy culture eventually. Coming up after the break, it's happened in sports, too. The NBA saw the three-point shot as a gimmick,

as a ridiculous gimmick. Also, how did Flora Yuknovich's Rococo dream turn out? That's right after the break. By the way, this is the 499th episode of Freakonomics Radio. If you like this show, please spread the word however you can and maybe leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Thanks a million. If you are a fan of NBA basketball, and given the league's popularity these days, you probably are, you may be surprised to learn where some of your favorite things about the NBA came from, like this. Good evening, everyone. This huge, record-breaking crowd about to bear witness to one of the most spectacular events in professional basketball,

the Slam Dunk Contest. The Slam Dunk Contest didn't originate in the NBA. Back in the 1960s, pro basketball was a much smaller sport. The NBA's fan base was about one-tenth the size of Major League Baseball's audience. And the NBA had a rival league called the ABA, or American Basketball Association. The thing that the ABA figured out pretty quick was that this is show business and they set out to put out a more entertaining product, if nothing else. That's Bomani Jones. He is a sports journalist who happens to have a master's degree in economics. So he's our kind of sports journalist. He's also host of the ESPN podcast The Right Time with Bomani Jones and a new HBO show called Game Theory. Jones says that back in the 1960s, the NBA was pretty conservative, but not the ABA. There was a Carnival Barker element to it.

In a word, déclassé. The ABA used a red, white, and blue basketball. The ABA had cheerleaders. It was also a notably blacker product. Sports Illustrated described the ABA as the Funkadelic League that valued big hair, flashy dunks, and second chances. Dunking itself had a strange history in basketball going back to the college game. The most dominant college player of the 1960s was Lou Alcindor, who would later change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He'd also become one of the most dominant players in the NBA. In his first year on the varsity team at UCLA, Alcindor averaged 29 points a game and led the team to a national championship. Alcindor also liked to dunk the

ball, which made sense given he was over seven feet tall. There is no more high percentage fundamental play than dunking the ball. It's literally getting as close to the basket as you possibly can. But the dunk was still rare at the time. And after Alcindor's breakout season, the NCAA banned the dunk from college basketball. They said it was not a skillful shot. Here's what Alcindor said of the ban. It smacks a little of discrimination. When you look at it, most of the people who dunk are black athletes. It was a cultural shock as much as anything else, the idea that somebody was going to dunk a basketball. The dunk remained illegal in college

basketball for about a decade. The NBA did allow dunking, but it just wasn't a big part of how the game was played in the NBA. But in the new ABA, the dunk became the show. They have the dunk contest, right? The contestants will be judged on artistic ability, imagination, body flow, as well as fan response. One of the ABA's biggest stars was Julius Irving, better known as Dr. J. The man that has turned the slam dunk into an art, who has thrilled ABA fans with moves that have been beyond comprehension. At six foot six for the New York Nets, the fabulous Dr. J. Julius Irving. Dr. J. won the ABA slam dunk contest in 1976 with a leaping dunk from the free throw line. And that sends everyone, really. Julius Irving.

Who was the NBA commissioner back in the 70s? I believe that's Larry O'Brien. So what do you think Larry O'Brien was thinking if he's watching the ABA all-Star Game on TV and they have the dunking contest and then the game is full of dunks? What do you think he's thinking? Oh, this is a clown show and it'll never work. I mean, that's what the incumbent always thinks about something like that. But the thing with the ABA that, to me, becomes most interesting is they added the three-point line. The three-point line being an arc painted on the floor far from the basket. And if you made a shot from beyond the arc,

it counted for three points instead of the standard two. The three-point shot actually originated in an earlier upstart league called the American Basketball League, but it was the ABA that made the three-point shot famous. And what did the NBA think of it? The NBA saw the three-point shot as a gimmick, as a ridiculous gimmick. The ABA also saw it as a gimmick, and that was the point. It was obviously a conscious decision that we are going to be the more fun alternative to the established league. Like sometimes you just have to lean into what you are. And this is a bit of a freewheeling sport and a bit of a freewheeling culture that surrounds it. And so rather than trying to win over the fuddy-duddies, the ABA decided they were

going to win over people who wanted something cool. So one league's de classe was another one's cool. The ABA, it turned out, couldn't make it on its own. In 1976, after nine seasons, it merged with the NBA. Four of the old ABA teams are still around. The Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs, and the New York Nets, now based in Brooklyn. Julius Irving, after five years in the ABA, played another 11 in the NBA. He won the most valuable player award in both leagues. And there is Julius Irving. Look at that move behind the back.

