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thomas-mvller · 4 years

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Tag games x 283129

Hello everyone so uh lately i've started to be more active on my music sideblog which means i've been hearting stuff like crazy for the past couple of months aka all the things i've been tagged in has been buried under all that nonsense SO because i hate leaving things undone i thought on doing them all at once and tagging a bunch of people so they can get a little distraction by doing them (as in, not all of them but whichever they might want to do)

Again: you do not have to do all of them, not even one if you don't feel like doing so! there's a game for everyone so hey!

Tagging: @havertsz @foreverbayern @germanynts @sherlockisonfire @debushit @sadiiomane10 @miasanmuller @elishamanning @abcde-fc @bbjim @littletentaclemonster @tamtam-elizabeth @minimalloss @pearfight and whoever wants to do this! if you see it, consider yourself tagged >:))

Alright, here we go:

1) I was tagged by @/tamtam-elizabeth and @/sadiiomane10 to post a capture of my lockscreen, homescreen and last song i listened to. Thank you both <3

I used to be very annoying when it came to changing my lock/homescreen so now i just don’t do that often anymore (previous to that my homescreen was a pic of lfc winning ucl OBVIOUSLY) also i haven’t really been listening to music lately but i did have a depeche mode phase like two weeks ago and this was the song i replayed the most so hey!

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2) “Get to know me” tag

Tagged by the always thoughtful @/tamtam-elizabeth , thank you and i’m sorry for taking so long ;-; <3

Name: Cloud

Birthday: sometime in november

Zodiac Sign: scorpio

Height: 5′4′’ or 1.65 (last time i checked..... which was like seven years ago)

Hobbies: lately it has been sewing facemasks 😂 that aside i like watching movies, random videos on yt, baking and crafting sometimes

Favorite colors: black, red and teal

Favorite Book: don’t think i have one :o

Last Song Listened to: barrel of a gun by depeche mode

Last Movie Watched: currently watching prince of egypt. if that doesn’t count then ben hur 😂

Inspiration or Muse: i really don’t know what to say here 😂

Dream Job: i still haven’t given up to my goal but at this point i just want a job that gives me stability and zero worries

Reason Behind my URL: Thomas Müller (German pronunciation: [ˈtoːmas ˈmʏlɐ]; born 13 September 1989) is a German professional footballer who plays for Bundesliga club Bayern Munich. A versatile player, Müller plays as a midfielde- okay no in all seriousness yess this url is bc of a football player 😂

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3) Ten songs playlist tag

Tagged by the joy that is @/foreverbayern and the always sweetest @/havertsz . thank youuuuu <3

Rules: We’re snooping through your playlist. Put your entire music library on shuffle and list the first 10 songs and then choose 10 victims.

Some months ago I made the mistake of transfering the songs i had in my old computer to my current laptop and there are some stuff that just........ should not be acknowledged so i can’t do shuffle HOWEVER i will choose ten random songs i’ve listened to/discovered this year (technically speaking is the same) so here it is:

art-i-ficial by x-ray spex

sunny afternoon by the kinks

desire lines by lush

paper cuts by incubus

pure love by hayley williams

spirit by bauhaus

no one knows by screaming trees

let’s love by suho

all we need is a dream by cheap trick

cosmonauts by fiona apple

bonus: you’re so close by peter murphy (god i adore this song)

I wouldn’t be surprised if these aren’t your cup of tea tbh 😂

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4) “Core aesthetic” tag

Tagged by @/havertsz - i’m sorry for the delay ;-; and thank you <3

rules: search your name + "core aesthetic" on pinterest, get a moodboard & select a few photos that come up

i can’t really use pinterest so i googled it instead, as you might’ve guessed this is what i got 😂

ps: i’ve been informed not to use pinterest so if you wish follow this post’s indications

ah this is so pretty, i loved doing this!

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Tagged by @/germanynts @/havertsz and @/elishamanning to do this tag, thank you all <3

rules: describe yourself with pictures you already have saved. no downloading or searching for new ones. then tag 10 people.

if you want further explanations for each pic... ask ahead 😂

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6) “bold what applies” tag

Tagged by the always enJoyable @/foreverbayern, thank yoooou <3

rules: bold what applies to you and tag a bunch of people

- Appearance

I am over 5’5 // I wear glasses/contacts // I have blonde hair // I prefer loose clothing over tight clothing // I have one or more piercings (had three...) // I have at least one tattoo // I have blue eyes // I have dyed or highlighted my hair // I have gotten plastic surgery // I have or had braces // I sunburn easily // I have freckles // I paint my nails // I typically wear makeup // I don’t often smile // I am pleased with how I look // I prefer Nike to Adidas // I wear baseball caps backwards

- Hobbies and interests

I play a sport // I can play an instrument // I am artistic // I know more than one language // I have won a trophy in some sort of competition // I can cook or bake without a recipe // I know how to swim // I enjoy writing // I can do origami // I prefer movies to tv shows // I can execute a perfect somersault // I enjoy singing // I could survive in the wild on my own // I have read a new book series this year // I enjoy spending time with my friends // I travel during school or work breaks // I can do a handstand

Relationships

I am in a relationship // I have been single for over a year // I have a crush // I have a best friend I have known for ten years // my parents are together // I have hooked up with my best friend // I am adopted // My crush has confessed to me // I have a long-distance relationship // I am an only child // I give advice to my friends // I have made an online friend // I met up with someone I have met online

- Aesthetic

I have heard the ocean in a conch shell // I have watched the sunrise // I enjoy rainy days // I have slept under the stars // I meditate outside // the sound of chirping calms me // I enjoy the smell of the beach // I know what snow tastes like // I listen to music to fall asleep (i did that for a long time and i sicnerely don’t recommend it) // I enjoy thunderstorms // I enjoy cloud watching // I have attended a bonfire (quick story time: one time when i was 12 my friends and i sneaked into our seniors’ school anniversary activities and they lit this huge bonfire near the football field, it was nuts) // I pay close attention to colours // I find mystery in the ocean (spoopy shit) // I enjoy hiking on nature paths // Autumn is my favourite season

- Miscellaneous

I can fall asleep in moving vehicles // I am the mom friend // I live by a certain quote(s) // I like the smell of sharpies // I am involved in extracurricular activities // I enjoy Mexican food // I can drive a stick-shift // I believe in true love // I make up scenarios to fall asleep // I sing in the shower // I wish I lived in a video game // I have a canopy above my bed // I am multiracial // I am a redhead // I own at least 3 dogs

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my god this is getting embarassing i had stuff long due ;-;

Tagged by @/tamtam-elizabeth. think you for thanking on me when doing tag games, i mean it :-: <3

How old are you?: 24

Surgeries?: one

Tattoos?: none yet ://

Ever hit a deer?: i have never seen one so... no 😂

Sang karaoke?: yeah... years ago 😂

Ice skated?: nope

Ridden a motorcycle?: had the chance but nope

Ridden in an ambulance?: nope

Skipped school?: a handful of times

Stayed in a hospital?: for a few hours

Broken bones?: nope

Last phone call?: i haven’t called anyone in ages 😂

Last text from?: my mom

Pepsi or coke?: coke but i don’t mind having pepsi

Favorite pie?: haven’t had one

Favorite pizza?: chorizo + corn + red pepper

Favorite season?: autumn

Received a ticket?: don’t even know how to drive

Favorite color?: black, red and teal

Sunset or sunrise?: both!

Favorite Christmas song?: don’t think i have one, maybe universe by exo?

Cupcakes or cookies?: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh good q, cookies?

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8) “find your match” tag game

Tagged by @/tamtam-elizabeth, you’re allowed to punch me in the face at this point

Rules:

Take the test

Reblog this post with what type you got

Tag 7 mutuals to do the same!

I got the Dreamer and my ideal partner would be The Innovator ?)

Seek out opportunities to collaborate with INNOVATOR types, who combine your lofty idealism with a focus on pragmatic solutions. The grounding energy of the INNOVATOR can inspire you to apply your imagination to real-world change.

that’s deep fam 😂 but okay!

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9) “get to know me tag”

Tagged by: @/littletentaclemonster . thank you and sorry for the delay ;-; <3

nickname: cloud zodiac: scorpio height: 5′4″ / 1.65 last movie I saw: can you believe i managed to watch another thing while making this? anyway it was The celluloid closet last thing I googled: block site extension favorite musician: as of right now? depeche mode song stuck in my head: you’re so close by peter murphy other blogs: @/brltpop and @/s-lay-ing amount of sleep: as long as i can get (usually 7 or 8) lucky numbers: don’t think i have one dream job: whatever gives me stability what am I wearing: pajamas favorite food: chinese, mexican and italian language: which ones do i know? spanish and english somewhat. i want to learn japanese and german :c can I play an instrument: nope favorite song: atm is YOU’RE SO CLOSE (8) random fact: my nails usually grow sort of square except for my thumb and index fingers, they grow round for whatever reason describe yourself in aesthetic things: ?????????? idk man, messy room? loose clothes? football? cd’s on a shelf, posters on the walls ?????

