How to Run an Institution in an Anti-Institution Era | Better in Person

Meeting the institution directors

0:00This episode of Better in Person is presented by ChatGPT. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today.

0:12Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner, and this is a bonus episode called How to Run an Institution in an Anti-Institution Era. It comes from our new TV talk show, Better in Person. The guests are Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum, and Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University. To watch this episode or to watch any episode of Better in Person, go to the Freakonomics YouTube channel or search for Better in Person on Apple Podcasts. As always, thanks for listening.

0:48I think most people would be surprised to know that I play in a geezer rock band. I just love it. That is not surprising.

1:01This is Better in Person with Stephen Dubner and Anne Pasternak and Michael Roth. What's it like to run an institution in a time when trust in institutions is at an all-time low? Anne Pasternak and Michael Roth have some thoughts. Anne is director of the Brooklyn Museum. Before that, she ran Creative Time, a provocative public arts group here in New York City. If you've ever seen the annual Tribute in Light Memorial dedicated to the lives lost on September 11th, that was Anne

1:32Pasternak's idea. And Michael Roth is the president of Wesleyan University. His geezer rock band, by the way, is called the Smokin' Lilies. He's better known as one of the most outspoken university presidents in the U.S., eager to talk about the political, financial, and cultural pressures that universities are facing. So, I thought it might be a good time to get these two together. First of all, thank you for being here. Have you two met before? No. Yeah. First time. How was it? It was great. It was kind of, I was a little shaky. I was afraid he was going to touch me.

2:10Well, it was very hard for him because I love-bombed him immediately. You love-bombed him how? I love-bombed him because I follow his very moral voice, you know, in the papers, the opinion pieces he writes for the Times or wherever else, his letters out to the Wesleyan community. I often share it with my leadership team. I share his writing with my board. Wait, you read his letters to the Wesleyan community. Are you part of the Wesleyan community yourself? No, but these things have a way of getting around. How would you describe his moral voice? Very clear, very principled, courageous, humility. There's a lot of humility. But also, he knows

2:47who he is, and he's not hiding behind some fashionable way of, you know, being. Do you feel that's accurate? It seems too generous to me. Yeah, yeah. And it's funny, the principle part, because I've adopted an approach for most of my adult life of, like, principles are bad. Pragmatism is right. And yet, often people say, you know,

3:18you're sticking by your principles. And how I see it is I'm sticking by the things I said I believed in. Like, you shouldn't discriminate against people, that you should have more diversity, that belonging is a good thing. Like, everybody, any museum director, any university college president would have said that before. And in the last eight months, they seem to have forgotten what they said they believed in, in many cases.

Running the Brooklyn Museum

3:41Tell me a little bit about what it's like to be running an institution like yours right now. I think I read in an interview that you said something to the effect of feeling some days like a punching bag. Something like that? It's possible. Yeah. Sometimes it feels that way, but mostly it feels joyous. You know, it feels, in a moment of such social upheaval and divisiveness, purposeful to be able to contribute to the public dialogue and to model our beliefs.

4:11What are people coming to you for? When you think about what the Brooklyn Museum is for, in your mind, and how do you provide that? I think people are looking at the Brooklyn Museum as a place that really models what its values are. So, for example, we talk about inclusion, but we don't just talk about it. We model it. We're not erasing truths. We're confronting uncomfortable truths, but they're also places of joy. So, I think people are looking to the Brooklyn Museum maybe as a place of reality.

4:43Reality would seem to be the opposite of escape from reality, I guess. Yeah. But, you know, I'll be honest with you. When I'm in an environment like that, I am escaping from reality. I'm not going to deny it, or I'm at least traveling to a different one. I would think a museum serves that purpose, too, to some degree. Absolutely. And we can be many things, right, where those rare places with people of all backgrounds can come together and have an experience that's meaningful to them. If you want to make art, you can make art in the museum.

