I'm interviewing famous economist Tyler Cowen so I wanted to brush up on a few economic concepts. I studied economics in high school and at university, but a lot of the textbook stuff seemed a little crusty and irrelevant. Thankfully, I've read some great books that have taken the concepts from the classroom and applied them to the real world.

In this episode, I look at incentives, and specifically the difference between monetary incentives and non-monetary incentives. Drawing from three great economics books on this topic, I've pulled together the best ideas and stories from:

• Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely (where he differentiates "social norms" from "market norms")
• Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner (where they differentiate "moral incentives" from "economic incentives"
• Discover Your Inner Economist, by Tyler Cowen (where he explain the "dirty dishes" parable and the "car salesperson" parable).

Then I tie them together and apply these to some other real world scenarios - how you can think about applying incentives to housework, business, management, and dating.