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MY GOD WHY AM I LIKE THIS?????????

10)

Tagged by @/littletentaclemonster you too can punch me in the face

Rules: Bold the statements that apply to you, italicize your aspirations, then tag nine people.

AIR: I have small hands • I love the night sky • I watch small animals and birds when I pass them by • I drink herbal tea • I wake to see dawn • The smell of dust is comforting • I’m valued for being wise • I prefer books to music • I meditate • I find joy in learning new truths from the world around me

FIRE: I don’t have straight hair • I like to wear ripped jeans • I play an organized sport • I love dogs • I am not afraid of adventure • I love to talk to strangers • I always try new foods • I enjoy road trips • Summer is my favorite season • My radio is always playing

WATER: I wear bracelets on my wrists • I love the bustle of the city • I have more than one set of piercings • I read poetry • I love the sound of a thunderstorm • I want to travel the world • I sleep past midday most days • I love dimly lit diners and fluorescent signs • I rewatch kids’ shows out of nostalgia • I see emotions in colors not words

EARTH: I wear glasses/contacts • I enjoy doing the laundry • I am a vegetarian • I have an excellent sense of time • My humor is very cheerful • I am a valued advisor to my friends • I believe in true love • I love the chill of mountain air • I’m always listening to music • I am highly trusted by the people in my life

AETHER: I go without makeup in my daily life • I make my own artwork • I keep on track of my tasks and time • I always know true north • I see beauty in everything (sort of) • I can always smell flowers • I smile at everyone I pass by • I always fear history repeating itself • I have recovered from a mental disorder • I can love unconditionally

Water an aether huh, i don’t know what to do with this information 😂

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if you ask me i would very much appreciate it if you do the songs playlist tag bc i need recommendations thanks. Also massive apologies to the ones that were due since last year I had them in my drafts i swear!

Stay safe everyone :D

#ask games #yaay!#FINALLY #THE GUILT........ GONE #well this was fun

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deathghost8 · 5 years

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Studying Watts to replay his message

