I've only watched your first part of your seven-part lecture series. I think Gerard is the kind of thinker that when I was younger, I would say, it's a bunch of nonsense. But as I've gotten older, I find them much more provocative. Adam Smith said man naturally desires not only to be loved, but to be lovely. We should choose carefully who we hang out with, because we are going to be influenced by them. And what that does for my sense of identity in a circle of people who have their own perceptions of me and of what's important,. That's also very hard to resist.
When the 20-year-old overachiever Johnathan Bi's first startup crashed and burned, he headed to a Zen retreat in the Catskills to "debug himself." He discovered René Girard and his mimetic theory--the idea that imitation is a key and often unconscious driver of human behavior. Listen as entrepreneur and philosopher Bi shares with EconTalk host Russ Roberts what he learned from Girard and Girard's insights into how we meet our primal need for money, fame, and power. The conversation includes the contrasts between economics and Girard's perspective.