673. What Is Money?

Summary

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Freakonomics Radio Episode 673: What Is Money?

Air date: May 1, 2026

Host: Stephen J. Dubner
Guests: David Lang (Pulitzer-winning composer), Fleur Baron (mezzo-soprano), others

Episode Overview

This episode explores how Adam Smith’s seminal economic treatise, The Wealth of Nations, became the inspiration for a modern oratorio by David Lang, commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic under conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Stephen J. Dubner follows Lang’s creative process, delves into the philosophical and emotional dimensions of money, and examines the intersection between economics, art, and community. The episode offers both music excerpts and probing conversation about money’s meaning, the purpose of art, and the collaborative labor that unites both.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. From Messiah to The Wealth of Nations: The Genesis of a New Oratorio

• Commissioning the Piece

  • Lang’s prior success with Prisoner of the State (a reworking of Beethoven’s Fidelio) for the New York Philharmonic led to the opportunity to set Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations to music ([05:23]).
  • Motivation: "I really am happy that you like this project. And, you know, I have another project to make a piece out of the wealth of Nations." (David Lang, [05:54])

• Initial Approach & Challenges

  • Lang acknowledges the difficulty of reading Smith’s lengthy and archaic text, and initially searched for motifs similar to Handel’s Messiah, even evaluating all mentions of “sheep” in Smith ([06:14]).
  • The humor and obvious connections were ultimately set aside in favor of deeper themes.

2. Key Themes: Connection, Trade, and the Emotional Weight of Money

• Shifting from Factory to Connection

  • Initially, Lang anticipated focusing on "factory images, the division of labor, creation of wealth," but realized the more interesting, provocative thread was "that trade connects us and that money itself doesn't really have any value… It represents the amount of labor that we put into doing something." ([07:16])

• What Is Money?

  • The episode features a musical excerpt—“What is Money?”—performed by the Philharmonic ([08:00], [08:35]), and discusses the philosophical paradoxes of money being both an inanimate token and a vital social connector.

3. Personal Attitudes Toward Money

• Lang's and Dubner’s Reflections
  • Lang is “not that interested in money,” emphasizing the subjective question of “how much is enough” ([09:33]) and referencing David Copperfield: "if you have 20 pounds of annual expense and at the end of the year you have £20 and one pence, you are a rich person..." ([10:46])
  • Dubner recalls his mother’s adage: “enough is as good as a feast” ([10:13]).

4. Lang’s Artistic Journey

• From Almost-Doctor to Celebrated Composer

  • Lang studied chemistry and was expected to become a doctor. After a detour into music, he faced familial skepticism; his mother’s post-concert advice: "there's still time to go to medical school" ([12:38]).
  • The Pulitzer win (for The Little Match Girl Passion) provided overdue family validation ([12:57]).

• Incorporating Voice and Text

  • Lang describes his love for setting text to music—a natural progression delayed in his career. “It's very abstract to write for a violin or a cello or a flute. … But if I sing something myself... I get to feel it. And somehow, for me, that makes it a lot more powerful.” ([15:41])

5. The Creative Process: Composition and Collaboration

• On Writing and Notation

  • Lang relies on obsolete software (Encore) akin to writing by pencil, embracing mistakes and eschewing autocorrection ([17:16]).

• Titles and Labels

  • His preference for lowercase titles started as a way to relieve compositional pressure during grad school ([19:00]).
  • He dislikes the classical/contemporary distinction: “I really think it's just music, you know.” ([19:50])

6. Democratizing Classical Music

• Bang on a Can and Beyond

  • Lang co-founded the Bang on a Can festival to expand audiences and foster collegiality among composers ([21:36]), striving for a more inclusive, less competitive, and more communal music world.

• Community Music and Democracy

  • The football stadium anecdote ([22:35]) inspires the choral piece crowd out, meant to democratize music-making and foster real-world cooperation—a “democracy building” musical exercise ([24:00]).

7. Interweaving Texts: Contextualizing Adam Smith

• Beyond Smith: Emerson, Douglass, Debs

  • Lang explains including other writers such as Emerson, Frederick Douglass (“the inequality of wealth is a necessary precursor to enslavement”) ([34:51]), and Eugene V. Debs, whose courtroom speech becomes a pivotal, “angry but ultimately very optimistic” movement ([35:45]).

  "Money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth, gold is God today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men."
  —David Lang, quoting Debs ([37:25])

  • Lang aims not to promote socialism or a particular solution, but “only advocating to see things more clearly in the world.” ([35:45])

• Original Material: "Enough" (Movement 13)

  • Responding to Smith's inattention to those left out of the system, Lang pens a “Dayenu”-inspired lyric about sufficiency and those literally without a coat ([39:52]).

8. From Page to Performance: Anticipation and Anxiety

• The Composer’s Vulnerability

  • Pre-rehearsal, Lang describes the odd emptiness and nerves of waiting to see the piece realized: "It's really the shockingly most empty period of my life." ([04:56])
  • Lang views the first rehearsal as merely the start, with flexibility to revise for future performances—resisting the idea of any work being “set in stone” ([44:52]).

• Legacies and Eternity

  • Lang reflects on writing for hundreds of future performances, comparing classical music’s long arc with the immediacy of today’s popular music ([45:43]).

9. Behind the Scenes: Rehearsals and World Premiere

• First Rehearsals

  • Dubner attends rehearsals, describing the chorus’ musicianship as “otherworldly” and Lang’s presence as both vital and intentionally unobtrusive ([50:42]–[53:26]).

  “I know we have eggs and I know we have cheese and I know we have onions. Today we're going to find out if we have an omelet.”
  —David Lang, on combining musical elements in first full rehearsal ([53:07])

  • Collaborative process with superstar conductor Dudamel is highlighted—Lang receives only practical, not enthusiastic, notes prior to rehearsal ([49:11]).

• Soloist’s Perspective

  • Fleur Baron describes both the surprise and delight of setting Smith’s text to music and the special opportunity of engaging with a living composer ([55:10]).

