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silasmadams · 5 years ago

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My Problem with a “Darker Shade of Magic” by V.E. Schwab

So I’ve been meaning to talk about V. E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic. I know it’s got plenty of love behind it and its got its fair share of fans but I can’t for the life of me love this book and yes I mean only the first book because that’s as far as I read in the series. I have a similar relationship to this as I do Children of Blood by Tomi Adeyemi in that I completely understand why people like it, I just don’t.

I’m also going to give a trigger warning that I will be talking about sexual assault, violence, and general gore so if that makes you uncomfortable give this a skip. I’ll give a trigger warning again when I’m about to speak in-depth on the previously mentioned subjects. I will also warn you when I’m about to head into spoiler territory, though I won’t be going into particularly big spoilers.

Summary

For those of you that don’t know, A darker shade of Magic is the first book in the Darker Shade of Magic trilogy by V. E. Schwab. It’s about three separate Londons, Red, White, and Grey. Red is the London with lots of magic, it’s the pretty and bougie London. White is a cesspit of violence with very little magic forcing its inhabitants to cling onto any magic they can for dear life. Their leaders are cruel and it's not uncommon for them to be usurped. Generally to get ahead in White London you need to be vile. And Grey London is our world's London roughly around the 1800s, since King George III is alive but very old and dying. So the conflict is about Black London, the fourth London that was cut off from the others because their magic consumed the people and the land. Kell an antari, a super magical person, is able to travel through the three londons and he ends up getting caught up in some big conspiracies and power grabs. Interesting premise right? I agree but the execution ehhh. Ok, let’s start first with the pros of the book.

Style

Her style isn’t anything too extravagant. But that doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It’s nowhere near bad. She’s got quite a few descriptions that really draw you in. Her opening lines are damn near perfect. “Kell wore a very peculiar coat, It had neither one side, which would be conventional, nor two which would be unexpected, but several, which was, of course, impossible” [pg 11]. It doesn’t reveal much but it sort of tosses this thread out there for you to follow into the larger narrative. It’s got almost a rhyming quality to it, a rhythm that you can feel yourself saying as you recite the lines aloud. It gives you just enough to keep you invested but not enough to reveal anything of importance. All of the writing in this book has a similar draw to it, it’s simple and intricate all at once and it’s very precise in what it’s trying to say. When Schwab describes something in the narrative, you can imagine it very clearly. Just listen to how she describes the marketplace. "The subtle scent of flowers was lot beneath the aroma of cooking meat and freshly cut fruit, heavy spices and mulled wine. A man in dark robes offered candied plums beside a woman selling scrying stones. A vendor poured steaming tea into short glass goblets across from another vibrant stall displaying masks and a third offering tiny vials of water drawn from the Isle, the contents still glowing faintly with its light..." [pg 45 and 46]. Overall Schwab knows her craft and it’s clear that she’s confident in her writing because she should be, she’s got the technical and stylistic aspect down to a tee.

Setting

The setting is amazing, but and there is a big but which includes minor spoilers so run away now if you want to read this book. I will say that it’s a good book, it’s just not a good book to me. If you’re into other world fantasies and cross-dimensional travel you’ll probably like this. I’m into that too but the problem is that this book has a lot of missed potential for me. So if the previously mentioned description sounds interesting or if the summary I gave sounds interesting to you, leave, go read the book and come back. If it doesn’t sound interesting or you don’t care about spoilers then I guess stick around if you want.

So the premise is amazing. These three different Londons that all exist in different dimensions that only a select few, two people to be exact, can travel to are vastly different from one another. Their landscapes, their people, their overall geography, it’s all completely different, the only overlapping aspects that they all have are their names and the two travelers that can move about their kingdoms, those two being Kell, one of our main characters and Holland, one of our main antagonists.

I think Red London is overall well done, Schwab captures it perfectly. A land of flowers and joy with obvious problems and tensions but out of the three London’s is clearly portrayed as the best. So I’ve got no qualms with that.

What I found upsetting though was White London and Grey London. For White London, it was this hellscape of a city that had so much room to be this horrible torturous place and Schwab touches on it, she grazes the surface of it ever so slightly but she never manages to hit the mark completely. When you tell me White London is a grimy and gross place filled with power-hungry bastards and bitches what’s to stop me from going “well isn’t that just normal London aka Grey London but with magic?” I needed more of White London, I needed more of that seedy underbelly to better contrast with Grey London. With Grey London, we see the horrors of the land through the character of Lila Bard who has a difficult life, who needs to survive on her own in this terrible place, no offense London. I think the best way to have fixed this was to have more focus on Holland, the character that was from White London. If we were to have three POVs from Holland, Kell, and Lila, instead of just Lila and Kell, this problem could be solved. It would convolute the story because of the twist about Holland and his involvement in trying to help the twin rulers of White London take over Red London but I feel like that’s an ok thing to lose in order to gain a better understanding of White London and have a more fleshed out narrative of all three kingdoms.

Characters

I hate these characters. Ok, that’s kind of a strong word, I don’t hate them. I don’t hate all of them at least. And I know plenty of people love and adore these characters, I’ve seen the artwork and the time and effort people put into these characters and it’s all amazing but I just do not get the hype. I didn’t like them.

See, my thing is that I hate characters that don’t reach, what I see as their true potential. Which is just a roundabout way of saying that I hate characters that are boring. I mean I can enjoy a badly written character as much as the next person but the thing is that a boring character is not enjoyable for anyone, especially when you see threads of a character and know that they can be something more. Now I haven’t read either of the other two books so maybe the characters are different there, I don’t know. All I know is that I either found the characters to be boring, cliche, or just annoying.

The first character to make this most egregious mistake on the part of being boring, would be none other than Kell. So Kell is the adopted Prince, the older brother of Rhy. He was taken away from his family at a young age and brought up in the palace because he was an Antari, which again is a super magical person that can travel through the different Londons and is an expert in various other types of magic, natural or otherwise. So Kell loves his brother and he has issues with his adoptive parents because he feels that they see him only as a tool. Now, this is good, this has potential. The problem here is that we never see moments of the King and Queen treating Kell badly and they don’t even need to necessarily treat him badly they just need to drop hints of how they clearly favor Rhy. And I didn’t see those hints. As far as I could tell, both boys were treated relatively equal, Kell had a lot more work on his plate but that was because he’s an Antari, he’s the only Antari. To really drive home that feeling of isolation and of Rhy being his only real family among the royals there needs to be more memories of their childhood where the King and Queen picked Rhy over Kell and it was because of them seeing Rhy as their real son and Kell as more of a soldier. There is also the issue of Lila just dismissing these feelings that Kell has about his family not loving him but we’ll get to that in a bit. All that aside, Kell just isn’t interesting. You could replace him with a cardboard cutout and I wouldn’t know the difference. He’s just not an engaging character, he’s got the threads of an engaging character but he himself is not one. Whenever I was back to his POV I didn’t know whether to groan out of boredom or to just be glad we weren’t in Lila’s head. I decided to go with the former because Lila is fun to hate, Kell is bread, he’s not even toast, he’s bread, soggy bread. Ok, that’s enough.

Now Lila, Oh Lila. How I despise thee. I get what Schwab was going for with this character. She was the badass cross-dressing thief lady that could cut you down. Lila is an orphan that had to fend for herself after her father basically tried to sell her off. She’s got a good introduction and it bleeds into some good first few chapters. Now warning I’m about to talk about sexual assault and just general violence so skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to read that. In one of the earlier chapters, Lila comes home, her home being a docked ship that she stays at. The ship is owned by an older man who she basically pays rent to. When she gets back, the guy, Powell, asks for his cut. He’s drunk out of his mind which is also not unusual for this character. When she says she doesn’t have anything to give him today, he responds by saying he can take something else from her, clearly implying sexual favors. So she straight up fucking murders Powell "Dead. Dead... and making a mess... She crouched, wiped her blade on Powell's shirt, and recovered the silver from his pocket. And then she stepped over his body, retrieved the revolver from its drawer, and got dressed" [pg 69]. And then to cover her tracks, she sets his boat on fire and dips. "Lila stood on the dock and watched the Sea King burn. She stared up at it, face warmed by the fire that danced on her chin and cheeks the way the lamp light had before the constable.'It's a shame,’ she thought. She'd rather liked the rotting ship. But it wasn't hers. No, hers would be much better" [pg 70]. Come on, tell me that’s not a great anti-hero introduction? Because it is.

