![]() It has lint on it.ĬORBETT: I’ve been haunted. What are you eating?ĬORBETT: A loose granola bar. My next-door neighbor was convinced that her apartment was haunted by a child who survived the Titanic. It’s so close to the piers that a lot of survivors ended up staying at the Chelsea Hotel. Have you ever been to the gate the Titanic was supposed to arrive at? It’s on the West Side Highway, between the highway and a bike-lane. RIPS: If I had been there it would have gone down differently. I was like, “How did that city get on top of water?” What about you?ĬORBETT: What about it? Were you like, “I could have fixed it?” RIPS: When you were a kid did you have any niche historical interests?ĬORBETT: I was obsessed with Venice. “The Pizza Principle,” Corbett says, “follows that the price of a slice of pizza and the price of a ticket on the subway were the same and went up together.” It’s all about irrational human behavior. I wasn’t interested until my second or third month making videos for Planet Money.ĬORBETT: That it’s so very weird. ![]() RIPS: Were you always interested in economics?ĬORBETT: Never. Which is the whole of economics, saying people do this, what the heck. ![]() RIPS: And The Corbett Principle is that it’s because of nostalgia?ĬORBETT: The Corbett Principle is people do it and it’s crazy. It’s like the company is spitting in your face. They taste the same everywhere and for some reason people have clung to this. An unnamed national coffee company, to create conformity, over roasts the beans. Though I do know people who drink Dunkin for the taste.ĬORBETT: You’ve really thrown a wrench in The Corbett Principle. RIPS: I think people love Starbucks because they get the thing they’ve been drinking since high school you know, the sweet, iced, venti whatever, they’re at a drive through with their friends, not the taste of the coffee itself. But people have clung to this purposeful cheapening of Starbucks. I don’t mean to be a snob! Objectively, it’s not what you’re supposed to do with coffee. There’s this thing I’ve noticed with Starbucks that I don’t think has an economic term yet and I’d like to coin it “The Corbett Principle.” Basically, they over roast their beans so there’s conformity across their multinational legion of coffee shops, but it makes their product suck. When in Rome… when Americano… does it taste like a Michelin Star? That’s what I want it to taste like. Maybe that was the special something that made the coffee taste all the better.”ĬORBETT: Two Americanos. We really perceived this as a deal, as luxury. “The happiness a consumer gets from the perceived value of the deal. “This demonstrates Transactional Utility,” Corbett explained. THE NEAREST MICHELIN STAR RESTAURANT | MILE END ($7.08)Īpparently, this was only a Michelin Bib Gourmand, a restaurant that, according to the Michelin guide, offers exceptionally good food for a more moderate price. It was freezing but thankfully he brought us both sweaters his mom knit. Jack let me follow him around and see the rational and irrational ways he spends his money on a day out in New York. “Things can be needlessly complicated.”Īside from being a financial wizard, he’s also a writer, filmmaker, musician (he’s toured with Atlgrandma and The Crooks) and Twitter savant (there’s a whole account devoted just to his deleted tweets). “It’s nice when you can explain something,” Corbett says about his approach to work as we dragged ourselves across New York City in pursuit of the perfect apple. Jack is our unreliable narrator, constantly surprising the viewer with a new bit that winks at the absurdity of our financial structure with his signature deadpan. With deliberately bad animations and kitschy props, each TikTok has a narrative that repackages the most nebulous financial concepts, the kind I slept through in college, into something that’s legible in the TikTok ether. The videos he makes for NPR’s Planet Money are a Kafkaesque mix of Bill Nye and Tim Burton. The creator and star of this video is Jack Corbett, the internet’s favorite economics hottie. Then he explains The No Surprises Act, a new healthcare bill that requires hospitals to give you a good faith estimate if you ask what a visit costs. “I ate a bunch of rocks and I don’t have insurance.” Radiohead starts playing. He stares deep into your eyes, unblinking. A guy stands in the frame, arms hovering goonishly to the side. ![]()
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