PLAYBACK (2015): Could the Next Brooklyn Be ... Las Vegas?!

Tony Hsieh, the longtime C. E. O. of Zappos, was an iconoclast and a dreamer. Five years ago, we sat down with him around a desert campfire to talk about those dreams. Hsieh died recently from injuries sustained in a house fire; he was 46.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 0:46Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:31Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:05Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there, Stephen Dubner. We are breaking into your feed with an extra episode this week. This is a playback of an episode we put out in 2015. It is about how one man, a soft-spoken but wildly interesting and accomplished man, had a vision and acted upon it. His name is Tony Shay. For more than two decades, he was CEO of the shoe company Zappos. He was known in the tech and entrepreneurial communities and beyond as an iconoclast and a dreamer, maybe even a seeker. Before recording this episode in Las Vegas, I had met Shay just once or twice before with my friend and co-author Steve Levitt.

• 3:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  Both of us were really taken with Shay himself and a book he published called Delivering Happiness. About a week ago, Tony Shay died at age 46. When I heard the news, I dug into our archives to playback the episode. I thought you might all like to hear it, too. Keep in mind that some of the facts and figures are now outdated. We'll add a few updates at the end. Shay himself doesn't actually appear until the second half of the episode, but as you'll hear, his ghost is sort of floating through the first half, too. You'll also hear that his drink of choice was Fernet Branca. If you like a drink now and again, you might want to pour one out now for Tony.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  We're standing at the corner of Ogden Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard North.

• 4:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  In Las Vegas, Nevada. Nevada? Not Nevada. It is Nevada?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Nevada.

• 4:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, God, I had it wrong the whole time? I always try to be so respectful of the way that a place is pronounced in the place where it is, like Oregon, I think. Oregon? Now I'm probably wrong on that. Oh, you're right on that. It is New Yersey, right? Okay. And we're looking up at the Ogden. The Ogden is a luxury condo building in downtown Las Vegas. Not on the Strip, a famous part of the city with all the huge hotels and casinos and glitter. The old downtown is about five miles north of the Strip, but it's still Las Vegas, still in the state of, say it with me, Nevada. Apartments in the Ogden sell in the low to mid-six figures. You've lived there how long?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  I've lived there a year and a half.

• 5:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  And you are?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Maggie Hsu, and I run business development for Downtown Project.

• 5:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  The Downtown Project is, as the name implies, a project to make downtown a thing again in Las Vegas, a vibrant area where a lot of people might actually want to live.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Vegas is a very unique market. You have a family, kids, animals. It's, you know, less appealing to have an apartment downtown, so what we're really trying to do is boost up the amenities. So you have a dog park nearby, you have restaurants within walking distance.

• 5:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  But as you'll hear, it's more than just that, more than just boosting amenities. The Downtown Project, founded in January 2012, comes with a big vision and a big price tag, which is being funded primarily by one man.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  So the initial allocation of the project was $350 million, fully funded as a for-profit entity by Tony Hsieh.

• 6:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tony Hsieh, that's H-S-I-E-H, is already a business iconoclast. He first got involved with Zappos, the online shoe and clothing retailer, as an investor, but then became its CEO and has presided for years over a corporate culture that most corporations wouldn't recognize. Among his priorities, having fun, empowering his call center employees, and making customers happy at almost any cost. We've written about Shea and Zappos before, how, for instance, company meetings are sometimes held in a bar, and why customer reps are encouraged to talk to a customer for as long as they want, all without a script, and how they're authorized to settle problems without

• 6:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  calling in a supervisor, they can even fire a customer who makes trouble for them, and how Zappos gives new employees a chance to quit their brand-new job and even get a quitting bonus, about one month's pay, because Tony Shea figures he would rather weed out anyone who doesn't really, really, really want to work at Zappos. All those gambles paid off. In 2009, amazon.com bought Zappos for about $1.2 billion. Now Shea is using some of his money for an even bigger gamble, to try turning downtown Las Vegas into a very different kind of city. So, in this episode of Freakonomics Radio, we'll do what most of you think about doing whenever you visit Las Vegas, I'm sure.

• 7:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  We sit around a campfire and chat with Tony Shea and campfire-appropriate beverages.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  I'm not really normally a beer drinker. And this is your first PBR?

• 7:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think ever. It tastes like beer.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  We had a Burnett shot earlier, for those of you just tuning in.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  From Stitcher and Dubner Productions, this is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 8:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Compared to the rise of Las Vegas itself, gambling and entertainment mecca built in the middle of nowhere through the moxie of some Jewish gangsters, Mormon bankers, and other colorful characters, the Downtown Project that Tony Hsieh envisions isn't quite so bold. But for anyone who cares about cities and about the future of cities, it's worth paying attention to. The idea for remaking Downtown Vegas began when Hsieh relocated Zappos headquarters from Henderson on the southeast edge of Las Vegas into downtown. But Hsieh, being Hsieh, didn't settle for some random address. Zappos moved into the old City Hall. So today, the former Las Vegas City Council Chamber is now an auditorium for Zappos

• 9:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  company meetings. The old jail has been converted into an employee gym. And once Zappos made over City Hall, Tony Hsieh began to wonder if Downtown itself might need a makeover. One of his main inspirations was a Harvard economist named Ed Glazer, who four years ago published a manifesto called Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. So let's start there. Professor Glazer.

• 9:50Speaker 04

  Hi, Stephen. How are you?

• 9:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm very well, thank you. How are you?

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Great, thanks.

• 9:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  And where are you today?

• 9:56Speaker 04

  I'm in Paris, France.

• 9:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  Poor fella. How are things there?

• 10:00Speaker 04

  It is a spectacular April day in Paris.