5:15If you want to dance and sing, you can dance and sing in the museum. If you want to have a solitary experience and dive into an artwork on your own and look deeply, you can do that. Brooklyn Museum is what's called an encyclopedic museum, is that right? How is that defined, just for kids? You know, none of us are really, truly encyclopedic. But the point is that we have collections representing people from all over the world. Yeah. All different times as well. Absolutely. We represent 5,500 years of human creativity. So is New York City one of the few or only cities with two encyclopedic?

5:48Because there is a place called the Metropolitan Museum over there. The what? I've not heard of it either. But apparently on the east side of Manhattan.

6:01It's very rare. It is very rare. And what is your relationship with the museum that shall not be named anymore? No, I love the Metropolitan Museum. It's one of my happy places. I'm probably there close to three or four times a month. Oh, you're kidding. No, no, no. Why? Because I love it. So I have meetings there. I go to see, you know, events and all sorts of things. They're new shows. And I know that collection pretty well. Michael, which museum do you prefer, Brooklyn or the Met? Brooklyn Museum.

6:32I'm sorry. Good job. And I think it's a reflection of its community. And that means that people find in it all kinds of things that they go to the public square to find. I mean, it's such an important resource now because in a time when the government is encroaching on all aspects of our private lives, to have an environment like a museum, which is constructed to keep out certain stimuli and to let in lots of other stimuli,

7:06it is just the phrase happy places is so important. And you can go there to have a good cry. And it's especially when you're from Brooklyn or from New York, it's your public space.

The purpose of a university

7:18When I think of Wesleyan or when one thinks of Wesleyan, what's it for? I mean, I think the purpose and the reality of the modern university is a really interesting question a lot of people are shouting about, with good reason because it's become really complicated and I think exclusive to many, too expensive for many, et cetera. I think a lot of people see it as a resume building factory now, which is unfortunate. It is not a resume building factory, that's for sure.

7:50Wesleyan is a place where students can practice freedom while they're creating something new and discovering who they are. Okay. And that manifests in so many different ways from someone who discovers they really like physics and computer science to someone who discovers that they really want to try to be a football player and sing in a musical and do physics. And that Wesleyan is—

8:21You're describing a couple of your most famous alum by chance. Lin-Manuel Miranda was not bad at musicals and Bill Belichick went to Wesleyan, too. That's true. That's true. So there's this combination of rigor and freedom that is quite astonishing. And I always say it's not for everybody. I mean, if you want to build a resume, go to Williams. But you can cut that out. Or not. But if you want to experiment and with the expectation that the thing you experiment with might produce something really extraordinary.

8:59Yeah. I'm curious to know how much time each of you spend fundraising. I'm guessing for a university president, it's quite a good bit, yes? Not enough. Not enough. What share of your billable hours are fundraising? It's really hard to tell. I'm actually doing this because I hope it'll help me raise money. And I like asking people for money. You like it. I do. You do? I do because it took a while. I think Anne's about to ask you if you will ask on her behalf for the Brooklyn Museum. I do because I think we have very generous supporters.

9:33And I give them an option so they don't have to use their resources frivolously. They can dedicate them to higher education, which is a great – I'm giving them a great opportunity, as we say, in fundraising. And I really believe that we would be a better school if we were able to provide more financial aid to more people. We meet full need, but there are people who can't meet their needs, so we can't accept them. I've read your tuition, your list price is something like $76,000 a year.

10:03Is that possible? It is. It's actually higher than that. It depends on what you include, if you count room and board. But at about 40-some odd percent of people don't pay that, and about half of that, 40 percent pay almost nothing. So what's median paid tuition then? Do you have any idea? 25, somewhere like that? $25,000 maybe? Yeah, I think it's 42 percent of our students run financial aid, and the average grant for those students is over $60,000. But 60 percent, or almost 60 percent, pay full fare.

10:34And almost all the time, if that happens, I will try to find my way into their living room and ask them, would you give money so someone else can go to Wesleyan? Got it. I'm so glad I didn't go to Wesleyan, because you're in my living room now. I'd be stuck. So I love what you both do. I love the university life. I love museums. I love everything they stand for. I love the stuff that's collected there. I love the kind of people who want to work there, who want to teach there, who want to go there.

