We tend to think of tragedies as a single terrible moment, rather than the result of multiple bad decisions. Can this pattern be reversed? We try — with stories about wildfires, school shootings, and love. Van Reenen is particularly interested in failure because of a puzzle that economists are trying to solve: why has there been, over the past couple decades, a decline in innovation and productivity in advanced economies like the U.K. and the U.S.?
Listen to the podcast at Freakonomics Radio.