Over the past year it's become clear that traditional economics doesn't necessarily do a great job of accounting for real world problems like transport gridlock or irrational decision makers. For instance, sawmills' first response to the Covid crisis was to cut back production because they were scarred by the memories of the 2008 housing bust. Container shipping issues have caused widespread supply chain issues, and so on and so on. Enter complexity economics, which views the economy as the outcome of decisions by sometimes irrational participants who are constantly interacting and learning from each other. In this version of economics, nothing is ever stable or at equilibrium and everything is always changing. Brian Arthur, economist at the Santa Fe Institute and visiting researcher at PARC, explains why complexity economics might be the perfect way of viewing the world right now.

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Inflation is running hot these days. But, even when the official measures were considerably cooler, there were many people who were skeptical and insisted that inflation was running hot and rampant. It turns out, nobody really experiences inflation similarly, and one's own consumption and behavioral patterns will have a big impact on their outlook. On this episode, we speak with Berkeley professor Ulrike Malmendier, whose work has shown how one's behavior (where you shop) and history (what conditions were like earlier in your life) can inform views and perceptions of inflation for years.

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Vlad Zamfir is something of a crypto legend. The researcher was early into Bitcoin, and he was part of the Ethereum Foundation before it launched. He's still an active researcher in the space, but he believes the people operating in it get some basic premises wrong. One of the basic premises that people preach is the idea of database immutability. He argues that, in order for crypto to become more influential, it needs to take governance seriously and find ways to be in compliance with generally accepted ideas about the law.

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One of the big stories in the economy right now is the high number of unfilled job openings in the leisure and hospitality sectors. There are numerous theories for why these businesses have had a hard time hiring. And there are a lot of questions regarding how long this will last or whether this will be a new, more permanent condition. To better understand what's going on, we spoke with Kurt Alexander, the CFO of Omni Hotels & Resorts, about what they're seeing and what they're doing to bring in employees.

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Mainstream economics has come under attack lately. People have begun questioning its understanding of things like inflation, monetary policy, deficits, and how best to get out of a downturn. Steve Keen, an independent renegade economist, has been preaching this for a long time. And he believes the whole profession needs to be chucked. On this episode, we talk about some of the big failures he sees in economist thinking, and he is particularly energized by the subject of climate change. He also deplores the economic consensus, and says the way to think about it needs a total rethink, resulting in much more dramatic action than what is currently being proposed by the mainstream.

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Bookstores typically aren't seen as the most attractive businesses in the year 2021. Add in the pandemic, and that makes it even tougher. And if you're in Texas, dealing with multiple blackouts, then it gets even harder than that. Our guest on this episode did all of that. We speak with the author Ryan Holiday, the author of several books including The Daily Stoic and Ego Is the Enemy, as well as Conspiracy, a book about the takedown of Gawker. He talks about his new bookshop in Bastrop Texas, and all of the various difficulties he's faced over the last year in running the operation.

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There's a lot of hype about so-called DeFi (decentralized finance) these days, and much of it is based on enthusiasm over what can be built on Ethereum. Ethereum is seen as easier to build on for multiple reasons. But the Bitcoin world is increasingly interested in some of the same mechanics and similar types of projects. On this Odd Lots, we speak with Alyse Killeen, the founder Managing Partner at Stillmark, a Bitcoin-focused VC fund, on what's being built there, and how its vision of DeFi is similar and different to what's being built on Ethereum.

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By now you've no doubt heard about DeFi: the hot vision of crypto that aims to disrupt traditional lending and fundraising. But the space remains really difficult to grasp. There's all kinds of jargon — Automated Market Makers, Impermanent Loss, etc. — and the markets don't quite operate like traditional markets do. So how does it all really work? Where's it going? And what will it all be used for beyond speculation? On this episode, we speak with Tom Schmidt of Dragonfly Capital to break it all down.

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The world's central bankers are facing challenges the likes of which they've never seen before. We're in a unique moment for the macroeconomy, coming out of the pandemic crisis at a rapid clip. What's more, the nature of money is changing. Cryptocurrencies are on the rise. More commerce is becoming digital. The pandemic showed weaknesses in the existing payments system. On this week's episode, we speak with Hyun Song Shin, the Economic Adviser and Head of Research at the Bank for International Settlements on the future of central bank digital currencies, and other challenges they face right now.

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You can't talk about the problems in logistics and supply chains right now without talking about trucking. Once goods are unloaded from ships, trucks are the dominant mode of domestic freight. However, unlike shipping, the trucking industry was something of a mess even before the pandemic: prone to extreme labor problems and rapid boom/bust cycles. On this episode, we speak with Craig Fuller, the CEO of the information and data firm FreightWaves, to discuss the current and long-term state of the industry.

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