11:04But that's not the way the world necessarily sees either universities or museums right now. They see them as big, arthritic institutions that have had too much say in the way that the culture has been driven. At least that's according to some of the complaints. So I really want to hear what it's been like for you guys to be under, I don't know if under attack is too strong a phrase, but maybe for universities not. But I want to know where things stand right now. So, Anne, you first.

11:34Well, I'm not sure I agree with your characterization, actually. I think the recent surveys tell us that actually people have a great deal of trust and belief that museums are among the most trusted public institutions, actually. So I think we're dealing with a fringe that tends to be inside our community, you know, of artists and critics who have been most critical of our institutions. And what are their major critiques? Well, a lot of the major critiques are correct, that, you know, we have upheld white supremacy and those narratives for a very long time, that we're not as deeply connected to community as we should be.

12:13And when I say we, I mean as a field. And that the pay for museum workers and cultural workers in general has not been great. So it means that you perpetuate a cycle of only those people who can afford to work in the museum. We've done a tremendous amount of work on wage equity within the institution. But, you know, we've also been dealing with outside forces of inflation, of, you know, benefits. Benefits are growing 24 percent this year alone. Right. So. And you don't have the endowment he has, do you?

12:45I don't know. How big is your endowment?

12:48Do tell. I don't think I should say on the first date.

12:52Everybody has a bigger endowment than us. Well, right. Yours is, you're like 50th in the country for universities, somewhere in there, right? I believe you if you say that. What's 1.6 billion? 1.6 billion. Oh, okay, yes. It's much bigger than ours. 1.6 billion. Yeah. Okay. And yours is? Over 200 million. Oh, okay. So. So it's one of the smallest endowments of a major museum, if not the smallest in the country. Right. But. And we're also pay what you wish. So more than half of our audiences don't pay anything to come to the museum. I always joke that we have the worst business model and we're proud of it.

13:26Because it creates all this diversity within the institution, economic diversity, gender, you know, create all of it. And we're really very proud of that.

Navigating crisis and protests

13:34What about now, if you go back a couple years after October 7th? October 7th, the Hamas attacks in Israel were, they turned out to be big, big, big events for both of your institutions. Let's talk about yours first. What was that? Can you just start to tell that story from them? Well, I knew that this was going to be explosive. As a Jewish woman who's progressive, I've been a target of the boycott divestment sanctions for probably two decades now.

14:07And is that because you're Jewish or because you've done something that put you in a position to be critiqued? I've never done anything to put me in a position to be critiqued. I think there's been a lot of assumptions about who I am and what I stand for. And I also think that, you know, I can't prove this, but that because I'm a progressive woman who's Jewish, that if I had signed on to a cultural boycott, it would probably help the movement. I see. And I don't believe in cultural boycotts. I believe culture should be a part of the solution. And I think cultural boycotts are antithetical to what I believe in.

14:40Right. So it's a very logical and rich argument, but it's a tough sell when people are shouting at you. Yeah. Everything's a tough sell when people are shouting at you. And so. So how do you, what do you do when they start shouting? Your home was vandalized. Yes. You were, it was a banner, I think, hung white supremacist Zionist. Oh, God, do you have to bring it up? I just always feel like my obituary is going to be that picture. So if I'm lucky enough to get an obituary at some point, but at any rate, listen, I think

15:15that these situations are incredibly difficult and you have to have a sense of calm and listen and bring your, your best advisors around you to, because, you know, you're, you're dealing with a crisis. There's a lot of tension and fear, sometimes fear around that. And so you ask yourself a whole bunch of questions, questions about how do our audiences feel and how does participating in one way or another impact our mission or our audiences? There's so much to think about.

15:45Do you begin to doubt yourself? I think if you're a healthy person, yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have to have some humility. You have to listen to the multitudes of, of, of viewpoints. And when October 7th happened, didn't take a, you know, a genius to realize that Israel would retaliate and that this would not be good for Jews around the world. Yeah. So when you were saying that you admire Michael's spine and courage for what he's been writing, a lot of it has been around these issues.

