Political Economy with James Pethokoukis

Tune in each week as the American Enterprise Institute's James Pethokoukis interviews economists, business leaders, academics and others on the most important and interesting issues of the day. You can find all episodes at AEI, Ricochet, and wherever podcasts are downloaded, and look for follow-up transcripts and blog posts at aei.org/publication/blog.

Rank #1: 132. Will artificial intelligence change the economy for the better?.
Will artificial intelligence (AI) lead to a jobless economy? Can AI stimulate lasting economic growth? Is anti-competitive behavior by big tech slowing the rate of AI innovation? On this episode, Professor Robert Seamans discusses AI's impact on the economy, how it will change the nature of work, and whether regulation is needed to keep the AI industry competitive. Robert Seamans is an associate professor at New York University's Stern School of Business and a former Senior Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Most recently, he coauthored the chapter "AI and the Economy" with Jason Furman. Join the conversation and comment on this podcast episode: https://ricochet.com/podcast/political-economy-james-pethokoukis/will-artificial-intelligence-change-the-economy-for-the-better/.Now become a Ricochet member for only $5.00 a month! Join and see what you’ve been missing: https://ricochet.com/membership/.Subscribe to Political Economy with James Pethokoukis in iTunes (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in iTunes or by RSS feed.

Rank #2: 133. Huawei and the battle to build the 5G backbone.
Does allowing Huawei to build Europe's 5G network pose a threat to international security? And to what lengths should the US go to help Huawei's European competitors? On this episode, AEI's Claude Barfield discusses the race to build the world's 5G backbone and how the Trump administration should police Chinese intellectual property theft. Claude Barfield is a resident scholar at AEI and a former consultant to the office of the US Trade Representative. He has written extensively about 5G, China, and Huawei. Join the conversation and comment on this podcast episode: https://ricochet.com/podcast/political-economy-james-pethokoukis/huawei-and-the-battle-to-build-the-5g-backbone/.Now become a Ricochet member for only $5.00 a month! Join and see what you’ve been missing: https://ricochet.com/membership/.Subscribe to Political Economy with James Pethokoukis in iTunes (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in iTunes or by RSS feed.

Whose Century Is It?: Ideas, trends & twists shaping the world in the 21st century

"Whose Century Is It?" explores ideas, trends and twists shaping the 21st century, through a global lens. Host Mary Kay Magistad, a former NPR and PRI East Asia correspondent, offers interviews, stories and perspectives from around the world.

Rank #1: Is the American Century Over? .
Americans have been worrying that their country's best days are behind it since before the American century began. And now? China's economic rise has persuaded many that China will supplant the US, if it hasn't already. But China's challenges are bigger than they look, and the US still has an edge when it comes to smart power, argues Harvard Professor Joseph Nye, author of "Is the American Century Over?"

Rank #2: Conspiracy theories, China & the real John Birch.
Conspiracy theories thrive amidst distrust — distrust of power, distrust of the "other," distrust of the unknown. They can limit what's possible, and create conflict when none is necessary. One story, about a young Baptist missionary-turned-US military intelligence officer in China during World War II, killed in action, spun conspiracy theories into anti-Communist activism and suspicion. Terry Lautz, author of "John Birch, A Life," talks conspiracies, China-US mutual perceptions, and the myths and realities in the brief life of the real John Birch.

Economic Frontiers

Economic Frontiers is a podcast about the frontier of economics research regarding technology, innovation, and digitization. Each episode brings in a leading researcher or research team for a discussion of their work and its broader implications. This podcast is sponsored by the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE). The IDE is an effort focused on the impact of digital technology on businesses, the economy, and society. Drawing on MIT Sloan’s strengths in technology and innovation, its internationally recognized faculty, and more than a decade of research and partnership with MIT Sloan’s Center for Digital Business, the IDE is analyzing the broad sociological changes brought about by the advance and spread of digital technology.

Rank #1: EF3: Marketplace Design and Strategy w/ Greg Lewis.
Show notes: http://ide.mit.edu/news-events-media/podcasts/ef3-marketplace-design-and-strategy-w-greg-lewisThis podcast is about economic issues related to online marketplaces and platforms. We are joined by Greg Lewis, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, who is one of the leading experts in this new and growing field. Why have companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and eBay been hiring a lot of economists? We discuss the unique perspective that industrial organization economists have in using data to make strategic and market design decisions. We then discuss how the search ranking algorithm and other platform policies can be used as strategic tools to incentivize platform participants. Next, we talk about why it's difficult to measure the effects of changes to a platform even when experiments are possible. We then move on to a conversation about platform fees and the chicken and egg problem in platforms. Lastly, we discuss emerging issues such as competition in cloud computing.