That being said, the more time I, as a reader spent with Lila, the more I realized I hate her. I mean at least I felt something towards her, unlike Kell. So the first problem with Lila is that she is the epitome of “I’m not like other girls” Every chance she gets to put down anything girly or to put down other women she takes. Or, she just jumps at the chance of being called not like other girls. Which Kell often obliges in. And, this would be ok if it was criticized within the story, if it was properly examined why she feels this way, because there could be a lot of reasons, one of which could be that she realized behaving in a more aggressive or traditionally masculine way allowed her to have autonomy and allowed people to not talk down to her but to be afraid of her. There are a lot of ways in which this could go but it didn’t. And there’s nothing wrong with liking more traditionally masculine things, the problem is the way in which Lila clearly needs to put other women down in order to feel special about herself. I also mentioned earlier about my issue with how Lila undermines Kell’s feelings of his adoptive parents never really loving him and seeing him only as a tool. Again, this could have been played up a little more and Kell could have properly called her out instead of just being the meek bread he is and letting her essentially tell him that his emotional struggle doesn’t matter cause he’s rich. I get where Lila is coming from in this scenario and I do like that she treats him like that in terms of his emotions because it’s very telling of her own upbringing. The problem is that she very clearly makes it about herself and her problems. This could have worked better if she simply dismissed his feelings, got angry at him for basically swimming in cash, and then stopped there. We should have gotten an insight into her thoughts of why she feels this way or have it implied why she feels this way, rather than have her outright say it, because in this case, when she voices that and shifts everything back to herself it feels very purposeful and mean on her end rather than it just being her natural reaction. Instead of going “oh my life was terrible and way worse than yours” it would work better if she just called him a brat, told him to shut up, and then moved about her own business. That could also add a more interesting dynamic to these characters by having Kell be the emotional one and Lila be the one who Kell has to urge out of her shell by being the emotional support. It would be a role reversal of the traditional way most romances go, and again, I think Schwab was trying to do that, but the execution of it fell flat. My final gripe with this character is that she isn’t feral enough, and if Schwab had just made her more feral, this character would fit in perfectly. What I mean by feral is, exactly that honestly. She was too put together, too suave and cool and always knew what to say. If you’re gonna tell me this street urchin type orphan in 1800s London is cool and suave I’m gonna call bullshit cause no way this girl isn’t straight up feral and ready to bite someone’s nose off at the drop of a hat because that’s what she’s gotta do to survive. I just wish Schwab had gone down this route instead of the Lila we got, but oh well. It is what it is.

I’m only briefly going to talk about Rhy, Kell’s younger brother, because there isn’t too much I have to say about him and I feel like this is already long enough as is. Rhy is basically a cut and dry trope of the rich prince boy with a heart of gold. I love that archetype so I like Rhy, but to an extent. He seems to be only that trope and that’s it. There isn’t much more to him. Though he’s not as boring as Kell or as annoying as Lila so that’s a plus. I haven’t even talked about the twins that rule White London or Holland but again this is already too long, don’t need to make it longer and they also involve a lot of major spoilers that I don't want to get into.

Pacing

I know earlier that I said Schwab’s style of writing was very well done, that she clearly had a kind of rhythm for the writing itself, and I stand by that statement but the pacing is not good. It’s all over the place, it’s either too slow or too fast or just nonexistent. I’m going to use romance as an example of how the pacing is bad and I think you can tell that with a lot of books. If they have romance in them, which if we’re being real, they probably do, then the way in which the romance plays out can often be a good indicator of pace. The relationship is wonky so the pacing is wonky. To be honest, the relationship was something I didn’t buy. It went by too fast and when Lila kissed him it felt very robotic like they were just getting together because they were the breeding pair. They had no chemistry whatsoever even as friends. As friends, they were at least somewhat more tolerable, but like romantic partners, I just didn’t see it. The stilted romance was awkward and dumb and again, there was no chemistry, they were just shoved together because they were the only guy and girl and both had a POV. I don’t know the overall pacing was slow, and I don’t mind slow build-up books. One of my favorites, Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor is a very slow build-up book but it’s well done, it doesn’t drag. This book drags and the romance in it drags. When the pace picks up it’s like going a thousand miles an hour. When shit hit the fan in the book, I get that it was supposed to be fast-paced and tense but I was never tense while reading it I just kind of wanted the whole book to end so I didn’t have to keep slogging through it. I guess I just hoped that the ending would tie it all together and fix the pacing which is stupid on my part because that’s not at all what happened.

Conclusion

Well, that’s all I gotta say about it, I gave it three stars on GoodReads.

Buy the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Darker-Shade-Magic-Novel-Shades-ebook/dp/B00ME0TBFE

Buy it Used here:

https://www.abebooks.com/Darker-Shade-Magic-Schwab-Victoria-Titan/30413099967/bd?cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade-_-used-_-naa&gclid=Cj0KCQiA4NTxBRDxARIsAHyp6gDRNRjl8x-ktniE3IUmecyE1lDYlPxglxoLpBAYEt7C3ivyt9PPabkaAmTGEALw_wcB

or here

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/a-darker-shade-of-magic_victoria-schwab/9043358/item/16041243/?mkwid=MUQmUYQc%7cdc&pcrid=70112856192&product=16041243&plc=&pgrid=18035380632&ptaid=aud-305373123344%3apla-459905910383&utm_source=google_shopping&utm_content=MUQmUYQc%7cdc%7cpcrid%7c70112856192%7cpkw%7c%7cpmt%7c%7cproduct%7c16041243%7cslid%7c%7cpgrid%7c18035380632%7cptaid%7caud-305373123344%3apla-459905910383%7c&gclid=Cj0KCQiA4NTxBRDxARIsAHyp6gDXbz2350Y8Tse02z5fKP_TgnPIH1DXhILOWkgk260VeZzQwUCgXbEaAsH5EALw_wcB#isbn=0765376466&idiq=16041243

Or just get it at your local library.

#a darker shade of magic #book #bookblog #character writing #pacing #a darker shade of magic series #complaing #complaining about books #setting #character analysis #fictional characters #writing style #library #spoilers #mild spoilers

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geeks4squeaks-blog · 7 years ago

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|The Verdant Prince|

Chapter 7: Useful Tools

People milled around casually as was expected on a warm sunny mid morning. No one bowed and treated me as different, a few people even threw a some ugly curse words and such as I pushed my way through the thickening crowd. And with all honesty I liked it. I liked the rough equal feeling it had and took very little offense to it.

I had wandered around gathering supplies slowly. New clothing, new bedding, nicer plates and utensils. I was honestly excited that my family didn't have to live like hungry rats anymore, scavenging and living off of single thread blankets and clothing. I was for once in my life truly proud I could do something to help. I wasn't pathetic and helpless. I was useful and strong.

In my mini adventures across the cold tiles and stones of the market place I had overheard several conversations. It was amusing to me in all of my years at training I had learned to kill in hundreds of ways, swim well, create light from my fingertips, ride a beast with nothing, speak languages and so much more. Never had I thought I would learn to hear and comprehend so many conversations around me. Most were in hushed tones of gossip, others loud and cheery. They all had their fair share of odd subjects.

"Red or yellow beats?"

"Green!" A snotty shrill voice said.

"Did you hear about the barbarians breaching a few of the nine realms? There's rumors going around saying they're headed towards Asgard." A croaky old man coughed out.

"No, that's absurd. If they were anywhere close to us the horn would sound and the problem would be taken care of." A woman answered back, doubt lacing her carefully picked words.

"I did not bed him, Mama! He is a pig!"

"Pies should be sold in the food vendor section not the herbs. Someone is going to think you poisoned it."

"Maybe I did."

So many people in such a little place talking all at once fascinated me. The way everyone could interact with a different face every way they turn.

"Would you like a sweet roll?" A man grabbed my arm, pulling me out of everyone else's conversations. His palms were sweaty and his head was badly shaved. It was as if a goat was his barber.

"No thank you, sir," I said, prying his hand of my arm. He grunted unhappily and rolled his eyes. Or eye I should say. Rather than being matching vibrant green, one was a cloudy grey void of color.

I walked slowly through the vendors. They all shouted what they had to offer, some shaking the goods they sold in their air as if people would swarm them if they saw it. I shifted my arms, adjusting the heavy filled basket in my arms. I now had a few odd looks in my direction. I figured not many woman carried giant baskets with a single arm in these poorer parts. I shifted my arms once again so I was carrying the basket in two arms. I didn't want any attention what so ever.

But why?

"Silver, bronze, and iron jewelry! Sapphire, emerald, ruby, and more gemstones!" A man shouted gruffly from across the street. I turned and made my way to his booth, curious in his craft.

"Do you hold silver and amethyst materials?" I asked him softly. He stopped his loud ramblings and looked to me. I dropped my eyes to the shining gemstones below me. Silver and gold bands lined the crooked wooden table. I looked up to the man again when he hadn't answered me. He rubbed is chin thoughtfully, his calloused fingers making a crude scratchy sound as it rubbed on his rough dark beard. His dark cocoa colored eyes scanned me over and he shook his head.

"You wouldn't be affordin' it, m'lady." He said, a thick foreign accent showing. He looked genuinely sad as he looked at my attire. I shot my eyes up to him and squared my shoulders. A small pompous part of me laughed inside as his shoulders slouched ever so slightly.

"I can afford it and I will afford it. Do you hold silver and amethyst bracelets?" I repeated my question in an even tone. He dropped his eyes and nodded his head, a small apology escaping his chapped lips.

"What size?" He asked without hesitation now.

"Smaller than your own wrist. It's for my younger sister." I explained. He nodded his head, the ghost of a smile resting on his face. I looked away slightly to the western city. The sun and clouds rose from that side but today it looked empty and the sun seemed to show less light than before. The sky seemed ashen and pale... as if it was dying.

"Here m'lady." He said as he slipped the silver and amethyst bracelet into a soft pelt pouch. I had lost interest in the western gate- pinning my bad thought to my slowly growing hunger.

"Thank you, how much?" I asked as I set the bracelet gently in the top of the supply basket.

"One hundred five golden coins," he said, leaning back on the wooden post beside him heavily. He scratched as his head once more as I handed him the small sack of my own savings. I wouldn't take it out of my family's spending's. It was my own purchase.

~*~

"Good Gods, woman what did you buy?" Father nearly choked as I walked into the small dusty home. Uthgard turned away from the sink and dried her blue stained hands with a rag. I set the heavy filled basket on the table gently and opened the lid. It creaked ever so slightly.

"What my family truly needs. You have been living with the same things for nearly twenty years now." I chided. I slipped the small pouch into my pocket before Uthgard could see it. She had made her way over to the table, the floor boards creaking under her tired feet.