So it turns out all that I'm doing here is trying to get the message out, the message that was already crafted by the greatest word technologist to ever live. The polarity message. The nature message. The money and class and wealth message. The message about being a civilized social unit of people, not individual nomadic clans at war with one another. My Narration stream idea was only abstract at first, but now I have done several streams and studied some of the messages about declining the social status game in order to fully embrace our inseparability from nature. The message about Society, Nature/Mankind unity, Trust/Love, Money/economy and class / the social game as pertains to Zen as the full exit from that version of the game of life is what I need to replay to my friends and followers, and to a society whose authority I refuse, in search of educational sovereignty. I have clarified the opening module to be directly focused on my GRIPE with a society that demands we subscribe to the king-grandfather obsession of social structure with Authority coercion built in to the minimum transaction. Here I am gathering transcripting so that the totality of that message in his words can be brought together in a single post that I can share with my friends who I am not able to go directly to and live share the hours of content that this comprises, with my own commentary and interaction with them. The talk titles as they exist in my youtube playlists is as follows 1- The spectrum of love https://www.alanwatts.org/1-5-7-spectrum-of-love/ - Trust (Life is willingness to die) https://www.organism.earth/library/document/trust Interlude / tangent - Zen tales and legends -- zen poetry / interlude with some musical aspects, helps establish the ground for the conclusion items. filler info. 2- Words and emptiness talk - if you don't use words, you don't have any problems. the big problem here is that we are bewitched by words, there is actually only one Thing. one ultimate suchness, which is nature. The reality that is nature. all religious/philosophical problems are problems created by words. 3- the talk that goes into man's inseparability from nature and the defuse of aggression as the way of conveying manliness. "And the great symbols of our culture are the rocket and the bulldozer. The rocket--you know, compensation for the sexually inadequate male. So we're going to conquer space. You know we're in space already, way out. If anybody cared to be sensitive and let outside space come to you, you can, if your eyes are clear enough. Aided by telescopes, aided by radio astronomy, aided by all the kinds of sensitive instruments we can devise. We're as far out in space as we're ever going to get. But, y'know, sensitivity isn't the pitch. Especially in the WASP culture of the United States. We define manliness in terms of aggression, you see, because we're a little bit frightened as to whether or not we're really men. And so we put on this great show of being a tough guy. It's completely unnecessary. If you have what it takes, you don't need to put on that show. And you don't need to beat nature into submission. Why be hostile to nature? Because after all, you ARE a symptom of nature. You, as a human being, you grow out of this physical universe in exactly the same way an apple grows off an apple tree. So let's say the tree which grows apples is a tree which apples, using 'apple' as a verb. And a world in which human beings arrive is a world that peoples. And so the existence of people is symptomatic of the kind of universe we live in. Just as spots on somebody's skin is symptomatic of chicken pox. Just as hair on a head is symptomatic of what's going on in the organism. But we have been brought up by reason of our two great myths--the ceramic and the automatic--not to feel that we belong in the world. So our popular speech reflects it. You say 'I came into this world.' You didn't. You came out of it. You say 'Face facts.' We talk about 'encounters' with reality, as if it was a head-on meeting of completely alien agencies. And the average person has the sensation that he is a someone that exists inside a bag of skin. The center of consciousness that looks out at this thing, and what the hell's it going to do to me? You see? 'I recognize you, you kind of look like me, and I've seen myself in a mirror, and you look like you might be people.' So maybe you're intelligent and maybe you can love, too. Perhaps you're all right, some of you are, anyway. You've got the right color of skin, or you have the right religion, or whatever it is, you're OK. But there are all those people over in Asia, and Africa, and they may not really be people. When you want to destroy someone, you always define them as 'unpeople.' Not really human. Monkeys, maybe. Idiots, maybe. Machines, maybe, but not people. So we have this hostility to the external world because of the superstition, the myth, the absolutely unfounded theory that you, yourself, exist only inside your skin." ~Alan Watts. 4- the hypocrisy around money - the invention of system "economic utopia" is not wishful thinking - the system to distribute money for work done by machinery on the humans behalf is THE ONLY REAL ALTERNATIVE to self-destruction -- Finally I said, "The trouble with you gentlemen is you still think money is real.” And they looked at me and sort of said, "Oh ha ha ha, someone who doesn't think money is real. Cause everybody knows money is money and it's very important." But it just isn't real at all because it has the same relationship to real wealth, that is to say to actual goods and services, that words have to meaning - that words have to the physical world. And as words are not the physical world, money is not wealth. It only is an accounting of available energy - economic energy. Now what happens then when you introduce technology into production? You produce enormous quantities of goods by technological methods but at the same time you put people out of work. You can say, "Oh but it always creates more jobs. There will always be more jobs." Yes, but lots of them will be futile jobs. They will be jobs making every kind of frippery and unnecessary contraption, and one will also at the same time have to beguile the public into feeling that they need and want these completely unnecessary things that aren't even beautiful. And therefore an enormous amount of nonsense employment and busy work, bureaucratic and otherwise, has to be created in order to keep people working, because we believe as good Protestants that the devil finds work for idle hands to do. But the basic principle of the whole thing has been completely overlooked, that the purpose of the machine is to make drudgery unnecessary. And if we don't allow it to achieve its purpose we live in a constant state of self-frustration. So then if a given manufacturer automates his plant and dismisses his labor force and they have to operate on a very much diminished income, (say some sort of dole), the manufacturer suddenly finds that the public does not have the wherewithal to buy his products. And therefore he has invested in this expensive automative machinery to no purpose. And therefore obviously the public has to be provided with the means of purchasing what the machines produce. People say, "That's not fair. Where's the money going to come from? Who's gonna pay for it?" The answer is the machine. The machine pays for it, because the machine works for the manufacturer and for the community. This is not saying you see that a... this is not the statist or communist idea that you expropriate the manufacture and say you can't own and run this factory anymore, it is owned by the government. It is only saying that the government or the people have to be responsible for issuing to themselves sufficient credit to circulate the goods they are producing and have to balance the measuring standard of money with the gross national product. That means that taxation is obsolete - completely obsolete. It ought to go the other way. Theobald points out that every individual should be assured of a minimum income. Now you see that absolutely horrifies most people. “Say all these wastrels, these people who are out of a job because they're really lazy see... ah giving them money?” Yeah, because otherwise the machines can't work. They come to a blockage. This was the situation of the Great Depression when here we were still, in a material sense, a very rich country, with plenty of fields and farms and mines and factories...everything going. But suddenly because of a psychological hang-up, because of a mysterious mumbo-jumbo about the economy, about the banking, we were all miserable and poor - starving in the midst of plenty. Just because of a psychological hang-up. And that hang-up is that money is real, and that people ought to suffer in order to get it. But the whole point of the machine is to relieve you of that suffering. It is ingenuity. You see we are psychologically back in the 17th century and technically in the 20th. And here comes the problem. So what we have to find out how to do is to change the psychological attitude to money and to wealth and further more to pleasure and further more to the nature of work. And this is a formidable problem. It requires the best brains in public relations, in propaganda, in all that kind of thing, in all the media: television, radio, newspapers, everything...to try to get across a message to the vast general public about what money is. You see the difficulty is this. When the public suspects that the money that is being issued, the dollar bills being issued by the government are only paper, and stand only for paper, they start putting up prices so you get an inflationary situation where the more paper money there is, the higher and higher and higher the prices go… which is a very stupid psychological maneuver. And people have to be persuaded. The least effective way of persuading people is passing laws, but they have to be persuaded somehow not to put up the prices, but to play fair with each other and keep some sort of standard correspondence between how much is produced and how much credit is issued. - 5- escaping societies brainwashing the function of a Zen teacher is to put his students in all kinds of situations we're in the normal course of social relations they would get stuck by asking nonsensical questions by making absurd remarks by or always of unhinging things and above all keeping them stirred up with impossible demands: to hear the sound of one hand to without moving stop a ship sailing out on the water or to stop the sound of a train whistle in the distance magic- to touch the ceiling without getting up to amongst chair -to take the four divisions of Tokyo out of your sleeve -to take Mount Fuji out of the Kobach's all these impossible questions are asked and in the ordinary way of interpreting these questions we think well now be how could we do that? see that's the very difficult question that's been asked and you have to think what would I do to do that because we are caught up in a certain way of discourse which the language game that we play and the social game the production gains and the survival games that we play are good games but we take them so seriously that we think that that is the only important thing and this is to unstick us from that notion and realize that it would be just as good a game to drop dead now as to go on living is a lightning flash bad because it lives for a second as compared with the Sun that goes on for billions of years you can't make that sort of comparison because the world is like mingoes also with the world rebels of son and vice versa so long-lived creatures and shortness creatures go together that's the meaning of that saying flowering branches grow naturally some short some long so this n is a scene in in a zen community where the spontaneous behavior is encouraged within certain limits and as the student becomes more and more used to it those limits are expanded until eventually he can be trusted to go out on the street and behave like a true Zen character and get by perfectly well you know what occasionally happens on the street when two people are walking down the sidewalk straight at each other and they both decide to move to the right together and then to the left together and they somehow get stuck and they can't pass each other then teachers will pull just exactly that sort of stunt when going down a path and meet one of their students to see if they can get him in a tangle and can you escape from it and you will find in everyday life that there is a very clear distinction between people who always seem to be self possessed and people who are desiring and nervous and don't quite know how to react in any given situation always getting embarrassed because they have their life to strongly programmed you said I mean this is a common marriage argument you said you would do such and such a thing at such and such a time and now you've changed your plans not that they really the change of plans really caused any inconvenience just the feeling that when you say you will do something at a certain time you ought to do it at that time come hell or high water well that's being very unadaptable that's being a stone kind of sticky thing if it after all doesn't matter when we do it and as if somebody is offended because the time instant chase that's simply because they are attached to punctuality as a fetish and this is one of the great problems this is causes many automobile accidents men rushing home to be on time for dinner when they stayed late either working or they had to stop for a drink of some bar or when the girl feels that she has to if she has a fussy husband and she feels she has to have the dinner ready at exactly a certain moment she ruins the cooking he'd rather have a faithful wife and a bad cook how about not riding on your toes so you see we spend an awful lot of energy trying to make our lives fit images of what life is or should be which they could never possibly sit so then practice is in getting rid of these images but it's it's so explosive socially to do that and it's so various people they get vertigo they get dizzy they don't know which end is up and this happens you know if you've ever been in one of those blab blab sessions where they call them tea groups I think it's all something like that where the people gather together without any clear idea of what this gathering is about they know it's somehow self-exploration but just how do you begin on that and so somebody starts to push his idea and then somebody else says well why you tried to push your idea on us and then they all get into an argument about the argument and the most amazing confusion come about that sometimes they all see what idiots they're being and then they learn to live together in a they open and spontaneous way there was a very interesting dinner party once where the Zen master was present and there was a geisha girl who served so beautifully and had such style that he suspected she must have some Zen training and after a while he when she paused the silly sake cup he bowed to her and said I'd like to give you a present and she said I would be most honored and he took the iron chopsticks that are used for the hibachi with charcoal brazier moving the charcoal around he picked up a piece of red hot charcoal and gave it slip well she instantly she had very long sleeves on her kimono she weld the sleeves round her hands and took the hot charcoal withdrew to the kitchen dump it and changed her kimono because it was thought through then she came back into the room and after a suitable interval she stopped before the Zen master and bowed to him and said I would like to give you sir present I would be very much honored of course he was wearing a kimono or something like this and so she picked up a piece of coal I've offered it to him he immediately produced a cigarette and said thank you that's just what I need it now you know in the same way that we have this in our culture certain people who are communal who know how to make jokes and gags in a completely unprepared situation face them with anything and they somehow come through so that is exactly the same thing in a special domain as then only it will be master of them does this in every life situation but the important thing is to be able to do this this is the secret you must remember you can't make a mistake now that's a very difficult thing to do because from childhood up we have had to conform to a certain social game and if you'll go to conform to this game you can make mistakes or not make mistakes so this thing is gone into it all the time you must do the right thing there's certain conduct appropriate here a certain context appropriate there and that sticks in us and gives us a double self all our lives long because we never grow up! - --- you realize that the whole of life plays a game - which is a childhood game - **There are three kinds of people top people middle people of bottom people and there can't be any middle people and let's to the bottom people and top people accompany any top people unless to the middle and bottom people and so it goes and everybody's trying to be in a top set well if they're going to be there has got to be someone on the bottom set and the people who do the right thing and people do the wrong thing you hear in Sausalito we have this very very plainly there are the right people nice people who live up on the hill then there are the nasty people who live down here on the waterfront and they grow beards and they wear blue jeans and they smoke marijuana and whether the other people on the top of Hill Drive Cadillacs and have wall-to-wall carpeting and nicely mowed lawn and their particular kind of poison is alcohol now the people who live on the top of the hill know that they're nice people but they wouldn't know they were nice people unless they had some nasty people to compare themselves with every in-group requires an output whereas the nasty people think they are the real far-out people whereas those people those Hillbillies the squares and they wouldn't be able to feel far out unless there were squares see these things simply go together but when that is not seen we play the game of getting on top of things all the time and so we're in a constant state of competition as to if it's not I'm stronger than you it's I'm wiser than you I'm more loving than you I'm more tolerant than you I'm more sophisticated than you it doesn't matter what it is that this constant competition is going on in terms of that competition we can of course lose place and in that sense make mistakes but what a Zen student is is a person who is not involved in the status game that's the real meaning of a monk he is not keeping up with the Joneses and to be a master he must get to the point where he's not trying to be a master the whole idea of your your being better than anybody else simply doesn't make any sense at all it is totally meaningless because you see everybody manifesting the Marvel of the universe in the same way as the Stars do and the water and the wind and the animals and you see them all as being in their right places and not being able really to make mistakes although they may think they're making mistakes or not making mistakes and playing all these competitive games but that's their game now I only say if that game begins to boil and it begins to trouble you and give you alphas and all kinds of things then you raise the problem of getting out of it and therefore you start to become interested in things like then that is simply a symptom of your growing in a certain direction where you are tired of playing a certain kind of game you are as naturally flowing in another direction as if a tree were putting out a new branch so because you say oh well we people are interested in higher things you see that depends still on the differentiation of rank between the superior and the inferior people but when you begin to see through that and grow out of that you don't think anymore of this superior and inferior classification you don't think we are spiritual people who attend to higher things as distinct from these morons are only interested in beer and television this is simply our particular form of life like there are crabs and there are spiders and there are sharks and there are sparrows and so on the trouble with the human being is like the trouble with certain animals like the dinosaur who evolved to the point where he was so big did he have to have two brains a higher self in the head and a lower self in the rump and the difficulty was to get these two brains coordinated but we have exactly the same trouble and we are suffering from a kind of jitters that comes from being two brained now you see I'm not saying that that jitters is bad it's a potential step in evolution and an opportunity of growth but remember in the process of growth the oak is not better than the Acorn because what does it do it produces acorns or you could say just I like I sometimes enough to say that a chicken is one eggs way of becoming others so an oak is an acorn way of becoming other acorns where is the point of superiority the first verse of that time I just quoted the flowering branches grow naturally some short some long the first verse is in the landscape of spring there is nothing superior and nothing inferior the flowering branches are naturally some short some long so that's the point of view of being an outcast in the sense of being outside the taking seriously of being involved in the social game and therefore being threatened by making mistakes of doing the wrong thing that is to say of carrying into adult life one's childhood conditioning where somebody is constantly yammering at you to play the game so therefore the preachers and the teachers take the same attitude towards their adult congregation the parents take two children and lecture them and tell them what they should do and judges in courts feel also entitled to give people lectures because they say those criminal types haven't grown up but neither have the judges it takes two to make a quarrel so one can begin to think in a new way in the polarity thinking instead of being stuck with the competitive thinking of the good guys and the bad guys the cops of the robbers the capitalists and the Communists the all these things which are simply childishness now of course you recognize that if I at the moment I say that it's like talking in English in order to show that the English language has limitations and I am talking in a language that seems competitive to show that the competitive game has limitations if I was saying to all you cats here look I have something to tell you that if you get this you will be at a better position than you were before you heard it but I cannot speak to this group or the society or this language speaking culture without using the language the gestures the customs etc that you have the Zen masters try to get around this by doing things suddenly that people just don't get well what is this therefore that is the reason why this is a real reason why then cannot be explained you have to make as it were they jump from the valuation game of better people and worse people in-groups and out-groups and you can only make it by seeing that they all are mutually interdependent so if we take this situation let's say I would be talking to you and saying look I have some very special thing that you've got to take notice of therefore I am the in-group and I'm the teacher and you are the out-group I know perfectly well that I cannot be the teacher unless you come in and so that my estate is in my position is totally dependent on you it isn't something you see therefore I have first and then you get these things arise mutually so if you wouldn't come I wouldn't talk I wouldn't know what the same hahaha because I borrowed your language so that that is the insight that things go together then when you see that and aren't in competition then you don't make a mistake because you don't do this when I first learned the piano and played these wretched scales the teacher beside me had a pencil in my hand and she hit my fingers every time I made a lot wrong note consequent was I never learned to read music because I hesitated too long to play the note on time because I was always business if his pencil gonna land see that gets built into your psyche and so people are always although they're adults and nobody is clubbing them around and screaming at them any longer they hear the echoes of that screaming mama all that bum been aiding Papa in the back of their heads all their life long and so they adopt the same attitudes to their own children and the fast continues because there is no I mean I don't say that you shouldn't lay down the law to children if you want them to play the social game but you if you lay down the law to your children you must make provision later in life for them to be liberated to go through a process of curing them from the bad effects of Education but you can't do that unless you two grow up you see as we grow up as I including myself so that is the fig now therefore in the Zen scene you would think that the master as we know even as we read about him is an extremely authoritarian figure that's the way he deliberately comes on at the beginning he puts up a terrific show of being an awful dragon and this screams out all sorts of people who don't have somehow the nerve to get into the work but once you are in a very strange change takes place the master becomes the brother he becomes the affectionate helper of all those students and they love him as they would a brother rather than respect him as they would have father and therefore the students and masters they make jokes about each other they have a very curious kind of social relationship which has all the outward trappings of the authoritarian but everybody knows on the insides of that to joke liberated people have to be very cool otherwise in a society which doesn't believe in equality and cannot possibly practice it they would be considered extremely subversive therefore great their masters were purple and gold and carries scepters and fitted Thrones and all this carried on to cool it the outside world knows are there all right this has been their order they're perfectly fine