But Dr. J was hardly the only crossover from the old league to the new. In fact, when you look at the NBA today, the ball movement, the spectacular dunks, the three-point shooting, it's clear that the DNA of the ABA was fully absorbed into the NBA. Would LeBron James play like LeBron James had there never been an ABA? LeBron drives in. Oh, my. A ferocious slam.

Did you see LeBron? He jumped right out of the building. Would Steph Curry play like Steph Curry had there never been an ABA? Curry has time. Three seconds. Oh! He puts it in at the buzzer. The upstart league, as the ABA was, probably had more influence on the 40 years after than the established league did about what the game became. As Bomani Jones said earlier, the ABA was

also a blacker product than the NBA. This would hardly be the first time that the establishment took a look at something a marginalized group was doing and declared their efforts de classe. It was so pink and so fluffy, and that made me think it was kitsch. That, again, is the young British painter Flora Yuknovich. She is talking about the Rococo paintings she knew she shouldn't love, but did. And then I realized that some of that has to do with the gendering of aesthetics and thinking of things as less serious because they're related to femininity. The Rococo aesthetic had evolved out of the Baroque, which was also highly ornate, the gendering of aesthetics and thinking of things as less serious because they're related to femininity. The Rococo aesthetic had evolved out of the Baroque, which was also highly ornate.

But Baroque was the style of public opulence, as exemplified by the Palace of Versailles. Rococo, meanwhile, had originated in the private homes of French elites. It was lighter and more delicate, characterized by floral patterns and rosy pastels. There were loads of plump little putti or cherubs. Compared to the Baroque style, the Rococo is distinctly feminine. It fell out of favor alongside the French aristocracy. And then after the revolution, people said that the reason it's in such poor taste and the reason it's so decorative is because women were involved in the commissioning of the work. I think was so inspired by their feel that she taped them to her studio wall for inspiration. I asked if this had required a certain courage. Yeah, I think so. And then sort of a sense of defiance when I did that I leant into it really hard

because I was like, yeah, this is what I'm doing. I was really drawn to the really chubby wrists and chubby, almost unformed hands of the putty. But at the same time, it was, yeah, I felt like I had very poor taste. So what made you lean into it so hard? What gave you the confidence or desire to do that? Part of it was just commitment. Part of it was a sense of creating a new distance from myself by going so hard that it was almost sarcastic.

Was it sarcastic? Or did you tell yourself it was sarcastic and know that it wasn't quite? I'm still not sure. I think it goes between the two. And there are times when I use sarcasm as an excuse. Yuknovich is now 31 years old. Her paintings begin on a computer. She'll often start with a classic Rococo painting as a base and then mash it up with images from a magazine ad or a Disney cartoon. This small digital collage then becomes a rough map

from which she creates a large painting on canvas. It's like a really slow process of finding my way of putting stuff in, taking stuff out, trying to work out the way that the abstraction and the figuration are working together. She has become known for painting big canvases with broad sweeping brushstrokes. They meld the busy, colorful swirls of Rococo masters like Fragonard and Tiepolo with a modern sense of cheekiness. The titles of her paintings often come from pop culture. There's Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner, for instance, and Lipstick, Lip Gloss, Hickies 2.