We unpacked together, occasionally Father would make sighs and uneasy sounds as I brought out fresh food, new cups, and clothing. He set his head in his calloused hands.

"You still have enough for a month to live very comfortably, and at the end of the month they will send more." I assured him, and I rested my left hand gently on his forearm.

A sickening hollow sound echoed across the house. It rang heavily in my ears even after it bellowed. We had all frozen, a ghostly chill trickling down my spine. The wind seemed to stop, the birds no longer sung and everything was sickly silent.

BOOM.

Every thundering blow sent a horrid shudder through me. And then there was silence again.

"What was that?" Uthgard whispered as if breaking the silence was a crime. Immediately I rushed outside, my small family following suit. I knew exactly what it was- but I didn't want to believe it.

"That wretched bellow was that of the Barbarian Horn. It signals invaders are near. The three thundering sounds belong to King Odin's staff. He summons us." I said as I unlatched the sack on Bjorn's back. Bjorn snapped his head up and stiffened feeling my distress. Out of the sack I grabbed out silver lined gauntlets and the rest of my gear. I didn't have time to change all of the way, as long as I had enough armor to cover me.

I jumped onto Bjorn and I could feel the small pit of worry form in my stomach.

"Where are they coming from?" Father asked, his worry showing slightly in his tone. Bjorn shifted backwards impatiently and I pat his neck as I slipped on my shin guards quickly.

"The Western Gate most likely. I need you two to reach the safe point quickly. Don't grab anything, we don't know how far they are or if they have even breached the city. Just please get to the safe point I will meet you there." I pleaded and without further comment I dug my heels into Bjorn's sides and he was off. His hooves clicking rapidly across the cold stone roads.

I hooked my knees to his side and leaned back to fetch my dagger sheaths. The pack bounced more the emptier it got. I slipped the belt with the sheaths around my hips easily and sheathed the double daggers.

I leaned forward and took the reins once again into my clammy hands. The streets were empty, everyone in their homes or headed to the safe point in the hearth of Asgard.

Bjorn had gotten me to the Golden Palace in under ten minutes. Bjorn slowed and I jumped off and exhaled as I saw the slowly growing group of our comrades outside in the court yard. Everyone was wearing the basic three armor pieces. Some were even in full battle gear. Odin's large throne was empty but the two princes stood with their hands tucked in front of their chests. Their brows heavy with thought. Orgnar stood in between two pillars, the growing group of warriors forming a semi circle around him as he spoke. I stood beside Ur, a stern cold look etched on his face.

"Barbarians of Jotunhiem have made their position known to us. The sit on the South Western gate and have already breached the walls. This has never been done before so we don't truly know what to expect. Six of you will go down to the wall and prepare for possible battle. If the Western wall falls, use the fire signal and we will send in more troops. For now you six are the Vanguard-the front line of warriors." Orgnar spoke. The air seemed to become tight as he talked more. Silence sat uncomfortably between us. "The rest of you will help evacuate the people from the West and South district quickly. If they break through half of you assist the six below, the other half stay with the people at the safe point. Do we all understand stand?" He said sternly, the silver beads in his beard clinked softly as he talked.

We all nodded collectively.

"So we are up against giants?" Ceri asked and he rested his hand uneasily on his mace.

"Not exactly. They are hybrids of the giants of Jotunhiem and several other races in the nine realms. They will not be as massive as pure-blooded giants but they can be as dangerous. Truthfully we don't know what to expect. Just kill the damned things and be done with it." Orgnar said, his eyes softening ever so slightly in helplessness. "Go."

~*~

Asmund had been divided into one of the six in the front lines. He adjusted his shoulder plates nervously and began chewing the inside of his cheek. He pat his horse, Az, on her broad shoulder and began quickly tightening the straps on the heavy saddle. His lips twitched ever so slightly.

"They won't break through. And if somehow I am wrong- kick their bloody hybrid asses to Hel." I said firmly, though the flutter of worry in my stomach told me it would be everything but okay. I didn't show it however for it would make Asmund nervous as well. He nodded, a small, more relaxed smile on his lips. He turned away from me without responding. In retaliation I slapped his backside and he turned and stuck his tongue out at me.

"You're a kinky one." He teased and raised his eyebrows rolled my eyes. At least I was easing his worry.

"Just don't die." I said softly. His smile faded slightly.

"I won't." He answered back and slapped Az's backside and she bolted down the path. Other warriors followed behind him quickly, determination etched in their faces.

I turned and pat Bjorn's side.

"It's going to be a long day, Bjorn." I whispered as I climbed on him to meet the evacuation squad.

Together we rode down into the Western District in solemn silence. The only sound being the clicks beneath our beast's hooves and the whistle of the wind through the desolate homes. We finally arrived to see everybody was already mostly evacuated, save for the few people scattered about. A pang of guilt slid through me as I saw my comrades taking turns giving rides to the Asgardians. I simply rode around on Bjorn looking for stragglers but found none. The Prince's had been in our group as well but were ordered to not get involved in battle unless it was an emergency.

I turned down a street- clothes hung on their lines above us between the buildings. They hung from windows and other buildings and flapped quietly in the dry wind.

The sky was dull with no bright sun to warm our bare arms. Suddenly the hair on my neck and arms stood on their ends. My stomach turned as I yanked Bjorns reigns to the left sharply. Bjorn snorted as if to sass.

To the south smoke began to rise from the watch tower. The fire licked at the pillars, growing ever so slightly.

All of the sudden a thunder like sound rippled through Asgard.

"The wall has been breached!" I screamed, my voice cracking loudly as I dug my heal into Bjorns sides, the buildings around us slowly becoming a gray blur as we raced to the breached south wall. I could hear the faint sound of hooves on the tiles as the warriors followed me but that was soon drowned out by the sound of blades clashing and faint screams.

The west district was likely all evacuated in fear of barbarians invading the west. South had not yet been evacuated thoroughly- most likely the front sections of the walls.

My family was in the south right corner on the edge of the wall. Not close enough to be evacuated first.

I only prayed to whatever gods were listening that they had left as I had told them.

Tag list: @cutefuto

#loki #battle #fanfiction

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peachhplum · 6 years ago

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[AD] WHY CROYDON IS THE PLACE TO BE RIGHT NOW

This post is sponsored by Leon House Croydon

Hey all! I’m gonna be upfront and say it before I get into this post but I am a born and bred Croydoner so my views here are a little biased! HOWEVER… let me tell you this place has had its fair share of crummy moments so I’m gonna be pretty real about why I think that moving to Croydon now is the perfect time.

Let me rewind you back 15 years or so.. Croydon had a banging nightlife scene. Thousands of people would be lining the streets on Friday and Saturday nights and our shopping centre was considered one of the best. This is the Croydon most people remember - the days of The Blue Orchid and garage raves. However, when the UK nightlife scene started going downhill due to various reasons, Croydon suffered really badly. I’d say between the period of 2005-2015 there really wasn’t much going on here AT ALL. I was not so proud to say I was from Croydon during that time!

Around 2015 I started to see cool stuff start to happen around here. Indie coffee shops, co-working spaces, more community events and a thriving tech / startup scene. TMRW opened its doors and it’s like someone said ‘game on.’ In the recent months it has seemed like every time I walk through a side street there is a new bar, a new development or a great new street art piece that’s gone up. Whilst Croydon residents eagerly await the commercial Westfield development the indies have gone all in. People are starting to work and hang out here instead of making the (albeit short) commute to London.

Put it this way, in 2014 I would have NEVER had any meetings here. I mean where would I have even taken them to, Costa?! Now I get all my one to one clients to come and meet me in Croydon. With a plethora of places to take them I am starting to hear people say ‘oh yeah I’d love to come and see what’s happening in Croydon, I have been hearing great things’ rather than ‘woaaah, will I need my passport?’

With that in mind, I’d love to share with you the new Leon House development, which is one of the best developments I’ve seen in the area.

Why? The developers have hired an amazing interior designer for one - the communal areas of the development are gorgeous and with co-working, meeting space, a private dining room and a roof terrace there are plenty of areas to enjoy it.

Secondly, I love that they have really utilised space properly. The hallways are spacious and the flats themselves are much bigger than others I’ve seen lately. The fact that they haven’t chosen to cram in another residence for a few more quid really speak volumes in my eyes.

Lastly, I am obsessed with the fact that they have uncovered and renovated the original William Mitchell carvings throughout the building. You can see these brilliant Brutalist pieces in both the lobby and every hallways leading up to the roof terrace. Again I think this shows the developers have so much integrity and really wanted to preserve the brilliant history of the building which is something to applaud.

I thought finally I’d also share a few of my favourite Croydon spots. Some are brand new, some have been going for years. Combined these make up the Croydon that I love!

LUDOQUIST

Board game cafe, fun for all ages.

THE JOKER

New trendy pub, great food and cocktails plus very nice decor.

BOXPARK

The place to go for a quick bite with loads of variety of vendors. Also do events.

CROYDON BUDDHIST CENTRE

My go-to for yoga classes and things like gong baths and meditation.

CRUSHED BEAN

Fave indie style coffee shop, small, scandi style with lovely staff.

COFFEE SHOTTER

Coffee shop also selling Vegan quick bites and wicked donuts!

MATTHEWS YARD

Arts and cultural hub with things like life drawing classes and indie theatre but also food and drinks.

TMRW

Co-working space upstairs, banging cafe downstairs.

ART & CRAFT BAR

Craft beer bar on Surrey Street Market with knowledgeable staff and and wide selection of craft beer.