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Make Me a Match (Rebroadcast)

Market-design wizard Al Roth finds solutions for the problems money alone can’t solve. (Photo, cropped: Newtown Grafitti)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Make Me a Match (Rebroadcast).” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

Sure, markets generally work well. But for some transactions — like school admissions and organ transplants — money alone can’t solve the problem. That’s when you need a market-design wizard like Al Roth.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

* * *

Hey there, it’s Stephen Dubner. The holidays are upon us, so we’re taking the opportunity to replay what’s turned out to be one of the most influential episodes we’ve ever made. It actually helped save lives! Now, we can’t claim credit — we were just spreading the word on the good work done by people like Al Roth, whom you’ll meet in a minute. And then people who heard the episode acted on their own to perform random acts of kindness, and courage. I won’t tell you what they did — you’ll figure it out as you listen. Suffice it to say that during this season of gratitude, we’re grateful to have played a tiny role in this most excellent display of human ingenuity, and generosity. The Freakonomics Radio team has been really busy this year, producing dozens of new episodes that are sent out to you each week, free of charge. That’s they way it should be. It’s why we’re here. It’s quite possible that if you are a regular listener, you spent, in total, more than one whole day with Freakonomics Radio in 2017. It feels safe to say that we’ve earned a spot in your life. I mean, you’re here now, right? Well, you can help us bring you more Freakonomics Radio in the new year. When you do it by December 31st, you’ll set yourself up for a nice little charitable deduction on your tax return. What are you waiting for? Support Freakonomics Radio. Become a member today with your donation. Get your 2017 tax deduction before it’s too late. Just go to Freakonomics.com/donate or text the word “Freak” to 701-01. Thanks so much!

[MUSIC: Greg Ruby, “Someone Told Me Your Secret” (from The Rhythm Runners)]

Al ROTH: Okay, I’m Al Roth and I’m a professor of economics at Stanford.

For many years, Roth had taught economics at Harvard. But he and his wife, who’s a human-factors engineer, had relocated.

ROTH: We had just moved into our new apartment. We had moved to Stanford in September of 2012.

Shortly thereafter, on October 15th, something memorable happened.

ROTH: And my wife woke up around three in the morning and said, “The phone’s ringing.” And I woke up and it wasn’t ringing anymore. We only had one phone at that point and it was in her office, which was downstairs. So I said, “It’s not ringing,” and went back to sleep. And she went down and got the phone and it started ringing again. It turns out it’s a good thing they call you back, they don’t go down their list. And it was the Nobel Committee.

Roth, half-asleep, was informed that he, along with Lloyd Shapley, had won the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel — also known as the Nobel Prize in Economics.

DUBNER: Did you think you had a chance? Um…

ROTH: You know, it’s hard to answer that humbly. So I knew that I was on the big list of people who, if I won a Nobel Prize, it wouldn’t cause the Nobel committee to be embarrassed. The newspapers the next day would not say, “Craziness in Stockholm.” But there are many, many people in that category. So indeed, we had- we were asleep. We were not waiting for a call. And it’s an interesting call because one of the things they’re concerned about — they have a lot of experience with this — is convincing you that it’s not a prank. So the person who first spoke to me said, you know, “Congratulations. You’ve won the Nobel Prize.” And then he said, “And I’m here with six of my colleagues and two of them know you and they’re going to talk to you now.”

DUBNER: To persuade you that this is for real.

ROTH: Right.

DUBNER: Either that, or a very elaborate prank.

ROTH: Exactly. But they call you up and say, “So in half an hour this is going to happen. Get ready.” And, you know, I took a shower and got dressed, which was a good thing, because there wasn’t the opportunity to do that again all day.

DUBNER: And what was the rest of the day like then?

ROTH: Well, so at five minutes to, someone calls you back and again, they’re still I guess concerned that you shouldn’t appear confused on the phone. So what she said was, “Point your browser to the Nobel site and you will see your name being announced and then we will come on the line and have a press conference by telephone.” So by the time that happened, I was ready and then the Stanford press office, fortunately descended on our house at 4:00 am and started fielding calls from journalists, and you know they’d say, “Professor Roth is ready now. Are you ready?” And I’d get the phone and I’d get, you know, five questions from someone and I would speak to many, many people. And apparently I mostly answered them very, very seriously, but I told a joke or two that I hadn’t intended to tell. But people would say to me, “Oh, I heard you on NPR. You said something a little odd.” But—and then there was a press conference, and then at 11:00 I had a class. So people seemed a little surprised but that’s how we ended the press conference. That this was a surprise and it was a Monday and I teach on Mondays.

DUBNER: Word had travelled to your students by then, I assume?

ROTH: It had. There was Champagne in the classroom.

DUBNER: Very nice. Yeah.

So what kind of work did Al Roth do to land a Nobel Prize in Economics? Well, it’s not the kind of work that typically wins a Nobel. He has helped people who need a kidney transplant find a donor. He’s helped new doctors find their first jobs. He’s helped high-school students in New York City find the right high school – even though Roth himself, who grew up in New York City, dropped out of high school.

ROTH: I was, you know, a poor ungrateful student who didn’t appreciate what my teachers were trying to do for me. You should tell all your listeners they should complete high school.

* * *

[MUSIC: Slink Moss Explosion, “Bad Bad Blues” (from Slink Moss Explosion)]

I recently visited Palo Alto, California, home to Stanford University – and a few others things — to talk with Al Roth. He was, as you’ve heard, a high-school dropout. But don’t worry, he did go on to college – many, many years of college. Not finishing high school isn’t the only odd thing about Al Roth as a Nobel laureate. Consider this: even though he won the prize in economics, and even though he’s a professor of economics, he is not technically an economist.

ROTH: I mean, my degrees are in engineering. And, you know, I wrote a paper once, a manifesto of market design called “The Economist as Engineer,” so I think of myself as something like an engineer. I’d like to be an engineer.

“A manifesto of market design” Roth calls it. The Nobel Committee’s citation noted his “theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design.” So what is market design, and why can it win you a Nobel Prize?