• 10:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  And now, we should just establish for the record, you do not live in Paris. So just give us quickly your geographical bona fides.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  Usually, I live outside of Boston, and I'm currently on sabbatical, attempting to civilize my children by taking them to a variety of different cities.

• 10:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Very good. And you have a particular interest in cities, do you not, sir?

• 10:28Speaker 04

  I do, indeed. I do love cities very much. I've spent almost all of my adult life studying cities. And that's also one of the reasons why I'm here in Paris.

• 10:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, Ed, you grew up in New York City, so you may be biased. But just rank for me, if you don't mind, your five, let's say, favorite cities in the world.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  Oh, come on. That's like ranking your favorite children. That's a highly unfair thing to do.

• 10:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, you don't have that many children, so it's probably a little easier.

• 10:54Speaker 04

  But certainly, I love New York and I love Boston, and I'm very, very fond of Hong Kong. And I think Singapore is, still remains, the best-run place on the planet. And Europe is filled with wonderful cities, full of charm and history, that I also love very much.

• 11:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  If you had to pick one, since you're in Paris right now, maybe it would be Paris. If you had to pick one Western European city to make your top-five list, what would it be?

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Oh, certainly, Paris is great. I also, you know, I just spent a month in Barcelona, which I also love. And, look, I'm passionate about London as well.

• 11:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  You've shared with us your five or seven favorite cities, noting that what makes them your favorite is not necessarily universal. Where on your list, and this list can be as long as you want, of cities in the world, where would Las Vegas rank on that list?

• 11:54Speaker 04

  Again, I gave you cities that I loved. I'm not sure that I'm comfortable making any sort of a list, but certainly, there's a lot to like about the dynamism in Las Vegas. Las Vegas was one of the fastest-growing American cities for many decades. It was a place that, until the boom, succeeded marvelously, as many American Sun Belt cities do, at providing vast amounts of affordable housing for ordinary-income Americans, and that's terrific. It cannot be faulted for its pro-business policies. All of these things are to be loved. It is true that what people often think of as the core of Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Strip, which is really in the unincorporated city...

• 12:41Speaker 04

  That's a thing which, as a lover of cities, I may marvel at. But it's hard to sort of fall in love with it. Because I think historically, the great weakness of Las Vegas has been education. So much so that in my earliest work documenting the connection between education and urban growth, Las Vegas was an obviously huge outlier because it grew so quickly and had so little of a base in terms of share of the population with a college degree. And in the city, you still have about 21% of the Las Vegas adults with a college degree, which is a lot closer to Detroit, which is about 12%, than it is to Seattle, which is about 50%.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  And I continue to think that that is, Las Vegas' greatest challenge is making itself attractive to a wider range of skilled categories.

• 13:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  This message, the need to attract highly educated people, got through to Tony Hsieh and the other architects of the Downtown Project. One of them is Zach Ware, who's a general partner at Vegas Tech Fund, the venture capital arm of the Downtown Project.

• 13:51Speaker 05

  The work that we first found that really, I think, sowed the seeds for what would become the Downtown Project was Ed Glazer's book.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  I was very flattered when Tony reached out to me. He read my book and seems to have been excited by it. It's deeply flattering, obviously. And Zappos paid me to come out and give a talk to their workers. And I got to spend about three days with Tony, hanging out in the downtown area of Las Vegas. I thought it was fascinating what he was doing. And I thought that it always seemed like it was an uncertain bet.

• 14:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  The bet was whether Tony Hsieh could use his fortune to reshape Downtown. Not, however, by building big attractions that draw visitors, but rather by reconfiguring things for the locals. Zach Ware again.

• 14:35Speaker 05

  So in Tony's case, he set about on the real estate side to acquire a fairly large contiguous area of land. And his perspective was, I don't necessarily need to build everything. I don't want to. I don't want to program the neighborhood. I'm not someone who can do that. But what I can do is be a force as best as I possibly can. So our secret weapon, if you have, if we wanted to have restaurants, a bookshop, a bar, coworking space and so forth, sort of coexisting together, our secret sauce was that Downtown Project owned all the property. The idea is that when you look at coworking spaces, offices, cities, the magic and creativity that happens in those places is as a result

• 15:19Speaker 05

  of random encounters and conversations with people you otherwise wouldn't know to reach out to, couldn't reach out to, didn't know existed.

• 15:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  They have a word for this: collisions. Collisions are one of the most important metrics that Ware and Shay have in mind.

• 15:33Speaker 05

  It's engineering an environment to support collisions, to inspire collisions, and being very mindful that a master plan, single idea can be very, very risky, that letting the neighborhood to revolve itself is what makes our minds' long-term magic happen.

• 15:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ed Glazer says this vision is very different than most visions about how to build or grow a city.

• 15:56Speaker 04

  When you look at the globe and what, you know, building cities usually it means, it means that somebody has come up with a couple billion dollars to build some form of project, a convention center, a sports stadium, maybe something to do with transportation, and then they try to wrap a city around it. And sometimes it works, at least half of the time it doesn't, but it's very much of a view that what cities are physical structures and let the people, you know, follow that. Shea was remarkable because his view was that the structures should actually follow the people and that's a view I largely share, that actually focusing on the real heart of the city, which is always the humanity that's dwelling in that city, is the right

• 16:40Speaker 04

  thing to do. And it was very much a view that the neighborhood would grow organically, that it would originally be housed in older buildings and have businesses housed in things like shipping containers. It would focus on the social networks, on the bumping into each other of different people. It was a very exciting vision. Now, I think it's hard to make a dense downtown area work in Las Vegas, right? I mean, the entire Sun Belt area in the US is an area that's built around the automobile.