  "If you have a great composer, which David Lang is, then it's just pure joy. And he's very collaborative. He's also professor, so he's really strong in communication."
  —Fleur Baron ([55:49])

• Anticipating Opening Night

  • Lang quips about wanting to “body surf across the audience” ([56:27]), and jokes about his family’s “dread” owing to many prior concert outings ([56:54]).

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• On Money’s Role

  • “I think of money as... probably the greatest social lubricant that's ever been invented. If you compare it to the alternative... it’s either physical goods or maybe just beating people up when you want something.”
    —Stephen Dubner ([08:50])

• On the Purpose of Art

  • “The whole point of art is that the artist can see and express something that will lead other people to rethink it and change.”
    —Stephen Dubner ([38:44])

• On Collaboration

  • “It’s a little like the woolen coat. Yes, that’s right… I can’t do what I do without the cooperation of hundreds of other people.”
    —David Lang ([50:27])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Segment Description | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:04 | Introduction to David Lang and The Wealth of Nations project | | 04:56 | Lang discusses finishing and waiting for the oratorio | | 06:11 | Reading Smith; sheep and jokes as starting points | | 07:16 | Establishing main thematic focus (trade/money as connector) | | 08:35 | Excerpt: “What is Money?” performance | | 09:33 | On being “interested in enough” not in money itself | | 12:38 | Family reactions to Lang’s career and the “doctor” path | | 13:08 | Winning the Pulitzer and The Little Match Girl Passion | | 15:41 | Importance of text and emotion in vocal composition | | 19:00 | Lowercase affectation and pressure relief | | 21:36 | Bang on a Can: inclusivity and collaboration | | 22:35 | Football crowd: inspiration for crowd out | | 29:58 | Emotional weight of international trade in music | | 31:33 | Lang sings “the woolen coat” section | | 34:51 | Frederick Douglass, “the true statesman” movement | | 35:45 | Eugene V. Debs passage—anger and optimism in text | | 39:52 | Dayenu-inspired “Enough”—Lang’s own lyric | | 43:28 | Pre-rehearsal anxieties, anticipation of first read-through | | 49:02 | Collaborating with Dudamel, practical communication | | 50:42 | Chorus-only rehearsal—Dubner’s impressions | | 53:07 | Full rehearsal: “Eggs, cheese, onions—do we have an omelet?” | | 55:10 | Fleur Baron’s reflection on singing Smith and working with Lang| | 56:27 | Lang anticipates opening night: humor and nerves |

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Episode Tone

The conversation is warm, irreverent, and self-deprecating, interweaving sophisticated artistic and economic reflection with relatable personal anecdotes and flashes of humor—a tone typical of Freakonomics Radio.

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Memorable Moments

• Lang’s mother after a major orchestral premiere:
  “There’s still time to go to medical school.” ([12:38])

• Lang’s rehearsal food analogy:
  “I know we have eggs and I know we have cheese and I know we have onions. Today we're going to find out if we have an omelet.” ([53:07])

• Closing exchange about makeout music:
  “You're saying that wealth of nations is makeout music?”
  “I don't want to meet the people who are gonna make out to this piece. I have to say.” ([47:28]-[47:35])

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Conclusion

This episode offers far more than a story about notes and numbers—it’s a meditation on value: monetary, moral, and musical. Lang and Dubner explore how centuries-old economic theory can find new resonance through contemporary art, how collaboration mirrors the invisible but essential connections of trade, and why “enough” may sometimes be as good as a feast. Listeners come away with a richer understanding of both money and music—and the capacity for each to connect us. The world premiere and audience reactions will follow in next week’s episode.

Transcript

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[Stephen Dubner]

Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. We recently made a three part series about an almost 300 year old oratorio that still has a grip on a lot of people today. Handel's Messiah. During our reporting, we spent some time with the New York Philharmonic as they rehearsed and performed Messiah. One day our producer Zach Lipinski heard about a future Philharmonic oratorio called the wealth of Nations. You may recognize that title. It is a book published in 1776 by the Scotsman Adam Smith, who is widely seen as the father of modern economics and some people consider the wealth of Nations a sacred text of capitalism. This new wealth of nations oratorio was apparently inspired by Messiah, a musical story using artfully rearranged text from historical sources. Here's the weird thing. We once made a three part series about Adam Smith too. So hearing about an Adam Smith wealth of Nations Messiah mashup felt like one of those moments where your AI feeds you something a little too spot on. This would be a world premiere conducted by the Venezuelan born superstar Gustavo Dudamel and the composer was named David Lang. Maybe you have heard of David Lang, but I hadn't. So I asked my homepod to play some David Lang and here's what came out.

[Fleur Baron]

Just your mouth, just your love, just your anointing voice.

[Stephen Dubner]

This is a piece called Just. The lyrics are drawn from Song of Songs, a book of love poems in

[Fleur Baron]

the Hebrew Bible and my beloved, just your garden.

[Stephen Dubner]

This music mesmerized me. I wanted to know more about the person who could write something like that. Turns out that David Lang in the small world of contemporary classical music is a big deal. He has won a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy. He teaches composition at Yale. I found an online lecture where Lange was talking about his composing career. He was so interesting and disarming and well read that I immediately wanted to hear this new wealth of nations, but it didn't exist yet. So I decided to follow the process as Lange finished writing the piece and as it made its way to the New York Philharmonic. Today on Freakonomics Radio, David Lange explains why he felt compelled to set wealth of nations to music.

[David Lang]

There's so much of literature that we love, and it all ends up being people in money problems.

[Stephen Dubner]

But it isn't only the problems he was interested in.

[David Lang]

I think the wealth of nations is Adam Smith's idea about how everyone in the world gets along and we hear

[Stephen Dubner]

how all that becomes musical.

[Fleur Baron]

The real cross of everything. The real, real cross. The real cross, everything. This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

[Stephen Dubner]

By the time I first spoke with David Lang, he had finished writing wealth of Nations. The score had been distributed, and rehearsals would start soon.

[David Lang]

I really have nothing to do. It's really the shockingly most empty period of my life. I'm just sitting around nervous because I go up and down thinking that I did something that I'm really proud of. And I'm also unaware of all of the titanic errors that I may have made that I will only have five minutes to fix.

