The Rhodes Center Podcast with Mark Blyth

In 1849, the historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle referred to economics as the “dismal science.” The pejorative stuck, and is still slung by critics of the field today.  But what if economics is worse than “dismal”? What it’s…harmful?  George DeMartino’s recent book, “The Tragic Science: How Economists Cause Harm (Even as They Aspire to Do Good)”, makes exactly that claim: that econo...

On this episode Mark Blyth talks with this year’s invited speaker at the Rhodes Center’s annual 'Ethics of Capitalism’ lecture series, journalist D​​avid de Jong.  David’s groundbreaking book “Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties”, looks at the individuals and companies that accumulated unimaginable wealth under the Third Reich. Through his incredible inv...

The history of international politics since 1945. The role of values in the global economy. The future of America’s relationship with China. All three of these would be ambitious topics for a work of political economy. But combining them? That’s not for the faint of heart.   However, that’s exactly what Sir Paul Tucker has done in his new book, “Global Discord: Values and Power in a Frac...

One concept that comes up a lot on the Rhodes Center Podcast: the idea of the 'free market’. The idea, as you might know it, begins with John Locke, is fashioned fully by Adam Smith, and is delivered to us gift-wrapped (after some delays) by the likes of Hayek and Friedman in the mid 20th century. But as our guest on this episode explains, the idea of the free market is hardly so straightforward....

On the last episode of the podcast, Mark talked with two experts regarding the Inflation Reduction Act, and the political and logistical challenges of accelerating a ‘Green Transition’ in the US.  Which makes for an interesting comparison to our topic today. Because these days, when people want to critique how slow and ineffective the US government can be, they often compare it to another cou...

Over the last two years, if you had asked Mark Blyth if the Biden administration would ever do anything meaningful to fight climate change, he’d have said “no.” These feelings only got stronger in 2021, after the Democrats failed to pass their first big attempt at climate legislation, known as ‘Build Back Better.’ But then, something changed. The Inflation Reduction Act became law. And despite the...

In the last few years, globalization has gotten an increasingly a bad rap. Whether because of increasing geopolitical tensions over high end computers chips, or the realization that when you outsource your manufacturing base it’s quite hard to make things in a hurry (see: the pandemic), people across the political spectrum are calling time on ‘make it there, ship it here.’  It seems that poli...

This episode is a little different than the type of conversation you normally have on the show.  Last year, Mark spoke with Oded Galor about his book The Journey of Humanity , a long-run take on why humanity changed so little for so long, and then all of sudden changed tremendously, mostly for the better.  It’s a fascinating idea, but of course nobody actually experiences that long-run j...

On this episode Mark talks with Oded Galor, Professor of Economics at Brown University, and author of the new book The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality .  In this book Oded survey’s 200,000 years of human history to create a theory for why societies and economies grew so slowly for so long – and why, starting about 200 years ago, that began to change very rapidly.&nbs...

There’s a standard story economists and historians use to explain the global economy over the last 100 years: there was the gold standard, which gave way to the Bretton Woods system, which gave way to “neoliberal globalization”.  But on this episode of the Rhodes Center Podcast, Mark talks with someone whose work challenges this story by attacking its foundational myth with deep archival work...

From 2019 to 2021, Frances Haugen worked as a Product Manager in Facebook’s Civic Integrity Department. During that time she got an inside view into how Facebook’s algorithms are deliberately designed to influence its users. She also saw something deeply worrying: that this influence was often used to grow Facebook’s profits at the expense of users' safety and wellbeing.  In 2021 she anonymou...

In the last few years we’ve seen critiques of free trade from across the political spectrum. Trump focused on the US-China trade imbalance, while the left focuses its ire on free trade agreements themselves.  It’s, of course, not the first time that protectionist ideas have found currency in a globalizing economy.   In the late 18th century a theory known as ‘neomercantilism’ began...

On this episode Mark talks with Dr. Fiona Hill about her new book There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century . A foreign policy expert and key witness in President Trump’s first impeachment trial, she reflects on growing up in the deindustrializing North of England in the 1980s and how that upbringing attuned her to developments in both Russia and America that w...

The Rhodes Center Podcast explores the most important issues in finance and economics through straightforward, candid conversations with the world’s leading experts. The show is hosted by Mark Blyth, political economist and Director of the Rhodes Center, at the Watson Institute at Brown University.  On this episode Mark talks with Manuela Moschella about the recent transformations to central...

On this episode Mark talks with Elizabeth Popp Berman, Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, and author of Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Public Policy.  In it, she explains how in the middle of the 20th century a new kind of economic thinking took hold among policymakers at all levels of government. It replaced bold visions of justice and e...

On this episode Mark talks  with Ron Schatz, Professor of History at Wesleyan University and author of the new book The Labor Board Crew. In it, Ron  tells the story of a groups of young professionals who, during WWII, took on roles that hadn’t really existed before: they were hired as mediators, recruited by the government to help end strikes at a time when the US government felt the country...

On this episode: a conversation with Claire Priest. Claire is a historian and Professor at Yale Law School, and author of the book Credit Nation: Property Laws and Institutions in Early America.  In it, she explains how even before the United States became a country, laws prioritizing access to credit set colonial America apart from the rest of the world. This reality didn’t just shape coloni...

The Rhodes Center Podcast explores some of the most important and complex issues in the world of finance and economics through straightforward, candid conversations. The show is hosted by Mark Blyth, political economist and Director of the Rhodes Center at Brown University.  On this episode Mark talks with Zsófia Barta and Alison Johnston, authors of the upcoming book Rating Politics: How Sov...

On this episode Mark talks with economist and Brown Professor John Friedman. They discuss why decreasing income inequality is good for economic growth, the challenge of assessing inflation risk on the heels of a global pandemic, and whether 'Bidenomics' is an evolution of Democratic economic policy or a genuine paradigm shift. You can watch the full video of this conversation here .

Most discussions about AI and the future of work tend to go in one of two directions: either excitement for a ‘post-work’ utopia, or alarm over the end of work. On this episode Mark talks with Aaron Benanav, an economic historian, postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin, and author of ‘Automation and the Future of Work,’ about why this whole debate sort of misses the point. You ca...

On this episode Mark talks with Albena Azmanova, IWM Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Human Studies in Vienna and author of ‘Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia’. In the book, Albena explains how precarity (not inequality) is the central driver of our current political, economic, and social woes. Mark and Albena explore the roots of ec...

On this episode Mark talks with economist Pavlina Tcherneva about a policy proposal that’s bubbling under in the US policy debate: the creation of a federal jobs guarantee. Pavlina is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Bard College and author of 'The Case for a Job Guarantee.' As Pavlina describes it, a federal jobs guarantee isn’t just a good idea; in the face of our economic, environmental,...

On this episode Mark talks with Thea Riofrancos. Thea is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Providence College, and author of two essential reads on the challenges facing global left movements today: 'Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador' and 'A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal.' Mark and Thea discuss why the Left in Ecuador fractured und...

On this episode Mark talks with Luke Messac, physician, historian, and author of ‘No More to Spend: Neglect and the Construction of Scarcity in Malawi's History of Health Care.’ They discuss how Malawi’s politics over the last century has - like in many countries - been defined by a rhetoric of scarcity and austerity. As Luke shows though, this scarcity is more often the product of political decis...

On this episode Mark talks with economist Dan Davies about his book ‘Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World.’ Dan and Mark look at some of the great scams of modern history to explore how fraud works, why it persists, and what it can teach us about modern economies.