• 17:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now I'm back on the street with Maggie Shu, who runs business development for the Downtown Project. It was about 5:00 PM on Tuesday in February. Vegas was just recovering from a cold snap. It had gotten into the 40s. There'd been snow on the surrounding mountains. Zappos had been planning a charity event featuring Britney Spears and a bunch of zoo animals. Britney Spears was still going to show up, but the zoo animals were kept at home because of the cold. So we're at the very beginning of the Downtown Project here, Las Vegas, in Ogden. So if collision, colliding and collatability and collisionability, et cetera, are what you're after, it's, you know, prime time, late afternoon, and we're the only people on the corners. And there are 200 cars within eyesight, so they're all colliding, or not

• 17:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  colliding, but interacting with each other. How much more urban does it need to get before the stuff that you want to happen starts to happen?

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it's a mix of increasing the residential density, but also increasing walkability. And so Las Vegas is a very car-centric culture, and, you know, people are used to driving places.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  There's nothing surprising in this. All of the world's urban areas are built around the transportation technology that was dominant in the era in which they were being produced. So, you know, the western cities, which are post-war typically, were built around the car, Las Vegas as much as any. So the Shea vision of sort of a denser walking area was always a little bit at odds with that. Although Las Vegas was always somewhat quirky because of the desire of tourists to be able to walk places. So it always had more density, more walkability than, let's say, Phoenix did, or Oklahoma City.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  And I think the the attempt to sort of creatively reuse old space, the attempt to focus on social connections, all of that seemed, you know, exciting and visionary, if indeed something of a gamble.

• 19:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  The Downtown Project is now one of the biggest landowners in downtown Las Vegas. It directly employs more than 250 people and estimates that it has helped create at least 900 jobs through its startup investments. It owns and operates some properties like the Container Park, an open-air shopping and eating and entertainment zone, a grocery store, a boutique hotel, and the Gold Spike. That's a bar and restaurant that also serves another function.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  So this is the Gold Spike. It used to be a casino with dollar strip blackjack and lots of other interesting games. And we converted it into a coworking space. So you'll notice power outlets, free Wi-Fi. It's actually a great place for startups that don't have offices to meet and have meetings.

• 19:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  So are these guys over there coworking or are they just drinking?

• 19:53Speaker 01

  So the gentleman in the far corner actually runs our food and beverage operations. And so he's having a meeting, a little bit of both.

• 20:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  The Gold Spike is perfectly inviting, but only a handful of people had taken up the invitation, at least on this one weekday afternoon. It felt a little bit like a really nice model home version of a bar.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  It doesn't have to be perfect when you first open it. It was intentional, so being able to understand how people use the space. And the best example is the backyard. So the backyard actually was a parking lot when we first opened. And one day, someone said, why not build an ice rink?

• 20:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  So we built out what we called the Cold Spike. And we had ice rink. These were all decorated as gingerbread houses. Not many people went ice skating. And so we decided to retool. And what really stood out in the Yelp reviews and customer feedback was these giant games. And so we decided to get rid of the ice rink and build this area full of giant games.

• 20:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  There were indeed a bunch of giant games out there, including the classic backyard contest known in some parts of the country as Cornhole. It is basically a beanbag toss toward a sloped board with a big hole in it.

• 21:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  How do you score? In the hole is something and on the board is something?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  In the hole is three, on the board is one.

• 21:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, where do we shoot from?

• 21:11Speaker 01

  We can go from this line.

• 21:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay. What's our wager? A one-bedroom apartment in the Ogden? Is that too much?

• 21:19Speaker 01

  I was gonna say a Fernet shot. Over the airstreams later.

• 21:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, it's a deal. Okay, you go ahead.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, beautiful shot. That's three. All right, so a total of four?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh-oh, zero.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Oh! We tied!

• 21:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Sudden death?

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Sudden death. I have to do another one.

• 21:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ow!

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yay!

• 21:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Congratulations. Okay. I owe you a shot of Tony's vile Italian liquor.

• 21:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  After cornhole, the tour continued.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  So, on the west side of the street is the Fremont Experience. And it's a business improvement district, a mix of casinos and restaurants.

• 22:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Long predates the Downtown Project, right?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Has been. A lot of it was the original strip, and I think, out of my note.

• 22:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, and then over here?

• 22:13Speaker 01

  We're calling this East of Fremont East, for lack of a better name. But many of these restaurants and bars were around, have been around for several years, and existed before Zappos moved downtown. And they were kind of this unique spot where the bartenders and the owners of the restaurants would go to other people's restaurants after work. And so is this naturally supportive community. And what Tony saw there was something that, you know, had the beginnings of a really great, unique space across here, like a Brooklyn or an Austin.

• 22:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  If you know Brooklyn or Austin, it might seem impossible to remake the old downtown section of Las Vegas in their image. But remember, the Downtown Project has a secret weapon: an urban economist, Ed Glazer, who believes that the key to an effort like this is to attract a certain kind of entrepreneur. Ed, you wrote a paper back in 2009 called Clusters of Entrepreneurship, and it seems as though Tony is following this plan quite closely. I'll read you the beginning of your abstract. "Employment growth is strongly predicted by smaller average establishment size, both across cities and across industries within cities." And Tony, as you know, is trying to import a lot of,

• 23:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  or trying to start up and encourage, a lot of small businesses. Restaurants, shops, bookstores, and so on. Talk about that for a minute. Obviously, you think that's the right way to go. Why is that the right way to go? How does that work in cities?