All of these spots are just a 5-10 min walk from Leon House too. If you’d like to go for a viewing of Leon House (seriously recommend!) then tap here to book in your slot. One bed apartments start from £338k and help to buy is available.

If you have any questions about living / working in Croydon then hit me up! It’s one of my fave subjects ;)

Sarah x

#home decoration #interior design #floor care

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ash-travels-peru · 7 years ago

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Day 4: Lima City Downtown

Today I was moving accommodation to stay with other uni peers!!! Three days was enough of individual travel for me and I was so excited to be able to share things with other people and experience what they want to do! I was up at 8am, had another awesome brekky and was ready for my taxi at 9:45am. The taxi came and took me the 1.2km to me new accommodation.

My new accommodation is a B&B, and seems a bit like between a hostel and hotel. There are heaps of tables and sitting areas in a patio type area surrounded by brightly coloured and morrish style tiles and leafy green pot plants. I dumped my bags and then the two of us got ready to head back out. We had organised with two other Macquarie Uni girls to do a free walking tour of Lima City Downtown at 11am. The meeting point was at a backpacker style bar which was a 20min walk. Seeing as it was 10:45am, we caught a taxi there!

The free tour had a price of 2.50soles for the bus trip downtown. You could certainly pick where the tour began from because there were heaps of tourists and backpackers loitering out of the front. The street was bright and each building was a different colour! Inside, the bar had sick and psychedelic murals and served craft beer.

Our tour set off by foot and walked a few blocks to the bus stop Ricardo Palma. I took a photo of it and sent it to one of my uni mates because his name is Ricardo! There are no temporary bus tickets available for tourists, so if you want to catch the bus, you have to beg a local to tap you on and then pay them the money in cash for the fare. There was a fair few people on the walking tour from all over the world. However, the tour group was much smaller at the end of the four hours than at the beginning because many people left the group and went exploring on their own. I met some Brits and Canadians on the bus and was able to show them the photos of the Nazca Lines because they weren’t going to be able to make it there themselves. The bus was quite crowded! I don’t think Lima has trains, so these articulated buses seem to work a bit like trains around the city. It was mainly standing room and people were packed into the bus like sardines. This trip brought a whole new meaning to the phrase! The driving in Lima is a little interesting, the drivers seem to accelerate as fast as possible and then stands on the brakes...its as if they forget there are regular bus stops! If it weren’t for being pressed on every side, I probably would have gone flying along the bus and gotten badly injured. Alas, instead I think I kept stepping on some poor Peruvian’s toes. Sorry!

Once off the bus, we walked through a famous plaza which is apparently quite famous. During the 1950′s the rich and famous occupied all the buildings around this plaza. There was a marble statute in the middle of the square, with a female figure on it. There is a Llama on her head, and our guide told us that there is a theory that it was meant to be a flame on her head to show strength, but because the spanish words for llama and fire are similar, the artist must have gotten confused. One of the famous hotels facing onto the square has been voted the best Pisco sour in the country, and our guide also told us that all important marches/protests are always staged in the plaza. We continued walking and passed the bar that invented the famous Peruvian cocktail, the Pisco sour!!

We continued walking down a ‘commercial street’ that had many vendors who would walk up to you trying to sell you super touristy necklaces. There were also heaps of people painted in all gold or black doing statue busking. A few of the statues were quite macabre, referencing ‘black slavery’ and had chains around their neck. It wasn’t the most encouraging of things to observe. We passed many beautiful and colonial buildings in bright colours!!

At the end of this particular street was Plaza de Arms! It was a public holiday in Peru, so the plaza was teeming with people! The Cathedral of Lima was closed for the day and our guide told us that only the rich and famous were permitted to get married there! Our guide took us to the fountain in the middle and told us that it was the oldest construction in Lima because it has survived all the earthquakes. Apparently the figure on top of the fountain used to be solid silver and gold, but was “lost” when it was taken for cleaning one time. Since then, the statue has been replaced with a copper figure. Our guide also told us that on Peru’s independence day (24 July) the fountain is filled with Pisco Sour and people can fill up a cup and drink free Pisco Sour!!

We left the Plaza and walked down some side alley into what was a walking alley that was filled with cafes and restaurants. There was a large rock in the middle of this area, and our guide informed us that this was sort of a nod to Incan culture in the midst of Spanish colonised architecture. We headed into one of the cafes and were given a free sample of local Peruvian Coffee. Peru coffee beans have consistently been voted the best coffee in the world, but I just don’t think there is a sufficient barista population that knows what to do with this coffee gold. There is not a large coffee culture in Peru, unlike Australia and if you do get coffee...its usually NesCafe! First thing I do when I get home is get a flat white!!! Whilst our group was standing around sipping on the black coffee, an older gentleman walked around with a tray of churros filled with caramel. It was about 12pm and it turned out to be a perfect morning tea. Our tour group then walked next door and tried some local potato dipped in some classic sorta sauce. The local knowledge about the good places to eat was awesome, and there were plenty of photo opportunities to check out some beautiful colonial style buildings!

We walked back through the Plaza del Armas and stopped in front of the Government Palace for a photo. We left the square again and walked through a myriad of UNESCO protected colonial buildings. I think I’ve already mentioned it, but the lack of gutters really struck me as odd, particularly as the sky is always cloudy and looks as thought it is about to rain!!! We walked into a colonial building, which also was a restaurant! Here, we tried a craft beer made from star fruit. To begin with, I’m not a fan of beer. I think it may be because I was on a beer tour in Munich when my HSC results were released. But I still wanted to have a go! The beer was initially quite sweet, but then you were overwhelmed by that distinct hops taste. I didn’t finish the small tasting glass.

We then headed through the post office building. There was a strip of little stalls that sold super touristy items, such as key rings, postcards and selfie sticks. What struck me most about this place was that there was no glass in the roof! There was an atrium style roof frame, BUT NOTHING IN IT!!! I’ve started to believe that it seriously must never rain in Lima! Immediately left after this walkway strip was the house built by (and still owned by the family) the youngest Spanish Conquistador. He was 19 when he came to Peru and built his house. We then headed over to the Lima river bridge, if you could even call the trickle a river! There were so many people, women particularly, who walked past me dressed in that stereotypical Peruvian dress; big hats, plaits, jackets and short flaring skirts.

We continued on our way and we were taken to these little tourist markets that seemed to be in a little street maze between buildings. There were enough stools set out arranged for us and we all grabbed a seat. We found out that we were doing Pisco tasting! Pisco smells a lot like grappe, but knocks you for six just like schnapps. Grappe is made from fermented grape skins, whereas Pisco is made from the fermented grape flesh. The first pisco we tried was between 38-45% alcohol and it smelt like rubbing alcohol or something. Our guide showed us this particular way of consuming the alcohol so it doesn’t burn your throat! The second Pisco we tried was with passionfruit. It was quite sweet and was apparently the drink of choice for the ladies of Peru! I can definitely understand that! We drank out of these tiny plastic shot glasses that were made out of the same colourful and transparent plastic like the gelato spoons you get when you want to taste test.

Our tour finished (at about 3pm!). As we were already a block or so away, the four of us headed over to San Francisco Basilica. It is a bright yellow cathedral that is famous for the catacombs underneath and also for the heaps of birds that roost on the roof of the buildings! We crossed the road which was crazy and we went inside! It was five soles entry, but there were free tour guides available to take you through. Unfortunately we were unable to take photos inside, which is sad because it was so beautiful and opulent, but good because it forced me to really look and absorb what was around me! The first thing that I noticed was that all the steps, regardless of being wood, marble or stone were all sloped due to the wear over the past hundreds of years. We first went into the stairwell which had the most intricate ceiling! It was a geometric pattern that was made of more than 9,000 individual pieces of wood. It was stunning!!!

We then visited the library. The library was two levels and our guide told us that the first level was texts from the 15th - 18th century and the second level were texts from the 19th century to present. There were over 20,000 books in this library and it was so gorgeous!!!! Like the other library I visited before, there were two hymn books written in latin. Our guide explained that these sheep skins books weighed more than 200kg each due to the weight of the pages and the weight of the cedar covers! We visited the beautiful cathedral, saw a gold altar, a renaissance style passion of Christ pained by Peruvian artists (including pearly white skin and the Mona Lisa style eyes that follow you around) and beautiful cedar chairs set against aqua coloured walls!

We then headed down into the catacombs. They were sort of freaky and since visiting the Killing Fields and S-21 in Cambodia I’ve never felt fascinated, but rather horrified at human remains. It is known that the catacombs in San Francisco has more than 25,000 people but there is believed to be more than 75,000 due to layers beneath! Many bones were on display and looked so dusty and brittle. It was sorta creepy, because all the bones that has been examined by archaeologists were then arranged in patterns. It looked interesting but still eerie at the same time! I was relieved to head out of the catacombs, a) because it was out of the creepiness but b) so I could get out of the low ceilings and stop hitting my head!

The four of us headed back and found a bus ‘C’ heading in the right direction. We grabbed some local Bitel sims and bought plenty of calls and data for the month. However, we think we’ve been ripped off and given a lesser amount and the vendors have pocketed the difference! We made our way back to Miraflores and grabbed dinner near Kennedy Park. It was down a super touristy strip which I wasn’t overly keen on, but we were all hangry! Lima is known for its food, and this meal we had was positively BAD!! I had this pasta that turned out to be drenched in soy and was quite a turn off! Lima cuisine does not seem to be straight Peruvian food. The city seems to be a fusion of Peruvian, Italian, Japanese and Chinese cuisine! It was so odd!

