635. Can a Museum Be the Conscience of a Nation?

Speaker 1 Free Conomics Radio is sponsored by NyQuil Intense Flu. Flu symptoms don't keep business hours.
They like to show up at night, interrupting your sleep. Nyquil Intense Flu helps shut them down.

Speaker 1 Specially formulated to ease flu and cold symptoms, it is the nighttime sniffling, aching, aching fever.

Speaker 1 Best sleep with the flu medicine, delivering fast, powerful flu symptom relief for up to six hours. Nyquil Intense Flu works overnight, so you can sleep.
Try Nyquil Intense Flu today. Use as directed.

Speaker 1 Keep out of reach of children.

Speaker 1 Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Mint Mobile. Don't get them socks this holiday season.
Get them premium wireless for $15 a month. Shop Mint Unlimited Plans at mintmobile.com slash freak.

Speaker 1 That's mintmobile.com slash freak. Limited time offer, upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required, $15 per month equivalent.

Speaker 1 Taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required, availability speed and coverage varies.
See mintmobile.com.

Speaker 1 Okay, I'm going to keep my voice down for a minute because we're in a museum in London.

Speaker 2 Obviously, the British Museum is an inherently British institution. It's the first institution to actually be called British.

Speaker 1 That is Nicholas Cullinan. He became director of the British Museum in 2024.

Speaker 2 Hans Sloan, our founder, of course, who offered an extraordinary collection of 80,000 objects to the nation, did it in a very deliberate way.

Speaker 2 He said he wanted it to be for the benefit of all persons, but he also stipulated that it was to be offered first to the City of London.

Speaker 2 because it had the most international audience and then he left a list in descending order of other cities it should be offered to if that didn't happen based on how many people from different parts of the world would have access to his collection.

Speaker 2 So second was St. Petersburg and then I think it was Paris, Berlin and Madrid.

Speaker 2 There's a lovely idea about museums being either windows or mirrors. For example the National Portrait Gallery could be thought of as a mirror.
It's a mirror of Britishness.

Speaker 2 You know, history of the nation through portraits. The British Museum from the very beginning was clearly a window museum.
It's about opening windows into other worlds, other cultures, other epochs.

Speaker 1 Can you define Britishness?

Speaker 2 Probably the word sorry.

Speaker 2 Sorry is our first response to a lot of things. If someone bumps into you, you apologize.
I think sorry is a very British thing.

Speaker 1 It is true that Britain has spent much of its recent past apologizing, apologizing for its centuries of imperial conquest, apologizing for the slave trade, apologizing even for having launched the Industrial Revolution and the environmental damage that came with it.

Speaker 1 But the British Museum has not been a big apologizer, even though some people see it as essentially a trophy case for the nation's colonizing past.

Speaker 1 A couple years ago, we published a series called Stealing Art is Easy, Giving It Back is Hard.

Speaker 1 We looked at how museums around the world have been returning art and antiquities to their places of origin, especially if they had been taken by force.

Speaker 1 The British Museum, with 8 million items in its collection, stands at the center of this complicated issue.

Speaker 1 For years, the Greek government has been asking the British Museum to return a collection of pieces known as the Parthenon sculptures, also called the Elgin marbles.

Speaker 1 Nigeria, meanwhile, wants the British Museum to return a collection known as the Benin bronzes, which were seized by British troops in a 19th century raid.

Speaker 1 When we were reporting that series, we couldn't get anyone from the British Museum to speak with us.

Speaker 1 And when we visited the museum with an outside expert who was going to give us a tour of the Benin Bronzes, we had our recording equipment confiscated by museum security.

Speaker 1 Soon after that series was published, there was even more controversy at the British Museum.

Speaker 1 A senior curator in the Greek and Roman department was found to have been stealing coins and other artifacts from the museum and selling them on eBay.

Speaker 1 That led to the resignation of the museum's director, Hartvig Fischer.

Speaker 1 But now there is a new director in town. He has fresh goals for the museum and a fresh way of dealing with the old problems.

Speaker 2 I'm not really a big fan of binary thinking. Right, wrong, yes, no, yours, mine, win, lose.

Speaker 2 I don't think that gets you very far. I'm not afraid of the past.
And the collection of the British Museum, it's a story of many things.

Speaker 2 You know, people doing wonderful things and terrible things to each other, but it's definitely a story around Britain as well.

Speaker 1 Many British people feel that the story of their country has become a mess.

Speaker 1 There's the Brexit hangover, the shaky public finances, the arguments over immigration, and over what it means to be British.

Speaker 1 Today, on Freakonomics Radio, could it be that the British Museum, of all places, is taking the lead in rewriting that story?

Speaker 1 This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.

Speaker 1 Nicholas Cullinan, unlike many people who run high-end cultural institutions, does not come from privilege. His father grew up in Manchester, England.

Speaker 2 My dad really wanted to be an architect, but he left school at age 14 because he was dyslexic, which wasn't a word that was used, especially coming from a working-class background in the 1930s and 40s.

Speaker 1 Instead, he became a construction worker.

Speaker 2 My parents got married. My mom was from Rochdale, and my dad had an aunt just outside New Haven.

Speaker 1 That's New Haven, Connecticut, in America.

Speaker 2 I think they moved in 1959 for, you know, a better life, more opportunity. And then, of course, they got busy with babies.

Speaker 1 First came three girls, and then Nicholas. One construction project their father worked on was the Yale University Art Gallery building, designed by Louis Kahn.

Speaker 1 But when Nicholas was four, the family moved back to England.

Speaker 2 We left America. My parents basically quit their job, so there was a real sense of jeopardy around it.
We were in a little hotel on Gower Street around the corner.

Speaker 1 Around the corner from the British Museum.

Speaker 2 I remember being in the hotel. It's one of my earliest memories and realizing that my parents and my sister were quite freaked out.

Speaker 1 Cullinan is telling this story as we walk through the museum. We are near the Egyptian galleries and their famous mummy displays.

Speaker 2 Anyway, my mom brought me here to kind of probably distract herself and cheer me up. And I remember going to see the mummies.
And that memory has come back so strongly to me.

Speaker 1 The family settled up north in West Yorkshire. Nick and his sisters were homeschooled and a big part of that education was museum going.

Speaker 1 He moved to London for university at the Courtauld Institute, which is one of the world's top art institutes and a breeding ground for future museum leaders.

Speaker 1 He got his undergraduate degree there in 2002, stayed on for his MA and then his PhD. Ever since, he has been on the rise.
Very good jobs with very good museums in the UK and the US.