• 23:45Speaker 04

  Well, you know, I think this is maybe best illustrated by the counter example, which is Detroit. So Detroit goes from being one of the most entrepreneurial places on the planet in the 1890s, right? Which is filled with a cluster of smart people just trying to do the new, new thing, a lot like Silicon Valley in the 1960s. And it succeeds so well that it creates these massive, massive automotive companies that provide fantastic wages, are incredibly productive. I mean, it has a 70-year run that is almost unimaginable in terms of its urban triumph. And yet, the very success of those companies basically kills off the tradition of entrepreneurial human capital.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  It trains people who make superb company men, but not scrappy entrepreneurs. And entrepreneurship, like anything else that matters, is a skill. It's something that's built. And if you've spent your life working for General Motors, you're not likely to be the right person to start up some scrappy new electronic greeting cards company if General Motors falters. And that's really, I think, what that paper is about, and what the sort of long litany of evidence that shows the sort of role of proxies of entrepreneurship as predicting urban success. It suggests that just as, you know, normal human capital share the population with a college degree is very predictive of which areas do well, measures of other types of human capital, like the amount of entrepreneurial skill in the area, also predict urban success.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  And I think that's what Tony Hsieh is trying to do, is trying to create enough of a cluster of entrepreneurship, both because those entrepreneurs will themselves create employment, but because some of that entrepreneurial skill is likely to be infectious, that people will learn from each other, and you'll create an overall cluster of this.

• 25:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  And that's why the Downtown Project is helping fund all kinds of small entrepreneurs. So far, it has put money into more than 50 businesses and, through the Vegas Tech Fund, 100 tech startups. Here again is Zach Ware.

• 25:44Speaker 05

  And in our case, we said, hey, there's an amazing chef who wants to start a restaurant. How can we get behind that? Here are two or three really awesome tech company ideas that we think are really awesome companies to invest in. Let's do that. And the idea for us has always been create value by creating diversity. Try not to bet on one thing, but rather have 100 amazing ideas or interesting ideas where 20%, 30%, 40% can fail and you still have a very diverse, active economy and ground activity, rather than choosing one big gigantic thing like a stadium or a big building that can fail. And when it fails, the whole neighborhood goes down with it.

• 26:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  The epicenter of the Downtown Project, the densest small business incubator, feels like a cross between an outdoor mall and a county fair. So this is, this is looking like, I don't know what to describe this, like a public plaza playgroundy. There are kids and people climbing on stuff and, but shops and llama signs. So what is this?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  This is the Container Park. It was an old Motel 6 that we tore down. Wanted to build both a retail space, retail incubator for first time entrepreneurs, as well as a space for families and children. And so both components were equally important. So you have around the outside, a lot of first time owner operated, small business owners that can test out their concepts in a small space. And if they succeed, they can move to standalone brick and mortar, or they can shift locations. So we actually had a few stores go from second floor to first floor because they're so successful and they needed more square footage. And then at the same time, we had this giant Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse in the middle with three slides, a place space for children, and we can actually take a walk around the park.

• 27:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  So if you would just look around and tell me the name of some of the shops here, and if the name doesn't contain what they do, tell us what they do.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Sure. So Big Ernie's Barbecue is a barbecue shop, and the owner is a gentleman named Ernie, and he was working at the call center at Zappos, and his passion was barbecue. So another small business investment funded him. He was going out of the back of his truck for a while, and this was his first ever store, and I believe he's now the top or second grossing food and beverage outlet in the entire park. And when the park opened, he got up on stage, and I remember he was crying, and this was a life-changing opportunity. And then we'll go into the toy store, Capa Toys. So Lizzie and her husband Trevor are from Austin, Texas, and they were at a toy store. Several of us were there for South

• 28:24Speaker 01

  by Southwest, some were up on the store, and they were actually going out of business. And so we said, you know, why not open a toy store in downtown Vegas? What do you think about that? It seemed like a really natural fit with the kids, and they've been here ever since, and they're absolutely amazing what they can do.

• 28:44Speaker 06

  Hi, hey! Hi. Welcome! We're doing a little podcast. Oh, awesome. Cool.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  So there are the actual owners, Lizzie and Trevor.

• 28:53Speaker 06

  Yes, you found us both. This is very rare.

• 28:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Steven, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. How do you do? Explain to me just a little bit, are you a subsidized business then? How does it work?

• 29:03Speaker 06

  I don't know if subsidized would be how I would explain this business specifically, because we are part of that fully funded autonomous group, so we are...

• 29:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Which is?

• 29:13Speaker 06

  Small business. I would almost call it, I see it as venture capital, which I don't see a subsidy so much as investment risk.

• 29:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  So what's it feel like to be the business owners?

• 29:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  And in that scenario? And what are you thinking about is like, how do you measure success? And how long can you go without being as successful as you might be if you didn't have that backup?

• 29:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, we've done small business for 10 years now, specifically in the toy industry. And one of the biggest difficulties in such a weird niche industry, especially since the whole banking crisis, has been finding capital. And so what we've really appreciated overall from working before is a huge pressure is off. Like, we can focus on what we do best, and we're not constantly stressed. And we're not constantly having to also learn how to like, find funding and organize everything. Like, it's in a funding that we can, you know, really work on the business and not constantly freak out about where our next line of credit's coming from.

• 30:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  You guys are a couple? Mm-hmm. You have kids?

• 30:13Speaker 06

  No.

• 30:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Why is that so funny?

• 30:16Speaker 06

  Everyone asks it, and yeah, I think this is the best birth control you can ask. We get really cute kids in, and I love them. And every time I start thinking seriously about it, we'll get a little nightmare in, and all of a sudden I'll add another year on to our waiting period.

• 30:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  We've started discussing everything, but we're a few years out of it.

• 30:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think dog first.

• 30:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  What are your big sellers here, toy-wise? Everything.

