685. How to Survive the A.I. Shock

23:54Coming up after the break, how Gina Raimondo's family history influences the way she thinks about the future. This is Freakonomics Radio. I'm Stephen Dubner. We will be right back.

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26:57Like many successful people, Gina Raimondo has a lot of drive. She attributes this to her family background.

27:06Gina Raimondo:I'm from Rhode Island. That's a co-op thing about who I am. Youngest of three kids, working class Italian-American family. My grandpa was an immigrant from Italy, lived in the house with us. I spent my Sunday afternoons listening to Italian radio with him, learning how to cook. and we were just like bred to work hard, which I think is the immigrant experience. Like all the sacrifices Pop made, you will honor those sacrifices by working hard and being successful. So my dad, he worked in a Bolivar Watch factory 28 years. We had a nice, happy life growing up, never had too much, but always had enough kind of a thing.

27:46Gina Raimondo:And then he lost his job. The factory closed. How old was he? He was 56. I was a little kid. My brother and sister were just about to go to college. One was in college. Did that fundamentally change your family's fortunes? Oh, my gosh. Hugely and completely. My brother and sister are, as I just said, a little older than I am. So they, when that happened, I was a kid and they were off to college and out of the house. I grew up in a different house than they did because certainly there was way more economic insecurity. way more. And just my dad was just always grumpy. Like he felt bad. It was pride, dignity.

28:30Gina Raimondo:It was brutal. And do your kids work as hard as your father did? No, no, no. Does it concern you or do you say, well, you don't have to work that hard anymore? It concerns me. Yeah, maybe I'm just a hard ass. So you're calling your kids lazy on my air? No, I didn't go that far, But they are a little less tough and they've had an easier life. But I could imagine some people saying, well, that's wonderful. That shows that civilization and human progress are really trucking along and we should be grateful for that. But what are you missing when you don't have that work drive? I think people are genuinely happier when they have a little less and have to work hard to earn and achieve.

29:20Gina Raimondo:One thing that makes an American an American is we are strivers. We like to get ahead. We like to take risks. We're entrepreneurial. America's unique. If you walk into a restaurant, a bar, someplace, you meet somebody for the first time, you say, hi, my name's Gina, what's your name? What do you do? And everybody else in the world complains about that. Yeah, they think we're weirdos. We are our jobs, our careers. We judge ourselves. Are we worthy based on are we successful? I bet you, your friends, your family, you feel good about yourself if you have a good job and you're getting ahead. And that's why I think America is like the land of the career and the work and the worker.

29:59Gina Raimondo:And a job is way more than a paycheck. Yeah, you need the paycheck, but it's dignity, pride, purpose, identity. So do you kind of see your dad's face or think of him when you think about what's maybe going to happen if there is massive job replacement because of AI? Yes, absolutely. It's why I took the job as secretary. It's motivated so much of my career, frankly. I mean, I leaned into manufacturing so significantly as secretary because I saw how good it was for us when we had it and how bad it was when we didn't. But he always used to say, I needed a bridge to another chapter of work. He wasn't ready to end, right?

30:44Gina Raimondo:Like he wasn't 65. And by the way, they needed the money. They needed purpose and a job. Do you know where his job went? What country? China. So he was part of the early, what we now call the China shock. Is that right? Late 80s. Yeah. So with your adult reckoning now and having been in government for a long time, describe the China shock. I mean, the fact that we call it the China shock is kind of funny because it wasn't supposed to be a shock. This was, if I have it right, the Clinton administration thinking based on previous administrations interactions with China, that it was a really good idea for China to be admitted into the WTO, the World Trade Organization, and become a trading partner and a labor partner.

31:25So assess that decision and then the downstream consequences, knowing what you know now.

31:31Gina Raimondo:You know, this is a classic case of it looked good on paper and the economic theory and it didn't play out. The theory was if we draw closer to China, we'll draw them to a market economy and away from communism. and also the classic theory of trade, comparative advantages. China has comparative advantage in manufacturing, lots of cheap labor. Let them do what they're good at. The products will be cheaper. That'll help Americans. We'll buy stuff that's cheaper. Let us do what we're good at, which is services. And by the way, a lot of that happened. A lot of that did happen, yeah. China did lift millions and millions of people out of poverty through manufacturing, And America became more productive, higher wage, bigger economy, and a global juggernaut in services, software and all kinds of services.

