elief in 'markets' among the financial elite at time can at time border on the theological, with approaches like the efficient market hypothesis or the invisible hand cited, unironically, as dogmas. But finance professor Alex Edmans of the London Business School would like to have a quiet word with Mr. Market; Edmans would like to tell him that he's a bit, well, irrational.

That's not the dig it might appear in normal discourse. As Edmans explains to interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast, the dominant idea in economics was that financial markets were rational, that they already knew everything and trying to outsmart them was generally foolish. By calling markets irrational, Edmans is saying they are inefficient. In short, they don't know everything. And that opens up many doors for enterprising investors, as he datils in his latest book, Madness of Markets: Why Smart Investors Make Crazy Decisions – And How To Exploit Them.

Edmans started his career as a banker and trader for Morgan Stanley before joining the faculty at the Wharton Business School two decades ago. He moved to London Business School in 2013. Among his many honors and affiliations (including his first stint on Bites in 2024) he is president of the Western Finance Association; a fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Social Sciences and the Financial Management Association. He also serves as a non-executive director for Morgan Stanley, Novo Nordisk and Royal London Asset Management.

Graffiti has a long pedigree, whether our starting point is the wall paintings of Lascaux, the carved crudities of Roman toilets or the G.I. inspired Kilroy of World War II's European theater. But Graffiti – notice our use of the capital G – and its focus on individual tags has a more recent provenance and should be regarded as a legitimate art form, with its own canon, its own 'kings,' its own rules of engagement. That's the message Rafael Schacter delivers to interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast.

Schacter, an associate professor in anthropology and material culture at University College London, has a decidedly non-traditional c.v. for an academic. Before entering the ivory tower he was a fixture in the London underground music scene around the turn of the millennium, in part as one half of Ill Logic & Raf, a duo focus on DJong and music production.

In the academy he heads the Material Culture section of UCL's Anthropology Department and has penned a series of monographs centering on Graffiti, the most recent being 2024's Monumental Graffiti.