ROTH: Market design is an ancient human activity. You know, when you look at a distribution of stone tools around the Middle East and Europe, you find that long before the invention of agriculture, stone tools were moving thousands of miles from where they were quarried and made. And that’s a sign that there were markets for stone tools. There were ways to meet and trade things and we don’t really know much about those markets. But the stone tools, which are very durable, are evidence that markets are older than agriculture. But the Stone Age men who traded those stone tools and weapons had to make markets somehow. They had to make them safe. They had to feel confident that they could bring the things that they would trade for those stone tools and not be robbed by guys with stone axes who would take their stuff. And that’s been a big part of market design for a long time is making markets safe. Today we think about fraud and identity theft and securing your credit card. But there was a time when kings thought about securing the roads against highwaymen so you wouldn’t be waylaid on your way to and from the market. So if I were the king of England and I wanted to have markets in England, I had to make sure that the roads were safe to get to the markets.

Al Roth has written a book – a really wonderful book, I should say – called Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design. If market design is, as Roth says, an “ancient human activity,” why does someone like him need to get involved? After all, we’re told that markets generally organize themselves – there are sellers and buyers, supply meeting demand, with price being the glue that holds it all together. In this regard, the invention of money was a big breakthrough.

ROTH: Barter is very hard because you need a double coincidence of wants. You need to find someone who has what you want and who wants what you have.

DUBNER: Right, you happen to have salt, I happen to have wool, and we each want what the other wants, or we find a third party.

ROTH: Right. Well, so finding the third party starts getting you involved in other things. And, of course, money is a great market-design invention for helping you find third parties because you can sell what you have for money and then go look for what you want.

But there are some transactions – entire realms of transactions, really – where money cannot do what it does in a typical market. Where, for whatever reason, supply is not allowed to naturally meet demand with price as the arbiter. And that’s where someone like Al Roth comes in handy. The economist as engineer. Because these atypical markets have to be set up differently, they have to be helped along. This is called a “matching market.”

ROTH: Matching markets are markets where money, prices don’t do all the work. And some of the markets I’ve studied, we don’t let prices do any of the work. And I like to think of matching markets as markets where you can’t just choose what you want even if you can afford it, you also have to be chosen. So job markets are like that, getting into college is like that. Those things cost money, but money doesn’t decide who gets into Stanford. Stanford doesn’t raise the tuition until supply equals demand and just enough freshmen want to come to fill the seats. Stanford is expensive but it’s cheap enough that a lot of people would like to come to Stanford, and so Stanford has this whole other set of market institutions. Applications and admissions and you can’t just come to Stanford, you have to be admitted.

Or think about this problem, which Al Roth has worked on directly: what is the best way for hospitals to hire newly minted doctors, and for those doctors to find the most appropriate hospital for them to work in? The current system is called the National Resident Matching Program:

ROTH: So I got involved in helping it during a crisis in the 1990s. But you have to go back to the 1900s to understand how doctors get jobs. And the 1900s is around the time when the medical degrees as we know them, the MD degree, became the dominant medical degree. In about 1900, that’s when internships began. So instead of graduating from medical school and immediately beginning to “practice medicine,” as we say-

DUBNER: A word that’s always bothered me.

ROTH: Yes.

DUBNER: You should be good at it by now.

ROTH: The first job- the standard first job for medical graduates became what was called an internship, and is today called a residency. And that’s a job where you work at a hospital and you take care of patients under the supervision of a more experienced attending physician. And it’s a giant part of the professional education of doctors. So it’s very important to doctors where they get their internship and residency. And it’s very important to hospitals because the interns and residents are a very important part of the labor force of a hospital.

As Roth tells it, there was an arms race between hospitals for the best future doctors. They began grabbing medical students earlier and earlier – sometimes two years before graduation.

ROTH: And when you try hiring people two years in advance, it’s hard to tell who the good doctors will be. It’s also hard for the doctors to tell what kind of jobs they want.

So the medical schools intervened. In 1952, they created the National Resident Matching Program.

ROTH: They developed a marketplace that has a form that has survived ‘til today, although my colleagues and I have helped modify it since then. And what that form was…you go on interviews and you find out the salary and the working conditions of the various jobs that you might be offered and then, instead of working the phones and maybe getting an offer that says you have to take it — yes or no right now on the phone — what you do is you consider in advance which jobs you would like and you submit a rank order preference. This would be my first choice of the jobs I’ve interviewed at. Here’s my second choice. Here’s my third. And the jobs do the same thing, the hospital residency programs do the same thing. And then a match is made in a centralized clearinghouse.

By the 1990s, this system was showing strain. Some people thought the hospitals had too much leverage over the residents. Also: by now, there were a lot more female medical students, some of whom had a significant other who was also a medical student – and such a couple typically wanted to get a residency in the same hospital, or at least the same region. But the matching program couldn’t handle that kind of request. So those candidates might opt out. In 1995, Al Roth was asked to help write an algorithm that could fix these problems. The algorithm worked well and it now matches more than 20,000 applicants each year.

DUBNER: It sounds as though this works pretty well according to most people involved, yes? Most people involved in this scenario are pretty happy with how it works, correct?

ROTH: Well, labor markets are stressful for everyone. So I think you are overstating how happy people are with the labor market. But I think it works pretty well.

DUBNER: I mean in the medical residency matching particularly. Or at least an improvement over what was before?

ROTH: It’s a vast improvement.

DUBNER: But here’s my question for you really is this, broader labor markets. If we consider the medical residency matching program relatively successful to what preceded it, at least, why is it not used more widely in the labor markets?

ROTH: Well, the medical market is an easier one to coordinate than many markets because just about everyone becomes available at the same time when they graduate from medical school and they all start their jobs therefore about the same time in July. So it’s a market that can easily move people all at the same time. Whereas many markets, think about the market for journalists, they might be hired at different moments and jobs might become available and need to be filled and not be able to wait for you to consider many jobs.

DUBNER: Yeah, but you and your colleagues are pretty brilliant and you have mathematical backgrounds. I would think you could deal with rolling admissions, is that right? For all the talk about how modern labor markets have so many mismatches in them — so many people doing jobs that they don’t really want to be doing, so many corporations with all these theoretically qualified people out there not being able to find the people to fill them without going through- going to a lot of trouble. I mean, hiring practice has become more and more complicated it seems as one way to address the matching problem. But it seems as though your complicated mathematical foundation might provide, ironically, a simpler way to address that problem.

ROTH: So I’m not sure that’s true. Again, one of the special things about residency positions is, although they’re very different at different places, they’re sort of similar to each other. If you’re thinking about should you be a journalist or an airplane pilot or a chef, you are dealing with very different jobs with very different employers. And one of the things that we do in the medical match is we make all the jobs available at the same time that allows you to consider them, to have preferences over them. That’s hard to do if you’re thinking about being a chef or an auto mechanic.

DUBNER: Sure. I’m curious to know, what’s a market or scenario that you’ve looked at before that you thought, “Boy, I would love to help fix that one,” but either haven’t had a shot or maybe tried and failed?

ROTH: Well, the markets for new lawyers might fall into that category and certainly the most- the fanciest job that top graduates of elite law schools get is a lot like a medical residency. It’s a clerkship with an appellate judge. That market is presently in the kind of situation that the doctor market was around 1940, where jobs are being contracted far before law school graduation. And probably a dozen times in the last 30 years, the lawyers have tried to fix this with things like setting dates before which you shouldn’t hire and things like that, but it turns out it’s hard to make rules that judges have to follow. Judges are a law unto themselves, and they break the rules. They cheat. If you know someone who’s in law school now who wants a clerkship, they’re probably going to get an offer sometime in their second year. You know, so the middle of their second year and a half before they are ready to graduate.

DUBNER: And what would it take for you to have the authority to get in there and redo that market?

ROTH: Well the question is, is there a desire for judges to coordinate in a way that would control the market? And so far there hasn’t been.

DUBNER: So you can win all the Nobel Prizes you want and there’s a limit to your power nonetheless.

ROTH: There is.

[MUSIC: Tallboy 7, “Electro Acoustic”]

As complicated as it may seem to match future lawyers or doctors with their employers, consider an even more complicated match: a person who will die unless they can get a kidney transplant.

Ruthanne LEISHMAN: You can’t buy a kidney. You can’t pay for somebody’s college education to get a kidney. You can’t buy them a car. It’s illegal in the United States to obtain a kidney through any kind of valuable consideration.

That is Ruthanne Leishman.

LEISHMAN: I’m the program manager for the kidney-paired donation program at the United Network for Organ Sharing.

The United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS maintains the registry of all the people in the U.S. who need an organ transplant. According to the National Kidney Foundation, out of the roughly 123,000 people awaiting an organ transplant, more than 100,000 of them, roughly 80 percent, need a kidney.

LEISHMAN: We don’t have enough supply of kidneys available. And so the list is ever-growing, but the number of kidneys available for transplant is pretty stagnant.

It’s estimated that 12 people die each day in the U.S. while waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant. And that’s because, as Leishman says, the demand for kidneys keep rising — but the supply hasn’t risen to meet it. Why is that? Consider where most donated organs come from. They primarily come from cadavers – from people who have died but who’ve died under just the right circumstances – from a brain trauma, for instance — to allow their still-functioning organs to be harvested for transplant.

