Chapter 3. Contagion, Constellations, and Confluence
1. World Health Organization, 2015.
2. Wheelis, 2002.
3. Marineli et al., 2013.
4. See also Nagel and Xu, 2018.
5. Vinck et al. 2019, especially table 3.
6. Gerbert et al., 1988.
7. Historians of economic thought (including Dimand, 1988) show that the multiplier accelerator model
has even earlier beginnings, via Keynes (1936); before that, Keynes’s student Kahn (1931); before that, a
half dozen other multiplier expositors; and before that, even before the 1929 crash, Keynes himself in
handwritten notes to himself in preparing for a speech (Kent, 2007). The less pretentious and more
metaphoric and visual term “ripple effect” referring to the multiplier (instead of, as formerly, to a pattern or
sequence of pleats on clothing) began to go viral around 1970 and by 2000 had surpassed “multiplier
effect.”
8. The Samuelson overlapping-generations model was anticipated by Allais (1947), but Allais’s version
received little notice; Samuelson does not reference it.
9. These are examples of the “rational ritual” defined by Michael Suk-Young Chwe (2001), rituals
undertaken so that people know that other people recognize the narrative, which makes possible a
recognizable “common knowledge.”
10. Young, 1987.
11. Writers sometimes describe their craft as looking for stories or vignettes that will serve as “donkeys”
for important ideas. See Lawrence Wright, https://www.cjr.org/first_person/longform_podcast_lessons_on
_journalism.php.

Chapter 4. Why Do Some Narratives Go Viral?
1. Sartre, 1938, location 952.
2. Pace-Schott, 2013.
3. Polletta, 2002, p. 31.
4. Brown, 1991, location 2852 of 2017 Kindle Edition.
5. Plato, The Republic, bk. 3, trans. Benjamin Jowett, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497
-h.htm.
6. Cicero, 1860 [55 BCE], p. 145.
7. Mineka and Cook, 1988; Curio, 1988.
8. Reeves and Nass, 2003.
9. Brown, 1991; Kirnarskaya, 2009.
10. Jackendoff, 2009.
11. Patel, 2007, p. 324.
12. Newcomb, 1984, p. 234.
13. Hofstadter, 1964.
14. See Fehr and Gächter, 2000.
15. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/narrative.
16. Kasparov, 2017, p. 138.
17. White, 1981, p. 20.
18. Schank and Abelson, 1977.
19. Shiller, 2002.
20. Thanks to Ryan Larson. It is patent #362,868, 1887, G. I. AP Roberts, https://patents.google.com
/patent/US362868A/en.
21. “Come What May: A Wheel of an Idea,” Christian Science Monitor, October 24, 1951, p. 13.
22. Display ad, Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1991, p. A4.
23. Salganik et al., 2016.

Chapter 5: The Laffer Curve and Rubik’s Cube Go Viral
1. Shiller, 1995.
2. Litman, 1983.
3. Jack Valenti, in a speech “Motion Pictures and Their Impact on Society in the Year 2001” (April 25,
1978), quoted in Litman, 1983, p. 159.
4. Goldman, 2012, location 695.
5. For lists of exceptional one-hit wonders, see Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-hit
_wonder.
6. “[A tax] may obstruct the industry of the people, and discourage them from applying to certain
branches of business which might give maintenance and employment to great multitudes.” Smith, 1869, p.
416.
7. Cheney was as of 1978 soon to be White House chief of staff, later secretary of defense and vice
president of the United States.
8. Rumsfeld was as of 1978 recently secretary of defense.
9. http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/great-napkins-laffer.
10. Peter Liebhold, “O Say Can You See,” http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/great-napkins-laffer.
11. Arthur B. Laffer, “The Laffer Curve: Past, Present and Future,” January 6, 2004, https://www.wiwi
.uni-wuerzburg.de/fileadmin/12010500/user_upload/skripte/ss09/FiwiI/LafferCurve.pdf.
12. Paul Blustein, “New Economics: Supply-Side Theories Became Federal Policy with Unusual Speed,”
Wall Street Journal, October 8, 1981, p. 1.
13. See Mirowski, 1982.
14. Brill and Hassett, 2007.
15. Cicero, 1860 [55 BCE], pp. 187–88.
16. McDaniel and Einstein, 1986.
17. Lorayne, 2007, p. 18.
18. See Paller and Wagner, 2002.
19. “Second Look in Sweden,” Boston Globe, September 21, 1976, p. 26.
20. In 1989, it was pointed out that it was possible for an elderly person in the United States to pay more
in taxes than 100% of an increase in income because of the combined effect of the tax on Social Security
benefits and the Medicare surtax. James Kilpatrick, “Elderly Run Faster, Fall Further Behind,” St. Louis
Post Dispatch, March 19, 1989, p. B3.
21. US Tax Policy Center, https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-individual-income-tax-
parameters.
22. Patrick Owens, “What’s behind the Tax Revolt?” Newsday, June 2, 1978, p. 75.
23. https://www.gop.gov/9-ronald-reagan-quotes-about-taxes/.
24. Walter Trohan, “Report from Washington,” Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1967, p. 4.
25. Steven V. Roberts, “Washington Talk; Reagan and the Russians: The Joke’s on Them,” New York
Times, August 21, 1987, p. A1.