32:28Gina Raimondo:So all of that actually worked. The problem was the unintended consequence of the millions of Americans who were just like precipitously put out of work from their manufacturing jobs. And here is the really important point that I worry a lot about with AI. There were winners, right, all the people who got a better, higher paying job in the service economy and quote unquote losers. But the losers were concentrated in particular geographies and non-college educated men. And when you hit harder, quote unquote, the losers, man, it can reverberate. You destroy communities. I mean, we're still paying for it in our messed up politics today.

33:14So you recently gave a TED Talk discussing the China shock. And in a conversation you and I had not long ago, you said, we screwed that up. Good idea. Terrible implementation. Number one, we started too late. Number two, it was massively bureaucratic. Second, number three, it's completely divorced from employers. What makes you think this time can be different? Let's assume that there is a massive job replacement due to AI or massive job loss, or at least shifting due to AI. And at this point, it is still an assumption, really. But let's assume that that is true. What makes you think that this time can be different if you're following essentially the same playbook, which is to say we will be alert, we will retrain.

33:58and we'll figure out how to redistribute these gains a little bit better. What makes you think it can work this time?

34:04Gina Raimondo:First of all, it is a big gamble, right? I'm not promising success, but I'm going to will it into existence, truly, because it has to be. But secondly, gosh, let's learn from the past. We're still a young country and celebrating 250 years. We've seen now a few of these economic transitions. Let's learn from it and make it better this time. So for example, what you just talked about, it was completely reactionary. We didn't start to think about helping communities that were hurt from Vasa manufacturing until they were already reeling, which is part of why I'm starting Raise Us now. Let's get prepared.

34:54Gina Raimondo:Second thing is, it really was like a federal government one-size-fits-all approach, which it just often doesn't work. So what was there back then? Was there federal money going to states for retraining programs? Yes. The biggest initiative was called TAA, Trade Adjustment Assistance. And it was a giant pot of federal money given out to states that were disproportionately affected by the loss of manufacturing jobs. By the way, some of it did work. OK. For example, there was wage insurance. You lose a job, you take another job at a lower salary. The government tops up your pay to get you where you were.

35:36For a period of time, not forever, I assume.

35:39Gina Raimondo:Yes, not forever, for a period of time. It works best for people who are further into their career. And the whole point of it is, don't allow yourself to be unemployed for a year or more. Get back into the workforce, even if the job isn't at the same rate of pay. Lots of data to show that was actually pretty effective in certain communities. Where we really made a mistake with TAA is that the person who lost their job had to certify to their state that they lost their job because of the trade opening up with China. Ah, how do you do that? It's so, so hard. It's so hard. So the average person was waiting for benefits for almost a year.

36:24And loads of people gave up. I know nothing about how legislation like this is made. You do, plainly. How does something like that work its way in? That sounds to me, as you describe it, kind of like a poison pill that someone put in there because they didn't want all that federal money to go out. They want to make it harder for displaced workers to get their money.

36:43Gina Raimondo:That's an interesting comment, and I hadn't ever thought of it that way. Honestly, those things are often put in there, maybe by the poison pill folks, but also maybe they like, quote unquote, good government people. Don't waste the money. You don't want people getting this money for whom it wasn't intended. And maybe to prevent fraud, if you have to certify that your actual job is now being done elsewhere. Correct. There's lots of proposals out there now saying companies need to publish all the jobs they're getting rid of because of AI. If somebody's going to lose their job because of AI, They need to tell the person they're losing their job because of AI.

37:25Gina Raimondo:Personally, I oppose all of those because it's just impossible. It just weighs programs down with bureaucracy. But here's the real point. Companies didn't do anything. The whole thing was government top-down led to help folks who lost their job. What I'm trying to do here is to go to companies, including these tech companies that are making this AI, and saying, this isn't going to work out well for you if you don't get in the boat now and help us try to find some solutions. Like, it might feel good today to have a big riff of 10 ,000 people, but that won't end well for this country or you. It remains to be seen whether we'll have any impact on the way companies implement AI.

38:19Gina Raimondo:But I just say, I lift it, right? We put our blinders on. We sent all these jobs to China. Super excited about the increased profit and efficiency. And then we rued the day we did it. The CHIPS Act. The thing that I spent so many hours getting past in the U.S. Congress, same thing, Stephen. Everyone said, oh, it's a lot cheaper to design chips in America and make them in Taiwan. Let's put our blinders on and just make everything in Taiwan. And then we wake up one day and we don't make any leading edge chips in America. And we say, oh, wow, every leading edge chip the U.S. military uses is made in Taiwan.

