“Podhead”: I like that. The Pixie’s accused me of being addicted. I tell her that most of the time, it’s like wallpaper to me. Every so often there’s a gem that lights my brain on fire, but mostly, wallpaper. Or tranquillizer. Eh? Hmmm. Where’d that word pop up from? :ohreally: meh. Better than booze.
http://www.themoth.org/podcast
My partner’s discovered this. A selection of the best tales told in story-telling evenings in the US. Don’t make my mistake and listen while you’re trying to get to sleep - some of these are jaw droppingly horrific tales of adventures / romance / acts of kindness etc etc.
[quote=“Jaboney way back when”]The most recent edition of Bill Moyer’s Journal deals with social and political aspects of the subprime housing crisis. After listening to it, I started wondering why Russ Roberts, the guy behind the Econtalk podcast hasn’t dealt with it. So searched, found nothing, and fired off an email.
Nice guy, Roberts, he answered straight away. Said he tends to steer clear of most topical topics, but since this one’s lasting a while it’ll probably come up in passing. Figures we still don’t know well enough what’s what’s going on.
I’m hoping he does try to tackle it, because it would – I think – challenge many of his usual answers.[/quote]
I’m still a fan of Econtalk. It’s one of the very few podcasts where I actually archive and recycle episodes. Anyway, a while ago I posted the above complaint. Over the past 18~24 months, Roberts has dealt with the subprime housing crisis and bailout a number of times, and his opinions have shifted gradually. In his latest episode, ‘Acemoglu on Inequality and the Financial Crisis’, for a while he almost sounds like Bill Moyer – ok, not quite. More like Nassim Taleb – as he goes off the scandalous disfunction of American financial markets.
Good stuff.
Roberts’ overly simplistic arguments and caricatures drove me nuts for a long time, but he looks at things differently and obviously knows a great deal that it wouldn’t hurt me to learn, so I’ve stuck with it. Having swallowed so much of his bad medicine for so long, it’s nice to see him coming round to my position on at least one issue!
Oh yes, like a small number of other podcasts (thank you, producers) Econtalk is publishing transcripts – even if rushed, imperfect ones. (Great stuff for high-level students.)
[quote=“Roberts and Acemoglu”]Most chilling part of the financial sector’s success–there are other reasons I think it was unproductive–but the other chilling part is the sheer number of people other than the CEO who made enormous sums of money. You could probably get a count. Want to stress that I’m not against people making lots of money; I’m against people making lots of money for unproductive reasons using my money.
Do we feel–right word because we don’t have the empirical evidence to back this up–that based on the empirical facts we have and the theories we have that a software entrepreneur who has invented a new product that is being used all over the world and is making a billion dollars is contributing the same amount as somebody who made some great trades on some derivatives and is getting a billion dollars in bonus. Might want to think about what society is getting from these two people that are getting the same reward from society.
The standard argument, which I’m unpersuaded by–it’s tempting and I used to make it myself–is: People on Wall Street are allocating capital, and allocating capital through these kinds of trades and arbitrage is hugely valuable; true you can’t see it directly, but nothing is more important for capitalism is allocating capital.
The problem with that argument is when you allocate trillions of dollars towards housing you’ve made a horrible blunder. We got some benefit from it; most of it small relative to the costs; and I believe that was not a natural process. […] I actually believe that allocating capital is an important thing, and if anybody who was playing a role in allocating capital took the right form, that would have a very high social reward. No doubt. The question in my mind is whether, when you are making money on short-term price fluctuations, that actually is essential for getting the long-run prices that are important for the allocation of the trillions of dollars, whether it helps us get those prices right. I think it would be important if the prices were right. The question is whether they were induced to be wrong.
[…]
That I think is the question: How much of the money that investment banks are making is due to short-run fluctuations in price that don’t really have all that much to do with the long-run allocation of capital? Then there is the question you posed: this process and the variety of political channels it interacts with might also help get the prices wrong rather than right. For example, the prices of housing.
Let me suggest a different empirical way to think about this. In the venture capital world, which is centered around a bunch of places in the United States[…] If you are a venture capitalist, you have a fund. You make some bets. By definition it’s hard to do. We understand this. Maybe 3 out of 10 go broke; 4 or 5 out of 10 are mediocre; and there’s 2 or 3 that make you wealthy. If those 2 or 3 are successful enough, it makes up for the losses and the mediocrity. If you consistently pick badly, either by bad luck or stupidity, you end up with no money, and you don’t get to allocate capital any more either from your own money or the people who trusted you with it. Similarly, if you come up with a good idea, it might not work out–things go wrong–but well-accepted in California that if people had good ideas, showed fortitude, or other sets of skills, that eventually if you continually start companies that fail with other people’s money, you go out of business. You have to find a productive way to feed your family.
But on Wall Street, what has happened in the last 25 years is that if you do really stupid things and you lose a lot of money for your firm, you keep going. You make a lot of money, hundreds of millions of dollars sometimes–as an individual. Even though you’ve destroyed your company. And you can stay in the game. So, something is drastically wrong. And you are doing it not with your own money, but with other people’s money. The question is why would people continue, give them money; just like a venture capitalist would ask the fund’s losers. After a while he doesn’t get any money to spend. But on Wall Street, you can keep getting money for a while, from you and me, the Fed helps you out. It’s clearly disastrously inefficient. [/quote]
[favurl=http://www.litagogo.com/]Litagogo[/favurl] and [favurl=http://booksonthenightstand.com/]Book on the Nightstand[/favurl]
Oh happy days! I love book discussions / author interviews so my inner geek is delirious about these finds - guides to literary podcasts. My only small grumble is that they are both based in the states - does anyone know of anything similar for the UK? I’m usually more familiar with what’s popular there.
I have just had a brief look through this thread, I’m looking for some podcasts on learning basic Chinese (my Chinese is shocking) Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks
awesome thread! I’m a podcast junkie - for hiking/exercising/doing chores.
Glad to see Econtalk mentioned. That’s been a long time favorite. And that Roberts is open to change. Also interesting to see Gabfest but not the superior Culturefest mentioned - both from Slate. I can’t resist saying how incredibly anodyne John Dickerson of the Gabfest is - and yet his knowledge/analysis is always being talked up. Pfft. The Gabfest doesn’t have to be Glenn Greenwald but they could try a little harder.
My recommendations would be the above mentioned Culturefest: - there was a particularly good run of them in April. Found here:
slate.com/?id=3944&cp=2187916
Entitled Opinions: Andrew Mitchell shows on Heidegger and Neitzsche, Joshua Landy on Proust, and show host Robert Harrison on Wallace Stevens are all great.
french-italian.stanford.edu/opinions/
And for those with a meditation bent: Buddhist Geeks: buddhistgeeks.com/category/podcast/
Favorites of mine include Daniel Ingram, Kenneth Folk, Brad Warner. Dennis Merkel defending himself against charging 55,000 US dollars for a 5 day retreat is a good unconvincing listen.
And with a nod to the guy looking for Chinese lessons. Pop-up Chinese has a very interesting podcast show on China called Sinica that I’ve been listening to lately. Interesting to see the level of discussion the Chinese authorities allow foreigners in Beijing.