Paul Krugman Podcast

Thank you Eva Norlyk Smith, Ph. D. , Leo Marcel Schuman , Caro Henry , Chitra 🦋 Eder , Deeanna Burleson, PhD , and many others for tuning into my live video with Heather Cox Richardson ! Join me for my next live video in the app. The conversation begins at minute 34. Get full access to Paul Krugman at paulkrugman.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript Jensen Huang is a fool who should never again be allowed close to anything involving national security. But the Nvidia honeypot story is about much more than one man. Because the way the Trump administration handled it — basically, its attempt to bury any inquiry into the clear threat Huang’s affair posed to U.S. interests — is part of a bigger story of betrayal at the highest levels. H...

. . . TRANSCRIPT: Paul Krugman in Conversation with Azeem Azhar (recorded 10/29/26) Paul Krugman : Hi everyone. I am talking today with Azeem Azhar , writer, researcher, investor with Exponential View , who is one of the people I turn to when I don’t understand what’s happening with AI, which is basically all the time. There was a really striking piece that Azeem wrote the other day about the PHP...

Billionaires should not be making decisions critical to national security. That’s straightforward. And the case of Elon Musk and his attempt to undermine Ukraine makes that clearer than ever. Recent events, that is in the past 24 hours, really don’t change that point. If anything, they reinforce it. Hi, Paul Krugman. Yesterday, I wrote that Starlink’s control must be taken away from Elon Musk. The...

. . . TRANSCRIPT: Paul Krugman in Conversation with David Nir and G. Elliott Morris (recorded 10/1/26) Paul Krugman : Like almost everybody I know, I spend about 17 hours a day thinking about the midterms, and I’ve got G. Elliott Morris and David Nir from Strength in Numbers and The Downballot here to talk to me about: What do we know? What’s going to happen? What are the indicators? And then mayb...

Transcript On September 28th Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, one of the most prominent, most successful financial figures in the United States, published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Hell with Trump, Let’s Go Back to Globalism.” Okay, that’s a lie. That wasn’t what the article was titled, but it was, in effect, what it said. And it was a very interesting message to be com...

Transcript Will crypto crash the blue wave? Probably not a question you’ve been asking, but you should. Paul Krugman here with a video update for September 22nd. I want to talk about something that was a very big deal in the way we talked about the 2024 election, which was the role of the cryptocurrency industry. We’re talking about it a lot less this time, I think largely because AI has stolen th...

. . . TRANSCRIPT: Paul Krugman in Conversation with Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman (recorded 9/10/26) Paul Krugman: So, it’s a world full of choke points. Weaponized interdependence is a term I think coined by Henry Farrell and Abe Newman . Certainly I learned it from them. And there’s a big conference—not including them for some reason—taking place at the European Central Bank a few days after...

Transcript “Mary had a little lamb, but when she saw it sicken, she sent it off to Packingtown, and now it’s labeled chicken.” Hi, Paul Krugman here. That’s a little ditty that was circulating, I can’t find any original source, around 1905, when Upton Sinclair published “The Jungle” — about the meatpacking industry, one of the sort of founding documents of the progressive movement. The topic today...

Transcript At this point, it’s almost a commonplace to say that under DonaldTrump, America has become a kakistocracy, ruled by the worst. But I don’tthink it’s fully appreciated the extent to which we’ve also become a cheatistocracy, ruled by the most corrupt. Today’s commentary is a follow-upon yesterday’s primer, which was about the role of tax evasion both in leading to or contributing to our d...

For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . I’m spending a lot of time thinking about high interest rates, both for obvious reasons and because I’m reconsidering some of my own long-held views. So I thought I’d have a long talk with someone who has really studied these issues and now, I believe, may have been more right than I was. This may be even wonkier than usual, but trust me, it’s...