Speaker 1 Most recently, he was director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, where he modernized the collection and oversaw a $50 million renovation.

Speaker 1 That may be one reason the British Museum was impressed enough to hire him since they are planning a big renovation of their own. But there are many other reasons to be impressed with Cullinan.

Speaker 1 For instance, at age 47, he still carries the energy of a striver.

Speaker 2 If you look back at my career, it seems in a way quite seamless, but it wasn't the case at all.

Speaker 2 It was always a question of survival, of getting a good enough degree to get funding to do an MA, of getting a good enough MA to get funding to do a PhD.

Speaker 1 You were working nights and weekends at boots and things like that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like multiple part-time jobs. I worked seven days a week from the age of like 14.
I mean, studying and then working Saturday and Sunday and often nights as well until almost my 30s, basically.

Speaker 2 So maybe that explains the work ethic.

Speaker 1 Since you've worked at American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim, and at several museums in London, what do you see as the fundamental differences between U.S.

Speaker 1 and British museums? Or maybe we should narrow it to New York City and London museums. Anything from audience to collections to finances, et cetera?

Speaker 2 The first thing I would say is I'm always jealous of the resources of American museums. And it's not just about how big your endowment is.

Speaker 2 It's what they actually do with those resources and the research it enables. I suppose one fundamental difference, which maybe sounds small, is the board structure.

Speaker 2 In the UK for national museums, those trustee appointments are public appointments. They're basically rubber stamps by the Prime Minister.

Speaker 2 People are appointed not necessarily for how much they can help to give or get for the museum.

Speaker 2 In American museums, the Met, for example, a lot of those trustees are, of course, major donors to the museum, which is wonderful. I'm jealous.

Speaker 2 But that small fact has, I think, quite big ramifications on how the organizations are run.

Speaker 1 What are some ramifications? I mean, I jump immediately to the scandalous part of the story, which is how closely a provenance may be investigated to understand if a piece is legitimate and so on.

Speaker 1 Because I could imagine that if you've got a private donor who's on the board who's got a collection that they'd like to see in the Met, either today or someday, that they may be interested in not having that provenance examined as carefully as a public institution institution might.

Speaker 1 That said, the British Museum, in my view, is famous for not having had much to say in the past about provenance and repatriation, which we'll get into as well. So what do you mean when you say that?

Speaker 2 In terms of my own job, I have many different constituencies that I need to balance. I have a fantastic and very supportive board, but that board are not going to, for example, pay for a new wing.

Speaker 2 I mean, some of them will help or contribute. And therefore, there's a lot of other people I need to speak to and relationships I need to maintain.

Speaker 2 I know other American museum directors who say to me, I pretty much confine my fundraising to my board. British museums are public.
They're owned by the nation.

Speaker 2 We're responsible to every British taxpayer. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport is our main sponsor, and we're very grateful for their support.

Speaker 2 All major museums in the UK, it used to be that the majority of your funding came from that body.

Speaker 2 That is increasingly flipping where now actually a lot of museums, the majority of their funding comes from outside. So basically ticket sales, fundraising, exhibitions, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 Corporate sponsorship.

Speaker 2 All those things and they're all important. But the reality is that government support is increasingly constrained.
I mean, not just because people don't want to support museums.

Speaker 2 It's because the financial picture always seems to get tighter. No matter what the situation is, whether it's the financial crisis of 2008 or Brexit or when the Ukraine war started.

Speaker 2 There's always something. What you have is British museums looking more to the American model.

Speaker 2 One of the big lessons I've learned from working in American museums, or even just being a bit more American, is not being afraid to ask for money, not being afraid to be enthusiastic.

Speaker 1 In the U.S., as I'm sure you well know, the Trump administration has been firing or, you know, defenestrating in various ways the leaders of institutions like yours.

Speaker 1 There's the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Librarian of Congress. What goes through your mind when you read those stories?

Speaker 2 You always need some healthy separation between a government and some of the organizations they oversee. So to give you an example, I'm essentially a civil servant.

Speaker 2 I was appointed by the prime minister, but actually my appointment is made by the trustees of the museum. We are answerable to government, but we are not political appointees.

Speaker 1 Well, that's what we used to say in the U.S., too, until quite recently.

Speaker 2 I think that principle is very important. And when that begins to be eroded, that is a matter of concern.

Speaker 1 Well, let me ask you a blunter question. Are you concerned at all that the leaders of British cultural institutions may face a similar fate?

Speaker 2 I think it would be complacent for anyone or any country to think, oh, it couldn't happen here. When you look around the world, there is a common theme, which is increasing nationalism.

Speaker 2 Whatever you think, we all need to be listening to the fact that many, many people around the world feel disenfranchised. feel that globalization hasn't worked for them.

Speaker 2 The dial could shift for any of us at any point. Democracy is increasingly not something that we can all take for granted.

Speaker 2 It would be very naive to think that we don't all live in very challenging circumstances.

Speaker 1 Cullinen can be careful with his words, but ultimately you always know where he stands.

Speaker 1 He is, as he said, an enthusiast, and he exudes the confidence of someone who sees his goals clearly and believes those goals are the right ones.

Speaker 2 That's probably one thing that I bring to the table, which is maybe a sense of boldness,

Speaker 2 he says in a very tentative way. I was going to say.

Speaker 2 I guess it's about having a big picture and it's a sense of just panning back and how do we do something that will be an important chapter in the institution's history.

Speaker 1 The next chapter in the history of the British Museum, the Cullinan chapter, will include a renovation of what's called the Western Range.

Speaker 2 The Western Range refers to everything west of the Great Court that we've just passed through, including the Egyptian galleries that we're just walking into, Syria, which we'll come on to in Greece and Rome.

Speaker 1 There's a big rock in the case behind us. What might that be?

Speaker 2 This is the Rosetta Stone,

Speaker 2 which is obviously an incredible thing to be in front of and to be the custodian of. It's probably the object that is most visited.

Speaker 2 So obviously we do audience research and we know what people come to see.

Speaker 2 I mean many people come to the British Museum not to see anything in particular, just to see the British Museum and then to discover things.

Speaker 2 But some of the most visited things are the Rosetta Stone, the Egyptian collection in which it sits, of course the Parthenon sculptures, and then it goes from there.

Speaker 2 There's some of our most beautiful galleries, not all of them are currently beautiful. Some of them were redone in the 1970s, but perhaps they haven't aged so well.

Speaker 1 Also, the roof is leaking.