38:58Gina Raimondo:Holy cow. So we spent hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to reshore the industry. It happens every time. How stupid can we be? Just put your blinders on and focus on the efficiency and the productivity. So I'm saying to these companies, come on, let's get ahead of it and be part of the solution and have an intentional transition. Let's talk a little bit more about the CHIPS Act, which you really helped create and shepherd and implement when you were Commerce Secretary under President Biden. I gather that the CHIPS Act is a fundamental precursor to raise us in the conversation we're having today.

39:39Is that right? Yes. It was bipartisan, for one.

39:42Gina Raimondo:Yes. Talk to me a little bit about what you feel it's accomplished and especially what you feel it's accomplished even during the second Trump administration. My sense is that because it benefits a lot of manufacturers in Republican states, there are very few, if any, Republicans that I've seen in Congress who are interested in taking chips down, correct? They have continued to implement chips essentially on the same course as we had it, for which I'm grateful. And I think it's a national security imperative. Also, you made a really important point. It was bipartisan. We work really hard to have a lot of Republican votes.

40:21Gina Raimondo:And I did that intentionally because even though I'm gone and the president's gone, all the Republicans that are still in Congress, it's their baby, too. So they're still there pushing on it. But was the underlying Republican sentiment in favor because there would be jobs and factories and firms in their states or was it more open than that? It was much, much more about national security. Some of the biggest, most vocal, like Roger Wicker, who's from Mississippi, was hugely supportive of it. He's the chair of the Armed Services Committee. There's not a chip factory in Mississippi. I don't think there will be.

40:58Gina Raimondo:But he's like, listen, the United States, this is scary if we have to rely upon Taiwan for all our chips. You were essentially the chief or at least a chief dealmaker in this. You were going to negotiate with these semiconductor firms like Intel and TSMC and Micron and so on, yeah? I did, yeah. Can you just describe that? It sounds fascinating and important. And I'm just curious what those conversations were like. Was it an easy sell or no? It was not. I'm laughing because the bill passed. Everyone in the industry was euphoric because they knew they were going to get money. But when I sat down and said, okay, what do we have to accomplish with this amount of money?

41:38Gina Raimondo:We wanted to make a certain amount of chips in America, a certain amount of memory chips, yada, yada. We realized, ooh, it's actually not that much money. So every company came in with their ask. TSMC made an ask. We need this many billions, Micron, all of them. And I told all of them, like, guys, you'll be lucky to get half of that. The implication being that you need to then pony up the rest to build the factory here and employ our people. Correct. Exactly. So the first meeting was always a little rough. And what kind of leverage did you have if they just said, ooh, that sounds like a lot of trouble and a lot of money.

42:14No, thank you. I had that problem, especially with TSMC.

42:19Gina Raimondo:TSMC is an extraordinary company. It's an unbelievably well-run, efficient company, best in the world at what they do. And they would say, like, Secretary Gina, I mean, we're happy in Taiwan. We've got dozens of factories. We know what we're doing. And by the way, the PRC would probably rather us stay there, correct? Oh, my God, of course. And actually, maybe even the Taiwanese government because... Leverage against China? Yeah, if you think about it, it's leverage, it's the economy. They call it the silicon shield in Taipei because China needs it just as much as the rest of the world. So it's pretty good bet China will never blow that up.

42:59So what did you do? Did you just tell them your dad's bull of a story and they somehow were won over?

43:03Gina Raimondo:Never underestimate just sheer determination, willpower, sticking with the problem. But the real unlock was that I was able to get the biggest customers of TSMC, which were American companies, Apple, NVIDIA. I think between Apple and NVIDIA, that's like more than 30 % of TSMC's revenue. And they did it. You know, Jensen, the CEO of NVIDIA. Jensen Wang. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD. All TSMC's biggest customers leaned on TSMC, frankly, to say, we're too vulnerable if all of our chips come from the same factory in Taiwan. We need you to manufacture in America.

43:59Tim Cook, as you may know, recently completed his term as CEO of Apple. His successor, John Ternus, took over on September 1st. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. And we finish up our conversation with Gina Raimondo right after this break.

