Introduction

Three years ago, trying to understand Australia's obsession with residential real estate, I began researching housing bubbles. Increasingly, I came to view the question of bubbles as not just a topic of interest to the fortunes of my country, but a vehicle to explore deep questions of human nature. In this series, I'm using the prism of financial bubbles to tackle an eternal question: What does it mean to be a rational person? Five world experts will show me that we're not quite so befuddled as popular narratives would have us believe and invite you to reconsider what you might have been told.