EconTalk
Russ Roberts
EconTalk: Conversations for the Curious is an award-winning weekly podcast hosted by Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford's Hoover Institution. The eclectic guest list includes authors, doctors, psychologists, historians, philosophers, economists, and more. Learn how the health care system really works, the serenity that comes from humility, the challenge of interpreting data, how potato chips are made, what it's like to run an upscale Manhattan restaurant, what caused the 2008 financial crisis, the nature of consciousness, and more. EconTalk has been taking the Monday out of Mondays since 2006. All 900+ episodes are available in the archive. Go to EconTalk.org for transcripts, related resources, and comments.
Episodes
Mentioned books
18 snips
Oct 27, 2014 • 1h 2min
Robert Solow on Growth and the State of Economics
Robert Solow, Professor Emeritus at MIT and Nobel Laureate, shares insights on his groundbreaking growth theory. He emphasizes that capital accumulation isn't enough to explain economic growth, highlighting the pivotal role of technological innovation. Solow discusses the contrasts between U.S. and Soviet approaches to growth and critiques the limitations of productivity metrics in capturing the true value of computing advancements. He also reflects on legacies of Milton Friedman and John M. Keynes, emphasizing the importance of understanding macroeconomic complexities.
Oct 20, 2014 • 1h 2min
Luigi Zingales on Incentives and the Potential Capture of Economists by Special Interests
Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Zingales's essay, "Preventing Economists' Capture." Zingales argues that just as regulators become swayed by the implicit incentives of dealing with industry executives, so too with economists who study business: supporting business interests can be financially and professionally rewarding. Zingales outlines the different ways that economists benefit from supporting business interests and ways that economists might work to prevent that influence or at least be aware of it.
Oct 13, 2014 • 1h 4min
Russ Roberts and Michael Munger on How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life
EconTalk host Russ Roberts is interviewed by long-time EconTalk guest Michael Munger about Russ's new book, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness. Topics discussed include how economists view human motivation and consumer behavior, the role of conscience and self-interest in acts of kindness, and the costs and benefits of judging others. The conversation closes with a discussion of how Smith can help us understand villains in movies.
Oct 6, 2014 • 1h 9min
David Autor on the Future of Work and Polanyi's Paradox
David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the future of work and the role that automation and smart machines might play in the workforce. Autor stresses the importance of Michael Polanyi's insight that many of the things we know and understand cannot be easily written down or communicated. Those kinds of tacit knowledge will be difficult for smart machines to access and use. In addition, Autor argues that fundamentally, the gains from machine productivity will accrue to humans. The conversation closes with a discussion of the distributional implications of a world with a vastly larger role for smart machines.
Sep 29, 2014 • 1h 1min
Martha Nussbaum on Creating Capabilities and GDP
Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago and author of Creating Capabilities talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about an alternative to GDP for measuring economic performance at the national level. She is a proponent of the capabilities approach that emphasizes how easily individuals can acquire skills and use them, as well as the capability to live long and enjoy life. Nussbaum argues that government policy should focus on creating capabilities rather than allowing them to emerge through individual choices and civil society.
Sep 22, 2014 • 1h 9min
Thomas Piketty on Inequality and Capital in the 21st Century
Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century talks to Econtalk host Russ Roberts about the book. The conversation covers some of the key empirical findings of the book along with a discussion of their significance.
Sep 15, 2014 • 1h 4min
Elizabeth Green on Education and Building a Better Teacher
Elizabeth Green, an education journalist and co-founder of Chalkbeat, discusses her book, Building a Better Teacher. She dives into the art and challenge of teaching, emphasizing practical training over theory. The conversation touches on classroom discipline strategies, comparing American practices with those in Japan, and the balance between rigor and fun in education. Green advocates for reformed teacher accountability and the role of journalism in highlighting educational inequities, stressing the need for compassion in teaching.
Sep 8, 2014 • 1h 1min
Paul Pfleiderer on the Misuse of Economic Models
Paul Pfleiderer, C.O.G. Miller Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his recent paper critiquing what Pfleiderer calls "Chameleon Models," economic models that are thought to explain the real world with little analysis of the accuracy of their assumptions. Also discussed are Akerlof's market for lemons model, Friedman's idea that assumptions do not have to be reasonable as long as the model predicts what happens in the real world, and the dangers of leaping from a model's results to making policy recommendations.
Sep 1, 2014 • 59min
Nathan Blecharczyk on Airbnb and the Sharing Economy
Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder and chief technology officer of Airbnb, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Airbnb, one of the earliest companies to use technology to allow individuals to share underused resources, and in the case of Airbnb, housing. Blecharczyk and Roberts discuss how a design conference and the Democratic National Convention got Airbnb started, how the company aligns incentives to overcome the trust problem of house-sharing, and the rise of technology and online social networks to make a new business model possible. Along the way, Blecharczyk gives his take on the role of luck vs. skill in entrepreneurial success and how Airbnb plans to expand its product offerings in the future.
Aug 25, 2014 • 1h 2min
Daphne Koller on Education, Coursera, and MOOCs
Daphne Koller of Coursera talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about online educational website Coursera and the future of education both online and via bricks-and-mortar. Koller, co-founder of Coursera with Andrew Ng, explains how Coursera partners with universities, how they try to create community and interaction, and the likely impact of widespread digital education on universities and those who want to learn. The conversation includes a discussion of why Koller left a chaired position in computer science at Stanford University to run a for-profit start-up in a crowded field.