We finally finished dinner and parted our ways around 10pm and Bella and I headed back to our accommodation.

#ashtravelsperu #lima #peru #mqpaceinternational #mqechange

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caplofan · 5 years ago

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The Side Effects of Social Distancing (Ep. 409)

(Photo: Shutterstock)

In just a few weeks, the novel coronavirus has undone a century’s worth of our economic and social habits. What consequences will this have on our future — and is there a silver lining in this very black pandemic cloud?

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

* * *

After a relatively slow and scattered response to the global pandemic known as COVID-19, the U.S. has in the past week assumed what is essentially a wartime footing. The primary focus is on curtailing the spread of the virus and creating capacity to treat those who contract it. To accomplish this, we’ve been encouraged — all 330 million of us — to keep to ourselves as much as possible, a practice known as social distancing. Schools and universities have been shut down, along with cultural and religious institutions, restaurants, and much more. The same for sporting events, theaters, conventions, and any other large public gatherings. Many office buildings have emptied out, with employees ordered to work remotely. Travel, especially on planes and trains, is being severely diminished.

All this has resulted in the biggest disruption of daily life that many of us have ever known, and it will last for weeks, perhaps months. Will it successfully contain the spread of COVID-19? We’ll find out; hopefully it will at least be minimized. If we listen to the public-health people, the virologists and the epidemiologists — and we should, because they’ve been dreading and studying this kind of pandemic for years — they say the situation will get substantially worse in the U.S. before it gets better.

And what other effects, and aftereffects, will this social distancing produce? There will be many consequences, and certainly some unintended ones. Would anyone be surprised, for instance, to see a baby boom starting around 9 months from now? Entire industries and segments of our society are being upended. The economic impact will be massive. Obviously, some people stand to be hurt, badly. Others are more protected. And some may well benefit, including those who can entertain and deliver and sell to the millions of people who suddenly have few places to go and not much to do. But the overall economic impact will be hugely negative, and will likely require a massive infusion of government aid — everything from industry bailouts to rent and tax relief to emergency aid for laid-off workers. The stock markets fell 30 percent — with one, harrowing, single-day drop of 10 percent and another of 12 percent.Volatility is higher than it’s been since the financial crisis of 2008.

Now, to be fair, before the COVID-19 pandemic began — apparently in Wuhan, China — the U.S. markets were at an all-time high. And part of the drop should be attributed to another huge market disruption that sort of slipped in under the radar: an oil-price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. The fact is, there are a lot of things flying under the radar right now, a lot of consequences that may come out of the global response to COVID-19. So we thought we’d call a few economists whose past research indicates they might have some insights into the future that’s being crafted right now by the extraordinary changes we’re all living through. They are:

BLOOM: Nicholas Bloom. I’m a professor of economics at Stanford University.

Bloom studies economic uncertainty and the management of firms. Also:

Toby MOSKOWITZ: I’m Toby Moskowitz, I’m a professor of finance and economics at Yale University. And I study financial markets and sports.

And, finally:

Marshall BURKE: My name is Marshall Burke. I am an economist at Stanford University. I’m an environmental economist, so I study how changes in the environment shape a range of human outcomes — health outcomes, economic outcomes, livelihoods more broadly.

We’ll talk about the sudden spike in working from home and online learning; about the super-volatile stock markets — and, believe it or not, one silver lining in the black pandemic cloud.

* * *

Let’s start with an overview of the economy itself in the age of COVID-19. Here’s Nick Bloom.

BLOOM: So there are two things that I think are happening now. First is, there’s clearly the tremendous negative shock on both demand and supply. Businesses are shutting down. Transportation, tourism is falling. So that’s what’s called a first-moment effect. We know for sure that’s bad news. But there’s a second factor thrown on top of that, which is, there’s incredible uncertainty, in particular left-tail risk.

DUBNER: What does left-tail risk mean, please?

BLOOM: Left-tail risk is very bad outcomes. So risk can, in theory, be on both the good side and the bad side. So there’s upside risk and downside risk. The COVID-19 really only has, obviously, downside risk. It’s hard to see anything good coming out of this. And this additional uncertainty, historically, has turned out to be really costly for the economy because businesses pause hiring or investing. So I’d be pretty confident in saying I suspect we’re now already in a recession. How bad it will be is hard to tell.

MOSKOWITZ: Some of the latest work in academia is about network effects.

That’s Toby Moskowitz.

MOSKOWITZ: So, take the N.B.A., who just postponed the season. The vendors, the suppliers, all the periphery industries, including people that work at the stadiums, taxis, hotels, they’re all going to be affected by this. So we’ll see that trickling effect happen as well.

DUBNER: I wonder if you could talk for a minute about the difference between being, right now, a salaried, full-time employee versus being an hourly or non-salaried worker. And how it strikes me that that may be a huge split, bifurcation, that one class is going to do much better than the other. Am I wrong on that or right on that?

BLOOM: You’re right. So on the one hand there’s folks like me and you that are on a salary and can kind of relax in some senses, and we have all kinds of issues with our kids and health risks, but at least we’re not worried about losing our income. And then on the other hand, there are people that are hourly pay that I think life is substantially harder yet still for, because they’ve also got to go out and work, which puts them at higher exposure risk. And when the recession happens, they’re the ones that are easiest for the firms to lay off.

DUBNER: Can you think of an example from history, either recent or distant, of how — in a case like this, where workers, especially the most vulnerable workers, have the rug pulled out from under them, a case where government and/or private firms responded well to this problem?

BLOOM: I mean, unfortunately, when you look at recessions generally, the lower-skilled, lower-paid do much worse. When has there been a good response? You know, I’m scratching my head to think about it. I mean, there are things like Ford, on the $5 a day, which was famous in the 30’s, stepped in to guarantee workers an honest living wage. In recent times, I mean the last 20, 30 years, actually, labor markets have generally been moving towards being more flexible. And so it’s become easier for firms to lay people off, particularly hourly workers.

MOSKOWITZ: In fact, we’re already starting to see some layoffs from this. They would be — you see it at bakeries, restaurants, things of that nature. Those are going to be the first to go. And that’s something where policymakers and economists, I think, need to think about to sort of smooth out this disruption.

DUBNER: What do you do?

MOSKOWITZ: Well, I think one of the answers — and it seems like this is a — I’m sure there’s some debate, but my reading of the news has been that it’s been fairly bipartisan, is longer paid leave from work — that, I think, has to help. But that’s, again, for full-time employees. I don’t know what we do about — I mean, some sort of safety net for those people, I think, would be important.

DUBNER: When there’s such a high level of economic uncertainty, especially one produced by this massive disruption or shock, what does that do to monetary or fiscal policy? Does it rob it of some of its typical power?

BLOOM: Yeah. So as we speak on March 12th, the S&P 500 fell almost 10 percent, which is actually the second biggestdrop since World War II. And more surprising was, halfway through the day, the Fed and the European Central Bank both stepped in to try and provide stimulus to the market. And it’s like blowing against the wind. So the market briefly went up and then just kept falling down. So, unfortunately, monetary policy, and to a broader extent fiscal policy, the government with tax and spending, I think has pretty limited effect on slowing us down.

DUBNER: In this case, was it really the uncertainty or was it just the magnitude of the fear right now?

BLOOM: The primary reason why the Fed’s move wasn’t consequential, is the damaging impact of COVID-19 is so large. There’s not much the Fed can do. The other thing that’s worth bearing in mind is, of course, before we went into this two weeks ago, interest rates were already very low. We just fought a war against the Great Recession in 2008, 2009. We really hadn’t reloaded our arsenal. And suddenly the biggest meanie in sight appears on the horizon. So economists had worried about this for a while. One of the reasons people wanted actually the Fed to put up interest rates a bit, over the last two or three years, so that we had some ammunition.

DUBNER: The president, President Trump, has very vocally said that he wanted to keep rates as low as possible. Jay Powell, the chair of the Fed, reportedly had had inclinations in going the opposite direction over the past several years, but instead either kept them or kept lowering them. I mean, is this exactly the kind of instance where you wanted to keep that powder dry?

BLOOM: Yeah, with benefit of hindsight, it was a mistake in particular to have massive tax cuts over the last two, three years, because we’re actually growing very fast. What would have been much better is to push down the government debt so that right now when we really need it, we could spend money. Normally, you want to have big blowouts in recessions to support the economy, and earn your savings back in the booms. And instead, we’re in the hangover from spending in a boom and suddenly you’re hit with a recession with very little money left in the bank. So the fiscal position, I think, is much more worrying because there we should have been generating a surplus, and instead there’s a big deficit.

This past Sunday, after we spoke, the Federal Reserve cut its rates to nearly zero; it also announced it would buy at least $700 billion in government bonds, a move known as “quantitative easing,” to try to keep markets from locking up. The stock markets were not mollified: they fell another 12 percent on Monday.

MOSKOWITZ: Let’s face it, if we’re not transacting with each other for some long period of time, that will take a toll. I mean, think about the airlines. If the airlines aren’t making any money for a while and can’t run their routes, that’s going to affect lots of businesses and all of that’s going to go down for a while. Now, the thought is, of course, that as soon as everything jumps back up, the airlines can kickstart and start flying again. If that takes some time, it may take a little bit longer to recover. But I’m hopeful that won’t be the case.

DUBNER: The last time we saw a stock-market meltdown like this was after the financial crisis began to really gather steam. And what we saw was a lot of investors — institutional, but a lot of individual investors — really panicked when the markets ended up falling. And many people sold low. And then as the recovery started, they ended up buying high. I think we all understand the emotional component of that, especially for people who are a little bit older and they just want to preserve the capital. As a finance person who’s seen a few of these rises and falls now over the past few decades, do you have any general advice for people?

