Pod Paper Scissors

When your interaction with another person has an end date, like moving out of a shared apartment, do you still do the dishes? In this episode we talk about repeated prisoner's dilemmas when and end is in sight, and how things fall apart.

The real world is full of "repeated prisoners' dilemmas" in which we face the same situations over and over with the same people. In this episode we discuss the optimal solutions, going all the way back to a contest that required people to mail in computer code.

Buying a house isn't as straightforward as offering a price. Contracts are malleable, and buyer and seller are also negotiating who will bear the risks. Learn how game theory underlies this process.

We discuss a different kind of auction: the second price auction. It resolves many of the problems of the usual auctions, but the game is played a little differently.

Sometimes winners feel like losers. In this episode we talk about auctions, including the concept of the winner's curse and Memorial Day sales.

Why does money have value? Why did every child want a Furby for one holiday season? On this episode, we explore how people's preferences are shaped by what they think other people want.

Journalist and author Elizabeth Becker is our guest as we contemplate how to use game theory to think about travel.

In the Before Times (and in the Future Times), there were a lot of different kinds of travel experiences you could choose, and the ones you went for might have said a lot about your "crowding type." Plus, listen to our new shanty "Tweedom by the Sea."

After a musical interlude about data loss, we invite Kevin Zollman back to discuss evolutionary game theory and delve into the origins of altruism.

We all send signals to other people to present ourselves in certain ways -- the clothes we wear, the drinks we order, the concert seats we book (in pre-COVID times). Animals do it too. Learn how game theory can help us understand how humans and animals communicate in this episode, the first of a two-part series about evolutionary game theory.