Planet Money - Our Valentines 2022

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

We profess our love for our curiosities, obsessions, and the things we wish we'd thought of first. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Planet Money from NPR. Alexei? Amanda, does your husband know where you are right now? Only sort of. Yeah, he knows I've left the house. The other day, I called up my colleague Amanda Aronchik as she was in the middle of a very important mission. colleague Amanda Aronchik as she was in the middle of a very important mission.

I would call it like a mission of love. It's a mission of love is what this is. Amanda had just schlepped her way across Brooklyn, taken the subway, and then walked some 15 blocks through the freezing rain with a handful of white tulips in hand. How are you feeling right now? How am I feeling? I'm feeling a little nervous. People don't always like surprises. But this is what Valentine's Day is for, right? Love, surprises, flowers, that kind of thing. You have to be bold when it comes to love. Okay, I'm going to be brave and I'm going to be bold for Planet Money Valentine's Day episode. Okay, wish me luck. Good luck. Hello and welcome to Planet Money.

I'm Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. It is Valentine's season. And as longtime listeners will know, here on the show, we have made it our annual tradition to say yes to love. To gather up all the things out there in the world that inspire our affection or jealousy or admiration and bear our deepest feelings. Sometimes the thing we love is a piece of amazing journalism or a delightfully wonky

economic concept. Or in the case of Amanda Aranchik this year, it's Baljecaja, a kind of Brazilian cheese bread. Because this cheesy bread has been Amanda's beacon over the last few months. A delicious glint of light cutting through the dreary fog of another pandemic winter. And that is why Amanda found herself with a fistful of tulips, explaining our show to a server at Santo Brooklyn, the restaurant that makes her favorite delicacy. Okay, so my name's Amanda. I work for an NPR show called Planet Money.

It's Planet Money. Got it. And we do a Valentine's Day show where we profess our love for something. And I am professing my love to this restaurant. And the love is also for the cheese bread. Oh my god! I brought you guys these flowers. Oh my god, that is so cute!

I love tulips. It's not for me, but I still love tulips. Today on the show, declarations of love, meet cutes, and true bromance. Hey, Alexi. Kenny Malone. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day, Alexi. I have a Valentine I'm very passionate about this year.

It is an economics paper. Would you like to hear about it? I'm excited to hear it. What are we talking? Well, it's not just any economics paper. This is the microeconomics paper of the year last year, according to the American Economic Journal. Ooh, fancy. It is very fancy. And the reason I love it is because the author found this wonderfully clever way to test a big economic theory that I feel like we take for granted, which is when retailers are forced to compete on a transparent and open marketplace, when all the information is out there, that it's better for consumers and prices should come down.

Okay. I'm interested. Go on. Okay. So this is, let me walk you through this. We're going to start first before we get to the paper with a screen share. I'm going to show you this website. Can you see my screen okay? Are you seeing? Okay, yes. Can you tell what we're looking at, like just generally?

It's kind of like lo-fi, clunky government website. Is that right? That is right. Yeah? Yes. I'm looking here. It looks like, are these gas stations? I see Shell. Yeah, yeah,. Looks like, are these gas stations? I see Shell.

Yeah. So, okay. Yeah. What you are looking at is an official website run by the Chilean government, because by law, if you are a Chilean gas station and you want to change your gas price, you have to log onto this very website and tell the world what your new gas price is. That is a rule. I think I've heard of like crowdsourced versions of this app. Yes, but crowdsource schmoudsmore, Selexi. This is legally enforced gas price posting. And so it is like a very good data set to test out what happens when suddenly everybody has price information. Right. So remember, the big economic theory that we're like looking at says that here is what should happen once all that price information is out there. People who want to buy gas will look at all of these prices for the stations nearby them, and then they will go to the place with the cheapest gas, which means that the other gas stations nearby will also need to lower their price if they want to have their own customers. More price information empowers customers and it forces the gas stations to compete with each other. That's exactly right. And what I love about this paper is that it adds a beautiful twist into that general theory. Ooh. Ooh, indeed, Alexi. Ooh, indeed. Okay. So the author of this paper got a hold of another data set that let them look like geographically at whether people did or didn't search for gas prices.

You know, did people go and actually do comparisons? Like that's what they were able to check. Okay. And what they found was that when customers checked online gas prices a lot, yeah, like gas stations appeared to compete on price. Gas prices stayed relatively low. Like the theory generally held. Makes sense. However, in places where people did not use that gas price information, where they didn't go searching for it often, the exact opposite happened. Gas stations charged relatively more money. They made more money. And this is like the most wonderful twist of it all. Do you want to guess why that was happening, Alexi? Are the gas station owners like using the same price data to collude in some like they called each other up and like, hey, everybody, let's set our price. They didn't have to do that because everyone's price was out there. And so in these cases where the customers weren't searching for gas prices, the gas station owners could like kind of ask like, hey, wait a second.

