Curious conversation
Another book! Another Russ Roberts interview on Econtalk! But this time a bit lighter: author A.J. Jacobs talked about his book, The Puzzler, including these remarks on games with language and—stand well back, commenters—the joy of puns.
The interview is from June of last year. It is cheerful, and as with puzzles, may induce some existential questioning, but not in an unhappy fashion. The full video version of the discussion is here. The audio podcast version is here.
Scanning the reviews on Goodreads, it seems that Jacobs’s book was well received, but that it does not make for a good audiobook or Kindle ebook—in both cases due to limited illustrations that permit greater reader engagement. Otherwise, it seems to appeal very much to those of us who can become engrossed all sorts of puzzles.
A few years ago, Russ Roberts changed the motto for Econtalk to “Conversations for the Curious,” which is itself quite a wonderful ambition. The podcast has been around for a long time, with archives going all the way back to 2006. The early years were very much about economics and had a definite radical free-market flavor. It has since ranged far and wide into other social sciences, the natural sciences, philosophy, literature, and art.
I’ll probably come back to the podcast from time to time, because it tends to delve into topics that—to me, at least—are deeper and more profound, ideas and theories presented by guests who are engaging. The conversations are less about the latest news and political combat, and more about medium- to long-term perspectives.
Here is the homepage for Econtalk.
I believe I met Russ Roberts some time ago when I was a staffer at a think tank for a few years. I didn't know he had a podcast. I think I'd better put this on my "check it out" list, even though I'm hard pressed to keep up with podcasts from The Dispatch.
Re Conversations of the Curious clip. I never bought the saying, "puns are the lowest form of humor." I think he is saying what I've thought all along, perhaps it is the highest. It does require looking at and hearing and thinking about words in many ways and I think the most creative are the spontaneous ones. Of course, spontaneity lowers the success rate but better that than time spent to conjure up a story line to get to a pun. Well, that is always how I've seen it. Damn, I wrote that somewhat seriously! Time to move on.