The Economics Show: What economics gets wrong about human behaviour, with Richard Thaler

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Economists like to model people as rational creatures who make self-interested decisions. But humans don’t act that way. Why do investors, politicians and ordinary people act against their best interests – and how can they be nudged into making better decisions? To find out, FT economics commentator Chris Giles speaks to Richard Thaler, the founding father of behavioural economics. Thaler is a professor at the University of Chicago who won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on how humans make (often irrational) decisions. This is a repeat of an episode published on The Economics Show, a sister podcast of Behind the Money, on November 7, 2025. Subscribe to The Economics Show on…