Ezra Klein-Vox-WorldBank-Oct19-Talk-Partial-Transcript.txt

http://live.worldbank.org/ezra-klein-takes-on-world-bank
also see: https://medium.com/@edelwax/is-anything-worth-maximizing-d11e648eb56f#.8c6392s14#de8b

10:30 -- the research not getting out is not the fault of the audience.

275 

29:40

16:30
Human brain is a press secretary, it is not a researcher.  The human brain is great at motivating its reasoning in order to retain its standing within the group that it cares about. We social animals are evolved to develop reasonable standing within our tribe and when you run the experiments, when you give people information they don't like, they are very very good at ignoring it. The really depressing view of the Washington DC policy debate is that it is primarily just people who know what they believe, know what it is rational for them to believe, and are going to find the information necessary for them to create a self justifying superstructure  for that political identity. The flip of that is that there are certain communities of people who have strong incentives to get it right. Individual policy makers in power realize they'll eventually be judged on deliverables and do try to figure out what is going on.

If you want to reach people who are not inclined to agree with you, it is important to write things in a way that they feel heard. If you don't do that you won't have any influence on them.
What is the emotional transaction with your audience: They don't have to read ti but they do (19:15)
If they don't come with strong priors, what is the point of connection with 
People really like showing they are not racist. Putting that particular piece of research, they are willing to recognize that white people have all sorts of deleterious affects on things they are involved in.
What is it that connects people t

20:00
One of the really things 

A lot of people do care about foreign aid.

21:30 - Angus Deaton on inequality were shared because they
We would have gotten it really wrong if we did was sort of stop with the idea that either you're interested in the nobel prize or your not. We be;eve the work of AD was important so
It was on us to look into Angus Deaton  find what they really cared about then build a pathway back to Angus Deatons work and why he won the nobel prize and why this was significant.

One of the first things I do is to look for what visuals there are.
29:25: 
How to change the cognitive ask. What I'm basically saying to you while you're on your lunch hour. When I tell you this is a piece about representation By income class in american democracy--... -- Do you feel you have the time and energy and contextual knowledge to walk into this and understand a study about representation by income classes in american democrazy. 
 For most of us at any given moment it is a big ask: it arouses an anxiety...that we're going to be made to feel stupid, that we are going to leave feeling confused. But if I change the ask: if I say this show is about american democracy in one chat, the scariest chart on American democracy in two minutes.
 Do you have 2 minutes. Do you have the ability to understand one chart. Oftentimes you do.
 
 
 30:45  This is the most important sentence. 
 Then
 People will decide if the story is working for them. Need to get them into the story first. I need to give them some kind of ask, where they understand what is asked of them and they feel empowered to complete it.
  This is true in academia too, headlines, are self referential.  It didn't try to pull them in. Headlines always seem to assume the interest of the audience, and as such we'll give them a clever in-joke on the subject on their way into the story. It was rare they would have the interst on the story.
  
  I care more about the headlines that let great work and let it languish in obscurity.
  
  Shark Tank: Where's the popularizing angle, Ezra?
  Somali Piracy: Data off gulf of aden, ransoms, crew held randoms how long, deterrents, calibrate a model to quantify the interactions between deterrents vs. etc.
  Make policy recommendations.
  What if we remove navies, or increase?
  What about armed guards on big ships?
  $50k/trip = 200 mil / yr
  50 bil / yr for patrols. 
  Total cost is 300mil for ransoms. w/o costs in insurance, boats avoiding cape of good hope, traffic decrease.
  
  38:00
  Two approaches: how do you get most people to read it.
  2nd. how to get actual finding out.
  People care about pirates, because they're amazing. This is almost like a slow pitch.
  "Here's a cheaper way to end Somali Piracy"
  I am sure you have a lot of really interesting information about piracy in there. I think people are really interested in knowing about that. If you look around the web at the aggregation economy. Something you realize very quickly, even professional journalistic outlets don't know what the most valuable part of their article is.  There is an entire economy. They go and find a little nugget that is completely fascinating and use that to generate interest in the piece. You want people to know there is a cheaper way to deal with somali piracy. But there is also a lot of waste in interesting points that y'all have--be alive to the possibilities of the other interesting facts that other people frankly don't have, or even not, if they're collected there for the first time.
  
  40:00
Sierra Leone:  textbook retention: Deep fear that there will never be a textbook again...
  Layering that again/.
  You're dealing within that population. At buzzfeed. We don't judge on how many people they reached, it is how many people of the people they should of reach that they reached.
  
  Schools withold textbooks from students. Reinforce their priors--headmasters don't care. But that is sad for us. Because this is rational consumption smoothing behavior. We hoped that this would demonize them less, but it is having the opposite effect.
  
  46:21. The thing that it easily maps into If you're not listening that hard, it maps on to foreign aid does not work. Because corrupt,so much graft, nothing you do matters. There is a heavy interest in the foreign-aid-does-not-work argument. Anything that appears to be ammunition is going to be used in that way.
  The main thing to do then when you have a finding like that (easy to be misinterpreted) we need to remember that the main thing people take away is the headline. The thing they hear first. If that is enough, they will leave it at that.
  
  When I listened, I assumed that I knew what was going on (48:10) if you were not doing a sharper presentation, I might walk out and be like "I know whats up here"
  It is important to be aggressive. Stories should surprise as quickly as they possibly can. They should be framed as surprising. Suspense doesn't necessarily work.
  
  49:25 next questions
  
Not package tightly
51:52
  Podcast: There is a certain kind of product that you create where it is tightly package and tightly framed so they can travel as far as possible to audiences who you are most concerned will misinterpret because it is will have no context. It is low context kind of media. How does someone who has never heard of vox ever before but it was shared on Facebook, something they want to send to friend. Podcast is not that -- it is for superfans. If you're really into the policy talk. Not less complex than we like it to be. Satisfying to a narrow audience that might really enjoy it. If you're coming in with a lot of interest in the topic. Important to have mix of High context + low context products. Easy to have all of the latter. Keep loyal core (high) and low context.
  
  54:45: Writers are looking for intense audiences because that is who shares things.
  
  Context vs. distribution problem. Email policy makers directly.