[Stephen Dubner]

Let's step back for a minute. How did this piece come to be commissioned?

[David Lang]

This piece actually started with another piece. I did a project called Prisoner of the State for the New York Philharmonic, where I rewrote Beethoven's opera Fidelio. I took out the love story and all the comic books elements, and I just left the prison story. It was really fun and it was a really successful project, which they really liked. So, of course, I went in and I said, I really am happy that you like this project. And, you know, I have another project to make a piece out of the wealth of Nations.

[Stephen Dubner]

Had you already read the book?

[David Lang]

I wasn't going to read the book unless I had a gig to read the book.

[Stephen Dubner]

It's a long book. It's a long book, and it's, you know, 18th century language.

[David Lang]

The language is very hard. And there's a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have read if I wasn't reading it for purpose.

[Stephen Dubner]

So what was the experience reading it? For you, then once you had a

[David Lang]

purpose, then it was really exciting because I started trying to figure out what the themes were. That resonated with me. One of the original ideas was that I would compare this to Handel's Messiah, because mine is an oratorio about a serious book as a popular entertainment for a general audience, which the Messiah is as well. And so my first reading of the wealth of nations was reading for every incidence I could find of sheep, because sheep play a prominent role in the Messiah. And I thought, okay, I'm going to make a joke out of the connection to sheep. And of course, being from Scotland, there are a lot of sheep used in examples in the wealth of Nations.

[Stephen Dubner]

There's the woolen coat.

[David Lang]

The woolen coat. Eventually, those sheep ideas fell by the wayside, and the jokes ended up getting edited out of this piece. But that was the original idea I was reading for. Like, what's the thread that I'm going to be able to pull through this book?

[Stephen Dubner]

And how would you identify the themes as they ultimately emerged?

[David Lang]

At first I thought I was going to be dealing with the factory images, the division of labor, creation of wealth. And then I just realized maybe that wasn't as interesting as the idea that trade connects us and that money itself doesn't really have any value. But money exists as a kind of token that goes from person to person as we are connected through trade. Money doesn't really represent anything by itself, but it represents the amount of labor that we put into doing something. And to me, that was much more interesting and much more provocative.

[Fleur Baron]

What

[David Lang]

is money?

[Fleur Baron]

What is money?

[Stephen Dubner]

Okay, I'm gonna cheat a little bit here. Like I said, this conversation happened before Lang's wealth of nations had even gone into rehearsals. So it was a bit like Schrodinger's cat. It existed and also didn't exist. And that's why I'm going to cheat and play you some of the recording from later, when it was performed by the New York Philharmonic, because it's fun to hear in the music the ideas that David Lange is talking about. This recording is from a movement called what is Money? When you have something

[Fleur Baron]

that I want, something that I.

[David Lang]

Once you start with this idea that I'm connected to people, then the next question is, well, how far does that connection work? If I love my neighbor, well, who's my neighbor? How big is my neighborhood?

[Stephen Dubner]

You know, one thing that's always struck me as paradoxical is that so many people have come to see money and economics as leaning toward the inhumane, whereas I Think of money as an invention, as a social construct. I think of it as probably the greatest social lubricant that's ever been invented. If you compare it to the alternative, what would that be? It's either physical goods or maybe just beating people up when you want something. I'm curious whether reading wealth of nations and then writing the wealth of nations oratorio changed the way you think about money and economics generally.

[David Lang]

I'm not sure that I got changed by anything that I read. Because I read it with a particular eye from the beginning. I'm not that interested in money, to be honest.

[Stephen Dubner]

You know, I mean, are you interested in having some?

[David Lang]

Well, that's an interesting question. I'm interested in having enough. And then that question of how much is enough is different for everybody else. Everyone may have a different level of risk that they want to have in their lives. Or everyone may want to have a different amount that they feel is necessary in order to show off or to feel that they're better than someone else or whatever, you know, I don't really know what the right amount is.

[Stephen Dubner]

I grew up in a family without money. And my mom had this old saying, I don't know where she got it from, which is, enough is as good as a feast. And that's always informed the way I think about money. But everybody's got their own relationship to it. As you noted, money is one of those things that people have very odd relationships to. So I'm curious, the person that you are now, you're a composer living in New York City. It's not the cheapest place in the world to live. Got three grown kids now. I'm curious about your relationship to what you think is the sufficient or enough amount.

[David Lang]

You are reminding me of the part of David Copperfield where Mr. Macawer says, if you have 20 pounds of annual expense and at the end of the year you have £20 and one pence, you are a rich person. And if you have 19 pounds and 19 shillings or whatever the calculation is, one penny less, you're impoverished. And I sort of have tried to live by that definition. And I think when you're freelancing in the arts, as most people in the arts are, you have to get an attitude which is comfortable with having less. Unfortunately, we don't really take care of the people who are in the arts in this country very well. And I, after all, was in college to go to medical school.

[Stephen Dubner]

You studied chemistry at Stanford?

[David Lang]

Yeah, I was a chemistry undergraduate for the first two years. In fact, the whole Music department at Stanford was all pre med, and then

[Stephen Dubner]

graduate school was where and what?

[David Lang]

I went to the University of Iowa, which at the time had a fantastic music department. And I got my master's in Iowa, and I got my doctorate at Yale, and I've been teaching at Yale for a very long time.

[Stephen Dubner]

Your father was a doctor?

[David Lang]

Yes, my father was a doctor. So it was very clear to me when I decided not to go on with that, what the risks were gonna be.

[Stephen Dubner]

I'm guessing it was even clearer to your parents.

[David Lang]

No, they never gave up. They never gave up. I had a performance when I was 27 or whatever with the Cleveland Orchestra, and my mother, in tears after the performance, leaned down and I thought, I'm finally going to get the approval that I've always wanted. And instead she said, there's still time to go to medical school.

[Stephen Dubner]

How did you feel about that?

[David Lang]

I told my parents they probably shouldn't come to any of my concerts for a while.

[Stephen Dubner]

And is that what happened?

[David Lang]

That's what happened, yeah.

[Stephen Dubner]

Did they ever come around?

