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Behavioral economist Dan Ariely talks about the study “Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time,” conducted together with Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton, and what it reveals about Americans’ ideas about the distribution of wealth in this country.

University of Chicago behavioral economist Tobias Moscowitz and veteran Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim reveal the hidden forces that shape how basketball, baseball, football, and hockey games are played, won, and lost. Their book Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won overturns some of the most cherished truisms of sports—from home-field advantage, to the biased umpires exhibit, to the myth of the "hot hand" in sports.

Dan Ariely, behavioral economist at Duke University and author of The Upside of Irrationality, takes a look at the so-called 99ers -- the segment of the population that has been unemployed for over ninety-nine weeks, at which point their unemployment benefits end. What's next for them?

Putting thing off until the last minute is a compulsion many people share. On this week’s Please Explain, Dr. George Ainslie, Professor of Psychiatry at University of Cape Town, in South Africa, and Dr. Joseph Ferrari, professor of psychology at DePaul University, tell us what causes us to procrastinate, how it affects productivity, and methods for ending procrastination. Dr. Ferrari is the author of Still Procrastinating? The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done. Dr. Ainslie is the author of Breakdown of Will and Picoeconomics.

Dan Ariely uses behavioral economics to explain how human irrationality affects life, business, and public policy. In The Upside of Irrationality, he describes such idiosyncrasies as the IKEA effect and the Baby Jessica effect, and talks about what behavioral patterns can improve how we love, live, work, innovate, manage, and govern.