Everybody around me is charging more. Can I get away with charging more? And if the customers aren't going to punish them for charging more, then like, yeah, they can charge more. And they did charge more. Right. Okay. So is our big takeaway here that information is powerful, but that it maybe has some unintended consequences or something? The reason that I want to give this paper my valentine is because it puts like a big asterisk next to this price and information theory. It says like, yes, knowing prices is incredibly powerful for consumers. But if consumers for some reason cannot or do not use that price information, it can and will be used against them by the retailers. All right, Kenny Malone, thank you for the valentine. It is my pleasure. And by the way, the name of this paper is Who Benefits from Information Disclosure, the Case of Retail Gasoline by Professor Fernando Lucco

at Texas A&M University. Thanks, Kenny. No, thank you, Alexi. And thank you, Professor Lucco. Happy Valentine's Day. Waylon Wong, happy Valentine's Day. Thanks for coming in. Happy Valentine's Day, Alexi. I'm so excited. What do you want to give your love to this year? Okay, my Valentine goes out to this children's book that I absolutely adore.

It's called A Bargain for Francis, and it's by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban. It was published in 1970. An oldie but a goodie. An oldie but a goodie, a forever goodie. Do you know this book? I have to admit, I'm not super dialed into the children's literature world. What's this book all about? Okay, so welcome to Super Quick Storytime with children's librarian Waylon Wong. I will give you a very fast plot summary.

Sure. Okay, so this book is about a badger named Frances. She is a child. A child badger. She is a child badger. And actually everyone in the story is a badger, including Frances's friend and occasional nemesis, a badger named Thelma. Oh. And the plot, it's a little twisty.

I'm not saying it's Gone Girl, but it's a bit too complicated to summarize here. So I'll give you the very, very quick version. Thelma tricks Francis out of a tea set and Francis ends up tricking Thelma back. That's as simple as I can get the plot. It involves a scam and a tea set. Okay. a trick and then a trick back. A trick and a trick back. Normally, I would have loved to have sent this valentine to the Hobans for creating this book I love. Unfortunately, Russell Hoban died many years ago. But I did find someone who loves this book as much as I do. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The federal agency tasked with protecting consumers from scammy lending. Bingo. And specifically their Consumer Education Division, which maintains a list of books for children and families to learn about money management and other practical life skills. And I was extremely delighted to find a bargain for Francis on the list, on the top of the list. It's alphabetical. So I called them up. Laura Schlachtmeyer at the CFPB oversees the list.

How would you explain your job to a child? I help people make good decisions about their money so that they can have the things in life that they want. Children don't have money. Well, they're supposed to start saving it, according to the CFPB. And in this book, Francis the badger saves up for this tea set. Right, okay. And so Laura at the CFPB sees all kinds of life lessons like this in the book.

It's a beautiful story. It is connected to something that's very practical. Like you saved up for something. There's a real goal that you have set for yourself. And then you have to develop the relationships and solve the problems along the way. Don't trust your little badger friends. So I take a very different lesson from this book, which I think is where your mind is also going, Alexi, because I see A Bargain for Frances as being about recognizing when you are the victim of a scam and then carrying out an elaborate revenge plot against your frenemy. This is making me want to read the book more and more. Yeah, no, it's a it's a wonderful, wonderful book And I'm just so happy to see it on this CFPB list Is there a reading list that you put out for adults as well?

Actually, no Well, if you were going to put together a reading list for adults I might suggest a book called A Bargain for Francis Which I think actually speaks to adults as much as children. I agree with you. I agree with you. The book is called A Bargain for Francis by Russell Hoban. Thanks, Waylon. Thank you. After the break, we give the last of our Necco candy hearts away.

Next up, My Valentine. This one goes out to a documentarian named John Wilson. John has a TV show on HBO called How To with John Wilson that I cannot stop thinking about. So I decided to send him a valentine. So I guess that my first question is, John Wilson, will you be my valentine? Uh, absolutely.

Um, I'm so, yeah, I'm honored. Every episode of How To With John Wilson starts with a kind of practical sounding lesson, like how to split the check or how to invest in real estate. Things that often tread into economic territory. But the episodes quickly turn into these surreal, meandering, often hilarious personal essays in John's voice. So stick with me, and I'll show you how to turn every waking moment into something that's impossible to forget.