16:17Can you just walk me through that? You've been visible and vocal on this kind of thing for a long time, yeah? So on October 7th, I was actually just doing some work in my study on campus and the news flash came, you know, through on my computer and I thought, should I actually be saying something about this? Because I have been keeping a blog fairly regularly since 2007 and it was cool in 2007 and not so

16:49much anymore. But the, and I looked back and I had said something, written a little bit about different terrorist attacks over the, over the years. And so I decided to write something quickly. I think we, I called it sickening violence and posted it with, you know, that afternoon, I guess, on October 7th. And, and that is how I do things. You don't run it by your board? I do not. I do not. And I had, I had the great, good fortune of having a board chair early in my tenure,

17:23Joshua Boger, who was the founder of Vertex Pharmaceuticals. And like the founders of companies, I'm told more generally, they don't like to be, have a lot of oversight. And Joshua said to me, my job is to support you or fire you. And I'm not. How do you know when you've crossed from one boundary to the next? Well, you all know. And, and so my protocol with him, and I've been very fortunate, I've had great board chairs ever since. I let them know that there will be something in the press, let's say, but I don't tell them

17:54what it is. Like I had something in the LA Times when I let the board chair know that there'll be something in the LA Times in a couple of days. That piece was about essentially the rise of authoritarianism, yes? Yeah. You like to stick your neck out? Not, I don't think, maybe. I guess I like. I don't, no, but I don't think either of us are sticking our neck out. We're just engaging in the conversation. And isn't that what we're supposed to do as cultural and educational institutions? Yes, I would say, comma, but I see many, many, many, many people not.

18:29And that's why I, part of the reason I do it so often is to try to encourage other people. Is it working? No, not, not, not yet. This episode of Better in Person is presented by ChatGPT. ChatGPT work moves beyond answers into getting real work done. It's a new experience in ChatGPT for bigger, multi-step projects across web, mobile, and desktop. You can give ChatGPT work a goal and have it gather context, choose an approach, create

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Inviting Antonin Scalia to campus

19:46Michael Roth isn't even scared of the free speech debate. He wrote a book called Safe Enough Spaces. And in 2012, Wesleyan hosted the Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Yeah, we have an annual talk that's endowed in honor of free speech. And there's a faculty group that makes a recommendation to the president. And this group recommended I invite Justice Scalia. And I thought they were kind of pulling my leg to see if I would, because they referred to the left of me and I was not, I thought they wouldn't really do this.

20:20I thought, well, he's not going to come. So I'll just invite him. No big deal. And so we invite him and immediately I get a letter back accepting the invitation. And then he wrote a handwritten note on it saying that his former law clerk, Larry Lessig, had given this talk the last year and he knew he had a great experience. Larry is quite far to the left. And so there, here's Scalia's coming. Now, my own view is that Scalia had, Justice Scalia had done more harm to the interpretation of the American Constitution than anyone since the 19th century.

20:51And some faculty announced that they would be demonstrating and students would demonstrate. Yeah. And I knew that if I had not been the president and having had the task of introducing him at the lecture, I would have been demonstrating against him speaking at Wesleyan. Why? Why demonstrating against him speaking? Isn't that the whole idea of the speech model? Well, because I could just, well, to demonstrate against the views that he would be discussing. Right. But isn't what we've been talking about here the whole idea that you want to hear? Of course. No, but, and I wouldn't say that he shouldn't be allowed to speak, but if you're going to

21:24invite people, you might invite someone who hasn't done as much harm to the republic. Right. And honor him in this way. That would have been my view had I not had the task of introducing him and celebrating him. He spent the whole day on campus with students, much to his credit. We had dinner together with a group of, even at Wesleyan, I have conservative donors, and it was remarkably interesting in many ways. He was as hidebound and sexist as his critics would have thought, and he was charming and

22:00interesting and very smart. And did he change your mind on anything? I guess what he changed my mind is how productive it could be to have someone who I thought was wrong, to listen to him speak. And that he was gracious and thoughtful. And we had people stand up in the chapel as we had the talk in orange jumpsuits to protest the Guantanamo. And we had folks go around and say, you have to sit down or leave. And they either sat down or they left.

