Tag: EconTalk

Roya Hakakian on A Beginner’s Guide to America

EconTalk | 26 April 2021 | 1h 09m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Roya Hakakian about her book A Beginner’s Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious. Describes her refugee experience, coming from Iran to the United States as a 19-year-old, not speaking any English, and carrying only the things she could stuff in her backpack. Discusses her love for her adopted country as well as where there is room for improvement.

Max Kenner on Crime, Education, and the Bard Prison Initiative

EconTalk | 29 March 2021 | 1h 07m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Max Kenner, the founder and executive director of the Bard Prison Initiative, which was profiled in a four-part PBS documentary, College Behind Bars. Discusses the program, which replicates the coursework of students at Bard College to offer college degrees to prisoners. Kenner talks about the origins of the program, what students experience, and the injustice he sees in both the criminal justice system and the educational system in the United States.

John Cochrane on the Pandemic

EconTalk | 22 February 2021 | 1h 08m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with John Cochrane about the pandemic and the policy response. Argues that outcomes would have been much better if governments, in the United States and elsewhere, had embraced approaches that relied more on market forces. Serves as a demonstration of the powerful, but counter-intuitive insights available from free-market economic thinking.

Dana Gioia on Learning, Poetry, and Studying with Miss Bishop

EconTalk | 15 February 2021 | 1h 35m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Dana Gioia about his book Studying with Miss Bishop. Discusses the craft of being a poet, the business world, mentorship, loss, why poetry no longer seems to matter, and how it might begin to matter again.

Lamorna Ash on Dark, Salt, Clear

EconTalk | 8 February 2021 | 1h 14m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Lamorna Ash about her book Dark, Salt, Clear. Ash leaves London and moves to the small fishing village of Newlyn, near where her mother grew up on the Cornish coast. In Newlyn, everything revolves around fishing. Ash gets herself a bunk on a trawler and quickly learns how to gut fish with sharp knives on a rocking boat in the middle of the night. And so much more.

Sowell on Economic Facts and Fallacies

EconTalk | 28 February 2008 | 1h 06m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Thomas Sowell about the ideas in his book Economic Facts and Fallacies. Discusses the misleading nature of measured income inequality, CEO pay, why nations grow or stay poor, the role of intellectuals and experts in designing public policy, and immigration.

Gary Shiffman on the Economics of Violence

EconTalk | 18 January 2021 | 0h 59m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Gary Shiffman about his book The Economics of Violence: How Behavioral Science Can Transform our View of Crime, Insurgency, and Terrorism. Shiffman argues that we should view terrorism, insurgency, and crime as being less about ideology and more about personal expression and entrepreneurship. He argues that framing these problems with economics gives better tools for fighting them.

Michael Blastland on the Hidden Half

EconTalk | 28 December 2020 | 1h 14m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Michael Blastland about his book The Hidden Half: How the World Conceals its Secrets. Argues that the deeper you delve into science, medicine, astrophysics – pick a topic – the more you realize there is a lot we don’t understand and can’t explain. Suggests we would all do well to stop pretending that everything is knowable and every problem solvable.