. >> reporter: millennium park richard thaler an academic revolutionary, who thinks his field economics, has a weirdly distorted view of human behavior that we're all rational maximizers, mathematical machines, who use our unusually big brains to wisely calculate every decision as we strive to get to the top, thus creating perfect markets to make us better off. yet, says thaler-- >> after the '87 crash, when the market fell 20% in a day, and the internet bubble, when the nasdaq went from 5,000 to 1400, and then the real estate bubble, which led to a financial crisis from which we're still trying to extricate ourselves the idea that markets work perfectly is no longer tenable. >> reporter: thaler is running his revolution from inside the belly of the beast-- the university of chicago, which boasts 28 nobel laureates practiced in traditional economics. collectively, they've created what's known as the "chicago school," pred predicated on the perfect efficiency of markets in which prices rationally reflect all available information. but at a lunch with star students thaler offered his late