As he talks, you see a constant stream of documentary footage. Shots that John has collected as he roams New York City searching for serendipitous moments. Little snapshots that he edits together to make visual jokes that play off his narration. And there are so many bizarre found images from the show that are impossible to forget. Like there's a shot of a woman surreptitiously placing a live pigeon into her shopping bag. placing a live pigeon into her shopping bag. And another one of a guy sitting in his car waiting for a parking spot to open while also sucking on the toes of the person in the passenger seat. In maybe my favorite visual gag from the show, John is talking over a series of images of

architectural features that cities use to control animals. It starts with a shot of those little spikes that are supposed to keep pigeons off of windowsills. These things are here to stop birds. A shot of a fence around a tree. These things are here to stop dogs. A rat encountering an obstacle. These things are here to, that's for stopping rats. And finally, the punchline. But they still let the pigs go wherever they want. On that final line, John's camera is focused on a couple of police officers. And all of a sudden, a woman happens to walk right past them with a huge potbelly pig on a leash. Feels like a tiny comedic miracle. And this is why John Wilson's show is so amazing, and why I wanted to give him my Valentine. There is just moment after moment like this. To be honest, it makes me jealous. Like, when I go out reporting, I am just praying that I'll be able to record even just a little bit of this kind of serendipity. How do you manage to capture this much like weird magical stuff on tape?

uninteresting. You'll go out shooting for an entire day sometimes and you'll only get one shot. But I'm, you know, like, it's all worth it for that one shot. And I feel like the magic is out there and it's really just a numbers game. I think I was hoping John would have some sort of hack for me on how to find these amazing moments. But unfortunately, the answer is just time. So much time spent walking around with a rolling video camera. It used to take him a year to gather enough material for a 10-minute video. These days, John has that sweet HBO money and multiple crews of people working for him, extracting spontaneous magic from the world on an industrial scale. But he's also still out there all the time, filming a lot of the key footage that lands each episode.

Like, I just randomly captured this massive garbage fire. And it was a garbage can at a bus stop. And on the bus stop, there's an ad for vodka that says in big bold letters, you know, good vodka shouldn't burn while it's on fire, you know, and I was just shivering. And I was trying to keep the camera as stable as I could while I was filming it you get when it feels like you're the only person witnessing something. Right. And it's like ephemeral and might just disappear if you weren't there with your camera. it's really paralyzing to me because, you know, it's like, I know that these moments are happening all the time and I can't be everywhere all at once, but the best I can do is just be outside and just hope that something extraordinary happens. Well, John, thank you so much for taking time to talk about it. I really love the work. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. Then thank you so much for asking me. I'm just so tickled that you thought to talk to me on a show about money.

And happy Valentine's Day for all you sweethearts out there. Mary Childs. Hey. Welcome to Valentine Land. It's great to be here. Mary, who are you sending your Valentine out to this year? So this year, Alexi, I'm sending my Valentine out to a very special website. Okay. It's not Wordle, is it? No, no, it is not. It's so much more important to me. It is a local estate auction website where basically people's entire life possessions, their estates, get auctioned off to the highest bidder. And that makes it this like magical mystery land of

adventure and wonder and a little bit of voyeurism where if you can dream of an object that has ever been in human possession, at some point that object will show up on this website for you to buy. What are some of the actual things you've been looking at on the site? Well, I want to take you back to when I got into this website, like what got me hooked. There was this really nice rug store in downtown Richmond where I live, and they had like gorgeous area rugs, wool, really fancy things that I could never in my lifetime afford. And they were going out of business. So they put all of their inventory on this website.

And I lost my mind. I mean, the rugs were starting at $5. So I bid on every single rug. And I was the lead bidder on 500 rugs at one point. So obviously it's an auction. So the rugs did not stay $5. Other people were also on the website. And so, you know, luckily I did not end up with 500 rugs, but I did end up with four for an average cost of $150. Not bad. Okay. For, I will tell you,

$10,000 rugs. Okay. So the real problem is that I didn't buy more rugs. Okay, so these were your gateway rug, but what have you gotten hooked on since then? Well, I'm glad you asked. I did make a list for you of everything that I've bought on this website in the past years. I've bought a bookshelf, a framed print that I regret buying, a 15-million-year-old piece of rock. Hey. Maybe my best purchase. A Casio electronic keyboard without power cord, a painted wood storage cabinet, a Cedar Creek dulcimer, a music stand-in box, and two handcrafted canjos. That's a banjo made out of a can. A lot of stringed instruments. My husband's a musician.

So it sounds like you've got a bunch of sick deals and maybe some junk you don't really need, but that's neither here nor there. What's underneath this? Like, what's the thing that you really love about this particular auction site so much that you want to give it a valentine? I feel like this website is a really beautiful local example of the greatest gift of free markets, which is price discovery. You get to watch in real time as prices are discovered on this website, you know, what people will actually pay for an item right now. And it turns out a lot of this stuff is basically worthless. You know, there'll

be a lot of lots that go for like $2 or $5. And to me, there's something very reassuring about that. Like when we're alive, we imbue all of our possessions with all this importance and all this meaning. Oh, I couldn't possibly give it all away. It's this or that. But then at the end, it kind of turns out that your stuff, your precious stuff, is just stuff. I find that really liberating. And I think this website is a really lovely reminder of our own mortality. You can spend a whole lifetime gathering all of these things, but when it's put in the exposed glare of a regional auction site.