22:30He gave his talk. There were some questions about Bush versus Gore. And he was, you know, just get over it, he said. I remember he said. And then it was one of my students who yelled out, why don't you call in a woman? Because he had only called on the men who raised their hands. And he said, OK, I'll call on a woman. You know. But it was a great event. I mean, what changed my mind was that it was a great event because he got to make his arguments. People got to push back and ask questions.

23:01He had heard all these things before. He was ready with replies. And I think everybody learned that you could have a really good discussion with someone who you deeply disagree with. And that's our job. Yeah. That's our job. That is a big part of our job. And I mean this in the nicest possible way. I would not want to do either of your jobs for one day. I mean, my job is fantastic. I mean, it is. I've heard you say that. But when I hear the details, I think it takes a special kind of person to process that into

23:31fantastic. And I'm glad you're that person. Well, it's just that you get to spend time with a lot of really interesting people. And if you can deal with the projections onto you and their own mishegas and their relation to authority. And you think, I just find that interesting. I don't actually, I had a great mentor at the Getty named Deborah Marrow, who ran the Getty Foundation for a long time, who's an art historian. And she said to me, Michael, the first rule of administration is don't take anything personally. And she said, because people are going to give you credit for things you have nothing,

24:04like the football team won the championship. I get credit. You know, Glenn Ligon gave us some artwork. I get credit. But, you know, and at the same time, I also get blamed for things that I really have no role in. And are you able to, you're able to perform that? You're able to not get too caught up in... I try. I try. What would you say is the biggest misperception about your job when people hear that you run a museum? What do they think you do? And how vast is that? I don't know, actually.

24:35You know, when I first came to the museum, people would say things like, oh, do you get paid for that?

24:43Barely, yes. I mean, I hope so.

24:47Do you take home work that you love? Can you just take something off the wall? No. That would be, for me, then, the biggest misperception, because that's what I imagine you're doing. They show up every day with a big bag. Well, some museums, their directors have housing that the museum owns. And it's furnished with good art. Yes. That's not the case that I have, but... Didn't the Museum of Modern Art, once upon a time, have a lending library, essentially? Yeah, I think Brooklyn did, too, actually. Is that right? Yeah. No longer? No, and a lot of people think it's a great idea and that we're going to make a lot of

25:20money on lending our collection out to people. In fact, I think Brooklyn Public Library just did something like that. But you really cannot do that with valuable work. One, you know, our job is to make sure it lasts in perpetuity. And you can't control if the, you know, dog is peeing on something or the kids are throwing a Nerf ball at something. So that's not great. Also, the insurance, the amount of registrars. I mean, it's really a kind of misunderstanding of how we care for art in this day and age. I can see that.

25:51But I still like the idea that you could walk into MoMA and say, I kind of like that Gorky. Can I have him for a couple of weeks? It's just a nice idea. You know, the answer is still no, Steve.

26:01All right. Fair enough. I tried.

Bringing art to the conversation

26:04Art does sometimes travel well. I had asked Michael and Anne to bring some show and tell to this conversation, and they both brought art. To be clear, Anne's art did not come off the museum walls. And Michael's decision to bring art probably has something to do with the fact that he used to be president of the California College of the Arts. I asked Anne to go first. She brought a small painting of a boxer lying flat on the canvas. So this is a little painting that my husband gave me for Christmas last year by an artist

26:35named George Wilner. But you've never heard of George Wilner. I never heard of George Wilner. Living? Dead? Dead. He died. I learned that he was born around 1908 and died around 1970. Where'd your husband find it? He found it through an online antique store in Portland, Oregon or someplace like that. Your husband's an artist, we should say. He's an artist. A very well-regarded artist. Yes, he is. Mike Starn. And so I looked this up because I wanted to learn more about the artist. He was involved with the American Artist Congress in the 1930s.