[David Lang]

My mother, unfortunately, didn't live long enough to see me make a living, but my father lived quite a long time and ended up being totally fine with my being a musician.

[Stephen Dubner]

I'm glad to hear that.

[David Lang]

That's actually the best thing that the Pulitzer Prize is good for, is getting one's parents off one's back.

[Stephen Dubner]

Lange won his Pulitzer in 2008 for a choral piece called the Little Match Girl Passion.

[David Lang]

I wrote this piece because I had this idea about how to make a new kind of passion, which I could believe.

[Stephen Dubner]

Maybe you could pull apart that title for me. The Little Match Girl Passion. It's a little bit Hans Christian Andersen, a little bit Bach. So how does that work?

[David Lang]

I love Bach, but I'm not Christian, so there's a limit to how close I can get to the true emotion of what those pieces are really aiming for. And I went to the St Matthew Passion, which I love, and I thought, you know, what gives the Passion format its power? It's people looking at the suffering of Jesus and then saying to themselves, maybe noticing that suffering could make me a better person. If noticing that suffering could change my life, I could be a better person. We could live in a better world. So I took Hans Christian Andersen's story of the Little Match Girl, the poor girl who is trying to sell matches on a cold street and dies freezing to death and goes to heaven. And I intercut that with the crowd scenes from the Bach St. Matthew Passion, where the crowd is responding to the suffering of Jesus.

[Fleur Baron]

She lighted another match, and then she

[David Lang]

found herself sitting under a beautiful Christmas tree. So I took Jesus out and I put the Little Match Girl in. And I didn't really know it was going to happen. I thought, maybe this is an experiment which will be completely blasphemous and people will be throwing bricks through my windows and things like this.

[Stephen Dubner]

And instead you won a Pulitzer Prize for it.

[David Lang]

Yeah, I took it really seriously. I was surprised and very happy that it meant something to people and that won the Pulitzer Prize. And after that, I had immediately a lot of requests to write other vocal music, which I'd never really thought of before. And when I started doing it, I decided that I really loved it, that it really was a huge part of something that I'd been missing.

[Stephen Dubner]

Is it something about the vocal instrument, per se, that lit you up once you started doing it? Or was it about the ability to add text to music, which you're, as a literate person, I could imagine would feel like an incredibly powerful tool? I guess the thing I'm really asking is, what took you so long, David, to incorporate vocals into the music?

[David Lang]

I don't really know what took me so long. It feels so natural for me now to think of a text and then imagine how I might sing it. But I think part of it is that it's very abstract to write for a violin or a cello or a flute. And if I imagine what is important to me emotionally, and then I have to channel that thing into this particular instrumental range and fingerings and practicalities, it's one step removed from my own emotional life. But if I sing something myself that I know is going to be sung by someone else, I get to feel it. And somehow, for me, that makes it a lot more powerful.

[Stephen Dubner]

I conceptually understand, but I specifically don't understand how it works that you, a composer, write down a bunch of things on paper or on a screen, you plainly must hear it all. But I don't know how you hear it. And then I don't know how that hearing matches the expectation of hearing it with actual instruments and vocalists. Can you explain that?

[David Lang]

One way I think about it is like the difference between watching a movie on your television in black and white and seeing it in Technicolor in a big theater with big sound. You know the plot, you know the characters, you know how the shapes work, you know how everything's going, but it's not alive yet, and it's not big and it's not powerful and doesn't have the huge reach it's not real yet.

[Stephen Dubner]

And when you write, what do you write on?

[David Lang]

I'm from the generation before computers, so I was taught how to write with a pencil on a piece of paper. And I'm not a very good keyboard player. So I'm not from the school of composers that sits down at the piano and plays a bunch of stuff and then goes, oh, that's beautiful. I'm gonna write it down. So I began as a composer who was supposed to sing things to himself and then write them down. So I work on a computer, on a software program that's the most like having a pencil on a piece of paper.

[Stephen Dubner]

What's it called?

[David Lang]

It's called Encore. And I can't ever upgrade any of my computers because the software hasn't been upgraded. But the thing which is interesting about this software is it's so Stone Age that it lets you do all sorts of things that other programs will just autocorrect. Other programs are sophisticated, and they don't want you to make mistakes. But in my writing, I actually embrace all the mistakes, and I don't want my software to correct them.

[Stephen Dubner]

And then when you write a flute part or timpani part or whatever it is, how do you hear that?

[David Lang]

The other parts are just things that you approximate. You write something down and you look at it and you go, well, that's flutey, or that's oboe Y or whatever. And you imagine, come on, that can't be real. No, that's exactly what it is. I mean, look, you work with words all the time. You type the word blue on a keyboard. You don't have to imagine for yourself what are the amazing shades of blue? And how much experience do I have with blue? And what does blueness mean?

[Stephen Dubner]

The titles that you give your compositions are all lowercase, no capital letters, including wealth of nations, lowercase W, lowercase N. What's that all about?

[David Lang]

That's just a hopeless affectation that I started in graduate school. The true story is this. We only study the music of great composers from the past, right? And it's very humbling to be 19 or 20 years old and to think, here are pieces which are about, you know, human beings and life and death. And it becomes very oppressive to think that you don't know how to write music yet. But your pieces are supposed to fit into this tradition. So one day I just wrote a piece of mine in a lowercase title, and it seemed like a joke, and it seemed like all the pressure was off. Like no one would think that my piece was about war. And peace if the title was in lowercase. Right. And so then I felt like, okay, I'm not held to a higher standard and I can write the music.

[Stephen Dubner]

How do you feel about the phrase classical music?

[David Lang]

I don't really like it. I don't really like it. I really think it's just music, you know. And I think when you say that you write music and I say that I write music, I actually think we're doing the same thing. Even though the commercial separation of those things puts them in different places or different radio stations, or different parts of the Internet.

[Stephen Dubner]

Do you consider what you write now classical music? Maybe contemporary classical music. I'm guessing you don't like labels generally the way most people who make anything don't like labels.

