Author Michael Shermer Talks Money and Human Evolution

Tom Fudge: When we want to learn how people behave in the marketplace and we want to consult an expert, we talk to an economist. But a new book by Michael Shermer argues that many of the assumptions economists make about how and why we spend money are questionable. The problem, he says, is that economists assume that people behave in ways that are functional, rational and that maximize their financial gain. Not so, says Shermer.

In fact, human emotions and even human delusions can be much more important to the way we spend our money. Shermer is a professor of economics and the author of ten books, many of which focus on how evolution determines our behavior.

Guest

• Michael Shermer , author of: The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and other Tales from Evolutionary Economics . Shermer is a professor of economics and founder of the international Skeptics Society .