Today Odyssey was about economics and finding ways to work around the rationality stipulation for utility. On the whole I wasn't very impressed with what they had to say on the issue, although Philip Mirowski made the sensible enough argument that trying to endogenize altruism and other extra-rational behavior is simply not the realm of economics. Most of the professors I've encountered here at school seem to share that view - they'll bring up extra-rational behavior, only to brush it aside as difficult to seriously address with the tools of microeconomics. There are people doing serious work on this stuff, most notably Amartya Sen, who focuses on situations where individuals - seemingly irrationally - act in the interests of others. (There are zillions of related links, but unfortunately none seems to give access to any of Mr Sen's very accessible writing.)
About Odyssey, I should mention that I've always been a fan of the show, but less so recently. Along with a lot of people, I went through that Gretchen Helfrich crush stage, but these days I find her shows really stale and self-satisfied. Probably it's the parade of academics... the perspective of some of these people is so limited - which would be fine, except that there's rarely anything to anchor the discussions in reality. The show works best when there are non-academic "experts" there to balance things out a little - journalists, policy makers, she even had Rick Bayless once. Now that was worth listening to.
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