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46:34Raise Us, the new operation that Gina Raimondo is running, will have its initial rollout in four states, Utah, Maryland, Arkansas and Connecticut. For those of you keeping score at home, which seems to be everyone these days, two of those are red states and two are blue. One goal of Raise Us is a reform of job training. Raimondo and I spoke about job training back in 2018, the first time she was on Freakonomics Radio. It's episode 313. If you want to listen, it's called How to Be a Modern Democrat and Win. At the time, she was governor of Rhode Island.

47:09Gina Raimondo:I would talk to guys in the building trades who had been out of work for years, losing their houses, losing their marriages. So I said, we have to completely turn upside down the way we do workforce development. We had a model, which I often refer to as train and pray. Train people and pray they get a job. And it turns out that's not effective. So now I asked Raimondo, with train and pray off the table, what will success look like for Raise Us? Success is a couple of years from now, we are judged by one thing. Do people get jobs, keep jobs, and transition more quickly from one job to another if they get laid off?

47:48Gina Raimondo:Two years from now, we'll have an apprenticeship program. We'll have some changes in unemployment insurance. We'll have this year of service. Like, is it working? We spoke with Raj Chetty, the Harvard economist, who I believe is on your advisory board as well. And he raised a point that in order to measure this success well, you have to figure out your time horizon for one. What kind of data infrastructure would you need, whether it's from firms or elsewhere? You need access to earning records and so on. So today, for example, we had a meeting working with some employers asking that question. In other words, what would it take for you to redeploy these people instead of lay them off?

48:30Gina Raimondo:And what are the jobs that they could go into? And how much of an incentive do you need? These are the discussions that we're going through right now. We have a data lab of folks who are going to work with us to collect the data. Raj Shetty is like the best in the world at this. I mean, he's a top flight academic. I'm a little bit more simple minded. Some of it can be dollars in, jobs out. Like when I was governor, we spent$5 ,000 of the state's money per person to get them a job through a training program. So if you take someone who's unemployed and get them a job reliably, that's a win. You talked about the AI firms in particular having an interest for a variety of reasons.

49:16I wonder how you think about whether employers have a moral obligation to protect workers going forward. My sense is that we believe the government does have a moral obligation to protect its citizens, including employees and so on. But when you think about the leverage that employers now have in the economy, we mentioned earlier that shareholder profits are at an all-time high. How do you think about that question, the moral obligation of a firm to protect workers, at least to think about them as, you know, maybe workers first, but also citizens second?

49:53Gina Raimondo:Something's happened in the past 50 years in this country where shareholder value has become singularly important and focused on. The whole industry of asset management certainly didn't exist the way it does now 50 years ago. I do think employers have an obligation to their employees to be a good employer as well as to their customers and their shareholders. You know, often I hear CEOs say, well, if I take my company hat off and put my America hat on, I would do X, Y, Z. And I understand that. You know, they're running a company. They're not running the country for sure. And they fundamentally have to have an efficient, profitable company.

50:42Gina Raimondo:I think that we'd be a much stronger country if CEOs led more on these critical issues. A lot of them want to, but they're afraid to. Politics today is the worst, and I have some sympathy for that. How do you feel about quarterly earnings reports? I read that the SEC is proposing stepping way back on the requirement for quarterlies. Yeah, they are, which I think is a great idea. We've become too obsessed with it. And no CEO I know likes these quarterly earnings. They don't like having to be slavishly focused on their share price. It makes it hard for them to make long-term decisions and long-term investments.

51:24Gina Raimondo:Listen, we're in such a precarious place as a country. The political violence and dysfunction that we face, Congress can't solve a damn problem. They don't function. We can't put out a budget. We're a global embarrassment on so many topics. I think if you're a CEO, you are an American, you have children, you care about the future. By the way, why are our companies so successful? because we have rule of law, democracy, a court system, free-flowing capital markets. None of these companies would be successful as they are without those things. And how do you think all those things, those foundational attributes of our dynamic economy, how do you think they're doing under the second Trump administration?

52:15Gina Raimondo:Strained, like very strained. We have to get back into the business of realizing that having good infrastructure, a good rule-based democracy, sensible politics is good for everyone. What's sensible politics look like? And let's even take a pretty big step back because I'm curious to know what you think of our electoral system generally, changes that you'd like to see. And, you know, I think the problems that I've heard you talk about before, I think we'd agree on that the primary system leads to extremism from both parties and there are litmus tests that are kind of unrealistic and gerrymandering.

