Originally published on January 9, 2023 (Episode 300)
Introduction
Welcome to Episode 300 of Historically Thinking!
Design theorists often distinguish between “tame problems” and “wicked problems.” Tame problems—like planning a trip to Chicago or increasing battery life—have clarity in both aims and solutions. Wicked problems, by contrast, resist clear solutions altogether.
But what about “wild problems”? My guest Russ Roberts defines them as life’s most important choices: whether to marry, whether to have children, where to live, how to pursue a meaningful life. These decisions cannot be solved by calculation or by science. They are not wickedly unsolvable but require courage, imagination, and wisdom.
Roberts makes this case in Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us (Portfolio, 2022), and our conversation explores how confronting such problems shapes who we become.
About the Guest
Russ Roberts is President of Shalem College in Jerusalem, the John and Jean De Nault Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and host of the long-running EconTalk podcast. This is his second appearance on Historically Thinking; in Episode 99 he joined me to discuss his essay Gambling with Other People’s Money: How Perverse Incentives Caused the Financial Crisis.
For Further Investigation
Russ Roberts, Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us (Portfolio, 2022)
Related conversations:
Episode 99: Gambling with Other People’s Money, with Russ Roberts on the financial crisis and intellectual humility
Episode 100: Wineburg-a-pa-looza
Episode 200: Connecting an English Portrait to Galileo, and Beyond, with John Heilbron
Episode 111: Alternative Universities, or, Thinking Way Outside the Box, with David Staley on reimagining higher education
💬 Listen & Discuss
What “wild problems” have shaped your life? How did you decide when calculation wasn’t enough? Share your reflections in the comments.
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