Speaker 2 Architecture is some of our most important and magnificent galleries, and of course the collections it houses are some of the most important things too.

Speaker 2 That doesn't sit so much with having a leaking roof.

Speaker 2 I think it's amazing how often museum transformations begin through very pragmatic and even banal reasons but what that turns into is a complete holistic transformation and not just of bricks and mortar but often of the ethos of the museum.

Speaker 2 We could show this collection in a much more compelling way. We could refresh the interpretation, we could reach new audiences, we could make visiting the museum a more pleasant experience.

Speaker 2 We're just beginning this process now.

Speaker 1 The museum held a competition to choose an architect for this big job. The winner was Lina Gattma, a 44-year-old Lebanese architect based in Paris.

Speaker 2 She was probably the youngest architect, but that wasn't the reason we chose her. She had an incredible fit with the museum and its collection and a real genuine passion for it.

Speaker 2 And she talked about how growing up in Beirut, in a city that was often in the process of ruination or rebuilding from ruins.

Speaker 2 Her desire to see architecture as a force to rebuild and to bring people together. She actually wanted to be an archaeologist when she was younger.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about the scope and timeline and budget of this master plan, this renovation. I'm especially curious about what you see as the major challenges or complications.

Speaker 2 So Lena and her team, their first job is to begin sketching out the initial ideas, obviously working closely with the team at the British Museum.

Speaker 2 Once we have those, we will then cost it and understand what ballpark we're talking about. But we already know the scale of work that's required here is 35% of the galleries of the British Museum.

Speaker 2 It's significant. It's hundreds of millions.
The question is just, is it past 500?

Speaker 1 A rough estimate I've read is in the neighborhood of a billion pounds or a billion dollars, perhaps.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, that figure is bandied about a lot, but it was something that was bandied about a few years ago, and it stuck, because it's a nice round number. It's a very eye-catching number.

Speaker 2 This is what you do with all projects, especially with architecture. There's the wonderful period of infinite possibility and ideas.
And you start by thinking, you know, all the things you could do.

Speaker 2 And then, of course, there's this process of that butting up against the reality of your resources, whether it's a massive rebuild or an exhibition or an essay.

Speaker 2 It's not about the scale, it's about the process. If you start any of those projects with, well, here's the resource I have, so what can I do within those parameters?

Speaker 2 You end up with something inherently disappointing. You need to start from an expanded field of possibilities.

Speaker 1 You've talked about how important it is for any museum to be able to sum up its purpose in one sentence. So give me your sentence on the British Museum, especially as you think about this renovation.

Speaker 2 When I started at the National Portrait Gallery 10 years ago, we didn't have that sentence. It's just a useful elevator pitch, especially to donors, when you're saying you need to support this.

Speaker 2 And the reason is because, X.

Speaker 2 The British Museum, we're actually coming at it from the other side because I think we've got the best of those sentences. That was done under Neil McGregor, my predecessor.

Speaker 2 This phrase about the British Museum being a museum of the world for the world.

Speaker 2 It's so good. It's infuriatingly good because it captures a lot.

Speaker 2 And obviously, no one sentence can encompass all the complexity of what we do and who we are and who we reach and the whole history and the good and the bad.

Speaker 2 But that goes quite far to sketching out the parameters.

Speaker 1 So considering how much you like that sentence, will it need to change based on the renovation?

Speaker 2 I think Neil, even in that sentence, a museum of the world for the world was rightly very collection focused.

Speaker 2 And I am too, one slight shift of emphasis is I'm probably also thinking about people quite a bit. The phrase that I keep coming back to is this phrase that Hans Sloan used in his original Will,

Speaker 2 which is all persons. This is a museum which should benefit all persons.
And maybe all persons is a slightly odd strapline for most people because it sounds quaint.

Speaker 2 But I keep coming back to that and I keep thinking, okay, what does that mean now in a digital age, in a global age?

Speaker 2 This was Hans Sloan's original intention, which is that he wanted his collection to reach as many people as possible, that it should be free, that everyone should have access, it should be for the benefit of everyone.

Speaker 2 But that's all physical access.

Speaker 1 You have to come to London to see it or be in London to see it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because that's what was available at the time. But if he were living now, I'm sure he would be thinking about how to use digital technology, how to have international partnership.

Speaker 2 Three centuries ago, he was visionary enough to invent something basically. We're the first public national museum in the world.

Speaker 1 Aaron Powell, if I'm on your board, I might say that is a lovely notion, Nick, and I love that you are trying to expand that notion into the present day when the virtual world has complemented the analog world so intensely.

Speaker 1 So why do we need to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a renovation when, in fact, there is a way to make our collection and our ideas available to everyone all the time without them coming here?

Speaker 2 Because you need both. It's not a binary choice or a zero-sum game.
As Mary Beard, one of my trustees said, we're in the business of knowledge transfer, which is true.

Speaker 2 But of course, that's led by the collection that we hold, which is objects. It's the fact that more and more people want to come to visit the museum to see those objects in the flesh, in person.

Speaker 1 I assume that you're just getting into the rather large fundraising process for your Western Range renovation. I'd love to hear your pitch, especially since this will rely on private donors.

Speaker 1 So let's say I'm a billionaire. Maybe I'm even an expat oligarch who's now living in London.
Why should I contribute to this new master plan of yours for the British Museum?

Speaker 2 I'd probably want to start by asking you, this hypothetical billionaire, your experience with the museum. Most people I talk to visited the museum when they were young and it left a big mark on them.

Speaker 2 And therefore, what what it did for you, and if you believe that it could do maybe the same thing or more for other people, essentially the positive potential for this extraordinary collection, which, I mean, let's be clear, it's arguably the greatest museum collection in the world.

Speaker 2 Complexity and controversy included, it is an incredible, incredible institution. The work it does, the research that it generates, the people it reaches, these are all inherently good things.

Speaker 1 And let's say I'm a little bit of an empiricist and I say, that's all well and good, Nick, but what's the best evidence you can offer offer that cultural institutions help cause a society to thrive rather than cultural institutions being byproducts of a society that's already thriving and has enough money to spend on culture?

Speaker 1 In other words, what's your best evidence for the ROI on culture spending?

Speaker 2 The honest answer would be just walking through the museum every day. I mean, even just going to the canteen to get my lunch.
I was on the front desk last week.

Speaker 2 It's just seeing the people from all around the world that come into the museum, seeing the multi-generational visitors, including families, school groups especially, I mean, it's really amazing when you see 20, 30 school children from the UK or from abroad just having their horizons open.