MOSKOWITZ: Yes, I have very specific advice. Don’t touch it.

BLOOM: One of the basic findings from economics is, you can’t outthink the market.

MOSKOWITZ: Any time people try to time the market, they end up doing far more damage than they help themselves. It’s very difficult to do. As one example, I had many colleagues — these are famous economists — who said last week, “I’m buying, I’m buying like crazy. This will be a blip.” They’re all sorry they did.

BLOOM: And you’re swimming with the sharks, because the other side of that trade is guys on Wall Street that eat for lunch retail investors like us, that don’t really know what we’re doing.

MOSKOWITZ: So what I’ve always done — and I’m not the only financial economist that would tell you this — many of us would — is, you have a long-term strategy. You stick to it. And you can’t be blindsided or emotional about these short-term blips because you can’t really do much about them. So the best advice is actually not to look.

Investing is, of course, a case-specific pursuit. If you are an older investor or if you’ve been putting money in a 529 plan for your kids’ college tuition, and they’re already deep into high school, then a 30-percent drop in the market has different implications than if you’ve got a longer horizon. In any case, we should probably expect stock-market volatility to continue for the near term, especially because COVID-19 has created so much volatility in how the biggest companies in the world are doing business. Apple has closed most of its retail stores around the world. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have enacted mandatory work-from-home policies for most employees. What will the effects of that be? And will COVID-19 provide researchers an opportunity to measure all these effects?

BLOOM: Yes. Much as aircraft engineers investigate crash sites, economists will investigate what happened after COVID-19.

Nick Bloom probably knows more about working from home than just about anyone you’ll ever meet. Not just because he’s a professor, and not because he’s lazy — but because he’s studied this very question.

BLOOM: Somewhat coincidentally, six years ago, we ran a study out in Shanghai, in China, where a large online travel agent called CTrip, which is really like China’s version of Expedia. They decided to allow employees to work from home because they found office space in Shanghai was expensive. So they asked 1,000 employees who wanted to work from home. And interestingly, only 500 of them volunteered, despite the fact employees on average were commuting 30 minutes each way. Of those 500 employees, they then randomized them by birth date.

They randomized them so that the experiment would be truly an experiment, and not an exercise in self-selection.

BLOOM: And then we tracked them for nine months. And what we found were three things. Firstly, employees working from home — so these were people, I should say, were booking telephone calls and making— processing data on computers. So they were kind of individual working jobs. They were 13 percent more productive. I mean, 13 percent is a huge increase. And the reasons they told us was, you know, A, it’s quieter at home, so they could concentrate more. But B, actually, they just tended to work their full shift rather than spending as much time at lunch or arriving late or taking long toilet breaks. Secondly, their quit rates halved. Many of them much preferred working from home and didn’t want to leave their job. And thirdly, once you controlled for performance, since they were performing better, they actually weren’t getting promoted any faster — so there is some sting in the tail, that being at home seemed to reduce your ability to get promoted.

DUBNER: It sounds like good news that productivity and happiness and all these things can increase. On the other hand, it sounds like that job that you were looking at lends itself particularly well to working from home, yes?

BLOOM: Yes. As you said, there’s a couple of major caveats. So it’s really not a team job. So that’s why you can be at home four out of five days a week. The second point was that after the end of the study, they then ask employees to re-decide whether they wanted to work from home or come back into the office. And half of the employees said after spending nine months at home, they didn’t like it. They felt isolated and lonely and they volunteered to come back into the office. So for me, the warnings from the COVID experiment is A, the type of working from home we’re talking about now is very extreme. It’s full-time, five days a week. I should note that less than five percentof Americans currently do that. Lots of people work from home a day a week, but very few people work from home full-time. It’s kind of like comparing going to the gym sporadically with marathon training, so it’s pretty extreme.

And B, as you say, we tested employees that don’t need to spend time together. And most people do. And C, the COVID threat could well go on for months and months. I really worry about a big tick up in people getting depressed, mental- health issues, which leads to health issues, more generally, because of the isolation it could lead to. My prediction is, we will find that people that do routine jobs may perform okay at home but for the majority of us, I think it’s going to be pretty painful personally, with all the loneliness. And I suspect will be pretty damaging for productivity, particularly as time goes on. So I think if there’s one or two weeks, it wouldn’t be so bad. But if it stretches on to three to six months, I think it’s going to be hugely damaging economically.

MOSKOWITZ: As you gather that data, and I suspect a lot of companies are doing this, you can get a sense of, well, what is the productivity loss, if any, from having people work at home?

Toby Moskowitz again.

MOSKOWITZ: And this might be useful for when you’re hiring employees — some of them want to, let’s say, come to the office three days a week and work at home two days a week. Sometimes there’s pushback on that. But it’s not really backed by data. This will give us a chance to make that assessment. And this might be a nice way to force everybody to actually run this experiment and see what happens.

BLOOM: I think another thing that’s going to be damaged in the long run, actually, is: if everyone’s working from home, there’s not going to be that kind of workplace discussions, coffee-table discussions, lunchtime talk. And most of that, it turns out, is important for long-run innovation. So day-to-day, we can get along with, you know, if you’re dealing with the same current customers or same ideas. But when you examine businesses or scientists or even the way I do my own research, a lot of that creativity comes from idle time and relaxed discussion with colleagues, and that’s all gone. So I also worry that five, 10 years out from now, we will see this as another lowering in long-run growth rate because we’ve taken a big hit to innovation.

DUBNER: You know a lot about management and leadership and firms that are successful and unsuccessful. What do you think might be learned along those lines from the COVID-19 situation?

BLOOM: So if you have a great manager that’s very organized, that can deal with change, that inspires their employees, they can survive this. But I think a chaotic and disorganized firm could literally fall apart. And in fact, already we start to see bankruptcies start to head up.

DUBNER: Is there anything you can point to that really good leaders do or don’t do in a crisis?

BLOOM: Well, one narrow piece of advice around working from home would be to try and regularly check in with your employees. So, it’s an unusual thing to do, but we’re in unusual times. You could easily set up every day, beginning of the day, end of the day, 10, 15 minutes, face-to-face, one-on-one Skype call and just chew the fat. It’s going to be really important for employees to feel like somebody is there that cares about them and notices they’re there. It may mean that managers are going to lose, frankly, three, four hours a day on these one-on-one meetings. But I feel without that, they could A, lose contact, and B, employees could become quite seriously depressed and lonely.

MOSKOWITZ: Well, it’s the same argument that people had with the school closings. So, it’s very costly to close a school. People work — now what do you do with your kids? The kids aren’t learning. I get all that. Those are costs. I think people are making the wrong comparison, though. You can’t compare the cost of doing this versus not doing it. Not doing it’s not an option. The question is, you do it now for a shorter period of time or you do it later for a much longer period of time. All the things you’re mentioning are definite costs. I just don’t think we can avoid them at this point.

DUBNER: Many people, including us on this show, have kind of complained about or agitated against the standard set-up with meetings in corporate America . We have a lot of meetings. And many people feel that those meetings are beyond not productive, but actually onerous and intrusive. Do you have any thoughts on whether this might change meeting culture in any way?

MOSKOWITZ: Well, nobody hates meetings more than professors, that’s for sure. But everybody feels this way. I’ll give you an example. I had, at the university today, a couple of meetings scheduled that — if I wasn’t coming in to do this, I would have canceled completely. Instead, I said, “Well, let’s not all get together in a room. That seems stupid at this time. Why don’t we try this on Zoom, which isjust a teleconference?” It worked just fine. I mean, initially there was a little awkwardness, where people introduced themselves, and a few of the, you know, I would call them the old-schoolers, said, “Well, this is why we don’t like these things, see how awkward it is?” Once we got into it, the meeting was far more efficient, and what was slated for a half-hour meeting took 10 minutes, and we resolved it quickly.

DUBNER: Many people hate commuting. And most people in the next period of time — weeks, months — are going to be commuting a lot less. Once we return — or if and when we return to normalcy, do you think it’s going to be hard to get people to get back on that commuting wagon?

MOSKOWITZ: Nobody likescommuting. It’s actually the number one thing on surveys that people say they hate the most. And I think the longer this goes, you’ll have more requests for, “Hey, look, I could do this commute three days a week. But not five.”

BLOOM: As we know, for the last 20 years, the prices of property in the center of cities have surged. Young people in particular want to live in downtown areas. If suddenly we switch to working from home, you could easily see that reversing. So I can easily see there being kind of satellite towns, but they would all be relatively cheaper, and we could spread out more uniformly. So, yeah, I think for the housing market, working from home is a big mass rollout. It would cut property prices in the center of cities.

DUBNER: I’m curious, you know, once people are ordered to work from home and then they — all of a sudden they’re not having to commute, they’re not having to shave ortuck in a shirt, et cetera. Maybe they don’t even change their underwear. I don’t know. Do you think getting some of those people back to work, especially back to the commute every day, will be difficult?

BLOOM: I’ve talked to a lot of firms in the U.S. and internationally about working from home. They’re kind of reluctant to do it. They’re nervous that they let the genie out the bottle. And it’s hard to reverse it. I actually think this experience is going to force a lot more serious thinking about working from home and see a big spike up, some of which will definitely be beneficial in the long-run.

These are just a few, and perhaps the most predictable, of the countless economic and social side effects we’ll be seeing from the COVID-19 response. What are you seeing? Let us know at [email protected].