• 30:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, we really set it up so that we keep in stuff that sells well, and there's not much we have that doesn't move. Brody is a personal favorite. I've worked with this company for years. So they're bouncy ponies, they're made in Italy. They're actually...

• 30:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Beautiful.

• 30:53Speaker 06

  They're beautiful. So you see that design?

• 30:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Speaker 06

  They're over 30 years old. Both of them are safe to 400 pounds.

• 30:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  How tall?

• 30:59Speaker 06

  So even though it's a kid's toy, it's totally adult-friendly, and there's so many drunk grown-ups on them every Saturday night.

• 31:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right. Oh, I guess we're leaving.

• 31:07Speaker 06

  You can come back. We won't be here, you can bother the employees.

• 31:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, thank you so much.

• 31:11Speaker 06

  No, it's fine.

• 31:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  It's nice to meet you. Good luck with everything. Yeah, I appreciate it. Maggie Shu and I head out of Container Park, where the density falls in a hurry. So... As neat as all this is, we're encountering very few actual humans. Is that because of time of day, day of week, and temperature?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  It's still less dense than you would find in many other cities and downtowns. But you'll notice that what we've tried to do is build block by block. So the Container Park a year ago would have even less traffic. So we built that extra block. You walk the extra block to the Container Park. We've started activating further down. We're about to walk to the bookstore and we'll see a few more people. So, you know, we're making that journey. And the thought is as we build more of that out. So we're building a music area on the right with the bunkhouse, which is a music venue, the wheelhouse, which will be a wind-powered stage, and a record store. So once that opens, you have even more people. And so it's this one-block, one-block strategy.

• 32:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  And part of that strategy is to attract technology startups. I asked Ed Glazer what kind of tech startups downtown Vegas should be thinking about. If there was some tech cluster that you could clone, or import, or steal, what kind of tech cluster would it be? What, you know, if you could transplant something, would it be like a Silicon Valley, or Route 28 corridor, or a Provo environment? Or do you want a different kind of industry represented than the kind of current traditional tech industry? What would you bring in to Vegas if you could bring in anything that you think would help it to succeed?

• 32:46Speaker 04

  I would think the more that you go towards, you know, things like Silicon Valley, where you're focusing on making faster and faster transistors, I can't imagine that that has any synergies with Las Vegas. That being said, think about what Tony Hsieh found attractive about the Las Vegas area for Zappos. It was the consumer-oriented workforce. People who came out of working in the hospitality industry, people who came out of the entertainment industry, people who were fantastic manning the phones for Zappos. Now, the question is, what other sort of consumer service tech companies could potentially take advantage of that?

• 33:27Speaker 04

  What, to what other areas are there synergies with the traditional strengths of Las Vegas? You know, maybe that's another angle to play.

• 33:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  But if Tony Hsieh wants the Downtown Project to do more than just make life a bit more interesting for Zappos employees, that is a much bigger challenge.

• 33:45Speaker 04

  I think it all depends upon whether or not there's going to be enough. Entrepreneurship that he can attract into the area, and particularly enough, educated entrepreneurs. I think this feels fairly central to me, is whether or not he can attract more people like himself into the area, and probably not just people who are in service industries. He needs to get something more of a chain of tech people who decide that this is a whole lot cooler and a whole lot cheaper than other places that they could move into.

• 34:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let me propose something where Tony Hsieh could be killing a couple of birds with one stone. What would it take for you to bring your family to Las Vegas, to Downtown Project, for, let's say, three years, to establish a kind of triumph-of-the-city urban institute, where you'd be the star attraction, and you'd work there and live there, and then the other IQ would flow? How much does Tony Hsieh need to pay you per annum?

• 34:56Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know about money. I mean, I think the problem is that my welfare function depends critically on having people who are smarter than I am around me. And I would need to make sure that my kids also had a lot of people who were smarter than they were around them. And if you can guarantee me that, I think I'd be willing to go. But in some sense, it's the challenge that you face in starting a new city is to attract a cluster of talent that can then feed on itself. And I don't know how feasible that is, or whether or not that will be achieved. But if you judge the project in the abstract, I mean, if it were me doing it, I'd be pretty sure that I would screw it up.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  But he is a remarkable guy with a remarkable track record, who is deeply charismatic in many ways. So you would have lost money in the past betting against Tony Hsieh. So I'm not sure I would be ready to start betting against him now.

• 35:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up on Freakonomics Radio, we finally get around the campfire with Tony Hsieh himself to hear what he's got in mind.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  A lot of city revitalization projects are really top-down, master-planned, and we're really anti that. It's really more about backing the entrepreneurs and their passions.

• 36:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's coming up, right after this. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Angie. Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years, and they've made it easier than ever to tackle home projects. Their nationwide network has experts in everything from plumbing and landscaping to roofing, remodels, and more. You can read verified reviews and request and compare quotes to find your best price. So join the millions of homeowners who use Angie to get the job done well. Download the Angie app today or visit Angie.com.

• 37:01Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 37:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  boring things like calculations and careful planning are usually behind it. Which begs the question, why not apply it to other aspects of life, like banking, for example? Well, PNC Bank did, since its inception, proving time and again that the best banking strategy isn't the exciting type, but the steady, reliable, definitely not YOLO type. PNC Bank. Brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. PNC Bank, National Association, Member, FDIC.

• 38:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there. I'm Stephen Dubner, and you are listening to a playback of a 2015 Freakonomics Radio episode called "Could the Next Brooklyn Be Las Vegas?" Back to Vegas we go.