Speaker 2 I don't need facts and figures. You walk around the museum and you see it happening every moment of the day.

Speaker 1 I am generally skeptical of people who say they don't need facts and figures. Still, I have been finding Nicholas Cullinan's reasoning to be persuasive so far.

Speaker 1 Or maybe it's just that his enthusiasm is contagious. Coming up after the break, is the British Museum ready to give back some of its most treasured loot? I'm Stephen Dubner.

Speaker 1 This is Freakonomics Radio.

Speaker 2 We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by FedEx, the new power move.

Speaker 1 You know those people who still rely on old school business power moves, like showing up late to meetings because they're so busy busy or wearing a big shiny gold watch and making sure everyone notices.

Speaker 1 Maybe it's the person who takes long dramatic pauses every time they speak because they're so profound.

Speaker 1 But let's be honest, all those old school power moves won't keep your supply chain moving smoothly. The real power move? Using data insights from FedEx to move your business forward.

Speaker 1 Like using predictive analytics to manage your entire supply chain or calling out logistics problems before they arise and sitting at the forefront of business intelligence.

Speaker 1 That's how FedEx helps modern businesses stay ahead, anticipating change, rerouting around challenges, and keeping everything running smoothly. FedEx, the new power move.

Speaker 1 Visit fedEx.com slash newpower move to learn more.

Speaker 4 A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon. Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn with detours, new possibilities,

Speaker 4 and even another passenger, two or three.

Speaker 4 And with 100 years of navigating ups and downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all because life is a winding path made rich by the people you walk it with.

Speaker 4 Let's find your rich together.

Speaker 5 Edward Jones, member SIPC.

Speaker 1 Free Conomics Radio is sponsored by Progressive, where drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. Plus, auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts.

Speaker 1 Get a quote now at progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.

Speaker 1 National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary.

Speaker 1 Discounts not available in all states and situations.

Speaker 1 We're speaking today with Nicholas Cullinan, who became director of the British Museum in the summer of 2024.

Speaker 1 We first spoke in person at the museum in London, and then a few days later in a studio interview when I was back in New York. We'll pick up now with some conversation from that studio interview.

Speaker 1 This is the most clichéd question ever, but I still find it a useful question. When you go to a museum and you could take home one object and keep it, what's your keeper from the British Museum?

Speaker 2 In my final interview for the role of director last year, one of the final questions was to talk about an object.

Speaker 2 And the object I talked about was the Portland vase, an amazing Roman glass cameo vase that we have.

Speaker 1 With a great history, we should say.

Speaker 2 Oh, with a great history.

Speaker 2 And that's also kind of why I chose it, because I'm a big fan of Susan Santag's novel The Volcano Lover, which is essentially a romantic novel around Lord Hamilton, who was the British ambassador to Naples.

Speaker 2 And the Portland vase makes quite a few important appearances in the book. Lord Hamilton sold it to the Duchess of Portland, and then her heirs put it on deposit at the British Museum.

Speaker 2 And in, I think it was 1845, a drunken visitor came in and smashed it into basically a thousand pieces for no reason, no reason whatsoever.

Speaker 2 It was then painstakingly put back together by restorers, which is extraordinary.

Speaker 2 And then a hundred years later in 1945, just after the Second World War, just as the world was putting itself back together and the British Museum too, because it was bombed and there were whole galleries that had to be rebuilt, we actually acquired it.

Speaker 2 It was bought by the nation. And since then, also been restored a second time.
I found it very moving that things survive at all, first of all, it's kind of a miracle if you think about it.

Speaker 2 It's already been destroyed one time, and it's managed to be pieced back together.

Speaker 1 It was pieced back together because it was destroyed within the confines of a museum.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but it could have been destroyed before that. It could never have been found.
It could still be in the ground. It could be in a private collection and no one would know about it.

Speaker 2 Just the fact that things are in museums at all is incredible when you actually think about it.

Speaker 1 Trevor Burrus: Well, you're making a rather compelling argument, which comes at a different issue, which is the notion of repatriation.

Speaker 1 One of the primary arguments there is that museums, while they may be charged with possessing and showing materials that have been obtained in a variety of ways that are not so above board.

Speaker 1 A word you use is looted, which no previous director of the British Museum that I'm aware of has ever used.

Speaker 1 And when people call for repatriation, one argument against that is that if these objects had not been kept in museums in the past and continue to be kept in museums, then they might disappear into either a private holding or who knows where.

Speaker 1 I wonder if you might want to spend a little time talking about that at the moment as it pertains to works that the British Museum currently holds, whether it's Elgin Marbles, whether it's Benin Bronzes, et cetera, how that factors into your general thinking about repatriation.

Speaker 1 And I realize that was a large side door we just walked through, but I know you can handle it.

Speaker 2 No, it's really interesting. I'll begin by saying, as you might have gathered, I'm not really a big fan of binary thinking.
You know, it only satisfies one party.

Speaker 2 And that's not a way of investigating about the past. Yes.

Speaker 2 As you said, some of the things that are in the collection, specifically the Bed in Bronzes, also the Asente gold regalia, which is currently on loan back to the Royal Palace in Ghana, those things were looted because we were at war with each other.

Speaker 2 I think most people now would deplore that, but that's a historical fact that you can't get around. It's not about politics.
We're just talking in a factual sense about what happened.

Speaker 1 As logical as it sounds now when you explain it that way, why did previous directors of the British Museum not engage in that kind of language? They wouldn't use those words.

Speaker 2 I don't want to speak for my predecessors. And just to be clear, I'm not talking about the majority of the British Museum collection.
I'm not even talking about a significant percentage.

Speaker 2 We have 13 life cases of claims for objects that are contested.

Speaker 1 Claims meaning requests from the...

Speaker 2 Requests either for things to be repatriated or for dialogue or discussion. One of those is the Parthenon sculptures.
We have 900 men in bronzes.

Speaker 2 That's one case I'm talking about, but 900 objects within that. The basic issue is there's an Act of Parliament from 1963

Speaker 2 that expressly forbids the British Museum from deaccessioning its collection. And actually, this goes back to your earlier question about maybe the differences between British and American museums.

Speaker 2 A lot of American museums, it's regular practice to deaccession from the collection. I'm not going to name names because it's not really for me to talk about museums I don't work in.

Speaker 2 There's not a press release issue and it's often kept fairly quiet.

Speaker 2 Also, and I've seen it, lots of small things where you've got better versions and so you quietly deaccession to small auction houses to not create a lot of press focus.