For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . Note: After I recorded this it was reported that Trump officials are threatening to demolish the Kennedy Center if it can’t be renovated to Trump’s taste (and presumably with his name added). Matches my argument exactly. Der Untergang naht . Pardon my German pronunciation. I’m going to take a break today from wonky economic analysis and talk a...

For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . Better transcript! . . . TRANSCRIPT: Paul Krugman in Conversation with Jared Bernstein (recorded 8/20/26) Paul Krugman : Hi everyone. Paul Krugman talking with Jared Bernstein , former chief economist, head of the Council of Economic Advisers under Joe Biden. Now a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and at the...

Get full access to Paul Krugman at paulkrugman.substack.com/subscribe

According to an old military maxim, amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics. But these days we need a third category: Immature, insecure guys think that war is about acting tough and looking cool. Hi, Paul Krugman with a podcast update for today. I want to weigh in on the incredible rash of stories about how Trump and company are eviscerating the military. It is truly rema...

For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . . . . TRANSCRIPT: Paul Krugman in Conversation with Vanessa Williamson (recorded 8/12/26) Paul Krugman : This week, I’m talking to Vanessa Williamson , senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of a fantastic short history of taxation called The Price of Democracy , which is, I’m pretty sure, an allusion to Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “...

Link to primer here . Transcript If you want to understand how we went so far down the road towards oligarchy, Malta is a good place to look. Hi, Paul Krugman, doing a video today. Yesterday, my weekly primer was another episode in the series about the rise of oligarchy and the policies that have led it to where it is. And this time, I focused on the role of a huge shift in taxation that has taken...

For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . . . . TRANSCRIPT: Paul Krugman in Conversation with G. Elliott Morris (recorded 8/6/26) Paul Krugman : I am returning for another of multiple conversations with G. Elliott Morris , whom I find the most informative polling and political data analyst out there. And for a couple of reasons: We just had the primary in Michigan, we have a lot of nu...

For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . Transcript Contrary to what Trump administration officials say, we are not experiencing explosive economic growth. We are, however, experiencing an explosion in misery — and Donald Trump deserves full credit. Hi, Paul Krugman here, slightly different location. I want to talk about food stamps and health insurance, two areas where things have g...

For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . Transcript Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice. Robert Frost wrote that in 1920. With more than a century gone by, we have a verdict. It’s fire for the win. Hi, I’m Paul Krugman. I thought I’d talk today about a story that should be getting even more play than it is. I mean, there’s so much going on, but, you know, Europe is o...

For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . In my writing about wealth concentration and oligarchy, I steal a lot from lean heavily on the truly work of Gabriel Zucman, who is a hugely important researcher (winner of the 2023 Clark Medal ) who is also starting to play a major role in policy. I’ve talked to him before, but this seemed like a good time to bring him back. . . . TRANSCRIPT:...

For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . Transcript Good news. The second richest man in America might be prevented from taking over CNN. That's the good news. The bad news is, aside from thefact that he probably will manage to pull it off anyway, the bad news is that that would be only a small piece of the ongoing takeover of U.S. media by oligarchs. And in turn, the media takeover...

Lina Khan, who chaired the Federal Trade Commission under Joe Biden, is one of the smartest and most influential thinkers about antitrust in our high-tech era, and one who has blazed new paths in policymaking. I spoke with her at a Graduate Center event back in March, and caught up with her again earlier this week for another enlightening conversation. For all my interviews and more, subscribe on...

For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . Transcript The war with Iran has just reached a very scary phase, and I’m not talking about the bombs and the drones. Hi, Paul Krugman here, doing a brief podcast instead of a full post, because I actually spent the day with friends and doing other things, and this is a quicker alternative. If you’re following the news, you know that the sort-...

With everything else going on, the ongoing demolition of financial regulation and supervision, which is raising the risks of financial crisis, isn’t getting much attention. So I spoke with Dennis Kelliher, president of Better Markets , an independent think tank that is trying to sound the alarm. Full disclosure: my nephew works at Better Markets. But I would have wanted to talk to Kelleher regardl...