An airline, the price of oil and the financialization of the global economy. On today’s show, author and former banker Satyajit Das talks about his career and the trouble with the rise of finance.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/09/30/140954343/the-friday-podcast-how-money-got-weird
Tagged with npr planet money economics
Clay Shirky, adjunct professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, discusses his new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Shirky talks about social and economic effects of Internet technologies and interrelated effects of social and technological networks. In this podcast he discusses social production, open source software, Wikipedia, defaults, Facebook, and more.
http://surprisinglyfree.com/2010/06/14/clay-shirky-on-cognitive-surplus/
It turns out it’s really hard for a small team of public radio employees to turn themselves into a cutting-edge apparel company.
Tagged with npr planet money economics clothing fashion intellectual property
Economist editor Tom Standage says if you want to get a good picture of world history, you should look at spices.
In his book, An Edible History of Humanity, Standage writes about how tall tales of carnivorous birds and flying snakes let Arab middleman charge Europeans inflated prices for cinnamon and pepper for years. Standage says it wasn’t until an Indian ship went adrift in the Red Sea that the Europeans realized there was an easier route to get all those spices they had been craving.
Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling 4 million copies in 35 languages. Now, four years in the making, arrives the follow up: SuperFreakonomics. Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner return with a book that is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. Freakonomics made the world safe to discuss the economics of crack cocaine and the impact of baby names. SuperFreakonomics retains that off-kilter sensibility (comparing, for instance, the relative dangers of driving while drunk versus walking while drunk) but also tackles a host of issues at the very centre of modern society: terrorism, global warming, altruism, and more.
Stephen J. Dubner is an award-winning author and journalist who lives in New York City. In addition to Freakonomics, he is the author of Turbulent Souls (Choosing My Religion), Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper, and a children’s book, The Boy With Two Belly Buttons. His journalism has appeared primarily in the New York Times and the New Yorker, and has been anthologized in The Best American Sportswriting, The Best American Crime Writing, and elsewhere. He has taught English at Columbia University (while receiving an M.F.A. there), played in a rock band (which was signed to Arista Records), and, as a writer, was first published at the age of 11, in Highlights for Children.
Steven D. Levitt is the Alvin H. Baum Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he is also director of The Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. In 2004, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, which recognizes the most influential economist in America under the age of 40. More recently, he was named one of Time magazine’s "100 People Who Shape Our World." Levitt received his B.A. from Harvard University in 1989, his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1994, and has taught at Chicago since 1997.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm
Why do smart people make irrational decisions every day? Why do we repeatedly make the same mistakes when we make our selections? How do our expectations influence our actual opinions and decisions? The answers, as revealed by behavioural economist Professor Dan Ariely of MIT, will surprise you.
Dan Ariely is author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions, (HarperCollins, £14.99). He is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT where he holds a joint appointment between MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences and Sloan School of Management. He is the principal investigator of the Lab’s eRationality group and co-director of the Lab’s SIMPLICITY consortium. He is interested in issues of rationality, irrationality, decision-making, behavioral economics, and consumer welfare. Projects include examinations of online auction behaviors, personal health monitoring, the effects of different pricing mechanisms, and the development of systems to overcome day-to-day irrationality.
Ariely received a PhD in business administration from Duke University, a PhD and MA in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a BA in psychology from Tel Aviv University.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm
Since the postwar boom, we’ve had a surfeit of intellect, energy and time.
Join Clay Shirky as he charts the effects that this ‘cognitive surplus’ - aided by new technologies - will have on 21st century society, and reveals that the choices we make are not only economically motivated but are also driven by the desire for autonomy, competence and community.
The lead singer of the band OK Go, famous for the video where they dance on treadmills, talks about the economics of Rock and his band’s decision to leave their label and start their own record company.
Tagged with economics planet money ok go music rock and roll
Here Bill Moyers sits down with David Simon, executive producer of The Wire, the stunning HBO production. As anyone who has watched the show knows, The Wire is not just a splendid drama. It is, as Simon has once called it, “a political tract masquerading as a cop show.” It takes a penetrating and aesthetically rich look at some of America’s most vexing social issues. And it’s why Moyers says, “What Edward Gibbon was to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, or Charles Dickens to the smokey, mean streets of Victorian London, David Simon is to America today.”
http://www.openculture.com/2009/04/bill_moyers_with_the_wires_david_simon.html
Panelists: Cory Doctorow, Tobias Buckell, Philip Edward Kaldon, Paul Melko and Matthew Stewart-Fulton
Recorded: Saturday January 24, 2009 11am
Economics and SF