52:55I know we've talked about as a big problem, but I'm curious whether you think the electoral system is both stable and working.

53:03Gina Raimondo:Listen, nothing is perfect. But even in the time I've been in politics, like not very long, I got in in 2010. Wasn't perfect then. The primary was the same thing that you just said. There was too much money in politics. Your first race was for treasurer of Rhode Island. Yes, treasurer of Rhode Island. And you won your first time? I did. You've never lost an election, have you? No, I never have. I've had really hard elections every time, but I've been lucky not to lose. But here I ran. This is not that long ago. There was a vibrant local press corps. I did pension reform. I think I had six reporters crawling all over me every day.

53:44Gina Raimondo:That's gone. It's not just gone in Rhode Island. It's gone everywhere. There's not really much local press anymore. And therefore, accountability in government is a different issue. Correct. Accountability, a news source that's fact-based about your community that the average person can read and trust. When we were doing pension reform, every Rhode Islander had an opinion. They knew what was going on. It was on every radio, every television, every Providence Journal. That's all pretty much gone now. What would need to happen for you to run for president in 2028? And if you did run, what would need to happen for you to win?

54:24Gina Raimondo:Well, I would have to be somewhat convinced that there were a path to victory for someone like me. Someone like me meaning what? You know, practical, have made a lot of tough decisions, a record as a bipartisan. Like, I'm a person of compromise and problem solving. The algorithm doesn't like that at all. Yeah, the algorithm hates that. And you know what the irony is, Stephen? To raise the money you need to raise, you have to do a lot of it online, obviously, in small dollar. And, you know, that was thought to be better to raise loads of money in tiny increments. And it is. That was the Obama model.

55:03It worked really well.

55:04Gina Raimondo:Exactly. The Obama model. And by the way, that is exciting and preferable to some high roller writing a big check. But here's the dirty secret. The way to raise the money online is to be more and more outrageous, more and more against compromise. And it unfortunately hardens people's positions in a way that I think makes it good for today's elections in a primary and very hard to govern. Let's go back to Raise Us in the little bit of time we've got left. One critique I've heard is that it's not really a jobs plan, but more like a reputational buyout for building future data centers. The financial journalist John Markman wrote, the$500 million that you've raised is not an apology for jobs already lost.

55:53It is a down payment on the political permission to keep building. What do you think of that critique?

55:58Gina Raimondo:I think it's silly. If we accomplish nothing, then okay, maybe that's fair. I don't think any of these data center companies think that giving us 20 million bucks is going to get rid of all the challenges they're having in local communities with data centers. So I don't think that that's why they're doing it, actually. I think they're doing it because this is going to be a problem for the country if you don't get it right and they want to be part of a solution and we want them because we can't figure it out without them. But I do want to say this. It would be a bad thing for the country if we over-regulated AI and lost ground in the global AI competition.

56:39Gina Raimondo:It would be a bad thing if Congress woke up tomorrow and said, no more data centers in America. Like, you can't put the toothpaste back in the bottle. AI is the next frontier of technology. Either we're going to lead the world or somebody else will. I mean, I want my kids to grow up in a world with AI, with the benefits of AI. We just have to cushion the downside in the transition, like we talked about, from here to an AI economy. But I don't think it's a win to kill data centers. So your plan with Raise Us is compared to some other plans in response to AI. Yours is extremely mild compared to some.

57:22There's one policy proposal from Bernie Sanders, which was, I think, to essentially confiscate half the stock value of big AI firms and put it into a public fund.

57:31Gina Raimondo:OK, so first of all, that's not very much money. Wait, you're saying that half the stock value of the top AI firms is not very much money? I mean, today, they're worth a lot. We'll see where that goes. Who's an AI company? We're just going to go after two companies? How are we defining an AI company? I mean, is it just going to be anthropic and open AI? Are we also going to go after Google? It's an impossible thing to implement. But also, why just them? This is another thing. Okay, so OpenAI would just pick on one company for a second, or Google, whatever. XYZ company invents a technology, and then they sell it to 50 U.S.

58:10Gina Raimondo:firms, and those U.S. firms implement it in such a way that they fire half their employees. Well, doesn't seem to me that Google or OpenAI is purely to blame there. My whole point with Raise Us is it's in everyone's interest for the United States to lead the global AI competition. I have one thing I want to put on your radar, which you may or may not find interesting, but it goes to your question of my wildest dreams. Capitalism and democracy have proven to be wonderful forces to allow for individual liberty, creativity, and prosperity. It's like the Reese's peanut butter cups of - Deliciousness.