Rank #2: EF5: How the Internet Became Commercial w/ Shane Greenstein.
Show Notes: http://mitsloan.mit.edu/ide/podcasts/In this podcast we talk about the economic history of the internet. Our guest is Shane Greenstein of Harvard Business School. Shane has recently written a book on this topic called How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New Network. We talk about the misleading perception that government single-handedly created the internet, the idea of internet exceptionalism by businesses, and the importance of a diversity of platforms and products for the health of the internet. We also touch on topics on topics such as the three waves of big data, commercialization strategies by universities and predictions about which technologies now are most like the internet in the early 90's.

Next Economy Now: Business as a Force for Good

Next Economy Now highlights the leaders that are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, democratic, transparent, and whole-systems approach to using business as a force for good. Popular guests include Winona LaDuke (White Earth), Rose Marcario (Patagonia), Daniel Goleman (author of "Emotional Intelligence"), Ed Whitfield (Southern Reparations Loan Fund), Charles Eisenstein (author of "Sacred Economics"), Kat Taylor (Beneficial State Bank), Nwamaka Agbo (Restorative Economics), Paul Hawken (author of "Drawdown"), and Rha Goddess (Move the Crowd). Learn more at www.lifteconomy.com.

Rank #1: Rose Marcario: Patagonia's CEO on Climate Change, Regenerative Agriculture, and Business for Good.
For the show notes (guest bio, summary, resources, etc), go to: www.lifteconomy.com/podcast

Rank #2: Patagonia Mini-MBA (1 of 4) – Vision [Ep. 154].
For the show notes (guest bio, summary, resources, etc), go to: www.lifteconomy.com/podcast

Wealth & Poverty from Marketplace APM

The Marketplace Wealth and Poverty Desk explores money and class, where we came from and where our country is going economically, thanks to funding from the Ford Foundation. We want to hear your stories, ideas, and questions to help us create great journalism about the growing concentration of wealth in the United States. We’ll report on the forces and policies that led to the wealth gap. We’ll look at what the consequences are, good or bad, for our families and communities. We’ll be asking you what economic choices our country should make.

Rank #1: Welcome to Wise County.
It’s the deadliest drug epidemic our country has ever faced. We go to ground zero, where “nothing changes except for the drug.”

Rank #2: Supply.
It’s not easy being an undercover cop in a county of just 40,000 people. But drugs were making it hard for Bucky Culbertson to run his business, so he made it his business to get rid of drugs.

APM: Marketplace Mid-Day Update

The Mid-Day Update is a five-day-a-week podcast from the Marketplace Morning Report hosted by David Brancaccio that wraps up the morning news in a fun little package. Listen here every day at 10 a.m. PT or download it to your iPod by subscribing to the Morning Report Podcast.

Rank #1: 08/16/2017: The price tag of letting Obamacare fail.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has released a new report evaluating what would happen if Trump cut off Obamacare subsidies. The result: the government will actually end up shelling out more money. We'll take a look at why this move would cost them more, and how taxpayers would be affected. Afterwards, we'll discuss a decline in the number of new homes being built in the U.S., and then talk about fringe sites that are popping up to support white supremacist groups as they get kicked off of more mainstream platforms.

Rank #2: 08/24/2017: America's AAA credit rating is at risk.
We've had federal government shutdowns and we've bumped into the federal borrowing limit, but now there's danger of both happening at the same time. Economist Julia Coronado MacroPolicy Perspectives joins us to talk about the issue, along with the state of the markets. Afterwards, we'll discuss the likely CEO shake-up at Chevron, and then look at Los Angeles' plans for reflective pavement so that it can keep city streets cooler.

We The Economy

Everyone is talking about the economy, but who can explain it? Award­-winning directors and leading economic experts team up for a surprising and thought­-provoking short­film series that tackles 20 essential questions about the U.S. economy through comedy, animation, music-dance, documentary, and scripted films.

Rank #1: City on the Rise.
What happens when jobs disappear? Detroit has been the poster child for the loss of well-paid manufacturing jobs, but this trend impacts communities all over the country. How does a great American city bounce back?

Rank #2: Fed Head.
What is the Federal Reserve? When Federal Reserve Chairman Rob Rafaelson awakes with amnesia only moments before a big press conference, his children, maid and intern must explain the Fed to him using the only thing handy: the children’s toys.

Economics Detective Radio

Economics Detective Radio is a podcast about markets, ideas, institutions, and all things related to the field of economics. Episodes consist of long-form interviews, and are generally released on Fridays. Topics include economic theory, economic history, the history of thought, money, banking, finance, macroeconomics, public choice, Austrian economics, business cycles, health care, education, international trade, and anything else of interest to economists, students, and serious amateurs interested in the science of human action. For additional content and links related to each episode, visit economicsdetective.com.