Speaker 2 So it's pretty standard practice and there's an argument for being able to do that, I understand, which is to keep your collection manageable. In Britain, deaccessioning is basically forbidden.

Speaker 2 What that means is that often you end up with collections where they become very large. But there's a principle that these things have been acquired for the nation.

Speaker 2 They're owned by the people of Britain. And therefore, it's not the museum's right to sell them.

Speaker 1 One thing that's always frustrated me about that argument, and we encountered this repeatedly when we did this series a couple of years ago called, Stealing Art is Easy, Giving It Back is Hard.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you agree with that sentiment or not.

Speaker 2 Well, you know what I would say? Sharing it is even easier.

Speaker 1 I love that sentiment, and I love that path that you're on with the British Museum, but the reason it's always been a frustrating argument to encounter is it just seemed like a ridiculous fig leaf to me.

Speaker 1 These are just laws passed by members of parliament. There's still a parliament which has the ability to pass new laws.
I don't understand why that's clung to as if it's some natural physical law.

Speaker 2 I'm not clinging to it. It's important to state it because otherwise people might be under the misapprehension that it's our choice or it's our decision, basically.
It would take an Act of Parliament.

Speaker 2 I don't want to make trying to get an Act of Parliament passed my sole focus. It would take years and you would also have a legal challenge.
From whom?

Speaker 2 Oh, well, from a member of the public that will decide this is not the right thing. If I decided tomorrow I wanted to do something radical.

Speaker 1 Like send all your Benin bronzes back to somewhere, although that's complicated too.

Speaker 2 I'll be taken to court for sure. I mean, there's no question.
So people need to factor that into the process too. And that's not me using that as an excuse.

Speaker 2 There isn't a legal framework for us to just do this in a straightforward way. I could spend my entire directorship trying to fight this and get nowhere.

Speaker 2 You have to also think really carefully about the ramifications.

Speaker 2 Thinking back to when the pandemic began, the big anxiety was that lots of small museums across the UK would be forced to sell like the one star painting they had.

Speaker 2 There was huge anxiety that this was going to trigger a wave of disposals. So I think a saner way around it is to begin collaborating now, which we already do, but to actually do even more of that.

Speaker 1 Including, I guess, back when you were at the National Portrait Gallery, your co-purchase of the Joshua Reynolds painting called Portrait of My. Is that right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's right. And that was very innovative when we did that two years ago.

Speaker 2 I learned that this portrait of Mai by Reynolds, which is one of probably Reynolds' most important portraits, was going to be sold.

Speaker 2 It hung in Castle Howard for most of the last 200 years, and then it's been basically in a bank vault for 20 20 years. The value is 50 million.

Speaker 2 I knew that it was probably impossible for the National Portrait Gallery to be able to raise 50 million.

Speaker 2 I also knew that the Getty really wanted to acquire this work and the Getty is the richest museum in the world.

Speaker 2 And it made sense to me rather than have this fruitless competition where I knew eventually we would lose to actually work together.

Speaker 1 Did you end up paying for roughly half of that 50 million pounds? We paid for half.

Speaker 2 We split it 50-50. On the British side, lots of people said this is a terrible idea.
It's not going to work. There's There's no precedent.
I said to them, listen, do you want 50% or 100% of nothing?

Speaker 2 Because that's your option, basically. Now, everyone's very happy.
And it's been on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery for two years.

Speaker 2 And then it will go to Los Angeles in time for the Olympics. The compromise of my spending half its time next to where it was painted in Reynolds studio.

Speaker 2 And it's spending half its time facing the Pacific. which is where my comes from.
And Los Angeles has the biggest community from the Pacific region outside those islands.

Speaker 2 I think that's kind of appropriate. Anyway, so that's a long-winded way of saying that you have to invent new models.

Speaker 2 Rather than battling one piece of legislation, I would rather work with the framework I have and use that to benefit as many people as possible.

Speaker 2 Yes, I think it would be wonderful to be able to show the Benin Bronzes, for example, in the new museum, MOA, the new museum in Benin City that we collaborate with very actively.

Speaker 2 We've been working with them on a joint archaeological excavation that we fund.

Speaker 2 But I also know that there's people I've talked to to who are of Nigerian origin that say, I'm torn because part of me would love to see the Benin bronzes go back, but the only reason I had access to my source culture was by going to see them in the British Museum.

Speaker 2 And therefore, there is an argument for both.

Speaker 1 So let's talk a bit more about the circumstances of the British Museums, Benin Bronzes specifically. I spoke with David Fromm, who wrote a piece about this situation for the Atlantic a few years ago.

Speaker 1 He said, as the piece I wrote predicted, the whole thing has fallen apart, meaning repatriation of the bronzes, not from the British Museum, but from other museums, especially in Germany.

Speaker 1 He said the driver behind that was the German authorities. They sent back a lot, which have vanished.
They were delivered to the Nigerian federal state.

Speaker 1 Some are known to have gone to the Oba, but what happened to them is totally unknown.

Speaker 1 You've talked about the plans for the museum to open and that you're involved in that, but what do you say to someone who is concerned about repatriation not having the desired effect of having a second place of display, but rather going back into a private collection or being sold off.

Speaker 1 That's the kind of panicky version of the story. So what are you shooting for?

Speaker 2 We only lend things where they're on public display somewhere else around either the country or around the world. I'm a museum person.

Speaker 2 I'm always excited when there's other museums to work with, new museums to work with.

Speaker 2 When there's new museums being born, I think it's incumbent on established organizations and other museums to do whatever they can appropriately to support. Let's not be paternalistic.

Speaker 2 A lot of museums have their own collections, their own program, their own curatorial expertise. They may or may not want your help or your collaboration, so it has to be a two-way street.

Speaker 2 Just to give you an example of that, the Getty, they fund this incredible project we do at the CSMVS Museum in Mumbai, which we've been working on for 14 years now, where that museum, which is essentially focused on Indian heritage, we lend things from our collection.

Speaker 2 But also for the first time, they've curated a show which is now on display at the British Museum, which is fantastic. And so I think all of these relationships need to be reciprocal in two ways.

Speaker 1 Does this apply to the Elgin marbles as well? What's the plan there?

Speaker 2 I wish I could give you some amazing world exclusive, but I can only talk about what's in the public domain.

Speaker 1 That means there is a world exclusive to be given. You're just not going to be able to do it.

Speaker 2 No, no, no. No,

Speaker 2 I'm telling you, it's actually funny how people always think there's some big mystery or secret. And actually, so it's well known that there's an ongoing discussion.