• 38:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  After our tour of the downtown project, we head to the outskirts of the area. The streets here are very quiet, sidewalks empty. It's getting dark now. We turn right and come upon a guard shack. We get waved through. We're with the band. And now we find ourselves standing in what looks to be a very funky trailer park. So we're walking on a very nice astroturfed, not trademark astroturf, but artificial grass walkway with colored lights and a kind of canopy. And the structures are some Airstreams, but also a lot of-

• 39:23Speaker 01

  tumbleweed tiny houses.

• 39:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tumbleweed, is that a name brand?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  It's a trademark, tumbleweed tiny homes.

• 39:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  And how many residences or how many buildings are there here?

• 39:31Speaker 01

  There are about 20 Airstreams and 10 tumbleweeds.

• 39:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  And are they all full?

• 39:34Speaker 01

  It's a mix.

• 39:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  One resident is Tony Shea, the CEO of Zappos and the man who's putting his own money into the downtown project. We began, as apparently many get-togethers here begin, with a shot of Shea's favorite drink, Fernet Branca.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  That is an Italian liqueur that's soaked in 40 herbs, including ginseng, myrrh, chamomile, anise. Tasting smells like Chinese medicine. 60 seconds after you drink it, it fills your stomach. It's a digestive. It actually gets rid of nausea. So it's like a healthy, um-

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Do you like it in the cup or no?

• 40:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  I don't, I'm not fancy.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Cheers, Chin Chin.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Cheers.

• 40:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  All the time.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Cheers.

• 40:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Everything.

• 40:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  This is delicious. Felt like I hurried through it just out of being the only one with a bottle. Thank you.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  But you'll see throughout the night as it evolves. As you evolve.

• 40:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Want to go talk?

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you want to do this outdoors? Or I don't know what's easier for- Because there's a great spot up there.

• 40:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  On top of the Airstream?

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Cool.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Or we can do next to the campfire, so he can get the crackling every once in a while for background.

• 40:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  I like that.

• 40:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tony, can you just kind of set the scene, like say where we are and what happens here?

• 40:53Speaker 02

  We are in a half a city block and so this was just a completely empty lot

• 41:02Speaker 02

  three and a half months ago and a bunch of us decided to move in as a living experiment. And the original idea was let's see what happens if we do an urban version of Burning Man.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  I think there's probably 15 or so of us that live here, but then we also have a whole bunch that are set up as guest airstreams and tiny houses.

• 41:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you're living here now? You sleep here every night?

• 41:26Speaker 02

  I've been here over three months now, since November 4th.

• 41:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, no kidding. Okay.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  I used to live there.

• 41:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  In the Ogden? Right. And so when you say you used to, you literally don't live there anymore? You kind of moved out of there? This is temporary, right?

• 41:43Speaker 02

  No, this is...

• 41:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Really?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've probably been back there five times.

• 41:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wow.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  This whole time.

• 41:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you keep all your stuff? You have an airstream?

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the one behind that one.

• 41:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so Maggie walked us around and it was great.

• 42:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Baffled that you've been able to do what you've done so far and even more baffled that you wanted to do what you've done because it seems like such

• 42:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  massive undertaking, not just physically and logistically and financially, but psychically. So that's what I kind of want to talk to you about is where did the psychic part... Like what made you want to reinvent a part of a city? And where did that... where'd the desire come from?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  I guess for me it wasn't really about reinventing. Like this area we're in near Fremont East, which is an area that most tourists don't know about.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Already existed and just by magical coincidence, it was a few blocks from the former city hall, which is now Zappos headquarters.

• 42:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  You didn't have any desire or idea to do this until Zappos moved there?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  So originally, actually, we were looking to do what a lot of corporate campuses do, where we were looking to buy a big plot of land and then kind of build our own little community for the company. So we actually toured campuses like Apple and Nike and Google that have these amazing campuses and then asked our employees for ideas for what to have in dream campus. And we literally got hundreds and hundreds of suggestions where we realized it was going to be physically impossible to fit all those things.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Actually, the number one request we got from employees was actually doggy daycare, which ranked significantly higher than human daycare.

• 43:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is that because more of your employees have dogs than kids or they care more about their dogs than kids, do you know?

• 43:49Speaker 02

  I'm guessing more people have dogs than kids.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  But as we got all these requests, we realized that it was going to be physically impossible to fit all of them under one roof. And the other thing we realized was that all those other campuses that we had looked at were great for employees, but were actually really insular and didn't really integrate or contribute to the surrounding community. And so we started thinking, what if we actually turned the entire concept inside out and rather than just focusing on ourselves, we took an approach that was more analogous to NYU, where the campus blends in with the city and you don't really know where one begins the other ends.

• 44:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Why did you care about that? I mean aesthetically, I understand and I personally happen to agree with it, that it's a nice idea, but there are all these other corporations, I mean, the typical corporate campus throughout history has been very segregated from where people live. What made you think that was worth doing?

• 44:47Speaker 02

  I think it was based on a lot of just different research reports I'd read. So we were talking about Ed Glaser earlier and then there's also Jeffrey Moore that's done research on cities. And every time the size of a city doubles, innovation and productivity per resident increases by 15%.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  The opposite generally happens with companies as they get bigger innovation or productivity per employee generally goes down. So part of it was wanting to avoid that fate and really think about how do we, over time, get Sappos to function more like a city and less like a typical bureaucratic.

• 45:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  How much of that from your end was a desire for business growth and how much of it was a desire, like a kind of aesthetic choice for you? Like you thought it would be better, nicer, cooler if your company could be like that as opposed to necessarily the productivity and the things?