Rank #1: Cotton, Slavery, and the New History of Capitalism with Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode.
Today's guests are economic historians Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode. Both of them have research related to the slave economy of the Antebellum South. Our main topic is a paper they co-authored, Cotton, slavery, and the new history of capitalism. The "New History of Capitalism" grounds the rise of industrial capitalism on the production of raw cotton by American slaves. Recent works include Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton, Walter Johnson's River of Dark Dreams, and Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told. All three authors mishandle historical evidence and mis-characterize important events in ways that affect their major interpretations on the nature of slavery, the workings of plantations, the importance of cotton and slavery in the broader economy, and the sources of the Industrial Revolution and world development. We discuss the problems with the New History of Capitalism literature and some alternative hypotheses suggested by the economic history literature. In their previous work on the subject, Olmstead and Rhode show "that a succession of new cotton varieties helped propel the rise in labor productivity and southern growth" (p. 7). Ed Baptist dubiously attributes this rise in productivity to torture.

Rank #2: Slavery and Capitalism with Phil Magness.
Phil Magness returns to the show to discuss his work on slavery and capitalism, particularly as it relates to the New History of Capitalism (NHC) and the New York Times' 1619 project. Phil recently wrote an article entitled, "How the 1619 Project Rehabilitates the 'King Cotton' Thesis." In it, he argues that the NHC has unwittingly adopted the same untenable economic arguments made by slaveowners in the antebellum South: that slave-picked cotton was "king" in the sense of being absolutely indispensable for the global economy during the industrial revolution. [T]he economic reasoning behind King Cotton has undergone a surprising — perhaps unwitting — rehabilitation through a modern genre of scholarly works known as the new history of capitalism (NHC). While NHC historians reject the pro-slavery thrust of Wigfall and Hammond’s bluster, they recast slave-produced cotton as "not just as an integral part of American capitalism, but . . . its very essence," to quote Harvard’s Sven Beckert. Cornell historian Ed Baptist goes even further, describing slavery as the indispensable causal driver behind America’s wealth today. Cotton production, he contends, was "absolutely necessary" for the Western world to break the "10,000-year Malthusian cycle of agriculture." And this same NHC literature provides the scholarly foundation of the ballyhooed New York Times' 1619 Project — specifically, its foray into the economics of slavery. Guided by this rehabilitated version of King Cotton, Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond enlists the horrors of the plantation system to launch a blistering attack on modern American capitalism. Desmond projects slavery's legacy onto a litany of tropes about rising inequality, the decline of labor-union power, environmental destruction, and the 2008 financial crisis. The intended message is clear: Modern capitalism carries with it the stain of slavery, and its putative excesses are proof of its continued brutality. It follows that only by abandoning the free market and embracing political redistribution will we ever atone for this tainted inheritance.

Unf*cked with Ryan J. Williams

Unf*cked with Ryan J. Williams is a podcast to help your your life, your business, and your soul get unf*cked. Tune into and heal your work/life balance, go deeper in your relationships, and increase your productivity with the author of The Influencer Economy, former stand-comedian, and international business speaker, Ryan J. Williams.Featuring conversations with NY Times best-selling authors, Emmy award winning creators, Oscar nominated writers, and experts in how to heal the universe. Featuring lessons and actions on empathy, compassion, and self-reflection for you to take to your business, family, and life. Find your frequency, focus on the breath, and listen to the sounds. Unf*cked is a podcast is about is about healing yourself, healing your business, and healing your soul. http://www.influencereconomy.com

Rank #1: Ep. 50: Veronica Belmont on Creating Sword and Laser, Vaginal Fantasy Book Club, Becoming an Expert & More.
I was excited that Veronica Belmont stopped by to talk about her hit shows Sword and Laser and Vaginal Fantasies, while diving into her overall creative process. She's an old school podcaster and we talk about how she got her career start after graduating from Emerson College back in the day.  Veronica on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/veronica Sword and Laser:  http://swordandlaser.com/ Vaginal Fantasy:  http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/62938-vaginal-fantasy-book-club

Rank #2: 110: Building a Brand That People Will Love with Dorie Clark.
All of us have ideas. But how do we turn our idea into a brand that people will love? That's a question I get asked often and this week branding expert Dorie Clark shares her tips and secrets on how to stand out in the modern economy. In episode 110 of the podcast, we'll find out how to build a brand that people will love. We'll answer questions like:  How do we make our ideas pop and take off? What makes a brand that people love: How do we find influencers to champion our ideas on our behalf? Do good ideas always win? How do we get traction for our brand? Dorie Clark's Stand Out book: https://www.amazon.com/Stand-Out-Breakthrough-Following-Around/dp/1491552115 Dorie Clark is the author of "Reinventing You" (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013) and "Stand Out," which was named the #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. magazine. A former presidential campaign spokeswoman, she is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Entrepreneur, and the World Economic Forum blog. Recognized as a "branding expert" by the Associated Press, Fortune, and Inc. magazine, Clark is a marketing strategy consultant and speaker for clients including Google, Microsoft, Yale University, Fidelity, and the World Bank. "Standing out is no longer optional Too many people believe that if they keep their heads down and work hard they'll gain the recognition they deserve. But that's simply not true anymore." - Dorie Clark

Money Talking

Go beyond the headlines and economic jargon for a look at what’s happening in the business world and in the workplace – and why it matters in your life.