27:09Well, it was a Congress at a time period of depression and growing authoritarianism around the world and fascism that really asserted the right to free speech, artist rights, and the group of artists, people like Stuart Davis, really felt that it was important for artists' work to be political and to engage in public dialogue. But I asked my husband, why did you give me a painting of a boxer who's been knocked

27:40out? And he said, because I see you as a fighter and you always get back up. You still have your gloves on. Exactly. Well, and I thought it was hilarious when I got it. I loved it instantly because that's how I felt last year. I felt flattened out. So I felt really seen by him in that moment. Yeah. That is a very, very lovely gift. Yeah. Do you feel you've gotten up off the canvas then this year? Yeah, I did. Yeah. And how'd you do that? You know, you surround yourself by people who are really supportive, your staff, your friends, your family, your trustees. And, you know, they say, we believe in you and we think you can do it.

28:13And you have to do it. You have no choice but to do it. People's livelihoods depend on it. Okay. Now it is Michael's turn. He brought a pair of photographs. The first shows a young couple in a sort of embrace, leaning up against a dirty wall. The photo is called Dave and Cookie Jonesen. So this is a photograph by Jim Goldberg. Jim is from New Haven originally, but he's been in Northern California for many decades. He's retired now from CCA, where I got to know him when I was president of the art school.

28:44And this is from a book called Raised by Wolves, which is a story of kids living on the streets in San Francisco. And Jim and his more senior colleague, Larry Sultan, were conceptual photographers, book photographers. Larry and Mike Mandel did a book of found photographs in the late 60s, I guess, early 70s, that became an important work in the history of photography. And then he did a book from which this is taken called Pictures from Home.

29:14This photograph is called Mom in Green Nightgown. In fact, everything in the photo is green. The walls, the shag rug, even the vibe is green. That's Larry's mom then? That's Larry's mom. And there's a picture. So in our living room, we have these two side by side with a large kind of more museum quality photograph of his dad with the golf club. And Larry, like Jim, put photographs and then with text next to them. And his father would say, why do you make us look so lonely?

29:46We actually have a great life here. And it's so wonderful. How would he answer that? Because I know that book, and it's true. And then I remember reading about it later where the parents were saying, like, we actually have a very nice, normal life where we interact. But, yeah, there's this feeling of sort of that suburban desolation, sadness. So why did he do that? Because that's how it felt to him. That's how it felt to him. That's how it felt to him. And, you know, he's the artist. They just get to be the parents. I love being explained anything personally.

30:19But looking at art, I think, is something that intimidates a lot of people. Is there anything you could teach me slash us in the moment? Or maybe this is something that someone who's coming to the Brooklyn Museum that you would want them to know? The first thing I would want people to know is there is not a right way to read an artwork. And that one of the great joys is just doing what we're doing, which is looking and sharing what we see with one another. I have been in this field for a very long time.

30:51And every time I speak with somebody, they see something I never noticed before. Right? So there's always an opportunity to really look deeply, to talk with one another. We realize we all see things differently. I think that's an important human lesson. And then if people want to go a little deeper, they can take a look at how the artist made something or when they made it. What was the social or historic context in which they made it? What did the artist have to say about it?

Artificial intelligence in museums

31:18It's fun to look at art together in person. But what happens when the art is no longer made by a human? What if it's made by an AI? Oh, well, I don't know if anybody wants to look at art created by AI. But I think that AI can greatly improve the viewer experience. You can look at an artwork and you can ask AI just about any question. How was it made? When was it made? Tell me about the biography of the artist.

