Paul Krugman Podcast

Transcript According to press reports, Jeff Bezos is planning to sell his 417-foot yacht, the one with a carved figurehead of Lauren Sanchez, his second wife, at the front. According to these reports, he’s unhappy at the attention that the yacht is getting. Funny how that works. Hi, Paul Krugman with a bit of an experiment. I am recording this in a cafe, a cafe that is not in New York, as you coul...

Jared Bernstein, former top Biden economist and all-round economic expert, and I bat around the puzzle of persistent negative economic sentiment. Recorded Wednesday. . . . TRANSCRIPT: Paul Krugman in Conversation with Jared Bernstein (recorded 4/22/26) Paul Krugman : Hi everyone. This week I’ve got Jared Bernstein with me for a talk about economic vibes. We had planned and hoped to have G. Elliott...

Some quick thoughts about yesterday’s hearing. Transcript Kevin Warsh, the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, is Donald Trump’s sock puppet. But we knew that. The question during yesterday’s confirmation hearing was whether he was sufficiently brave, sufficiently good at acting to pretend that he was more than that. And the answer is no. Hi, Paul Krugman here with a Wednesday update. I didn’t w...

Transcript When you’re losing a war, but it’s not an existential defeat, your country, your government can continue pretty much as before. Aside from the humiliation, there’s a well-established technique, which is to declare victory and pull out. But it appears that Trump can’t even pull that off. Hi, Paul Krugman with a Saturday update on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and all of that. It’...

More than a year ago I interviewed my old friend and colleague Kim Lane Scheppele, a constitutional scholar who speaks Hungarian and knows Hungary, about the march of autocracy. Now, suddenly, a much happier occasion. I found her account of how this happened startling — a lot I didn’t know, even though I’ve been following the news obsessively. And some of it is wild. Here’s a transcript: . . . TRA...

No time for a regular post today, so here’s a video. Transcript When Donald Trump took us to war with Iran, he dismissed warnings from the experts, from the military, from the intelligence community, saying that this was a highly risky proposition. Now he wants to bring that same level of clarity and judgment to monetary policy, and we should all be very afraid. Hi, Paul Krugman here. Today, I’m g...

Thank you Quentin Hardy , Beth Arnold , Jane Trombley , Resistance Media , Victoria Priya , and many others for tuning into my live video with Heather Cox Richardson ! Join me for my next live video in the app. Transcript HCR: Hey, everybody here from Bonita Springs, Florida and Elgin, Illinois and Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, Fairbanks, Alaska. Boy, it must be getting beautiful up th...

Transcript What is Hungary to us or we to Hungary? Hi, Paul Krugman here. A Saturday morning update ahead of the big election in Hungary taking place tomorrow. The eyes of the world are upon Budapest. It’s a little odd that Hungary is so much the focus of a lot of people, myself included. It has about the same population as New Jersey, about a quarter of New Jersey’s GDP. It’s not a big place, but...

Lisa Graves is a legal activist and the author of a remarkable and terrifying book, Without Precedent , that documents the assault on democracy via the story of John Roberts. I spoke with her about how America has come to its current state, and what the future may hold: . . . TRANSCRIPT: Paul Krugman in Conversation with Lisa Graves (recorded 4/9/26) Paul Krugman : I’m speaking today with Lisa Gra...

Transcript All around the world, big, strong men with tears in their eyes are coming up to Donald Trump and saying, “Sir, you’re a loser.” Hi, I’m Paul Krugman. A brief update on something that has palpably changed in the world in the last few days. As regular watchers of Donald Trump and regular readers of mine know, Trump has a thing about insisting that people treat him with immense respect — t...

Transcript This is America’s darkest hour. Hi, Paul Krugman with an update Tuesday morning. Earlier today, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. Not going to be a problem if we ever do get the war crimes trial that all of this deserves. A statement of motive, intent is completely clear. I don’t need to say how vile it is. It is...

America as we knew it may end Tuesday. Hi, I’m Paul Krugman. Sunday morning update. Yesterday, I talked about how awful Trump’s message about glory to God and all of that was, but it’s looking much, much worse today. I’ll quote Trump in a second. But let me do a Heather Cox Richardson here and talk about history for a second. Think about what Abraham Lincoln, a president who was actually winning h...