58:54Economic systems, yes.

58:55Gina Raimondo:And it works. Right now, the way capitalism is playing out in this country is causing a lot of people so much economic insecurity and anxiety that they're saying, what's wrong with socialism? So I'll ask you, what's wrong with socialism? Well, it hasn't worked anywhere. It'll take away our freedom. It'll take away our liberty. It'll take away our creativity. I mean, it's not a place where I want to live. I want to live in a place where anybody, any immigrant, anybody can have a good idea, get well educated, take some risk, and be successful. So I fall in the camp of make some changes to capitalism to save capitalism.

59:43Gina Raimondo:One of the things that I think has to happen is, like you said, more business leadership. You don't have to take your business hat off to do something that's good for the country, because something that's good for the country is going to be ultimately good for your business. The model that I'm using for Rezos was something that was created in the 1940s. It's called the Committee for Economic Development. It was created as the Second World War was winding down, and businessmen, they were all men, were very worried that as we transitioned to a peacetime economy from a wartime economy, and millions of GIs were coming home, and there were more GIs than jobs, that we were going to have a high recession.

1:00:29Gina Raimondo:So a group of businessmen, CEOs of Studebaker, Goldman Sachs, etc., got together and said, we're not going to let that happen. It was entirely private sector driven. They created like 10 ,000 or more local committees and communities all over America. they leaned on companies to create more jobs and they helped them figure out how to create more jobs and their theory was having money in the pockets of the average american helps business they had just gotten through the great depression and they didn't think the country could handle another great depression so they had what i'll call a planned intentional transition to a peacetime economy.

1:01:15Gina Raimondo:And it kind of worked. Yeah, kind of worked. So this is what I think we need now. Interesting. This was literally partnership or at least an association of firms trying to figure out how to grow the pie. Yeah, correct, correct, correct. Some of the examples are so interesting. They would purchase an abandoned manufacturing facility and use it as an incubator for startup manufacturing companies. They would look at the business plan of a local company and help it figure out how to find some growth so they would add employees. This is why I think we need these AI companies at the table. These people are smart enough to create these models.

1:01:55Gina Raimondo:They have to help us figure out how to use these models for growth. And it will feel better if it's collaborative versus forced, I assume is the idea. Completely. It's always so fun to talk to you. If we didn't love to elect politicians in this country who shout and tell crazy stories and pound their chests all the time, I'd say you'd have a great chance at winning something big like president. So who knows? I'll write you a letter of recommendation if you ever need it. Oh, could you please? I'm going to need a few hundred million copies.

1:02:32That again was Gina Raimondo. My thanks to her. Thanks also to some friends of the show who helped us prepare for this conversation, including Michael Strain, Raj Chetty, Claudia Golden, Kyla Scanlon, and Scott Lincecum. And you remember those questions I asked at the top of this episode? Well, I would love to hear what you think about the future of AI and your work. Our email is radio at Freakonomics.com. Also, it has come to my attention that many of you who listen to Freakonomics Radio have never read Freakonomics, which is fine, even awesome. But in case you are curious, we recently published a 20th anniversary edition of Freakonomics with a new forward, and you can get it wherever you get your books.

1:03:15Meanwhile, coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio, at the start of every NFL season, I find myself asking the same question. How can it be in this age of advanced analytics that it's still so hard to predict which college quarterbacks will thrive in the NFL and which ones will fail? Listen, quarterback evaluation is probably one of the most studied and still most uncertain problems in all of professional sport. In trying to answer this question, I spoke with a Hall of Fame quarterback, a professional scout, a pioneering sports psychologist, and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who wants to fundamentally change how athletic potential is evaluated.

1:03:53I also took a special kind of IQ test. Each time you touch a box, it will change to look like another one of the possible shapes below. Oh, man. No way. Is that what it's supposed to do? To begin. Good luck.

1:04:33and mixed by Jake Loomis with help from Jeremy Johnston. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Dalvin Abouaji, Eleanor Osborne, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Ilaria Montenacourt, Pete Madden, and Tao Jacobs. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening. Let me say a quick thing, and then... You can say a long thing. You're a governor, dammit.

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