31:48Does that church still exist? Can I say you're highlighting one of my major grapes about most museums. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when I see a piece, I mean, that's just the nature of me, I guess, is I want context. I want to know where and when and who the artist was. But I also want to know what was going on there. And I want to know what the symbols mean. I want to know all that stuff. So, yes, when can I start getting that at your museum? I actually think in the near future, I don't know, like two years, we might start to see less and less museum labels

32:19because there'll be more interfaces for the public to directly get the information that they want. So I think that we're going to see an enhanced, more satisfying museum experience or gallery experience, tourist experience. I mean, if you take it to an extreme, one might say, oh, maybe I don't need to go to the museum anymore if I can have... I don't think so. Because why? What is it about going that will retain its hold? First of all, I think people want to see the object in real life, right? Just think about all the tourists who go and they have to all have the same picture taken, you know, in the same location in Dumbo, the Brooklyn Bridge.

32:56What do they take, what's the piece or three that they take a picture of at your museum? I think probably our great Bierstadt painting, Mount Rosalie, The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, The Brooklyn Bridge by Georgia O'Keeffe. There are a number of works. But I think at the end of the day, people really want to commune with art. And I think the other thing is they really appreciate having a public space to gather and to learn. And I don't think that's going away. I'm not cynical about that at all.

Reimagining the modern classroom

33:27Michael, what about you, AI, Wesleyan, education generally? I mean, there are things that are, to me, disturbing. As an old guy, I like giving people assignments that they go home and they work on it, they revise it, they do it again. And in my class this fall, I gave them in-class exams instead. To prevent? Prevent cheating. But at the same time, I gave an optional writing assignment every week for extra credit, ungraded, but with comments from me, for those people who want that kind of exchange.

33:59And I also require them to use an AI chatbot that we made for the class where they would talk about the material in the class with what I call the aggressive therapist AI. It's a course on virtue and vice. And you would say, well, for my week of practicing temperance, I am going to cut down on my smoking. And the AI would say, well, why do you think you smoke? Well, I really like the taste. Really, you don't think it has something to do with your, you know, being nervous about. And then you answer and you try to deflect the question and the AI pushes you back. So they have to do that for 10 minutes.

34:30Can I say, I like that assignment. That's good. Good assignment. But I also added an hour of class time where, with no technology, you get in the room with 10 people who all had separate conversations. And then you talk about what you learned in those conversations. And the TAs who run those tell me that the conversations are really much more animated because everybody's primed. So I think there are ways of combining AI as a complement to education and to get rid of the things that we really shouldn't be doing in expensive colleges and universities, which are telling people things they could get online or in a textbook.

35:06So if that were to really happen fully, whether it's university, high school, grade school, what should be happening more in those classrooms now that you're no longer having to spend so much time transferring knowledge? Learning by doing. Yeah. You take on projects with your classmates and your teacher, and every project can be different because you're feeling differently that day. The team is different. The group you're working in is different. That sounds like a very different version of college. In some respects, I think people go to museums to be in the presence of artwork, to go to sports events, to be in the presence with other people of someone working at or playing at the highest level.

35:43And in education, you should be in there to be in the presence of people who are learning together. People want a social experience. We're more and more isolated. Yes. And yet we're human beings and we're social animals and we want to be together. I remember being in a Mark Rothko exhibition in Washington years ago, and I was, like, maybe two or three people were in the whole museum, and this woman kept going in front of the paintings, and she would go, oh, my God! And she started to weep, and she, and so the guards came over.

36:14And I said, you know, to me it was like, it was so much a more interesting experience because we were having this experience of looking at the paintings together. Thanks for checking out this audio episode of our new TV talk show, Better in Person. If you'd like to see the conversation and the paintings, go to the Freakonomics YouTube channel or look for Better in Person on Apple Podcasts. Our email is radio at Freakonomics.com.

36:46We will be back soon right here with more Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself, and if you can, someone else, too.

36:57Do you know I love hiring Wasteland students? Oh. That sounds very good. You do? I do because you train them to be independent thinkers. That can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Yes, that's true, too. Maybe I should rethink that. Thanks again to ChatGPT for sponsoring today's episode of Better in Person. ChatGPT can help teams move from goals to real outcomes.

37:27Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today. We'll see you next time.