* * *

“Social distancing” to diminish the spread of COVID-19 means that we’re all supposed to limit our interaction with other people as much as possible. Some of us, maybe most of us, will find this incredibly hard. The late economist Gary Becker made a career of studying behaviors that most economists didn’t think much about, including addiction. And what did Becker argue is the most addictive thing in the world? Other people. We are, for the most part, social animals. What kind of animals will we be without the socializing? We’re about to find out. One of the biggest changes right now — one of the biggest unplanned experiments of the COVID-19 era — has to do with remote teaching and learning. Schools and universities across the U.S., and elsewhere, have been shut down.

BLOOM: Yeah, Stanford closed.

MOSKOWITZ: Yeah. That’s what they’ve done here at Yale, too.

Those, again, are the economists Nicholas Bloom and Toby Moskowitz.

DUBNER: We’re talking about COVID-19 as a natural experiment that will allow people like you to measure the efficacy of remote teaching. So can you envision actually doing that study or someone doing that study? What kind of data would be needed, what kind of timeframe would be useful, et cetera?

BLOOM: You may compare courses to say the courses taught in person last year. So you may say, look, we’ve got 10 years of basically the same course. Then suddenly this year, we teach it online. What do the grades look like? What do the long- run outcomes look like? In Stanford, for example, Econ 1, which is one of our key courses, was taught in fall, spring, and winter courses. So you could look at Econ 1 students who took it face-to-face last quarter versus the ones next quarter that are going to take it entirely online. And see how they do in years two, three, and four.

DUBNER: And what’s your suspected conclusion? Do you think that there are some kind of antiquated inefficiencies in the system that could be eliminated? And even though it’d be a shame that it took something like COVID-19 to produce this kind of change, that there might be a lot of benefits to some forms of remote learning?

BLOOM: I’m not that optimistic that remote learning is going to be that successful. The reason is from personal experience, I feel a lot of my value-added is what I’ll call the personal-trainer effect — you know, giving students motivation. You’re forcing people to focus for an hour and a half. For example, probably the biggest single improvement in my teaching was the year that I banned laptops and cell phones from being used in the class. And it was miraculous. Suddenly everyone pays attention. Whereas when it’s offline, it’s so easy to get distracted by watching the football or seeing the news or watching the stock market.

DUBNER: So let me pretend to be cynical for a moment and say, “Well, the kind of person who would measure this effect long term — in other words, remote teaching actually bring some gains, and that might eliminate a lot of live professorial activity — the kind of people who’d come up with that are professors. So is this in the best interest, or in the interest at all, of anyone to actually study and come to that kind of conclusion?

BLOOM: Yes, absolutely. I think as economists, you always want progress. So imagine professors can suddenly teach much more efficiently by recording a class once and then having it played on video. Then, of course, we can spend our time more one-on-one with students. My sense, the highest value-added is sitting down with individual students and going through their research papers. And if we could spend our hours every day on that, I think it would be much more valuable for students, actually, than just reciting material they could learn out of a textbook.

DUBNER: So, many universities have already spent a lot of time and a fair amount of money putting their courses online. And then there are for-profit firms, Coursera and others who have pretty robust platforms. And I see that the take-up numbers are not insubstantial. But considering how difficult and expensive and timely it is to attend college, to go to four years’ worth of college, I’ve been shocked at how low the take-up rates are for online learning. And I’m curious whether you think that this might adjust that.

MOSKOWITZ: Here’s my view on this. And just from 25 years of teaching, myself. I find if you’re just teaching facts and methods, that can be done almost as well online as it can live. You could even argue maybe even better online because you can supplement it with video materials, and you can record it, right, and get it perfect. If you’re trying to teach someone how to think and you’re trying to teach them, let’s say, how to do research or how to ask an interesting question and get a scientific answer, that’s much more hands-on. So, you know, if I’m teaching basic investments — what’s a stock, what’s a bond — I think I can do that just as well online as I probably can in the classroom.

But if you’re talking about training students how to think, right, and how to really, you know, whether it’s writing an English essay or writing a poem or, you know, coming up with a computer program that, you know, does X or, you know, thinking about how to price some obscure private-equity firm — that, I think, requires a lot more back and forth, a lot more interaction. And I suspect that the reason that we still have the university model, is that’s what they’re trying to do. What I tell my students is, I’m trying to teach you how to think, because what I teach you today may not be relevant 5, 10, 20 years from now. But if you know how to think about it, you’ll be able to figure it out. When LeBron James— very terrible analogy. But, you know, there’s a reason that basketball players want to play in front of fans.

DUBNER: I have to just say, whenever an economist compares himself to LeBron James, I’m all ears, OK?

MOSKOWITZ: I wasn’t going there, I swear. But I’m making — making a very poor analogy. Well, the analogy is okay, but it’s on a very, very different scale. Which is, you know, I think when you’re teaching, you’re reacting to your students. You see their faces, you see their questions, you see confusion. Sometimes you see a light go on. That’s very difficult to do. Even though you see their faces on the flat screen, it’s not quite the same. And for an athlete, it must be a hundred times like that, right? And I sort of get where that sense comes from. So now, it’s in my interest to say that that’s the case. If it turns out we could teach just as effectively remotely, well, that’s a whole different paradigm for a guy like me.

BURKE: Yeah, for academics, it’s been in some sense a real opportunity to explore other ways of doing things.

That’s Marshall Burke, the environmental economist at Stanford.

BURKE: So all the conferences I was going to go to this spring have been canceled. I’ve sent my lab group home. So I hold my lab meetings online. We’ve had speaker candidates online. And I was skeptical that it would work well, initially, and actually, I think it’s working quite nicely. And I really hope that we learn that lesson, and then we do some of these substitutions. There’s no reason I need to fly to the East Coast many times a year to give talks. Why can’t we just do it remotely? I think this will give us the opportunity to explore the benefits of these other modes of economic production.

BLOOM: So I think this is going to generate huge amounts of experimentation in teaching. And in the long run, some of it will be good, but it’s very painful right now.

DUBNER: When we think about schooling, especially in the early ages, socialization seems to be a big benefit, or at least that’s what people say. So right now, we’re seeing all levels of schools being closed around the U.S. and in other places, from pre-K up through graduate schools. So I’m curious if you have any thoughts about what kind of unintended or knock-on effects that may have.

BLOOM: I think socialization is actually really important. It’s also interesting that the American system has been criticized heavily for doing not that well in international comparable maths tests and science tests and reading tests, but Americans are very good at socializing, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. There’s lots of American startups and successful C.E.O.s and entrepreneurs. It’s part of this socialization process. From an early age, American kids are taught to argue, to speak up. And I think that will be lost if we move entirely to online home-based teaching.

Marshall Burke has already moved his own young children to home-based teaching.

BURKE: We pulled our kids out of school this morning and already two hours into our homestay, they were punching each other in the face. So I am not optimistic about the livelihood improvements from these stay-at-home weeks.

DUBNER: We should say they are twins, right?

BURKE: They are twins. So they like punching each other in the face.

DUBNER: Are they both boys, by any chance?

BURKE: Two girls, actually. It cuts across all genders, apparently.

Here’s how Burke describes the work he does as an environmental economist.

BURKE: So I study how changes in the environment shape a range of human outcomes — health outcomes, economic outcomes, livelihoods more broadly.

DUBNER: Can you talk for a second about your past research on the association between climate change and violence?

BURKE: So one thing we have done is assemble historical data from around the world on violent outcomes. And what we find is a very strong linkage between changes in temperature and increases in various types of violence. So temperatures go up, you actually see more homicides in the U.S. You see more civil wars in sub-Saharan Africa. So this is not a new finding. It comes through very clearly in many different datasets.

DUBNER: And can you explain, just on a kind of behavioral level, the mechanism by which that happens?

BURKE: So there are multiple mechanisms that are consistent with this effect. I think we’re still trying to understand exactly which one, or which combination of them, is most important. There’s a physiological mechanism. So psychologists have shown for a long time that if you just put people in a room and turn up the temperature, you can piss them off even if there’s no one else in the room. But patterns of social engagement also change. So a warm evening, many more people are out on the street and maybe there are enough different social interactions that lead to an increase in crimes. And these larger scale-changes, declines in economic productivity or other outcomes, is the standard explanation for why you would see things like civil war, civil conflict, increase when temperatures go up.

DUBNER: So given all that, I am curious if you have any predictions about a similar association between violence and COVID-19. Because again, you’ve got the regular living patterns of many, many, many people — it’s going to be billions of people around the world — being disrupted, everything from going to work versus not going to work versus how they eat versus how they interact, et cetera. And I am curious whether that potential makes you anxious, interested to measure, et cetera, et cetera?

BURKE: Absolutely interesting to measure. I would think most of the measures being put in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19 are reducing social interaction. That’s explicitly their goal. My naive prediction would be that that would reduce at least many types of individual crime. Now, if things got bad enough where resources were constraints, could things get a lot worse? I think so. Anecdotally, a lot of people are buying weapons here in the U.S. So to me, that suggests that some people think that broader-scale violence could break out. I very strongly hope that’s not the case. But that’s clearly a concern of some people.

DUBNER: Okay. So the big reason we wanted to speak with you today was about this recent work you’ve done, specifically related to COVID-19, and an unintended consequence of the lockdown in China.

