History of Economic Species

History of Economic Species

By Ken EaronSociety & CultureDocumentaryHistoryPhilosophy
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History of Economic Species episodes

  • Chapter One: The Birth of Homo Economicus, part 1

    Can a species be invented? And if someone did it, why?

    In 1836, a zoo opened near Manchester, Charles Dickens published his first book, and a man was born in London who wanted one thing: to be rich, and then richer. He didn't evolve like the rest of us. The philosopher John Stuart Mill invented him — and called him Homo Economicus.

    What kind of job needs a man like that? Why build a hero out of greed? And what does Dickens's A Christmas Carol have to do with it?

    Along the way we meet David Ricardo and his theory of industry and machines, the Corn Laws that divided Victorian Britain, and the Cambridge scientist William Whewell, who said the whole thing wasn't science at all. Can a greedy man be the key to a fairer world? Mill thought so.

    History of Economic Species is a podcast on the history of economic thought. It tells the story of the evolution of its main character, Homo Economicus. This is the first chapter._

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      • Music and audio

      • "Good Times" by Podington Bear, licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0)
      • "Florentiner Marsch, Op. 214" by Julius Fučík (1907), performed by the United States Marine Band, a work in the public domain
      • "Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, no. 2" (1832) by Frédéric Chopin, performed by Aya Higuchi, a work in the public domain
      • "Frankincense and Myrrh" by Scott Buckley, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
      • "Grand Septet in Eb, Op. 62 – Allegro Vivace" by Conradin Kreutzer (1816), performed by the European Archive, a work in the public domain
      • "Step Over It", "Delham Corner", "Gallant Fantasie" and "Toaudella" by Blue Dot Sessions, licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
      • Excerpt from "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, narrated by Simon Stanhope (Bitesized Audio): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZk9vpJkeNA

        • Sources quoted in this episode

        • Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. 1843.
        • Whewell, William. "Review of Richard Jones, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth: Rent." British Critic 10 (1831): 41–61.
          • 24 min
        • History of Economic Species - Series Trailer

          Over two centuries, economists have understood human behaviour in radically different ways. Each version of the economic man — Homo Economicus — was shaped by the politics, science, and ideological conflicts of its time. And with each version, the policies governing our lives changed too.

          This podcast tells that story as a journey through the personalities, rivalries, and intellectual battles that built the discipline whose assumptions we all live inside today.

          4 min

        About History of Economic Species

        From the publisher's feed

        Every science has a mirror. Step in front of economics' and you'll see a very particular kind of human staring back.