Rank #1: The Debate Over Rent Regulations .
With just a few weeks left in the New York State legislative session, the future of rent regulations is still uncertain.

Rank #2: Rolling Back Bank Regulations .
The Trump administration is proposing to revise and change financial regulations put in place after the Great Recession. House Republicans want to go even further.

Understanding the Global Economy

Understanding the Global Economy

Rank #1: Markets, Trade and Globalization (Audio).
If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu.

Rank #2: Econ 101: What are Markets?.
If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu.

Actuality

Actuality explores the inner workings of the new global economy. Brought to you by Marketplace® and Quartz, it’s a podcast that combines the best of our economic smarts. Hosts Sabri Ben-Achour and Tim Fernholz find the interesting in the important and the important in the interesting—and define the issues shaping our daily experience in the global economy. In Season Two, we explore the impossible, with: they said it couldn’t be done. From creating a perfect algorithm to a perfect workforce, we reveal the surprising answers to puzzles that once seemed impossible to solve. Join us for new episodes every other week when in season. Produced by American Public Media’s Marketplace and Atlantic Media’s Quartz. Twitter: @ActualityPod

Rank #1: Robot Tastemakers.
They said it couldn't be done: Teaching robots good taste. "Actuality" visits Spotify, where algorithms tell 75 million users what to listen to. Then, Tim and Sabri talk with a world-touring musician and a critic to see if this trend will save the arts — or doom them."Actuality" is brought to you by Marketplace and Quartz. It explores the inner workings of the new global economy, combining the best of our economic smarts. Subscribe to the bi-weekly podcast on iTunes or your favorite audio app.

Rank #2: Fear Fast Fashion.
This week, Actuality slips into some fast fashion and learns how it pushes your brain's buttons to make you buy. But the trick means hiding the true cost of the clothes — including some surprisingly bad news for the environment. Plus, bitter cats.

On The Economy

Jared Bernstein and Ben Spielberg debunk some false solutions offered in response to real economic problems and discuss policies that can reduce inequality and boost opportunities for low- and middle-income people.

Rank #1: Episode 17: Ben's Exit Interview.
The last episode of Season 1 marks the end of Ben’s tenure at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Jared interviews Ben about his thoughts on the economics profession, the policy process, and Washington, DC.Musical Interlude: Haydn’s “Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major” by Mischa Maisky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tAvhIyw-BY

Rank #2: Episode 16: We Demand Real Tax Reform!.
Republicans in Congress say they want tax reform, but tax cuts for the rich are what they’re really pursuing. Back by popular demand, Chye-Ching Huang joins the beginning and end of the show to unpack what the GOP is trying to do, share some music from New Zealand, and crack a solid joke. Jared and Ben also interview Vanessa Williamson and Kimberly Clausing, who talk about the research on Americans’ views of taxes and what real tax reform would look like. Musical Interlude: “History Never Repeats” by Split Enz https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/history-never-repeats-1981/overview

Power, Politics, and Preventive Action

Zenko covers the U.S. national security debate and offers insight on developments in international security and conflict prevention.

Rank #1: Military Endorsements and Civ-Mil Relations: A Conversation with Peter Feaver.

Rank #2: Understanding Atrocities: A Conversation with Dara Kay Cohen.

PBS NewsHour - World

Learn more about your world through in-depth analysis and on-the-ground reports. (Updated periodically)

Rank #1: News Wrap: Middle East violence flares, leaving at least 3 dead.
In our news wrap Thursday, violence in the Middle East continues in response to President Trump's peace plan. Deadly shootings took place in the West Bank and in Jerusalem, and a Palestinian injured 12 Israeli soldiers after ramming them with a car. Also, heavy rain is finally dousing Australia's wildfires, but brings with it the possibility of flooding.

Rank #2: News Wrap: Buttigieg maintains Iowa lead in latest caucus results.
In our news wrap Wednesday, delayed results from Monday's Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa are still trickling in -- and Pete Buttigieg appears to be keeping his lead. With 75 percent of precincts reporting, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has nearly 27 percent support. Also, China's death toll from an outbreak of novel coronavirus is nearing 490, with more than 24,000 infections.