• 45:46Speaker 02

  It was a few different things. There's the productivity part of it and then there's also the attracting and retaining employees part of it. If employees that we're looking for want to be part of an urban environment, then that was definitely part of the motivation. But then the other interesting research is that most innovation actually comes from something outside your industry being applied to your own. And so I think companies that are just in four walls ultimately end up being less innovative because they don't have the interactions with people from other industries and so on, or on a typical suburban campus.

• 46:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Most people who know you and know who you are, know what you've done would consider you an innovator. I mean, that's kind of, in addition to being a success at business, that's what you're known for. Do you think that having been an innovator in business necessarily has inherently turned you into an innovator in this kind of thing, this kind of social urban experiment? I mean, are they, is it one in the same? Is it necessarily related? Or is it just something that's kind of an outgrowth of who you are as a person and what you like to do?

• 47:03Speaker 02

  I think it's more about, because I was never interested in anything related to urban revitalization or anything, or real estate until relatively recently. And for me, 10 or 15 years ago, I used to throw a lot of parties and I would think about how do you design the space so that... People collide with each other and interact with each other. And so, for example, if there's two bars at a party, then we'd shut down the first bar that's closest to the entrance. And then everyone eventually finds the alcohol. And then, maybe an hour or two later, open up the first bar, and then that promotes the circulation.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  And then, within an office environment, at Zappos, culture is really important to us. We want people to have those equivalent of water cooler conversations. And so, we'd do a lot of thinking about, how do you create more collisions? So, we would do weird things like, in our Henderson office in the building I was in, the parking lot was behind the building, and the previous tenant actually had all, there were doors on all four walls of the building, and employees would go in and out, whichever door was most convenient. So, we actually shut down those doors and had everyone actually walk around the entire building and come in the front entrance, which created, which ended up making the reception

• 48:27Speaker 02

  area this collision point where guests and employees would collide.

• 48:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  And do you have evidence that that leads to better outcomes?

• 48:35Speaker 02

  Part of it is just personal experience and anecdotal.

• 48:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  I mean, do you really care if it's empirically a lot better? Because, you know, when I talked to Levitt about you recently, he said that as much as he is, you know, kind of a slave to the data at the end of the day, like, if he's trying to do something as a consultant with the business, or with an NGO, or with the government, he's gonna take, even if there's a 1% advantage in scenario A over B, and that might require doing something that most people would think unpopular, he's gonna do it, because it's gonna be better. And he said that Tony doesn't care at all about anything like that. He said, Tony just cares about people being happy, and people having a good time.

• 49:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  And with Zappos, it's been incredibly successful. But Levitt, like for instance, wasn't sure if the success was due to that happiness or maybe orthogonal to that happiness. So do you know? Do you care?

• 49:37Speaker 02

  I do care. And I guess I'd be interested in whatever data or research that, you know, maybe you guys can come up with. But if you read books like Good to Great or Tribal Leadership, there's a clear, at least, correlation, if not cause, between companies that do well in the long term financially and culture.

• 50:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Although if you look at the good to great companies, have you looked at those lately?

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Well, so there's a follow up book that Jim Collins came up with, which was How the Mighty Fall or Fail. And so that's also interesting reading. But generally, the great companies, whether it's in Good to Great or in general, have strong cultures. And so some people might think it's a strong culture that results in the long term positive financial results. And some people could say it's the other way around, that because they're...

• 50:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  You have the ability to kind of develop your culture if you're being successful.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Right. And so I can also tell you just from, I guess, personal experience and from experience, at least of the close friends I have at Zappos that I talk to, that when you're working with friends and super engaged, just time flies and you want to do the best job possible, not because you're incented to, but just because you have that intrinsic motivation.

• 51:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. You grew up Marin?

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Marin County, just north of San Francisco.

• 51:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  And kind of borderline rural suburban? What was it like?

• 51:19Speaker 02

  It was in the suburbs.

• 51:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  And you went to college where?

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Went to Harvard.

• 51:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  What'd you study?

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Computer science.

• 51:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay. So you lived in Marin County, then you lived in Cambridge. What did you think of cities? Like what were your... Had you been in cities a lot? Did you live in any other cities? And which cities did you love?

• 51:40Speaker 02

  No, actually, I guess...

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, aside from Cambridge, which-

• 51:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you go into Boston much, or?

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Uh, I think I went twice during college, so, so, yeah, I was never a city person. But I did like the, um, community aspect of living in the dorm environment.

• 52:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh huh, right, right. So then, obviously, you went on to do a whole bunch of things, including Zappos, where you still are. Um, what are your favorite cities now in the world?

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Uh, I love visiting New York, Amsterdam, downtown Vegas, obviously, um, San Francisco.

• 52:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  And what is it about those cities that makes you happy?

• 52:24Speaker 02

  I think, um, probably a combination of the walkability and the accessibility of really whatever you want. If you're in the mood for some random type of Indian food, you can-

• 52:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  -find it, or if you want something delivered, you can find it.

• 52:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  So where we're sitting here doesn't resemble what most people think of as city as all. What's your ultimate dream of where we're sitting right now, which is, feels more Burning Man at the moment than the middle of a city? Do you want to have this feel like it's what Brooklyn now feels like someday, or no?

• 53:07Speaker 02

  I don't really know Brooklyn that well, but, but, yeah, one of the, you know, a few years ago, the easiest way to describe what we were trying to do from the Downtown Project perspective was, uh, imagine TED, the conference, uh, meets South by Southwest meets Burning Man, but as a lifestyle instead of as an annual event, um, and-

• 53:33Speaker 02

  I think more generally, it's, I guess, a lot of city revitalization projects are really top-down, master-planned, and we're really anti-that. It's really more about backing the entrepreneurs and their passions. And so, our goal is to help accelerate stuff, help make downtown Vegas a place of inspiration, entrepreneurial energy, creativity, innovation, upper mobility, discovery, and all that combination of creativity and entrepreneurism.

