Tim Lee is the author of Full Stack Economics and one of my favorite reads on business and the economy. He’s also a parent to three children under the age of seven, and a major reason he quit his full-time journalism job to go independent — even though he knew it would reduce his income — was so he could maintain a flexible schedule and be more available to attend to the needs of his children. Tim recently wrote about this choice, and he wrote a follow-up piece in which he spoke with 20 other fathers whose wives are the primary breadwinners, and who either stepped back from work or quit entirely to raise a family. I had an interesting conversation with Tim about his experience, and what he thinks other families can learn from it. I hope you find it interesting.

Retired professional poker player Annie Duke says quitting well — promptly realizing when your efforts aren’t working and redirecting resources to something more likely to be effective — is a badly underrated virtue. In this episode and in her new book Quit, Annie shares good advice and practical strategies to overcome our bias against quitting and to more quickly stop doing things that aren’t working for us.

Visit www.joshbarro.com for a transcript of this episode and more links.

Peter Suderman is back by popular demand to talk about cocktails for fall. We talk about Negroni variations, the right sour drinks for sweater weather, best practices for hot and room-temperature cocktails (yes, that's a thing), and Peter's recipe for homemade Pumpkin Spice Old Fashioneds that contain real pumpkin.

One note: This is the first episode of the Very Serious podcast that has a longer, premium version for paying subscribers to Very Serious. If you're already a paying subscriber, you can get that longer episode in any podcast player except Spotify. You'll only have to set this up once: go to joshbarro.com/account, click on the option to set up your podcast player, and you'll be good to go for this and any future premium shows. And if you're not a premium subscriber, you can become one by going to joshbarro.com.

Cheers!

This week's episode of Very Serious contains some un-bleeped profanity.

Have you noticed that advice columns are everywhere now? Have you noticed that most of the questions are fake, and yet you cannot stop reading them? Why? My friend Ben Dreyfuss has been getting into the advice business himself, taking the questions from popular advice columns and offering his own blunter, funnier, better advice. I invited Ben to talk with me about the advice column as a format, and the perverse incentives that lead publications to run questions everyone knows are fake. And Ben and I considered some letters together, just like I do in my own advice/Q&A column, which I call the Mayonnaise Clinic.

Visit joshbarro.com for episode notes, links and a transcript, and to sign up for the Very Serious newsletter.

Remember the Joe Biden and Barack Obama friendship bracelets from the 2020 campaign? That — and the whole Obama-Biden bromance meme — was cringe, and it was also an oversimplification of a much more interesting story. Gabriel Debenedetti, national correspondent for New York magazine, talks with me about their two-decade relationship that has shaped American politics in the 21st century. Gabe's new book (out Tuesday) is called The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama. We talked about Obama's behind-the-scenes work to set up Hillary Clinton as the 2016 nominee, effectively boxing out Joe Biden; Biden's reputation for gaffes and his newsmaking interview endorsing gay marriage before Obama did; and Biden's relationship with his own vice president, Kamala Harris.

For a transcript of this interview and to subscribe to our newsletter, go to www.joshbarro.com.

“I think remote work really is a general purpose technology… It's more comparable to electrification. It's more comparable to the invention of the internal combustion engine or automobiles or something like that in the way that it's going to ripple through everything and it's going to have these longstanding big impacts." This week, I talk with Adam Ozimek, an economist whose recent work focuses on the intersection between labor markets and housing, about how the sharp increase in partial or fully remote work is transformative and simply very important for the ways it will change how many parts of the economy operate.

Visit www.joshbarro.com or a transcript of this episode and links.

Lis Smith is a veteran Democratic communications consultant, best known as communications director for the Pete Buttigieg presidential campaign. Her 'more is more' instinct about engaging with the media was an essential component of the strategy to bring Mayor Pete out of nowhere and turn him into a major contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination — much to the irritation of various US senators he leapfrogged in Iowa and other contests. Fittingly, she has a revealing new memoir, 'Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story,' about her career highlights and lowlights working for Pete, Barack Obama, Bill de Blasio, Andrew Cuomo and others. She shares favorite stories from the book, and also offers ideas about how an increasingly insular party can re-learn how to connect with ordinary voters.

Nearly five months into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Western governments have a problem: despite international sanctions and rebukes for Russia's actions, the world's reliance (especially Europe's) on Russian energy is sustaining Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The world is already feeling the effects of the invasion on energy prices, and now Europe has announced it will impose an embargo on Russian oil by the end of the year — a move that would significantly impede Russia’s ability to benefit from high oil prices, but would also further constrict Europe’s energy supplies going into what could be a cold winter. If actually implemented as described, the embargo is also likely to drive the global price of oil far higher, triggering recessions around the world. Because of those… problems… world leaders from the G7 have been discussing possible solutions.

I talk with Margarita Balmaceda, a professor of diplomacy and international relations at Seton Hall University and an expert on the energy trade in Eastern Europe, about those ideas, whether they might work, how Europe allowed itself to get so dependent on Russia despite manifest signs of Russia’s unreliability as an energy partner.

Visit www.joshbarro.com for a transcript of this episode.

A lot of things aren’t working quite like they’re supposed to these days, and air travel is a prime example. Travelers are getting increasingly unreliable airline operations with more flights delayed and canceled, and a more chaotic experience at the airport even when flights go on time — at a moment when fares are very expensive and still rising. And as with so many problems like this, there are multiple reasons for why this is happening.

Brian Sumers, editor-at-large at the travel industry publication Skift, walks me through a lot of the “why”— listen to hear our analysis and Brian’s best advice for what you as a passenger can do to manage through it as best you can.

Find show notes, a transcript, discussion and more at www.joshbarro.com

Financial economist Allison Schrager says you can't have nice things anymore — or at least, you can't have all of them, not in this interest rate environment. After 40 years of falling interest rates, they're sharply rising again, and those higher rates force more discipline on everyone: not just consumers, but businesses and governments, all of which need to confront the higher cost of capital and decide what's really worth spending on. This is the intended effect of the Federal Reserve’s rate-hiking campaign: Excess consumer demand is fueling inflation, and getting people to cool it a little will hopefully take some of the upward pressure off prices. In some ways, this discipline can be good, if it forces businesses and governments to figure out how they're inefficient and what they can do to spend more wisely. And it's taking the wind out of some of the most annoying investing bubbles of the last decade, including crypto. But it also means pain for consumers, and if the Fed doesn't get things exactly right, it could drive us into recession. In this episode, Allison discusses whether you should hold your breath for the return of sub-3-percent mortgages (no) and the pitfalls and surprising benefits of our new world of higher rates.