Robert Shiller, a Yale economist and author of Animal Spirits
Q. What do you wake up to?
A. I get up and look at the stars in the sky. Sagittarius and Capricornus are rising.
Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. Stravinsky’s Firebird on my iPod.
Q. What’s your favorite word?
A. Peace.
Q. What do you find beautiful?
A. The stars. The cosmos.
Q. How would you describe yourself in five words or fewer?
A. Without flattering myself? Absent-minded, that’s what my wife would say, and distractible but persistent.
Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A. An astronomer.
Q. What is your favorite cocktail?
A. Maybe a gin gimlet.
Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. I’m not very extravagant. But we have a summer home on an island.
Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. The Atacama Desert in Chile. I was told by an astronomer, if you want to go anywhere in the world to see the stars, to experience the glorious night sky, that’s the place to go.
Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. Maybe a medical doctor.
Q. What would be your death row meal?
A. Logically as an economist, I’d want to try something very dangerous. How about fugu? …You might as well.
Q. What is your favorite holiday and why?
A. Christmas, because of the music, and the traditions.
Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. Singing as a family.
Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. We have a chest of drawers that was in my room when I was a toddler, all my life.
Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?
A. To relax.
Q. What should you throw away but haven’t been able to part with?
A. Stacks of papers in my office.
Q. Who is the one person living or dead that you’d most love to have a meal with?
A. Socrates.
To learn more about Robert Shiller’s talk at Zócalo, click here.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.