That's right. It's all just a pile of remotes. Lot 21. Memento Mori. Oh, remind us the name of the website again. So listen, unfortunately, I cannot share that at this time. That would create too much competition for me. Wow, that is ice cold.

I'm so sorry. I have to look out for my family, okay? It's good. Okay, sometimes you've just got to keep the things you love to yourself. That's right. Happy Valentine's Day, Mary. Thank you. And to you. Thanks. Our final Valentine today is a kind of meet-cute. It's going to take a little setup. What you need to know is that we love surprising Greg Rozalski, who writes Planet Money's newsletter.

Greg has these singular obsessions. And for our episode last year, that obsession was the economist Raj Chetty. So our colleagues brought Greg into the studio and just got him talking about why he loves Raj so much. Some people have LeBron James. Other people have Taylor Swift. I've got Beyonce. I have Raj. You have Raj. Raj is your personal Beyonce. He's my personal Beyonce. If you could meet Raj Chetty, like y'all are at the same bar, you say hi and you like buy him a beer and y'all could just chat. What would be the first thing you'd say to him? Is Raj about to come on the Zoom call right now?

Did you guys, is he going to surprise me? Raj, come on the line. Hey, Greg. Oh my God, Raj is here? No way. Get out of here. Oh my God, I love this. I'm so embarrassed.

Also, I'm so happy I'm in a closet and Raj can't see my face right now. So that was last year. And this year, when we asked Greg who, if anyone, he would consider sending his valentine to, he told us there was no way he'd ever cheat on Raj Chetty. When it comes to economists, he's a monogamist. But not too long after, he started talking about one of his other passions, extreme outdoor adventures. And he happened to bring up a different hero of his, Jimmy Chin. He's a mountain sports photographer and filmmaker who's made big documentaries with his wife, Chai Vasarely. They made Free Solo, which came out in 2018 and won the Oscar for Best Documentary. And more recently, they made The

Rescue. And so, out of our affection for Greg and our joy in surprising him, we contrived an obscure reason to get him onto a Zoom call. Uh, and I'm going. Um, okay, so first thing I was a little worried that Greg would know what we were up to the minute I mentioned Jimmy Chin. But it turns out that Greg's total love for Jimmy overrides his naturally suspicious tendencies. So when I casually dropped Jimmy's name, Greg immediately launched into a bromantic soliloquy.

I have a huge man crush on him, seriously. Because he's a legit professional athlete who made a name for himself climbing mountains and doing all this crazy stuff. He skied off of Everest. And then he starts making movies with his wife. Free Solo, The the rescue you never know like what would you if you were in just like jackson hole and you just walked into a bar

and you know you saw jimmy like what do you think the first thing you'd say to him would be i really thought that bar line would tip our hand but no i would be like a huge dork and I would fanboy and probably like humble myself. Jimmy, you can come on out now. Are you serious? What the f***? I'm sorry. What the f*** is this? Greg, happy Valentine's Day.

Oh my God. Wow. Like, Jimmy, I'm a, I think I just kind of embarrassed myself a little bit in front of you, but I'm a huge fan, obviously. No, I mean, I'm so, I'm so honored that you follow the work. I'm totally moved. I have a question for you. I mean, like how, when did you,

cause obviously you were a pro athlete, right? And like a question for you. I mean, like, how, when did you, because obviously you were a pro athlete, right? And like a very distinguished woman. Greg wasted zero time turning the whole situation not only into a fanboy session, but an interview. I got to ask you one question. He asked Jimmy what it was like to survive a massive avalanche. I only think of it as it wasn't my time. And that's the only way I can conceive of how I survived.

They talked about cave diving. Like how extraordinarily risky it is compared to, you know, normal diving, which already has its own risks. And then finally, Jimmy popped the question. If you would honor me with being a potential Valentine over your favorite mom, I don't know how tight of a race it is, but you know. No, definitely. You're my Valentine this year, Jimmy Chin. Awesome. If there is something that you love that you want us to cover, send us an email. We are planetmoney at npr.org.

We're also on all the socials media at Planet Money. Today's show was produced by Nick Fountain and Dave Blanchard. It was mastered by Isaac Rodriguez and edited by Molly Messick. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer. Shout out to producer Emma Peasley, who had the idea to surprise Greg. Greg's newsletter, in which he writes about the economics of action adventure sports and so much more, can be found at npr.org slash planetmoneynewsletter. I'm Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. This is NPR. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.

And a special thanks to our funder, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, for helping to support this podcast.