Wage Stagnation and Income Risk

Risk Talking | 8 September 2022 | 1h 02m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Fatih Guvenen discussing his research with tax data on US wage trends over time, destroying myths of rising within-firm inequality, rising income risk, the immunity of the top 1%, and the usefulness of assumed normal distributions.

Against Fairness feat. Stephen Asma

unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc | 16 September 2022 | 1h 09m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Stephen Asma discussing utilitarian values nepotism, the value and contracts of kith & kin, the costs of tribalism, and the decline of standardised religion. Argues that while Western societies profess hostility to nepotism, we all practice and benefit from nepotism. Draws from his book Against Fairness.

Josh Chin and Liza Lin on Surveillance State

New Books in Economics | 9 September 2022 | 0h 58m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Josh Chin and Liza Lin about their book Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control. Discusses China’s use of new technologies for social control; their brutal application to the Uighur people; the relatively benign-seeming applications to traffic control, crime, and public order where Chinese citizens judge the loss of privacy as a small price to pay; and the similar trade-off Western citizens will need to make.

Oded Galor on The Journey of Humanity

Top Traders Unplugged | 14 September 2022 | 1h 07m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Oded Galor about his book The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality. Discusses unified growth theory; the historical roots of inequality in geography, culture, and human diversity; the Malthusian trap; and the costs and benefits of diversity for a society.

Outliers, Revisited

Revisionist History | 15 September 2022 | 0h 35m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell reported on the relative age effect, the phenomenon of assessed excellence being concentrated in older children. Here he runs an experiment at the University of Pennsylvania to determine whether publicising the phenomenon served as a primer for gaming the system by neurotic helicopter parents.

Charles C. Mann – Americas Before Columbus & Scientific Wizardry

The Lunar Society | 14 September 2022 | 1h 32m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Charles C. Mann about his books 1491: New Revelations of America before Columbus, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, and The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. Discusses why Native American civilizations collapsed, why he disagrees with Will MacAskill about longtermism, why there aren’t any successful slave revolts, how Bitcoin is like the Chinese Silver Trade, how geoengineering can help us solve climate change, and more.

Walter Stahr On Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln’s Vital Rival

Uncommon Knowledge | 1 September 2022 | 0h 58m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Walter Stahr about his book Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln’s Vital Rival. Discusses the life and work of Salmon P. Chase, Treasury Secretary under Lincoln: his work as an antislavery lawyer; US Senator, where he was instrumental in helping to settle the slavery question in the United States; governor of Ohio; and Treasury secretary, where he standardized the dozens of currencies then being issued by local banks and to give the US a national currency and a system of national banks.