Her paintings are at the same time drop-dead beautiful and somehow a bit embarrassed by their beauty. The space I want to get to when I'm making is something that is like I've really enjoyed making it but at the same time I feel slightly humiliated that I enjoyed it so much and I think that's when I know something is working but it's quite hard to tell whether it's just pure humiliation or like whether it's because something's happening. When I'm making the work I swing between this sarcastic point of view with it and this really serious romantic point of view. And sometimes I'm embarrassed by how seriously I've taken these like pretty tropes. So Flora Yuknovich embraced her embarrassment, her so-called poor taste, her thirst for the déclassé. She gave the art world exactly what they said they didn't want.

And yet, as it turns out, they did want it. She has become one of the most successful painters of the moment. She is shown by one of the best galleries in London, Victoria Moreau, and her paintings have begun surfacing at auction. A piece from 2020 called Warm, Wet, and Wild. Yeah, the title is from the Katy Perry song, California Girls. It just sold at Sotheby's for more than $3 million. It is true that some art world gatekeepers are distressed by her success. One of them recently called her paintings syrupy medleys that are an obviously Rococo-inspired garden variety sort of abstraction with flourishes of figuration. It is also true that this gatekeeper happens to be an older male art critic,

a member of the New York establishment. He also hedged his assault on Yuknovich somewhat by saying he was, quote, still high on the medication from a hernia operation. So too much information along with too little appreciation. His words made me think of how the NBA saw the ABA at one point, years before the NBA essentially became the ABA. It's so interesting that something that is trying to be likable is automatically not. It's like you want a bit of abrasiveness in it to almost make it palatable. And there's a level of it being too palatable where it becomes unpalatable. And then it sort of comes full circle. If you lean into the beauty of something to the point where it becomes vulgar, it becomes easy to digest again because it's got that kind of abrasiveness built in. So even though Eager to Please is not the art aesthetic of this moment or frankly of many, many, many moments in the history of art,

Flora Yuknovich, who admits to being a person who embraces that aesthetic and an artist who embraces that aesthetic, is in the last couple years, one of the most revered young painters alive. What are we to make of that? Have you successfully reversed the entire taste trend of the modern art world? No, I don't think so. I think there's something about using a pleasing aesthetic as almost a Trojan horse. If your work is to some degree a Trojan horse, what's inside? What's it obscuring? It's that idea that something beautiful is lacking meaning. And I'm interested in setting it up in the right way in like a fine art setting, in a gallery setting.

And seeing how people respond to it. And seeing whether it's people get angry because they're like, oh, it's so palatable, how awful. It's easier to make something that is deliberately trying to be beautiful in opposition to someone who's saying it shouldn't be. So Flora Yuknovich accepted the price one must pay for embracing the déclassé, and she has succeeded wildly, at least so far. The same is true for Steve Levitt, mining the data on the sale of donuts and bagels. And for Dr. J, playing basketball in a style the mainstream

considered too wild and too black until the mainstream caught up. All of them have the same message for the rest of us. Don't worry. Be tacky.

What's the very worst thing that could happen? Coming up next time on the show. It's not true that corruption disappeared as countries became richer. Instead, it became more sophisticated. We update an earlier episode on American corruption versus Chinese corruption with a look at how Russian corruption set the stage for the war in Ukraine. That's next week. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.

We can be reached at radio at freakonomics.com. This episode was produced by Morgan Levy, and we had help this week from Jeremy Johnston. Our staff also includes Gabriel Roth, Allison Kreglow, Greg Rippin, Zach Lipinski, Ryan Kelly, Mary Deduc, Rebecca Lee Douglas, Julie Canfor, Emma Terrell, Jasmine Klinger, Eleanor Osborne, Lyric Bowditch, Jacob Clemente, and Lena Kullman. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers. All the other music was composed by Luis Guerra.

You can get the entire archive of Freakonomics Radio, 499 episodes and counting, on any podcast app. If you want to read a transcript or the show notes, you can find that at Freakonomics.com. As always, thanks for listening. What do your parents think of your level of success now? I don't know. Yeah. They come to your opening, I assume? No. Do you bring them there later to look at the pieces on the wall?

Well, yes. They came the other day and I felt like a weird teenager. So probably won't do it again. The Freakonomics Radio Network the hidden side of everything Stitcher