BURKE: Sure. So a few months into the COVID-19 epidemic in China, where it started, NASA published some really startling photos of changes in air quality over China. The Chinese had taken very aggressive action to limit the spread of the virus, and that had economic consequences. And you could actually see these from space. So many factories have been shuttered. People are not going to work. So what NASA showed was a dramatic reduction in air pollution across a lot of China. And as an environmental economist, we’re very interested in air pollution — why it changes, what effect it has on economic things we care about in the world. So I and many other environmental economists immediately thought, you know, this could be in some sense a silver lining in the epidemic. Clearly, the epidemic was causing an immense amount of harm on the ground, but it was also reducing air pollution. And we have decades of research suggesting that air pollution is really bad for health outcomes. And so any reductions in air pollution are going to be good, on average, for health outcomes.

At that point, Beijing had some of the dirtiest air in the world. And so what we saw in late 2007 and early in 2008 was one of the most dramatic efforts to rapidly clean up air quality that we’ve probably seen anywhere throughout human history. They raised the price of gasoline to encourage people to not drive. They prohibited certain polluting vehicles from being on the roads at all. They shut down a range of manufacturing plants, cement manufacturers, concrete manufacturers. They forced some of the large steel plants to either turn off or to actually relocate. And all of this had a really dramatic effect on air quality. Air quality improved by about a third in the span of just a couple months.

DUBNER: And this was all temporary suspension then, correct?

BURKE: This was temporary suspension. Olympics were done and all these constraints were lifted.

DUBNER: And once the constraints were lifted, where did the air-pollution quality go back to?

BURKE: So it went back to its previous very high levels. Unfortunately.

DUBNER: And was that relatively short amount of time with less air pollution enough to substantially improve people’s long-term health outcomes?

BURKE: So it turns out it was. So you can compare how mortality changed in Beijing relative to other cities that did not see this dramatic change in air pollution. So the researchers found very large reductions in child and infant mortality and very large reductions in old-age mortality.

DUBNER: What can you tell us about the in-utero effects of air pollution?

BURKE: This has been studieda lot in the context of the Clean Air Act in the U.S., which led to pretty substantial improvements in air quality across the U.S. And people, again, find really large effects. So exposure to air pollution in-utero leads to later life outcomes, reductions in earnings, poor health overall. So air pollution does not have to kill you to make you worse off.

So when Marshall Burke saw those NASA maps showing a decrease in air pollution across China due to COVID-19, he went to the data. And what kind of drop did he find?

BURKE: So the percentage drop was actually quite close to what we saw in the Beijing Olympics. Maybe slightly smaller. I would say a 20 percent improvement in air quality.

DUBNER: And with the Olympics, you mentioned that the drop was very variable, or very concentrated on Beijing. If you were to look at all of China, a couple months into COVID-19 versus before, do you see a drop pretty much everywhere? Or is it mostly in the places where COVID-19 was particularly concentrated?

BURKE: So the data are still rolling in on this, but the reductions do seem to be the largest in places where COVID-19 was most serious. The satellite data indicate that. So Wuhan saw an immediate and very large decline in economic activity and that led to a decline in air pollution. Cities in southern China have seen the largest overall decreases in air pollution. And that’s because in the north — places like Beijing, actually — home heating is an important source of energy use and also a source of pollution. And that hasn’t changed that much. So actually in Beijing, you’ve seen next-to-no-decrease in air pollution due to COVID-19. That’s both because the air pollution and because of — cement factories actually don’t like to turn off their blast furnaces. It’s really expensive to stop them and then start them again. So they like to just leave them on if they can and sort of try to wait it out. And that’s what they’ve done. And so you’ve seen sort of no decline in air pollution around Beijing, sort of ironically.

DUBNER: OK, so tell us what you believe will be the relationship between this reduction in pollution and mortality in China.

BURKE: So I calculated that this reduction in pollution will likely save 50,000 lives across China. I want to emphasize that this is — it’s a prediction, in a sense, it’s not a measurement. It’s using these estimates of the relationship between air pollution and mortality than we know from other studies. So what those estimates tell us is that the gains are concentrated, again, among the very young and among the very old.

DUBNER: So those 50,000, let’s call them “saved” lives, because it’s somewhat speculative or predictive. That, in your estimate, as we speak — with a moving target, granted — would compare to how many lives lost due to COVID-19 directly?

BURKE: Directly so far, there have been around 3,000 lives lost to COVID-19 in China. That number continues to go up, but go up much more slowly. China seems to have really turned the corner on this. So it’s about 20 times — 15 to 20 times higher — the deaths saved from air pollution. I want to emphasize that the 3,000 deaths are just the direct-attributed deaths to COVID-19. That does not count all the immense disruption that’s happened that could have led to additional deaths. Other people not being able to get treated for non-COVID-related diseases. Those we have yet to really observe in the mortality statistics. And so a full accounting will need to take those into account. And we just don’t have the data to do that yet.

DUBNER: If we were to focus for another minute on the silver lining — I’m curious about other behavioral responses to COVID-19 in China. Air pollution fell enough to have a big positive effect; transportation is a substantial contributor to air pollution; so did transportation fall enough to, say, lead to a big drop in traffic fatalities as well?

BURKE: I think that’s an interesting question, and again, one that would have to be studied once we have more mortality data in. In settings in which car accidents are a large share of mortality or for certain demographics, like young, otherwise healthy demographics, for which car accidents are the leading cause of death in many parts of the world, I think you would expect a reduction in traffic deaths.

DUBNER: I can imagine people listening to this and say, “This Professor Burke sounds like a nice person and a thoughtful person and a bright person, but ugh, he’s such an economist. There is a global pandemic going on and he’s finding this silver lining in this gigantic black cloud,” that you’re identifying what might be, let’s say, 45,000 fewer deaths in China because of less air pollution versus the deaths from COVID-19. So I’m just curious — does it feel — I’m sorry. I don’t mean to ask you to hoist yourself on your own petard. But does it feel somewhat awkward or do you feel guilty or conflicted in any way in kind of examining the specifics of that silver lining while the world is in such shock and uproar?

BURKE: It feels terribly awkward, and it was a calculation I could do because I had the data. But I would hesitate to even call it a silver lining. So, to step back. I did this calculation. I tweeted it out. And a lot of the response was like, well, you know, this is terrible, like, and you’re not accounting for all the other negative consequences that a large pandemic like this would have on the health system. And I think that’s right. And those have been the stories coming out of Italy and coming out of China, right? If you have any other health complication unrelated to COVID-19, it’s going to be very hard to get treatment. The silver lining is irrelevant right now. Let’s focus on the dark cloud and getting that dark cloud under control.

Epidemics are terrible. They result in an immense amount of human suffering. That is going to continue to happen in our country. And that is where our focus needs to be. And none of my silly calculations should take away from that. To me, what this calculation does highlight, though, and unfortunately what things like COVID-19 or other dramatic events bring into focus is, what’s going on when we don’t have pandemics? And if anything, the pandemic can help highlight the negative effects of our everyday actions.

DUBNER: So I guess ideally what you’d want to think is, after the recovery from this pandemic, what you’d have is policymakers look at your data and your conclusions and say, “Whoa, let’s not wait for the next pandemic to curtail pollution. Look how many lives it saves.” Right?

BURKE: That’s right. And I think the Chinese government, you’ve actually seen pollution levels come down pretty dramatically in the last few years. China’s already making progress on this problem and I think should be commended for that.

Economists really like to think in cost-benefit terms. So let’s weigh the positives and let’s weigh the negatives and let’s compare them. To me, that’s not obviously the right way to go in an epidemic. Let’s just think of this — let’s focus on the negatives. Let’s not do a cost-benefit calculation of epidemics. I think that’s just the wrong framing overall. Despite that being what we always want to do. But let’s use the epidemic to learn about things we could do better when we don’t have epidemics. I think that’s the way to think.

DUBNER: Let’s pretend for a minute that, you know, God willing, the pandemic turns out to be less fatal, less damaging than it certainly could be. And that in a couple months’ time, things seem to be getting back to what would seem to be pre-COVID-19 normal. Do you really think that people will, for instance, decide not to congregate as much? Do you think that online learning or remote working or any of these other substitutes will actually stick around?

BURKE: That’s a great question. And yeah, honestly, I have no idea.

DUBNER: I mean, I’m old enough now to remember when computing started to become pretty widely available and a lot of smart people said, “Well, that is the end of cities. It’s the end of in-person work, period. Everybody’s going to live in, you know, Fiji or wherever they want.” And it just didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite happened. This propinquity turned out to be incredibly valuable, and urbanization has risen and risen and risen. So I’m curious about what curiosities you may have to — what kind of lasting effects you may want to look for as an economist.

BURKE: Yes, so economic historians — certain economic historians — point to these critical junctures in history, where it wasn’t slow change, but something specific happens that set entire countries or entire economies on a different course. So obviously it remains to be seen whether this specific epidemic — and hopefully it subsides, and we get it under control — once it goes away, what happens? But one idea is that these sorts of large-scale events could be critical junctures that cause us to change our behavior in ways that just sort of slow-moving changes in technology or slow-moving changes in preferences never do.

* * *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Daphne Chen. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Harry Huggins, Matt Hickey, Zack Lapinski, and Corinne Wallace; our intern is Isabel O’Brien. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Nicholas Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University. Toby Moskowitz, professor of finance and economics at Yale University. Marshall Burke, economist at Stanford University.

RESOURCES

“Does Working From Home Work? Evidence From A Chinese Experiment,” by Nicholas Bloom, James Liang, John Roberts, and Zhichun Jenny Ying (Oxford University Press, 2014). “Every Breath You Take – Every Dollar You’ll Make: The Long-Term Consequences of the Clean Air Act of 1970,” by Adam Isen, Maya Rossin-Slater, and W. Reed Walker (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2014). “Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being,” by Daniel Kahneman and Alan B. Krueger (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2006).

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