Russ Roberts: preference

Transcript context

…What book to make sense of your own experience in Israel, which great book? I’m a sucker, I think I’d pick The Odyssey. It’s about travel adventures, a sense of home, a very reliable wife who’s come with me for this adventure. And I’ve been writing about it recently for my next book — Penelope’s decision and dealing with the absence of her husband, but the idea of that book, which I think is just one of my favorite books, The Odyssey, is the idea that home pulls you. Now I have two homes. It’s a little bit weird. I was born in Memphis, Tennessee. I’ve never lived long anywhere in the United States. Maryland’s the longest. My time in America, when I was teaching at George Mason and later working at the Hoover Institution — which I’m still affiliated with, by the way — 18 years of my 67 were spent in suburban Washington, DC, which is roughly a quarter and certainly more than a quarter of my adult life. There’s a certain home there. I have certain friends there, and now, all of a sudden, this feels like home. I don’t know what Odysseus — he must have had a lot of ups and downs when he was thinking about whether to come home or not, but he came home. I think that helps me a little bit. I love that book. Now, the United States has about 330 million people, yet there are more Israeli TV shows I want to watch than American TV shows. There’s Srugim, there’s Shtisel, there’s Prisoners of War, there’s In Judgment, there’s Tehran. There’s more. Why is Israeli TV so good?…

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