Episode · People I (Mostly) Admire · 2024-12-07
Books mentioned on 146. Is There a Fair Way to Divide Us?
Moon Duchin is a math professor at Cornell University whose theoretical work has practical applications for voting and democracy. Why is striving for fair elections so difficult?
Other mentions in this episode (3) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing The Federalist papers
“Go back to the Federalist Papers, and you'll see the argument that these constituencies around the country are going to have so-called competing local jealousies.”
Passing Hamlet
“One of the attorneys in the case actually used the analogy: a drunken monkey can eventually type Hamlet, there's this kind of old saw about how randomly typing you'll eventually type Hamlet, but why should we outsource our redistricting to a drunken monkey?”
Own book Freakonomics
“So you're a theoretical mathematician who, because of your applied work, has gotten to see the real world in action, and at least for me, when I wrote Freakonomics and got a taste of the real world, I was really poisoned to academics after that because I found the real world to be much more fun.”