LEISHMAN: Only about 1% of the population who die are actually able to donate their organs.

So if you need a heart transplant, let’s say, you are waiting for a cadaver organ. But a kidney is different from a heart. Why’s that? Because humans are born with two kidneys – and yet we really need only one. Which means that in a country like the U.S. with a few hundred million people, there are potentially a few hundred million spare kidneys out there. When someone has kidney failure, typically both their kidneys fail, so they are left with zero healthy kidneys. Whereas the typical healthy person has a perfectly good spare. So while it might seem that there’s a massive demand for donated kidneys – remember, there are more than 100,000 people on the list – the fact is that the potential supply is really massive. Here’s Al Roth again:

ROTH: If you’re healthy enough, you can remain healthy with just one. And that means if someone you love is dying of kidney disease, you can give him a kidney and save his life.

DUBNER: If you happen to be a match.

ROTH: If you happen to be a match. And that’s where kidney exchange comes in.

[MUSIC: Scott Hallgren, “Milonga” (from Tango – Jazz (live in Studio C))]

Ah, kidney exchange. Because remember, unlike some markets, where price is allowed to let demand meet supply, organ donation is a market that doesn’t allow money. As a society, we’ve decided it isn’t right to reimburse people for donating an organ – although I should say, some economists have argued that we should rethink that. But for now at least, kidney donation is reliant on altruism. Which, judging by the backlog of kidney patients waiting for an organ, isn’t working so well. And that’s why Al Roth got involved.

ROTH: People often ask me how I got involved in kidney transplantation and I think the romantic thing that they’re hoping I’ll say is that I knew someone who was ill or that I was ill, but that isn’t the case at all. I entered through the mathematics.

Coming up on Freakonomics Radio: how Al Roth and his comrades used mathematics to save lives:

LEISHMAN: We have about 600 kidney paired donation transplants a year right now in the United States. In 2000 we had 2.

And: Al Roth’s greatest hope for his new book, Who Gets What – and Why:

ROTH: My hope is that this book will help you to see markets in new ways. So may I take you to dinner to celebrate the completion of this book?

That’s coming up. But first, a quick quick reminder that you can do something amazing that will deliver good stuff for many other people, right now. This is the time of the year when we remind you that Freakonomics Radio is made possible in no small part by the dollars given by our listeners. That means: you. You can help us bring you more Freakonomics Radio in the new year. When you do it by December 31st, it’ll deliver a charitable deduction on your next tax return. Become a member today with your donation. Get your 2017 tax deduction before it’s too late. Just go to Freakonomics.com/donate or text the word “Freak” to 701-01. Thanks so much!

* * *

[MUSIC: Seks Bomba, “Fresh Perked” (from Somewhere in This Town)]

Al Roth – high-school dropout, Nobel laureate, author of the book Who Gets What – and Why – began working on organ donation more than 40 years ago, as it turned out.

ROTH: So in 1974, in Volume 1 Number 1 of the Journal of Mathematical Economics, Herb Scarf and Lloyd Shapley, with whom I eventually shared a Nobel Prize, wrote an article about how to trade indivisible goods when you couldn’t use money.

DUBNER: And this was a theoretical argument? Entirely, yes?

ROTH: Entirely theoretical. And sort of whimsically they said, “Let’s call the object houses.” And let’s suppose everyone has a house and people have preferences over houses and they can trade houses but they can’t use money. All you can do it barter. You can say, “I’ll trade my house for yours.” Or you can do it among three people, you know, “I’ll give you my house and you give someone your house and he gives me his house.” That’s all you can do. How would trade work? So they wrote a paper about that. And I had just gotten my Ph.D. in 1974 when this article came out and I read the article and I thought, “What an interesting problem to think about: how to trade without money.” So I wrote some articles about that too with Andy Postlewaite, and—

DUBNER: Still theoretical or did you touch-

ROTH: Entirely theoretical. We were talking about how to trade houses, and of course, no one trades houses without money. I can tell you, I’ve just bought a house in California and money played a role. But it’s, you know, the way economists learn about things, the way mathematical economists learn about things is a little bit the way children learn about things. You find toys to play with and then by playing with the toys you gain experiences that might help you with other things. So this is a toy. This toy model that allows you to think about the question of how to trade goods when you can’t use money and when you can’t divide the good. You can’t say, “You have a big house and I have a little house, so just give me half of your house for my house,” you know. You say, “Houses are indivisible, we have to trade.”

[MUSIC: Dorian Charnis, “Cubano”]

In 1982, Roth took a teaching job at the University of Pittsburgh – which happened to have an excellent medical center with a prominent organ-transplant program. Roth began thinking about kidneys from the perspective of supply and demand. Again, there’s a seemingly huge demand for donated kidneys – but in fact a much, much larger supply of potential kidneys for donation, since healthy people have two, but only need one. So let’s say that your spouse, or sibling, or parent needs a kidney transplant. You could voluntarily undergo surgery to give up one of yours – if, that is, you happen to be a biological match.

ROTH: If you aren’t a match, then you’re healthy enough to give someone a kidney but you can’t give the person you love a kidney. So there they are with an indivisible object that we had been calling houses. But now, call it a kidney. And here are these incompatible patient donor pairs and they have an indivisible object and it’s against the law to buy and sell kidneys for transplantation. So all of a sudden this toy model that we’d been playing with that didn’t make a lot of sense for houses because we use money for houses made sense for kidneys.

DUBNER: Was there a light bulb moment for you where you saw that the kidney was the, you know, concrete version of what had been discussed in this model or no?

ROTH: Again, I’d like to say that there was but there wasn’t.

DUBNER: Were you looking for something to plug in to that model?

ROTH: I was looking for a teaching tool. I was teaching the model and my students would say, “This is an interesting model, but isn’t it a little silly. We use- here in Pittsburgh, we use money for houses, professor.” And I’d say, “Yes, yes but this is a toy model. You should study it.” But there we were in Pittsburgh and we had all these transplants going on and I said, “Well, supposing it’s kidneys.” So we talked about kidney exchange without my ever thinking it would become a practical thing. I was not seeking to design kidney exchange. But in 1998, I moved to Boston to teach at Harvard and in 2000 the first kidney exchange in the United States was done in New England.

That’s an exchange between “incompatible patient-donor pairs” as Al Roth calls them – two couples, let’s say, with the healthy member of each couple agreeing to give a kidney to the needy member of the other couple. The first kidney-paired exchange ever took place in South Korea in 1991; the first U.S. exchange, that Roth mentioned, happened at Rhode Island Hospital, in Providence.

ROTH: And it was covered in the press, it was an unusual thing. And there I was, I had notes about kidney exchange. So with a former student of mine from Pittsburgh who was visiting at Harvard, Utku Ünver, I said to him, “Look at this. There’s kidney exchange. Let’s give a class-” I was teaching a market design class, “Let’s give a class on how we would do kidney exchange.” And—

DUBNER: Meaning this one had happened without your help and you looked at this and thought, “Hey, if this is happening on a small scale, we can maybe-“

ROTH: We can help organize it. We have played all these years with toy models. We know how to organize on a large scale trade among people dealing with indivisible goods when you can’t use money. We know a lot about this.

Several other economists began thinking about the problem.

ROTH: And eventually we wrote a paper about how to organize kidney exchange if you weren’t too worried about logistical problems. So we hadn’t yet talked to doctors. We hadn’t yet talked to surgeons. Although-

DUBNER: Like where the kidney needs to be at what-

ROTH: Right-

DUBNER: And what the preparation is for surgery and so on.

ROTH: And how hard it is to do big exchanges compared to little exchanges. So we sent the paper to all the surgeons we could think of and only one answered. It was Frank Delmonico.

DUBNER: Ah, that’s a good one to have answered then, as it turns out.

ROTH: Absolutely. He was the director of the New England Organ Bank and he came to lunch and he and I have been colleagues on kidney exchange and on other things for more than a decade now. But we helped him build the New England Program for Kidney Exchange.

[MUSIC: Arian Saleh, “Better in Blue” (from The Cobblestone EP)]

One person that Delmonico hired at the New England Program for Kidney Exchange, or NEPKE, was Ruthanne Leishman, who helped set up their kidney-paired donation program. Remember, the Rhode Island transplant had already happened, in 2000.

LEISHMAN: But that was just done manually looking at the blood types of the donors and the candidates. And then in 2004, we started working with Al and using his optimization program.

The idea behind using Al Roth’s algorithm was to make it so transplant centers could simply enter the medical and demographic data on potential organ donors and recipients, type in a few keystrokes, and then – voila! – it would produce a match.

LEISHMAN: It would really be impossible to do this by hand because of the number of antibodies that we’re talking about and the number of people that we’re talking about and we really need a computer to look at it. Not just to do any kind of matching, but really to optimize the matching.