Donald Trump isn’t sounding like himself, and that’s terrifying. Hi, Paul Krugman here with a brief update on Saturday afternoon. Not my usual thing. No economics, no analytics, just I felt I needed to say something. On Wednesday, Trump gave a speech, which was... pretty depressing. He was low energy, listless, and seemed to be disconnected from reality, insisting that everything is going great in...

A short video rather than my usual morning post Donald Trump doesn’t even have the courage to run away. Hi, I’m Paul Krugman. I’m not going to do a regular post today — it’s Thursday morning — because I wanted to wait and see what was in the big speech from Donald Trump last night. And I thought I could just do a short video about it. It turns out that the speech was sort of an anticlimax, althoug...

Transcript So the world’s greatest military power went to war against a fourth rate nation whose military budget would be rounding error in our defense spending. And it appears that we lost. Hi, Paul Krugman with a late night, well, evening update, which I don’t usually do, but I wanted to get this in before who knows what happens in the news tomorrow. It’s Tuesday. It’s the day that the stock mar...

A month into the war, and now they’re talking about pointless ground action and/or war crimes. TRANSCRIPT Pete Hegseth believes in the lethality fairy, and that’s a very bad thing. Hi, Paul Krugman here. Most people watching this probably don’t get the reference. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, a number of governments did what economic textbooks say is exactly the wrong thing. They...

For more like this, check out my YouTube channel Transcript Has the US military already been Kudlowized? Hi, I’m Paul Krugman. I’ll explain what I meant by that in a couple of minutes. It’s Friday morning. The war is continuing. A lot of what’s happened in the Iran war has sadly not come as a surprise. The fact that there was no planning, that there was no plan B in case a decapitation strike didn...

Another day in America’s self-immolation as a Great Power. More like this on my YouTube channel Transcript It’s Monday morning. Donald Trump has, at least for the time being, called off plans to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure. He has done so because, according to him, highly productive negotiations are underway involving the government of Iran, an invisible six-foot white rabbit, and his Cana...

The willingness of the Trump administration to let Iran keep selling oil shows that we’re not willing to endure pain in a war that it all about enduring pain. For more like this, see my YouTube channel Transcript If you want to understand how things are going in Iran and why it looks increasingly likely that the United States is going to lose this thing in every sense that matters, follow the oil...

For more videos, visit my YouTube channel . Of war, fertilizer, airlines and force majeure. Transcript (AI-generated) So let’s talk for a few minutes about fertilizer. Hi, I’m Paul Krugman. Fertilizer is not usually one of my things, but it’s important in what’s happening right now. And it’s also part of trying to understand just how big a mess we are in as a result of this unplanned, ill-conceive...

More videos like this available on my YouTube channel . Also: Substack generates a transcript for these videos, available on the app and the web, but the button doesn’t show up in email. So here’s a cut-and-paste (not edited): Transcript Is it time to bring back the 55 mile an hour speed limit? Not going to happen, but it’s actually would not be stupid right now. Hi, Paul Krugman. Update on Friday...

Imagine if the U.S. government had wasted as much money as Mark Zuckerberg. PS: I know, the company still named Meta was formerly Facebook; bit of a senior moment in there. Also, it’s easy to miss, but there’s a button above that says “Transcript.” It’s AI-generated and not edited like my Saturday interviews, but it’s there for the text-oriented. Get full access to Paul Krugman at paulkrugman.subs...

I don’t believe that it’s corruption, but it’s not a good look. Get full access to Paul Krugman at paulkrugman.substack.com/subscribe

People in power can keep insisting that things are going great, never mind reality — until they can’t. Get full access to Paul Krugman at paulkrugman.substack.com/subscribe

Another month, another war — this one looking like a complete c*******k. I spoke again with my go-to military historian, who among other things has thoughts about shoes. Here’s a transcript: . . . TRANSCRIPT: Paul Krugman in Conversation with Phillips O’Brien (recorded 3/12/26) Paul Krugman : Paul Krugman here with another conversation with my favorite military historian/expert, Phillips O’Brien ....