[David Lang]

Well, I don't really like contemporary. Cause it sort of implies that tomorrow it will be history. I really just like to think that I'm making music. I've tried really hard to do different kinds of things so that I wouldn't feel that I'm stuck in one particular way of expressing myself. I've done film and television, I've done public works and collaborations with artists. I try to keep it as fresh as possible. So I don't feel like I'm working in one highly regulated, old fashioned part of the business.

[Stephen Dubner]

Let me keep you in the little holding pen of classical music for just one more minute, if you don't mind. A lot of people consider it intimidating or difficult, and plainly it's not mass media. I'm curious what you're trying to do about that.

[David Lang]

I think you have an obligation as any kind of a musician to pay attention to both sides of the equation. You know, you want to make the music and you want to make sure that people hear the music. Both of those are part of your job. And so what I've tried to do in my life is make sure that there's a larger audience for who can hear this kind of music.

[Stephen Dubner]

This democratizing instinct goes back to the beginning of Lange's career. In the late 1980s, he co founded, along with Julia Wolf and Michael Gordon, the Bang on a Can music festival. A 12 hour orgy of contemporary music, as the New York Times called it. Bang on a Can soon became a composer's collective. And it's still going strong.

[David Lang]

One of the points was to expand who listens to the experimental music which is being written now and how we include more people than we exclude.

[Stephen Dubner]

And there was another more collegial motivation.

[David Lang]

Composers in certain times have been encouraged to be not nice to each other. So there are only a few opportunities, it is thought, and you should be selfish and suspicious of everyone else. I don't believe in that world. Part of the bang on a can ethos has been to try to build a world which is as generous to as many people as it can imagine.

[Stephen Dubner]

Being David Lang will sometimes take this democratizing instinct to extremes.

[David Lang]

I had a weird experience once. I was in England. I was staying at a friend's place in Islington in this section of London. And it was sort of like the situation I'm in now where I'm waiting a week during rehearsals for the performance to happen. And I was walking around through the neighborhood, and it turned out that this is the neighborhood where the football team Arsenal plays. I'm not much of a sports person. I don't think I'd ever seen a soccer match before. But there was a guy selling tickets out in front, you know, scalping tickets. So I just bought a ticket. I had nothing to do. And there's 50 or 60,000 people watching this football game, and they're all singing, and they're singing these incredibly lewd songs. They're so funny. And there's noise the entire game.

[Fleur Baron]

Fall in love I know you will.

[David Lang]

Everyone was cooperating through music. And because I wasn't really watching the match very much, I spent a lot of time thinking about what that actually means coming from classical music. Everything is very stratified. So there are people who can do it and people who watch really good people do it, do it. And here I was in this place where everyone was welcome. No one was auditioned, nobody asked anything about their neighbors other than, do you love this team?

[Stephen Dubner]

There's no political litmus test.

[David Lang]

There was a litmus test. And the litmus test was, do you believe that this team should be victorious? That was the only litmus test. It wasn't. Let me compare myself to my neighbor. What is the religion of the person who is sitting in front of me? Everyone is cooperating in this. And it started me thinking about the relationship between performance and democracy. So I decided to make this piece for a thousand members of the community. And I decided to call it Crowd out because I wanted to pay attention to my experience, which was what it was like to be an individual in this swirl of voices. So I went to the Internet and I auto completed in my search engine the sentence when I am in a crowd. And then I just set to music the answers, which were not pornographic or not saying nasty things about people or advertising particular products or whatever. You know, I sort of filtered those answers. Here are the lyrics. I draw deep breaths I feel more confident and calm. I lost it all. I do not waste my words. I hate for all eyes to be on me. I start to panic, I feel so alone I could cry I start to sweat, I can fully submerge myself I don't want people to know. I push, I shove, I glare, I mutter I am always alone I am alone, I am most alone. I feel like rushing into tears I feel anxiety, I feel awful and I wish to be alone. I feel energy, I feel more confident and calm. I feel no one understands. I feel surreal. I am nourished by the pure spring. So there's a range of feelings, some of them positive, some of them negative. You get something and you lose something for being in that crowd. One thing I really like about classical music is it has to get rehearsed. That's when you build a community of people who work with each other, who depend on each other. So I wanted this to be a project which was easy enough so that ordinary community members could do it, but hard enough so that they would have to rehearse a few times. They would meet their neighbors. They would end up learning how to depend on each other. And I really felt like that was the democracy building part of this piece.

[Stephen Dubner]

Coming up after the break. David Lang is a composer who likes to collaborate more than compete. But the wealth of nations is basically a blueprint for competition. So how's that going to work out? I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees and features, free perks that cost you more in the long run then a premium wireless plan from mint mobile for 15 bucks a month might be right for you. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service for Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop [e-mail] phreak that's mintmobile.com freak upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 per month new customer offer for first 3 months only then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

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[David Lang]

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[Fleur Baron]

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[Stephen Dubner]

Classical music is what you might call high prestige, but low reach for anyone who would like the reach to be wider. There's a lot of history in the way the most popular pieces in the classical canon tend to be at least a century old, often two or three centuries. The whole enterprise can feel like a shrine full of relics and incantations. It doesn't seem to speak to the modern world. But what if it did? What if you could take a foundational text about economics and build a modern sonic framework around it? What would that sound like?

[David Lang]

I wanted to make people feel the emotional weight of international trade, if that's possible.

[Stephen Dubner]

That again, is the composer David Lang.

[David Lang]

I mean, everybody deals with money and everyone has a totally a messed up relationship with how money changes hands and how it lives in their lives. It's an emotional issue, right? How we deal with our neighbors is an emotional issue. How we deal with our community and what we think of the people around us turns out to be hugely important to our ideas of the world we want to live in. And that's kind of what the piece is about.

[Stephen Dubner]

And the piece we're talking about is Lang's new oratorio, the wealth of nations, which repurposes text from the Adam Smith book of the same name.

[David Lang]

One of my favorite sections is where Adam Smith talks about all the labor internationally, which is necessary in order to create the woolen coat of the poorest worker, which is really beautiful. So I set this to music because, you know, imagine the poorest laborer and the wool coat that that laborer wears. The sheep had to be sheared and the shears were smelted, the ore was smelted from, you know, places. And the dye came on ships. And imagine who made the rope for those ships and who made the sails.