DUBNER: Matching a potential kidney donor is harder than it sounds. Not only does any given person have one of four major blood types but we also each have our own stew of antibodies and antigens. We’re born with a certain amount of inherited antigens; but when our bodies encounter foreign antigens, we develop antibodies that battle them. This can happen during a blood transfusion, for instance. That’s was the case with a Minnesota woman named Julie Parke.

Julie PARKE: What really happened was I broke my leg about, I don’t know, five, eight years ago and unbeknownst to me they gave me a blood transfusion during it. And that just changed a bunch of antigens and antibodies, enough so that Ray no longer was going to be a match for me.

Ray is Julie’s husband, Ray Book. They’ve been married for 24 years.

Ray BOOK: Julie and I went to high school together, didn’t know each other, had one date when we were freshmen at the University of Minnesota. I told her I’d get back to her and at our 20-year class reunion I got back to her.

Julie and Ray have one daughter and three grandchildren. Julie has been a Type 1 diabetic since she was 8 years old.

PARKE: And it basically, you know, has caused all my medical issues over the years.

Julie got her first kidney transplant when she was 35. It came from a deceased donor.

PARKE: And it lasted me quite a while, and that was great, like 26-plus years. And then that one for whatever reason was failing. So, all of a sudden I needed another one.

Ray’s blood type is O, which means he’s a universal donor.

PARKE: We were kind of going down that road thinking he’d be able to donate to me someday.

But after that blood transfusion, Julie was told by her doctors that Ray was no longer a match. In Julie’s body, Ray’s kidney would have failed. Ruthanne Leishman is familiar with Julie’s case:

[MUSIC: Tallboy 7, “Underwater Dreamer”]

LEISHMAN: She had a lot of antibodies. 94% was her antibody level, which means basically she only matches with about 6% of the population.

So if Julie went the route that got her her first donated kidney, it likely would have taken a long time to get another one. Given her particulars, one doctor told her, she could wait five years or more – years which, as Leishman describes, are hard on anyone with kidney failure.

LEISHMAN: And then they’re waiting on dialysis and then three days a week, they go into a dialysis unit to have their blood cleared of the toxins that the kidney usually removes, or they’re at home at night doing home peritoneal dialysis, and so that’s a nightly ritual for people. And it makes it difficult to work. It makes people tired. It makes people sicker, so when they do get a transplant they may not be in the best health anymore, so it’s challenging.

But Julie had the good fortune to be enrolled in a kidney-exchange program. And her chances were greatly increased because her husband Ray was offering to donate one of his kidneys to someone – anyone – since he wasn’t a match with Julie. This is what’s known as being a “paired donor,” meaning that Ray was offering his kidney under the condition that his wife would receive a kidney donated by someone who was a match with her.

BOOK: I wanted to help my wife in any way that I could, so I went out and got tested. All the information went into the computer. We just put it out there into the network and thank god there’s a network like that and the algorithm obviously worked.

And it worked fast.

PARKE: You know, I went on dialysis November 1st. They called me around Christmas time and told me, “Looks like we got something on the schedule here, but you’ve got to heal this wound you’ve got on your foot.” So I spent the month of January in bed. So anyway, that was January and then we had the transplant February 5th. So, you know, it wasn’t- it certainly wasn’t five years or more.

The kidney-exchange landscape has changed. There have been consolidations – NEPKE, for instance, has been dissolved under a push to create a national program. And the numbers have grown. Last year, for instance, there were just over 17,000 kidney transplants in the U.S. About one-third of those came from living donors – not all from kidney-paired donation, but still: that’s a lot. As Al Roth points out, in one respect it’s even more than it sounds:

ROTH: So what that means is that in the United States, we now have more living donors than we have deceased donors because deceased donors give two kidneys and living donors only give one. So there are more living donors than deceased donors, but more deceased donor transplants than living donor transplants. But the growth possibilities would be in the living donor transplantation because everyone has two kidneys.

The growth possibilities are substantial not only because the matching algorithm is successful but, perhaps because it’s so successful, it has allowed for another kind of kidney donor to enter the program. Ray Book, you’ll remember, was a paired donor; but there’s also room for what’s called a non-directed donor. Ruthanne Leishman again:

LEISHMAN: Somebody who comes into the computer program without a recipient. They don’t know anybody who needs a kidney transplant. They just want to donate to somebody and help somebody. Well they come into the program and they match with a recipient whose donor matches with another recipient, whose donor matches with another recipient, and this can go on and on. And so instead of that nondirected donor helping just one person receive a transplant, they can help 2, 3, 5, 10, 30, 60 people receive a transplant as we go down the line in the chain.

It was one of these incredibly generous people – a non-directed donor — who wound up giving Julie Parke a new kidney.

LEISHMAN: This chain started with a woman named Jodi.

Jodi SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: Hello. My name is Jodi Sheakley-Wright.

Jodi Sheakley-Wright is 42 years old. At the time, she was living in Charlotte, North Carolina.

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: In May 2012, I was working as a telephonic health coach for a company in Dallas, TX, and I worked from home in Charlotte. I had a client who needed to lose 20 pounds so that he could donate a kidney to his sister. And I knew nothing about organ donation at the time. And at first I wanted to do some Internet research to determine how his lifestyle might change after the surgery, as well as what he could expect to do pre-op in order to prepare for the procedure. In my research, I came across something called kidney-paired donation. Wasn’t really familiar with that at first, but I had also seen around the same time an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. It’s actually season 5, episode 5 if you’re interested in checking that out, but it’s about paired donation. And at first, when I had seen it on Grey’s Anatomy, I wasn’t really sure if it was a Hollywood thing or if it really existed. So I did some more research and sure enough it was a real thing and I wasn’t looking to donate, but kind of sat back and thought, “You know, I’m at a place in my life where I think that I’m healthy enough. I work out of my house. I’m financially stable, and this is something that I could do.”

She began working with the transplant center at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. She went through a long series of physical and psychological tests.

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: They wanted to know if I had considered all of the factors why I should not donate. First and foremost, I was asked to make a few minor lifestyle changes, or at least I felt like they were minor. But things like they didn’t want me to do any death-defying stunts, like ride motorcycles or jump out of airplanes. I had already jumped out of an airplane so that was okay. But with one kidney, you kind of have to take a little bit more care. So basically, you know, they wanted to make sure that I was sure about donating one of my kidneys, because I really only have one to donate. I need the other one to survive and you know, they really want you to think about things like, are you going to be okay with the decisions that your recipient makes? Meaning that once you give this kidney up, it’s not mine to direct how it’s used anymore. And I was really okay with that. That’s the recipient’s call. I’m giving a gift.

After passing her tests, Sheakley-Wright’s information was entered into the computer program used by the kidney-paired donor system, and the algorithm went to work on her data. It quickly found a match – Julie Parke, in Minnesota. Less than two months later, it was surgery day.

[MUSIC: The Mackrosoft, “The Immortality Project” (from Antonio’s Giraffe)]

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: My surgery was in Atlanta. First thing in the morning. And once they removed my kidney, it’s put in a styrofoam container and it’s put on a commercial flight and was flown to Minneapolis.

LEISHMAN: Her kidney is actually put on a plane and flown to Minnesota, where it is transplanted into Julie.

PARKE: I think I went in about four in the afternoon, something like that.

LEISHMAN: Julie’s husband, the same day, is having his kidney recovered at a hospital in Minnesota.

BOOK: It was a very emotional time. I told my kidney, “Go, do a good job and take care of somebody.” And I shed some tears.

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: So Ray’s kidney at the same time that my kidney was flying from Atlanta to Minneapolis, his was flying from Minneapolis to Atlanta for the second recipient in the chain to receive her kidney.

So Ray Book donated his kidney as a paired-donor so that his wife, Julie Parke, could get a kidney from a stranger, the non-directed donor, Jodi Sheakley-Wright. And who got Ray’s kidney?

BOOK: We did find out that it was a woman who got my kidney, so. And she was in the next room, next to the woman who was donating to Julie.

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: Now my recovery room in Atlanta was next door to Ray’s recipient’s recovery room. And I’m, you know, I had the respect enough not to barge in there and introduce myself; although I have to be honest, I really wanted to. All I know about her is that she’s doing well.

That recipient had also come into the kidney exchange with someone willing to give her a kidney – but she wasn’t a match.

LEISHMAN: So this person in Georgia who received Ray’s kidney, her daughter the same day went to the operating room and donated her kidney. And that kidney stayed right there in the same hospital and went to somebody on the deceased donor waitlist who didn’t have a living donor available to them.

So this one act of kindness by Jodi Sheakley-Wright…

PARKE: Who donated out of the goodness of her heart. She didn’t even have anyone she was donating for.

This one act had a multiplier effect.

LEISHMAN: So what Jodi did by entering the program without a recipient attached to her—she was able to unlock matches that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible.

It also wouldn’t have been possible without the algorithm created by Al Roth and his colleagues.

LEISHMAN: It’s saving a lot of lives. We have about 600 kidney-paired donation transplants a year right now in the United States. In 2000 we had 2. We would have stayed doing 2 or 4 or 6 a year without the algorithm.