Speaker 2 I think both parties, the British Museum and Greece, and it is quite funny that it's a museum dealing with a nation. It's not the British government and the Greek government talking.

Speaker 2 It's the British Museum and the Greek government talking. I think both parties would love to see progress.
Again, basically it all comes down to a piece of legislation.

Speaker 2 I'm sure that Greece would like to have them all back now.

Speaker 2 But it's not within our gift to do that. So the question is, okay, can we find a way where we could lend a proportion and Greece would send us some wonderful things and we can build this partnership?

Speaker 2 And that's the conversation that's taking place. Where that will end up, I don't know.
I'm very hopeful.

Speaker 2 I'm always trying to find ways to collaborate and to pioneer, I suppose, and to invent new things.

Speaker 1 Here's one idea I've always thought is cute.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's practical at all, but let's say you've got a contested object or set of objects, like the Elgin marbles, Benin bronzes, there are others.

Speaker 1 Just the British Museum or the British government, I guess, sponsoring, paying for a daily or weekly or monthly flight. of tourists from that place.

Speaker 1 Come see it, spend a day at the British Museum, a kind of handheld, curated experience of, yes, we're keeping these things.

Speaker 1 Parliament says we have to, but we also recognize that they are your heritage. And so we'd like to run this exchange program.

Speaker 2 Do you like that idea? Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 2 yeah, I think...

Speaker 1 Yes, he says, not meaning it at all.

Speaker 2 I don't know. It's definitely not a bad idea.
It's definitely innovative, and it sounds ambitious.

Speaker 2 is trying to break through maybe a barrier. But what I would say is even getting people to the British Museum and London only gets you so far.
And of course, the great thing is we're free.

Speaker 2 We've always been free. That was, again, Hans Lund's original stipulation.

Speaker 2 The fact that anyone in the world who is in London can visit the British Museum and see all these things for free is incredible. We had 6.5 million visitors last year.

Speaker 2 If you think about the number of people that have come and seen these objects over time, almost 275 years, that's kind of incredible.

Speaker 2 Then, of course, it's also beholden on you to get beyond the museum, whether that's virtually, digitally, whether that's sharing the collection around the UK with the most generous lender of all the major British national museums outside London, about 2,000 objects.

Speaker 2 To give you an example, 6.5 million visitors last year came to the British Museum in Bloomsbury. 8 million visitors outside London saw something from our collection.

Speaker 2 We have partnership galleries across the UK, and then up to 2,000 works are on loan all around the globe at any one time. It's a truly global network.

Speaker 2 And what's interesting is people just don't know that because it's not not an obvious headline.

Speaker 1 Coming up after the break, we will get to the more obvious headlines about the British Museum.

Speaker 2 In more challenging moments, I do like to think about Andy Warhol's great line, which is, don't read your reviews, weigh them.

Speaker 1 I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Free Konomics Radio.

Speaker 2 We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 Free Konomics Radio is sponsored by the new all-electric Toyota BZ.

Speaker 1 With up to an EPA estimated 314-mile range rating for front-wheel drive models and available all-wheel drive models with 338 horsepower, the Toyota BZ is built for confidence.

Speaker 1 Conveniently charge at home or on the go with access to a wide range of compatible public charging networks, including Tesla superchargers.

Speaker 1 Inside, enjoy a 14-inch touchscreen and an available panoramic view moonroof. Learn more at toyota.com/slash BZ, the new all-electric BZ, Toyota.
Let's go places.

Speaker 1 Freeconomics radio is sponsored by FedEx, the new power move.

Speaker 1 You know those people who still rely on old school business power moves, like showing up late to meetings because they're so busy or wearing a big shiny gold watch and making sure everyone notices?

Speaker 1 Maybe it's the person who takes long dramatic pauses every time they speak because they're so profound.

Speaker 1 But let's be honest, all those old school power moves won't keep your supply chain moving smoothly.

Speaker 2 The real power move?

Speaker 1 Using data insights from FedEx to move your business forward.

Speaker 1 Like using predictive analytics to manage your entire supply chain or calling out logistics problems before they arise and sitting at the forefront of business intelligence.

Speaker 1 That's how FedEx helps modern businesses stay ahead, anticipating change, rerouting around challenges, and keeping everything running smoothly. FedEx, the new power move.

Speaker 1 Visit fedEx.com/slash slash new power move to learn more.

Speaker 1 Free Economics Radio is sponsored by Southern Company.

Speaker 1 Southern Company knows that energy is more than what powers your office Wi-Fi, keeps thousands of data servers online, and connects teams from coast to coast.

Speaker 1 It also puts you on the path toward that next promotion, helps launch small businesses, and shapes your city's breathtaking skyline. Energy is partnership, innovation, and growth.

Speaker 1 It's the fuel for economic progress.

Speaker 1 That's why Southern Company is investing in new technology and resources to meet the evolving needs of its communities, ensuring everyone has the energy needed to keep moving forward.

Speaker 1 In fact, Southern Company has enabled economic expansion for over 125 years, establishing themselves as experts capable of serving the entire community from large corporations to mom-and-pop shops.

Speaker 1 Southern Company understands they must meet the energy demands of today to ensure a bright future, a commitment that they consider a privilege to keep. Go to southerncompany.com to learn more.

Speaker 1 That's southerncompany.com. Southern Company, Building the Future of Energy.

Speaker 1 In April of 1902, A man calling himself Jacob Richter wrote a letter to the director of the British Museum. It said, I beg to apply for a ticket of admission to the reading room of the British Museum.

Speaker 1 I came from Russia in order to study the land question.

Speaker 1 This land question had to do with whether private ownership of land should be allowed, and Jacob Richter was a pseudonym for Vladimir Lenin.

Speaker 1 Here's what Lenin said later about the British Museum's library. It is a remarkable institution, especially that exceptional reference section.

Speaker 2 It's an incredible space. Clearly, it was modeled on the pantheon but the amazing thing is this beautiful ceiling we're looking at is made of papilla-mâché

Speaker 2 because anything heavier would probably collapse in on itself. It's an incredible piece of architecture and of Victorian engineering.

Speaker 1 And that again is Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the British Museum. He and I are standing in the middle of the round reading room which was completed in 1857.

Speaker 1 It is a massive expanse with that domed ceiling, with very tall bookshelves lining the circumference, and rows of wooden desks laid out like spokes on a wheel.