[Stephen Dubner]

Can I hear you sing some bits and pieces? Are you willing to sing some parts now or no?

[David Lang]

I mean, I'm a terrible singer. And this is gonna be completely. The wrong notes and it's gonna be out of tune and the wrong rhythms.

[Stephen Dubner]

Perfect.

[David Lang]

The woolen coat which covers the laborer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labor of a great multitude of workers. The shepherd, the sorter of the work, wool. The wool comber or carder, the dyer, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, with many others must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. Yeah, I hire real singers because I'm a really terrible singer.

[Stephen Dubner]

We did a series on Adam Smith a few years ago. One big question we were trying to answer is, what did Smith actually write and how has it been interpreted and perhaps misinterpreted or used and perhaps abused over the years? Do you feel that this new piece of yours is part of that conversation or separate?

[David Lang]

I think it's part of that conversation. I don't want to get into too political situation here, but it's hard not to look at the world around us at this moment and think that one of the jobs which should be done is to call out hypocrisy where you see it. And I think this book is really, in a way, trying to say, how does a virtuous person build a moral structure for commerce?

[Stephen Dubner]

We should say you use several other texts in this piece besides the wealth of Nations. There are passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Frederick Douglass. There's a passage from an Edith Wharton novel. There's a courtroom speech from Eugene V. Debs, who socialists of a certain age will recall fondly. Tell me how you decided to bring in all these other voices.

[David Lang]

I basically have one hobby, which is reading. My first thought was there's so much of literature that we love and we revere, and it all ends up being people and money problems. And so it seems like there would be a way to talk about the world that Adam Smith imagines and then use literature. So I thought that it would be Dickens, Hard Times and Trollope and Jane Eyre. And I'm a huge Zola fan. I thought originally that that was what was going to be the counterweight to Adam Smith. Then when I realized that this was also the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. I switched those literary voices for American voices. They sort of footnote things that happen.

[Stephen Dubner]

Talk me through one example, maybe movement 16, the true statesman, which uses text from Frederick Douglass.

[David Lang]

Here is a problem warning of the True Statesman. Frederick Douglass wrote a beautiful essay on wealth, which talks about how the inequality of wealth is a necessary precursor to enslavement, that people not being economically free and is part of the world that we've built. And one thing that drew me to using this text is that he actually says, the wealth and poverty of the nation.

[Stephen Dubner]

And tell me about Movement 17, Statement to the Court. That's the one with text from Eugene Debs. This is a big crescendo of a statement. It comes very near the end of your piece. Tell me a little bit more about Debs and why you used him.

[David Lang]

Eugene Debs was the head of the Socialist Party at the beginning of the 20th century. He was a socialist candidate for president. He was tirelessly standing up for a new social system. And he went to jail as a conscientious objector to the entry of the United States to World War I. When he was convicted, he gave this speech which is very famous in lefty circles. And I set this text because it's a very powerful, angry, but ultimately very optimistic statement about where our country can go and how we should live with each other. I took out all the things which are specifically about socialism, because I don't think that's going to happen here. I'm a pretty moderate political person, so I'm not advocating for any particular kind of change. I'm only advocating to see things more clearly in the world. And what we do with that is up to us. But I really loved the emotion of this, and I love the way his diagnosis of the situation didn't keep him from being optimistic about the future. And I thought that that dovetailed very well with the message I was trying to get from Adam Smith, which is the moral connection of labor and how we cannot solve inequality without a sense of justice.

[Stephen Dubner]

Can I ask you to read or maybe sing a bit of that Debs movement?

[David Lang]

In this high noon of Christian civilization, money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth, gold is God today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men. I love the power of this language. It's really great. And I tried to set it so that it would keep that power. So most of what the chorus is singing, they sing IN unison. And most of what the orchestra is doing, the orchestra is doing in unison with the singers.

[Stephen Dubner]

Money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. Deb's writes, that was a little over a hundred years ago. How well do you think that lesson has been learned and taught?

[David Lang]

Well, I think the lesson that gold is God today has been learned very well.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's not quite the lesson I was asking about.

[David Lang]

Yeah, I gathered that.

[Stephen Dubner]

Right. But the whole point of art is that the artist can see and express something that will lead other people to rethink it and change. I'm just curious between Adam Smith and Eugene V. Debs and the billions of others who've come before us, how you feel we're doing as a civilization and thinking about taking care of each other and ourselves.

[David Lang]

We could do better.

[Stephen Dubner]

He said, comma, understatedly.

[David Lang]

I think that that's the whole point. Right. If we had actually paid attention to all the lessons we could have learned up to now, you know, all the music would be about love and dancing and the fact that we still have other things to write about means we have a little farther to go.

[Stephen Dubner]

Movement 13 is called Enough. For anyone who's ever been to a Passover Seder, they'll find themselves maybe singing Dayenu, Dayenu yeah. If I could have a piece of bread, you wr. When I need a piece of bread, it would be enough. If I could have a coat to wear When I need a coat to wear, it would be enough. If I could have a place to rest my head When I need a place to rest my head, it would be enough. There's no byline on that lyric. Is that from the mind of David Lang, then?

[David Lang]

Yeah, I just wrote that one. One thing that happens in this text, and probably many economic texts, is that we assume that everyone in the world participates equally and frictionlessly in any kind of formula of how systems interact. One thing that Adam Smith takes for granted is that everyone in the world is going to be part of this system, and everyone has to follow these rules. So when he gives an example of the poorest person he can think of, he talks about the laborer who has a woolen coat. And I just thought, well, there actually are people who don't have a coat. Those people don't show up in this book. And so I was looking for a text in which I could find someone who was coatless. And I decided finally, that I would write it myself.

[Stephen Dubner]

Coming up after the break, David Lange's new composition finally moves into rehearsals.

[David Lang]

I expect to be. Well, I don't know. I don't know what I expect.

[Stephen Dubner]

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[David Lang]

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[Fleur Baron]

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[David Lang]

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[Stephen Dubner]

We're speaking about five days before your first rehearsal, correct?

[David Lang]

That's right.