SHEAKLEY-WRIGHT: The entire process is incredible. I don’t have that much knowledge about algorithms. It’s been a little while since high school and college so I’d have to revisit some of my math skills, but I do know that it’s amazingly complex and just to match blood types and antibodies. And especially knowing that at this time there are almost 124,000 people in need of an organ. So how somebody begins to sift through all that is beyond me.

But, thankfully, it’s not beyond everyone. Al Roth again:

ROTH: This is about exchange. It’s called kidney exchange. There’s real exchange going on. So when I started talking to surgeons they didn’t automatically think of economists as fellow members of the helping profession. But when I talk about it nowadays, I say, “exchange.” That’s what economists study. Of course this is a subject for economists. But initially many people found it odd that economists were getting involved in organizing surgeries.

DUBNER: You write in the book, or maybe hint in the book, that all this work that you and others have done to try to solve this problem, will hopefully be obviated one day not too long from now, when there’s either medical treatment, or perhaps artificial organs, yeah?

ROTH: Oh I hope so. I think that your grandchildren, and maybe mine, they’ll just be appalled. They’ll say to you, “So Grandpa, tell me again. You used to cut the organ out of a dead person and sew it into a sick person and that was modern medicine?” And we’ll have to say to them, “Yeah yeah. We were proud and lucky to be able to do that. It saved lots and lots of lives.”

DUBNER: And even more antediluvian, perhaps, would be the notion that you would have had to create this complicated way to get a living donor to match with a donor, yes?

ROTH: So my hope is that stem-cell technologies will allow you to grow a new kidney the way you grew the ones you had originally. But we’re far from that now. And while that may eventually happen, everyone who has end-stage renal disease today, will be dead by that time. So our responsibility is to try to take care of the people who are sick today, even though there will be better ways to take care of them in the future.

DUBNER: What’s it feel like to have played a role in helping redesign, I don’t know if you call this a market, it is a market, yes?

ROTH: I call it a market. I mean, it’s not a market where money plays a role, but it’s exchange and you want to get efficient exchange. You want to get as many and as good quality transplants as you can, so absolutely it’s a market.

DUBNER: So there are a bunch of people out there who are alive who would not have been alive had not you and others working with you done what you’ve done. What’s that feel like?

ROTH: Well, many others. It feels good, but economics in general does good things for people. So I think that it may be an illusion to say, “Here we are saving lives. Isn’t that great?” And it is great, but imagine all the other good things that markets do. You know, the economy has been immensely productive. We all live much, much longer than people like us lived even a hundred years ago. And this has to do with the rapidly increasing prosperity that the world experiences because of the way markets work. So the big job of economists, of market designers, is to help that process along. It’s been going along for many, many centuries without the help of economists, but it goes by trial and error and maybe we can reduce some of the errors and make some of the trials go more quickly and more fruitfully.

DUBNER: The last chapter in your book is called “Free Markets and Market Design.” Do you happen to have a copy with you?

ROTH: I don’t but I remember it.

DUBNER: I’m glad you do. I do have a copy. I’d like you to read then, if I may pass you the book, the first two, the first two paragraphs there.

ROTH: “Thinking about the design of markets gives us a new way of looking at them, noticing them, and understanding them. My hope is that this book will help you to see markets in new ways. So may I take you to dinner to celebrate the completion of this book?”

DUBNER: Okay, that’s great. So Al, you interested in continuing this conversation over a bit of dinner, then?

ROTH: That sounds like a great idea.

[MUSIC: Studio Nine Productions, “New Orleans Funky Jazz” (from Michael Nickolas and Carl Carter)

DUBNER: Okay, Al, you have any ideas for where we can go grab a bite then?

ROTH: Well, we could go to California Avenue. There’s a thick market for restaurants there.

DUBNER: We didn’t really get into that. What do you mean by a “thick market”?

ROTH: Lots of restaurants and lots of people who like to eat at them.

DUBNER: And thickness is good in a market because why?

ROTH: Well, if we didn’t have reservation—which I know that you did make…

DUBNER: Did I? Did I?

ROTH: Someone in your office made a reservation. But if we didn’t have a reservation, the advantage of thick market is we could just walk down California Avenue and open doors and say, “Do you have room for two guys at this hour?” And we’d eventually get to one.

DUBNER: Okay, let’s go.

We went to a nice place in Palo Alto, on California Avenue, called Spalti. Northern Italian.

DUBNER: Al, you interested in something to drink?

ROTH: Uh, yeah—so we’re gonna split a half bottle of the Santa Margarita.

DUBNER: We can order food as well.

ROTH: I’ll have the salmon please.

DUBNER: Chicken Marsala. Thank you very much

[MUSIC: Texas Gypsies, “Maxwell Swing” (from Café Du Swing)]

MAN: Salmon?

DUBNER: Salmon here.

MAN: Some pepper?

DUBNER: I’d love some pepper. Please. Thank you…

You wrote about something that was so fascinating to me, it was just a tiny little aside, I just wanted to ask you not about it per se, but what it’s like to do the kind of work you do and the things you learn about these fields where you’re coming from outside. So when you’re writing about organ transplantation you wrote that if let’s say a husband and wife, if a spouse needs a kidney and the other one is willing to donate and they might be physiologically, blood type, tissue type, they might be compatible, but if they’ve had children there might be a higher chance of rejection because of the proteins intermingle or something during…It sounded made up to me, but I believe you because you’re a Nobel laureate. So…

ROTH: So one of the things that could stop you from taking my kidney is that you might have antibodies, pre-formed antibodies against some of my proteins. So if you have antibodies against my proteins then your immune system is waiting to attack my proteins if they show up in my kidney, for instance. But mostly you shouldn’t have antibodies against human proteins that you don’t have. You have to be exposed to those proteins to develop antibodies. So the chance that, so if I didn’t know my blood type, the chance that you could take my kidney is somewhat over 50 percent. But the chance that my wife could take my kidney is only about 30 percent. And the reason is we’re parents, and in the course of childbirth, not pregnancy, but childbirth, my wife, my wife’s immune system might have been exposed to some of the proteins that our boys inherit from me. And if so, her immune system might have developed antibodies that would now be prepared to attack my kidney if it should appear. So for parents, husbands donating to wives is harder than other donations.

DUBNER: And I assume that is just one of many strange, interesting, fascinating things you learn in your work about realms that you knew, right, nothing coming in?

ROTH: Market design is an outward facing part of economics, which means that we’re always learning new things. Economics is about almost everything that people do, which means that the nice thing about being an economist is it means that we can learn things from almost anyone. And of course you have to learn a lot about kidney surgery to be able to help surgeons organize surgeries. You have to learn a lot about medical practice and education in order to help organize labor markets for doctors. You have to learn a lot about New York City’s schools to be able to help high schools do their admissions process.

[MUSIC: Teddy Presberg, “$4/Gal” (from Outcries From A Sea Of Red)]

And that learning is a chain of its own, like the kidney-donor chain that Al Roth and others helped create, and which is saving lives. And as Al Roth and people like him continue to learn, they pass that knowledge along to people like you and me, making all of us a bit wiser, a bit more curious, a bit better off every day.

DUBNER: Cheers!

ROTH: Cheers!

SJD NARR: Thanks for listening. Please remember: it’s a great time to make a donation to keep more Freakonomics Radio coming in the new year. And to claim your tax deduction. Just go to Freakonomics.com/donate or text the word “Freak” to 701-01. Thanks so much!

Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio: we talk about one of the most important — and, unfortunately, elusive — components of a healthy, happy society: social trust.

David HALPERN: Social trust is an extraordinarily interesting variable and it doesn’t get anywhere near the attention it deserves. But the basic idea is trying to understand what is the kind of fabric of society that makes economies and, indeed, just people get along in general. It’s an issue that’s got long roots, but it doesn’t mean that governments had done very much about it until very recently.

How to create more social trust. That’s next time, on Freakonomics Radio.

CREDITS: FREAKONOMICS RADIO is produced by W-N-Y-C Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Merritt Jacob, Stephanie Tam, Harry Huggins, and Brian Gutierrez. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should also check out our archive, at Freakonomics.com, where you can stream or download every episode we’ve ever made – or read the transcripts, and look up the underlying research. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via e-mail at [email protected]. Thanks for listening

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

SOURCES

Al Roth, professor of economics at Stanford University

Ruthanne Leishman, program manager for the kidney-paired donation program at the United Network for Organ Sharing

RESOURCES

“The Economist as an Engineer”; Alving E. Roth, Econometrica (2002)

“A Kidney Exchange Clearinghouse in New England”; Alvin E. Roth, Tayfun So¨nmez, And M. Utku U¨ Nver, Practical Market Design (2005)

“The Redesign of the Matching Market for American Physicians: Some Engineering Aspects of Economic Design”; Alvin E. Roth And Elliott Peranson, The American Economic Review (1999)

Who Gets What ― and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design by Alvin E. Roth (2017)

EXTRA

Al Roth Takes Home the Nobel Prize

The Opposite of Repugnance

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from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/make-match-rebroadcast/

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