Speaker 2 The round reading room was really the brainchild of an extraordinary former director of the British Museum, Antonio Penizzi.

Speaker 2 This quote I think is incredible, which I will read out for the benefit of people listening.

Speaker 2 He said, I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity, of following his rational pursuits, of consulting the same authorities, of fathoming the most intricate inquiry as the richest man in the kingdom.

Speaker 2 And I think that's still relevant to what we do.

Speaker 1 Cullinan walks us over to an old ledger where Jacob Richter and others signed in.

Speaker 2 Britain for the first time in 1984, he came and looked at the round reading room and the desks where both Lenin and Marx had sat and said, if people don't like communism, they can blame the British Museum.

Speaker 2 And I can't think of many museums that are held responsible or accountable for an entire socio-political order.

Speaker 1 So, Nick, the headlines of the past few years for the British Museum have been, according to my reading at least, overwhelmingly bad.

Speaker 1 And so I wanted to ask you, as you were offered this job, first of all, I'm curious whether you were at all conflicted. I mean, it's an amazing job, so I'm assuming you were eager to take it, but

Speaker 1 the outstanding issues are substantial. There's the controversies over repatriation, as we've discussed.

Speaker 1 There's some strong protest and activism, particularly over reliance on corporate sponsorship of petroleum firms and so on.

Speaker 1 You had Peter Higgs, a curator in your Greek and Roman department, who was allegedly stealing objects from within the museum and selling them on eBay.

Speaker 1 And I've read, although I'd love you to tell me if this is wrong, that the British Museum was alerted to this and did not pursue it.

Speaker 1 And then additionally, when we were reporting out our piece on repatriation a few years ago, we couldn't even get the communications department to field our questions, much less an official.

Speaker 1 And we had our recording equipment seized when we showed up to try to record. This time, the director of the museum, that's you, met us quite warmly.

Speaker 2 We had an off-the-record chat with coffee.

Speaker 1 Lovely. We had a walkthrough of the museum.
Lovely. And now you're sitting down for the studio interview.

Speaker 1 So can you just talk about the degree to which either your appointment as director or a general shift, why that's happened?

Speaker 2 To go back to the beginning. No, I didn't think twice.
A museum obviously has to think very much about news cycles, but is also in the business of perpetuity and forever rather than just...

Speaker 2 getting through each day's news cycle. You take it very seriously and you take it with a little bit of a pinch of salt as well.

Speaker 2 Not saying, oh, I don't care, but okay, this is today, but then there's many, many more days to come. And the question is, each day, can you make improvement and keep moving it forward?

Speaker 1 In other words, it comes with the territory to some degree.

Speaker 2 To some degree, yeah. I'm not saying, oh, therefore, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 Yeah, drunk museum goers smashing the Portland Vase. Exactly.

Speaker 2 There will always be a crisis. The question for me is, is the British Museum an institution that is worth sticking with, basically? That's what we're saying.

Speaker 2 I mean, if you really want to push the argument, maybe its most vocal critics are saying it shouldn't exist. It has no right to exist.

Speaker 2 And I think a lot of people around the world, including the 6.5 million people that visit us annually, the people like myself that visited when they were a child, would disagree with that and would say, of course, there are things that need to change or there are things that are complex and need to be addressed.

Speaker 2 But the museum definitely does a lot more good than harm. My larger point is, do you want to carry on being angry about the past?

Speaker 2 Or do you want to do something to try and create a more equitable future? Do you care more about the problem or the solution? I mean, it's very easy to get angry.

Speaker 2 You know, all of us get angry about problems every day. But ultimately, is that where you want to expend your energy?

Speaker 2 Even if that's your motivation, at a certain point, surely you need to switch and say, okay, but then how are we going to make this better?

Speaker 1 What you just said resonates with me. I think it will resonate with just about everyone who hears it.
But in a world where short-termism and injustice collection is running rampant,

Speaker 1 how do you try to turn the tide, even if only within your own institution?

Speaker 2 I mean, it's a really good question.

Speaker 2 I happen to love encyclopedic museums. I love them from being a visitor as a child

Speaker 2 to having worked in them. I'm lucky enough to have worked for two of them, the British Museum and the Met.
I think they do something extraordinary.

Speaker 2 And of course, it can be complex in how that's achieved, but it's about bringing people and cultures together. Personally, I think we need more of that, not less of that.

Speaker 2 And that doesn't mean that you shouldn't look at certain cases or think, okay, should should the Parthenon sculptures be in London or Athens?

Speaker 2 But the bigger point is the idea of a world in which everyone and everything has to return back to its point of origin and never the twain shall meet and people and objects and ideas don't move around the world and can't contaminate each other and create new realities is deeply depressing to me.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, I feel like you're whispering this lovely notion into a massive fan that is blowing in the opposite direction.

Speaker 2 Of course, but that's all the more reason why it's important. Those 6.5 million visitors, we give them very strong evidence or reality of how everything is connected.

Speaker 2 I want that to carry on reaching more and more people because I think it's more and more important. It's not less important.
It's not less relevant.

Speaker 1 One critique of the British Museum, this goes back to the idea of the museum as a trophy case for the nation's colonial exploits, is that it publicly displays only a tiny fraction of their 8 million objects.

Speaker 1 The rest are in storerooms. I asked if we could see some.

Speaker 2 We are now in essentially the basement of the British Museum, although we're actually at floor level.

Speaker 1 And this looks very much like a basement.

Speaker 2 This looks like a basement, but.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 This is like Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Speaker 2 I know, it's quite watching.

Speaker 2 So, where we are now is this is the sepulchral basement, which is part of the original Smirk building. So,

Speaker 2 these are lions from Halicarnassus. We have quite a few on display upstairs, but a lot more things not currently on display.
I'm very keen to get as much of the collection on view as possible.

Speaker 1 So do you have any sense of the ratio of work on display to work owned?

Speaker 2 Yes, and it doesn't sound good, but we'll talk about it. So about 1% of the collection is on view.

Speaker 2 The British Museum's collection is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections in the world, spanning 2 million years of human history across all cultures.

Speaker 2 The Louvre it's several hundred thousand objects. The Met, it's more like two million.
They also have more display space.

Speaker 2 So we have this kind of unique problem, which is not just the biggest collection, but actually a smaller space in which to show it.

Speaker 2 There's whole parts of the collection that currently we're not able to show. For example, the Caribbean, which is really important.
You have very little, if any, here, yeah?

Speaker 2 We have very little on display, and of course, that's a very important part of our collection also because of Hans Sloan.

