Inflation is back, and its impact can be felt everywhere, from the grocery store to the mortgage market to the results of elections around the world. What's more, tariffs and trade wars threaten to accelerate inflation again. Yet the conventional wisdom about inflation is stuck in the past. Since the 1970s, there has only really been one playbook for fightin ... Show More
Yesterday
Leah C. Stokes, "The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet" (MIT Press, 2026)
They were perhaps an unlikely trio: professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our time. In The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthoo ... Show More
36m 9s
Sep 5
Robert Shum, "Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)
Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) tackles a critical question. Why has the world struggled so much to coordinate policy to address climate change, despite political and scientific consensus? D ... Show More
25m 23s
Sep 4
Chika Watanabe, "Play to Survive: Disaster Preparedness Along the Ring of Fire" (Stanford UP, 2026)
We live in a fragile world. This much is evident as stories abound of natural disasters that wipe out communities in an instant. How can we survive the future on such a planet, amid intensifying climate change? This question is particularly poignant along the Ring of Fire, a tect ... Show More
55m 39s
Mar 2025
The Truth about Tariffs: The Ultimate Guide to Busting Inflation Myths
Notes from James: I’ve been seeing a ton of misinformation lately about tariffs and inflation, so I had to set the record straight. People assume tariffs drive prices up across the board, but that’s just not how economics works. Inflation happens when money is printed, not when c ... Show More
25m 27s
Nov 2021
187 - The return of inflation
It’s no secret that we’ve been living in inflationary times, but inflation is always the harbinger of higher interest rates and if they were to go up, what happens? Lessons from Zillow, the problem of tomorrow's big data, yesterday's invented barter, and the amount of debt out th ... Show More
29m 47s