[Stephen Dubner]

Just describe what that's going to be like. Where is the rehearsal room? Who's there? What's it feel like? What's it sound like? And how does that day go?

[David Lang]

The first rehearsal is going to be with the chorus and with piano, not with the orchestra. And so I will walk into a rehearsal studio at Lincoln center. The Chorus, probably some of the people I will know. Probably most of them I won't. There will be 40 singers, and they won't know what kind of person I am or if they will be doing a good job. And if I'm gonna be fun to be around or not fun to be around.

[Stephen Dubner]

And will you be fun to be around?

[David Lang]

I'm always fun to be around. I'm gonna be totally excited and nervous, and I'm gonna be able to get to hear these things that, in my head, seem to be really good and interesting and successful. And I'm really hoping that I'm correct.

[Stephen Dubner]

What do you expect this piece will sound like?

[David Lang]

I'm hoping that the big moments where the chorus gets to sing something gigantic that I really believe in, that I imagine will be totally emotionally overpowering. I'm imagining and hoping that I will be overpowered.

[Stephen Dubner]

So what happens if you hear something that you don't like and the performance is just a week after that, so you can't change it? How do you feel about that? Do you feel like you've just got a piece of you that's slightly misshapen?

[David Lang]

I have a weird way of dealing with that kind of pressure, which is I tell myself, rightly or wrongly, that every one of my pieces is going to be played a thousand times. And so the pressure is off any one performance. So if there's something that I need to change, which is larger than this, or if I decide to drop a movement or add a movement or radically change something or add a soloist or. I mean, I can do anything I want to it. It's my piece, right? So this is the first version of the piece. It has another performance over the summer at the Aspen Music Festival. I can change it by then. It will have other performances after that and maybe thousands. I have no idea. But I don't want to ever think that the piece becomes set in stone and I'm not allowed to fiddle with it or change it or perfect it.

[Stephen Dubner]

I love that notion of writing everything in anticipation of the hope, at least, that it will be played maybe thousands of times. I would say that is a pretty unusual thing for a human to do. Because most of us are concerned with the thing we're doing at the moment. And it may reverberate for a little while. Like, I make a weekly show, and I know that there will be people who listen to this show years from now. But mostly it's being consumed in the near term. And you're essentially creating something for what smells a bit like eternity is that difficult.

[David Lang]

I wouldn't say I'm making it for eternity. But there is something of the way we think about classical music. And my background. I'm not completely nerdy classical musician. I'm a college professor. A lot of what I do is talk about music. Which is sometimes a thousand years old. And so our idea of what we're talking about in music we are writing now. Is that it is somehow in connection with the discipline. As it goes back to its origins. So we talk about Beethoven, we talk about Mozart, we talk about Haydn. These people are still fresh to us. Right. We're still getting lessons from them. I think that makes us weird.

[Stephen Dubner]

I know it makes you weird.

[David Lang]

There's something kind of a little necrophilic about classical music. But there's something also really relaxing about thinking that your timeframe is larger than. My thing has to be a dance hit this month. And by next month. I don't care if anyone will listen to it again. It's gotta make all of its sales and all of its impact. And all of its airplay. All the people who are gonna make out to it have to make out to it this week. We don't have that pressure.

[Stephen Dubner]

You're saying that wealth of nations is makeout music?

[David Lang]

I don't want to meet the people who are gonna make out to this piece. I have to say.

[Stephen Dubner]

How much have you communicated with this chorus to date? They've all got the libretto and the score. Have you sent them any notes, Any composer's cheat guide, anything like that?

[David Lang]

Everyone has the music. So I'm hoping that everyone has looked at their music. But I have not communicated with anyone. Not even the choral conductor. And that's unusual for me. Usually I like to workshop my pieces. But because of everyone's schedules. And because everyone is in a million different places. It's been really difficult to get people together. So this actually will be the first time to hear it.

[Stephen Dubner]

I don't mean this to sound the wrong way. But I'm extremely nervous for all of you. And I'm sure I shouldn't be. Cause you guys are pros. You're a pro. The singers are pros. The New York Philharmonic are pros. Your conductor is Gustavo Dudamel. Who's the most pro of the pros.

[David Lang]

The pro of pros.

[Stephen Dubner]

Right. He's the rock star in this world.

[David Lang]

I've worked with him before. He commissioned a percussion concerto that we premiered in Los Angeles. He is an unbelievably quick understander of the depth of the music in front of him. He's kind of unparalleled at his ability to look at something, figure out how to structure it, figure out what's deep about it, and then commandingly give that information to the orchestra.

[Stephen Dubner]

Have you spent any time with him leading up to this or communicated with him about the piece?

[David Lang]

Not at all.

[Stephen Dubner]

It's one big sight reading extravaganza.

[David Lang]

Well, he's looked at the score. I know he's looked at the score because I've gotten little comments back and forth.

[Stephen Dubner]

Oh, what kind of comments?

[David Lang]

Just, you know, rehearsal comments. Like, we're going to have to rehearse this and how many hours we're going to need, and I need a sectional for this or whatever. So he's looked at it enough to figure out how to take it apart and put it together.

[Stephen Dubner]

Were there any notes in there? Just like. This is snazzy. David. Love this.

[David Lang]

I didn't get any of that.

[Stephen Dubner]

Those will come later.

[David Lang]

I hope so. Yeah.

[Stephen Dubner]

To me, there's something about the notion that it's just been a thing on a page, and then in a week and a half from now, I and others will be sitting in David Geffenhall, Lincoln center with another. I don't know how many people that fits. 1800, 2000? It's a lot. Am I right to worry?

[David Lang]

I think you're right to be excited, yes. I think you can leave the worrying to me. It's very exciting, actually. It is very exciting. You don't know what it is. I know the basic outline of everything. I know the shape of it. I know how all the tunes work. I know how all the chords work. Whether or not it becomes as three dimensional as I think it's going to become, that's a different question. It's the hugely exciting part for a composer to make this thing that requires the cooperation of so many people.

[Stephen Dubner]

It's a little like Adam Smith in the wealth of Nations.

