Tag: EconTalk

Margaret Heffernan on Uncharted

EconTalk | 7 September 2020 | 1h 04m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Margaret Heffernan about her book Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future. Considers how best to prepare for an unpredictable future. Argues that smart organizations and people can learn how to do it.

Matt Ridley on How Innovation Works

EconTalk | 31 August 2020 | 1h 11m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Matt Ridley about his book How Innovation Works. Ridley argues that we give too much credit to inventors and not enough to innovators – those who refine and improve an invention to make it valuable to users. Along the way, he emphasizes the power of trial and error and the importance of permissionless innovation.

This is the fourth episode I’ve posted with Matt Ridley about How Innovation Works. It’s a fantastic book, by my favourite author, interviewed here by my favourite podcaster.

Ben Cohen on the Hot Hand

EconTalk | 10 August 2020 | 1h 08m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Ben Cohen about his book The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks. At times in sports and elsewhere in life, a person seems to be “on fire,” playing at an unusually high level. Is this real or an illusion? Cohen takes the listener through the scientific literature on this question and spreads a very wide net to look at the phenomenon of being in the zone outside of sports. Topics include Shakespeare, investing, Stephen Curry, and asylum judges.

Josh Williams on Online Gaming, Blockchain, and Forte

EconTalk | 13 July 2020 | 1h 13m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Josh Williams, co-founder and CEO of the blockchain gaming company Forte, about the state of online gaming and the potential of a blockchain-based gaming platform to create market economies with property rights within online games.

Robert Pondiscio on How the Other Half Learns

EconTalk | 18 May 2020 | 1h 20m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Robert Pondiscio about his book How the Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle Over School Choice. Pondiscio shares his experience of being embedded in a Success Academy Charter School in New York City for a year – lessons about teaching, education policy, and student achievement. Dissects what Success Academy does well.

Branko Milanovic on Capitalism, Alone

EconTalk | 11 May 2020 | 1h 38m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Branko Milanovic about his book, Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World. Discusses inequality, the challenge of corruption in the Chinese system, and Milanovic’s claim that in American capitalism, the texture of daily life is increasingly affected by the sharing economy and other opportunities.

Arnold Kling on the Three Languages of Politics, Revisited

EconTalk | 6 April 2020 | 1h 03m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Arnold Kling about the revised edition of his book The Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divides. Kling talks about the changed political landscape in the United States and around the world and how his ideas have changed since the book was first published in 2013.

Azra Raza on The First Cell

EconTalk | 23 March 2020 | 1h 24m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Azra Raza about her book The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last. Raza argues that we have made little progress in fighting cancer over the last 50 years. The tools available to oncologists haven’t changed much – the bulk of the progress that has been made has been through earlier and earlier detection rather than more effective or compassionate treatment options. Raza wants to see a different approach from the current strategy of marginal improvements on narrowly defined problems at the cellular level. Instead, she suggests an alternative approach that might better take account of the complexity of human beings and the way that cancer morphs and spreads differently across people and even within individuals. The conversation includes the challenges of dealing with dying patients, the importance of listening, and the bittersweet nature of our mortality.