The periodic table lists 118 different chemical elements. And yet, for thousands of years, humans have really, really liked one of them in particular: gold. Gold has been used as money for millennia, and its price has been going through the roof.
Why gold? Why not osmium, lithium, or ruthenium?
We went to an expert to find out: Sanat Kumar, a chemical engineer at Columbia University. We asked him to take the periodic table, and start eliminating anything that wouldn’t work as money.
Paper or plastic? Steak or salmon? Stay or go? Every day, we make thousands of decisions, most minor, some major. But how does your brain make the choice? In this hour, we’ll take a look at the science of decision making. Can your genes influence split second decisions? And how do your emotions influence the way you decide?
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman believes that increased public spending — akin to the efforts of the New Deal during the Great Depression — is the best way to escape the financial crisis and regain American global leadership.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95929699
Tagged with npr fresh air economics financial crisis paul krugman
As the financial sector shifts, so does the reach of the jolt to economic structures around the world. Economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his mentor, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, speak with Paul Solman about chain reactions and predicting the financial crisis.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec08/psolman_10-21.html
Tagged with nassim nicholas taleb mathematics economy economics chaos complexity