[David Lang]

It's a little like the woolen coat. Yes, that's right. Yeah. It's a little like Adam Smith. I can't do what I do without the cooperation of hundreds of other people.

[Stephen Dubner]

A few days later, I sat in on the first vocal rehearsal by the New York Philharmonic Chorus, 49 singers, the conductor Malcolm J. Meriwether, and a rehearsal pianist. That's it. No orchestra? No Gustavo Dudamel. David Lang didn't show up until around midway through, and he tried to stay out of the way. He later told me that he doesn't like to be a distraction during rehearsals, since most classical music was written by People who are long dead. A living composer in the room can be jarring. This was my first time hearing any of the music of wealth of nations, other than what David Lange had sung. For me, it was totally arresting. Lange's music, I was starting to realize, requires attention, but it also seems to pay a lot of attention to how the listener receives it. Here's a short piece I recorded on my phone. Lange uses a lot of what's called plain song in his writing, like a slightly modernized Gregorian chant. Here the chorus is singing over and over a passage from one of the most famous lines in wealth of Nations. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our duty dinner, Adam Smith writes, but from their regard to their own interest. Lange's music can be both lacerating and comforting in the same moment, hypnotic and then cathartic. To the.

[Fleur Baron]

Self.

[Stephen Dubner]

Love. I'm sure there were mistakes made in this first rehearsal. How could there not be? But I was astonished at how well the chorus sang this piece the first time around. To someone like me, their musicianship was otherworldly. What would it sound like when the Philharmonic was added? And the soloists? I found out very soon. A couple days later, I went to another rehearsal with all the performers and David Lang.

[David Lang]

I know we have eggs and I know we have cheese and I know we have onions. Today we're going to find out if we have an omelet, but I don't know that yet. I don't know it, because we haven't heard the things together. So I know that every little individual bit I'm happy with. But the whole thing together will see.

[Stephen Dubner]

Once again, Lang tries to keep a relatively low profile. He moves around the auditorium, listening, taking a few notes. He is a small man dressed in black, with chunky glasses and a shaved head. Sometimes when his music moves him, he starts pogoing up and down. Lang grew up in Los Angeles and he was part of the punk scene there. You can see, still see that now on stage, the conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, exhibits his own bouncy intensity. You get the sense he's trying to solve a large puzzle in a small amount of time. Every now and then, he consults David Lang. David, do we have crescendo here before letter F? Because this has no crescendo for the strings. Crescendo for. For the choir, but I don't know, for the rest of the orchestra. They go for the subito forte. Subito is Italian for suddenly loud versus a more gradual crescendo And Lang says, yes, the orchestra should go forte subito. One, two, and. Wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Bravi, everybody. After rehearsal on the street, I run into one of the soloists, the mezzo soprano, Fleur Baron. She has become one of the world's most in demand singers, and she travels constantly. She got her undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature at Columbia, just 50 blocks north, north of Lincoln Center. I asked what she thought when she was first approached about singing the wealth of Nations.

[Fleur Baron]

Honestly, I was surprised because I read the wealth of nations when I was at Columbia, because that's one of the core texts that all the students have to read. And, you know, back then, I remember it not being a very scintillating read. It's very obviously dry sort of economic treatise. Like an important example of, like, philosophical and economic thought then. And that still has a lot of ramifications for today. But not like an obvious choice of text for, like, a composer. Vocal music, let's say. I feel like composers would normally tend to be drawn towards something poetic, but given that these concerts are a kind of birthday celebration, I think the piece is fabulous.

[Stephen Dubner]

Is there a particular either challenge or maybe joy of working with a living composer?

[Fleur Baron]

I mean, if you have a great composer, which David Lang is, then it's just pure joy. And he's very collaborative. He's also professor, so he's really strong in communication. We had our first in person meeting just a few days ago when I got to New York, because I live in London. We talked about the piece over a drink, and it was really nice to get to hear a little bit more about his personal connection and thoughts of when he was creating the work. So those kind of conversations, that dialogue back and forth, has been just such a pleasure.

[Stephen Dubner]

The next time I caught up with David Lang, I asked him to envision what happens on opening night.

[David Lang]

I'd like to body surf across the

[Stephen Dubner]

audience before, during or after the piece?

[David Lang]

I think during the piece, where do

[Stephen Dubner]

you sit or stand or, I don't know, curl up in a fetal position?

[David Lang]

I think they put the composer now probably like 10 rows away from the stage, where it's really quick to get up on stage, take a bow. I'll be sitting there with my wife and kids.

[Stephen Dubner]

How do your wife and kids look forward to an event like this?

[David Lang]

With dread, I think. Seriously, I've dragged my family to so many weird things over the years.

[Stephen Dubner]

Come on, this isn't weird. This is dad having a world premiere with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln center with Gustavo Dudamel conducting on the 250th anniversary of one of the most important books in history.

[David Lang]

I think my kids are way too cool to be into this.

[Stephen Dubner]

David Lang's kids may be too cool, but I am not. And I know you're not either. So coming up next time on the show, wealth of nations has its world premiere. What does the audience make of it?

[Fleur Baron]

If he's trying to change people's minds about Smith, he's trying to change people's minds about capitalism.

[Stephen Dubner]

And what does David Lang think of it?

[David Lang]

There's always this, you know, kind of post experience depression.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's next week. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app. It's [e-mail] where we publish transcripts and show notes. This episode was produced by Zach Lipinski with help from Augusta Chapman and Dalvin Abuaji. It was edited by Ellen Frankman and mixed by Jake Loomis with help from Eleanor Osborne and Jeremy Johnston. Thanks to everyone from the New York Philharmonic who helped with production, especially Dinah Liu and Kaitlyn Hurst. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Ilari Montenicourt, Mandy Gorenstein, Peter Madden and Teo Jacobs. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening.

[David Lang]

I think one of the secrets of Bang on a Can from the early days is we did these very intense experimental music concerts, but we sold alcohol. I think alcohol in that environment makes any musical experience a lot better.

[Fleur Baron]

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[David Lang]

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[Stephen Dubner]

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[Fleur Baron]

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[David Lang]

Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Together, we're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Fleur Baron]

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[David Lang]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Fleur Baron]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

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