Speaker 2 Hans Sloan spent time in the Caribbean, spent time on plantations, which is a very complex thing. His wife owned plantations.

Speaker 2 But what was interesting about Sloan was he actually talked to and learned from and actually acquired objects and information from enslaved people. He was a physician? He was yeah.

Speaker 2 He spent time learning from them talking to them and understanding histories from them from the very beginning.

Speaker 1 So that's really interesting to me because it kind of fits with what seems to be your mission of being transparent

Speaker 1 and embracing what the past actually was. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then obviously trying to do the best with that history and that past. The history of the British Museum is essentially just the history of Britain.

Speaker 2 And then beyond that, in the collection and in our history, it's just the history of the world, which is of, you know, wonderful things, creation, innovation, democracy, and terrible things, conquest and brutality.

Speaker 2 And that's the history of the world. I think if you're really confident, you can own up to mistakes or misdeeds on a personal level, on a national level, on a historical level.

Speaker 2 I think cultures and countries that are truly confident are confident because they know themselves in all of their glory and with all of their flaws.

Speaker 1 I know it was a big year for amateur metal detectorists in the UK.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 And that there's something called an annual report from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which is about as British as it gets in my view, which is managed by you, the British Museum.

Speaker 1 I'm curious to know if there are objects in the museum that have been discovered by amateurs.

Speaker 2 It's an amazing scheme and it's pretty unique in the world.

Speaker 2 So basically, we administer the national scheme whereby detectorists, so people that are metal detecting, if they find something significant that could be considered treasure, they declare it and then it goes for a process which we oversee where it's decided what to do with that.

Speaker 2 Essentially, the law is that it belongs half to the finder

Speaker 2 and then half to the landowner basically.

Speaker 2 Over the years, this scheme has turned amateur detectorists into archaeologists and it doesn't just benefit the British Museum, it actually benefits museums all across the UK because often that's where the find ends up.

Speaker 2 It's really about making sure that whatever finds are made are shown in the best possible context, which is often a more local context.

Speaker 1 Do you know of any significant or noteworthy or just beautiful objects that have been found this way?

Speaker 2 Oh my God, there is many and I'm dying to, there's one that we're about to launch a public appeal for because it is incredible. Watch this space, watch this space.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to go into detail, but basically there was an incredible find made in 2019 by someone who had just begun metal detecting and found the most incredible thing from 1521.

Speaker 2 Probably in September, we're going to launch a public appeal to acquire this object because it is amazing.

Speaker 1 I did a bit of digging myself online when I got home.

Speaker 1 The object that has Cullinan so excited is a heart-shaped gold pendant on a gold chain found in the West Midlands by a man in his 30s who owns a cafe. The pendant is decorated with the initials H

Speaker 1 and K,

Speaker 1 as in Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, his first wife.

Speaker 1 So, yes, an amazing object, but even better, It is a very British object that was found on British soil, so it's hard to imagine that some other country will ever come asking to have it back.

Speaker 1 I'd like to thank Nicholas Cullinan for the tour and the good conversation. Let us know what you think of this episode.
Our email is radio at freeconomics.com.

Speaker 1 Coming up next time on the show, as I'm sure you've heard, there's been a bit of a panic about the falling birth rate in the US and elsewhere.

Speaker 1 If you think, for example, of economic growth, it depends on population growth. It is true that some families are still having a lot of kids.
The most polite version is something something like, why?

Speaker 3 You know, why would you do this?

Speaker 1 But the overall trend is down and governments are trying baby incentives. It was a decade-long experiment that really was considered unsuccessful.

Speaker 1 We kick off a three-part series on the human life cycle. First, birth, then the Middle Ages, and then the sunset years.

Speaker 1 Part one is next time on the show. Until then, take care of yourself.
And if you can, someone else too.

Speaker 1 Free Konomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was produced by Morgan Levy with help from Zach Lipinski in London and field recording by Rob Double.

Speaker 1 It was mixed by Jasmine Klinger with help from Jeremy Johnston.

Speaker 1 The Free Economics Radio Network staff also includes Alina Coleman, Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abuaji, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Ripen, Sarah Lilly, and Teo Jacobs.

Speaker 1 Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra.
As always, thanks for listening.

Speaker 2 We had something called a charrette, which was a new word in my vocabulary. It's not a cheese or a board game.

Speaker 1 I thought it was maybe a singer from the 1960s.

Speaker 2 It's a girl band, it's like blah blah and the charrettes.

Speaker 1 The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.

Speaker 6 Stitcher.

Speaker 1 Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Vitamix. According to the LA Times, the average American home contains 300,000 items, including a staggering number of appliances.

Speaker 1 All those gadgets just clutter, but there's one tool that delivers what a dozen others only promise.

Speaker 1 From pureeing to chopping, Vitamix blenders bring the power of an entire kitchen to your countertop, offering enduring performance and precision you can count on.

Speaker 1 In a world full of clutter, do more with less. Visit Vitamix.com and shop now.

Speaker 3 If you're an adult struggling with obesity, if you've struggled for years and years, you are not alone.

Speaker 3 But Zepbound Terzepatide is changing what's possible when it comes to weight loss, along with diet and exercise.

Speaker 3 Proven to help lose weight and keep it off, Zetbound is a prescription medicine for adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems.

Speaker 3 Zetbound should be used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity.

Speaker 3 Zetbound injection is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligrams per 0.5 milliliters in single-dose pen or single-dose file.

Speaker 3 Don't use with other terzepratide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zetbound can be used in children.

Speaker 6 Don't take Zeppbound if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome, type 2.

Speaker 6 Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zetbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction.

Speaker 6 Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems.

Speaker 6 Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes, depression, or suicidal thoughts before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant plantopy, or taking birth control pills.

Speaker 6 Taking Zeppbound with a sulfonyl urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.

Speaker 3 Discover the weight loss you you could be bound for. Ask your healthcare provider about Zeppbound or call 1-800-545-5979.
Explore savings options regardless of insurance status at saveonzebound.com.

Speaker 3 Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 1 Free Economics Radio is sponsored by Capital One.

Speaker 1 Nowadays, most people subscribe to everything, music, TV, even dog food, and it rocks until you have to manage it all, which is where Capital One comes in.

Speaker 1 Capital One credit card holders can easily track, block, or cancel recurring charges right from the Capital One mobile app at no additional cost.

Speaker 1 With one sign-in, you can manage all your subscriptions all in one place. Learn more at capital1.com/slash subscriptions, terms, and conditions apply.