• 54:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  So Glazer's, his whole thing is that the density of cities creates not only productivity, but a whole lot of other gains that are not necessarily predictable and not necessarily even that measurable. It's just the density and the propensity of all the people coming together in terms of value and in terms of intellectual property and stuff just totally changes the game. I'm just curious, like, how, like, do you see Glazer as a kind of guru for what you're trying to do, and how did you come to like him so much?

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, basically, after reading his book, it was probably a big part of, I guess, formulating the strategy behind what we're trying to do. So about, you know, cities are ultimately about the acceleration of idea flow and different industries and so on. And so just being more purposeful about that approach versus let's, he has something I think he refers to as the edifice complex in his book. So versus let's build a giant whatever, and then that will magically revitalize the city. But for me, it was more the progression

• 55:23Speaker 02

  of, we talked about the looking at party flow to within an office, getting employees to flow and collide to, this is the same concept, just at a different scale, but getting residents to collide and talk to each other. And, and just knowing that the more often that happens, just statistically, the magic will happen on its own.

• 55:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Will the magic happen on its own? It's obviously too early to say, but it shouldn't stop you from rooting for it if cities are your kind of thing, as they are for me and for Tony Hsieh, even though he came to them late, and as they are for Ed Glazer. Let's say that 50 years from now, or 100 years from now, downtown Las Vegas has turned into one of the most dynamic and original and productive and even aesthetically pleasing cities in the United States and the rest of the world. And you and I will presumably be long gone by certainly 100 years from now. What does it feel like to be the guy, the economist,

• 56:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  who studies cities and how they thrive and how they've triumphed? How would that feel to have played a not insignificant role in that triumph?

• 56:46Speaker 04

  Well, that would be lovely. Of course, if it doesn't do well, I have to take the bodes for that as well. But to be clear, I think, you know, if I'm 100th of 1% of this, that would be a lot. This is the dream and the energy of The Downtown Project and Tony Hsieh and his people. And I think there's often a tendency of people to point to academics and say, "Look, look at this fancy Harvard academic who gives me an imprimatur for the idea that I want to do anyway." And I think that, while it's lovely for me to puff myself up with importance and think that I played some huge role in this, I think really the vision was in Tony's head and in the people on the ground.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  But, look, I'm not trying to dodge responsibility if it goes badly. I certainly, you know, I certainly didn't say that it was a bad idea in a major way to him. So if it does crash, you can come knocking on my door and tell me I screwed up.

• 57:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  That again was a playback episode from 2015. The Downtown Project, now known as DTP Companies, hasn't succeeded as much as Shea or others would have liked. Some of the companies they funded ran out of money and shut down or moved elsewhere. Critics complained there wasn't enough investment in housing. Also, they said Tony Shea could be mercurial, changing his mind too much. That said, the project did help make downtown more attractive for other developers and projects. A new resort and casino called the Circa just opened nearby. It is the first new downtown casino in decades. And before the pandemic shutdown, there were plans afoot for an expansion of Symphony Park, an arts and culture and residential venue.

• 58:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  A few other updates from the episode. Ed Glaser is still a professor at Harvard, but Maggie Shu, who used to run business development for the Downtown Project, she now works at Amazon and she founded a nonprofit called Gold House Collective, which promotes the accomplishments of Asian Americans. Zach Ware, who was a general partner at Vegas Tech Fund, is now managing partner at what is now called VTF Capital. And Lizzie and Trevor, the couple who ran the toy store, they were unsatisfied with the financing and other elements of the Downtown Project, so they moved their shop to a mall on the Vegas Strip. And no, they still do not have kids.

• 59:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  As for Tony Shea, he retired as the CEO of Zappos earlier this year, although no formal announcement was made. He died on November 27th, more than a week after sustaining injuries during a house fire in Connecticut. Again, just 46 years old. When I saw the news, I immediately thought back to that night in Vegas, sitting around a campfire, talking about the sun, the moon, the stars. I loved his curiosity, his appetite to always know more. What I remember best is that after the interview, we just kept talking. He asked me about people I'd interviewed and books I'd read and written. He told me about research papers he'd been reading and where they led him.

• 1:00:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  He'd been reading a lot about the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence, and it concerned him. How did we know the AI wasn't going to turn on us humans once it had everything it needed and wipe us out? I wouldn't say it was a tortured conversation, but it was intense. I've thought about that conversation many times since, especially as the world has seemed to catch up to some of his concerns. I didn't know Tony Hsieh well, but I'm certainly going to miss him.

• 1:00:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky and Anna Hyatt, with help from Rick Kwan, Dan DeZula, Paul Schneider, and Mary Doudouk. Our staff also includes Alison Kreglo, Mark McCluskey, Greg Rippon, Zach Lipinski, Daphne Chen, and Matt Hickey. Our intern is Emma Terrell. You can get Freakonomics Radio on any podcast app. If you'd like the entire back catalog, use the Stitcher app or go to Freakonomics.com, where we also publish transcripts and show notes. Freakonomics Radio can also be heard on many NPR stations across the country. We will be back shortly with another new episode of our show. Until then, take care of yourself, and if you can, someone else, too.

• 1:01:40Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:02:13Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:02:42Speaker 07

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• 1:02:57Speaker 08

  This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Is there a right time to sell a stock? Are you taking the right risks with your portfolio? Financial decisions can be tricky, and often, your own cognitive and emotional biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help. Join host Mark Reapy as he offers practical solutions to help overcome the cognitive and emotional biases that may affect your investing decisions. Listen at schwab.com/financialdecoder.