The Federal Reserve recently announced a 75-basis-point rate hike — the largest since 1994 — in an attempt to curb inflation. The Fed's aim is to thread the needle by cooling the economy just enough to rein in rising prices without inducing a recession. But will the Fed succeed, or is a recession on the horizon? And if an economic downturn is coming, how severe will it be? To answer those questions and get a sense of where the US economy is heading, I've brought my AEI colleague Michael Strain back on Political Economy.

Mike is the director of Economic Policy Studies and the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He's also the author of the 2020 book, The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).

Moore's law, which states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years, has fueled rapid computing gains since the mid-20th century. But will this law last forever? Today's guest, Neil Thompson, thinks its end is near. I've invited Neil on the podcast to explain why Moore's Law may be coming to an end and what that means for productivity growth and continued innovation.

Neil is an innovation scholar in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a research scientist at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and an associate member of the Broad Institute.

When America endeavors to tackle an ambitious project, we speak in terms of moonshots or a "Manhattan Project for X." The assumption is that vast government resources, directed toward some objective, can yield results on the scale of the Moon landing or the atom bomb. But federal research funding is more complicated than throwing dollars at our problems. And with Congress poised to inject American science policy with an adrenaline shot of funding, I've brought Tony Mills back on Political Economy to discuss the bills working their way through the House and Senate.

Tony is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies the federal government’s role in scientific research and innovation, as well as how to integrate scientific expertise into our governing institutions.

From job interviews to college admissions, identifying and allocating talent plays a big role in the modern economy. But what is talent? And how well can we pick it out from a quick conversation or a glance at a resume? Returning to Political Economy to answer those questions is Tyler Cowen.

Tyler holds the Holbert L. Harris chair in economics at George Mason University. He’s a columnist at Bloomberg Opinion and co-writes the popular economics blog, Marginal Revolution. A prolific author, his previous books include Stubborn Attachments, The Complacent Class, Average is Over, and The New York Times bestseller The Great Stagnation. Tyler’s new book, co-written with Daniel Gross is Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World.

In the field of economic history, the causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution loom large. Competing theories point to the role of institutions, scientific achievements, and bourgeois ideas. Setting aside the origins of industrialization, another open question concerns the mechanisms by which modern economic growth emerged. To delve into that question, I've brought on W. Walker Hanlon, whose work suggests the engineering profession played a key role.

Walker is an associate professor in the department of economics at Northwestern University. Among his thought-provoking works in economic history is a recent working paper, "The Rise of the Engineer: Inventing the Professional Inventor During the Industrial Revolution."

America's kids have been greatly affected by the pandemic, from canceled sports seasons to constant academic disruption. And at the same time, parents are caught up in bitter disputes over masking and critical race theory in schools. To get a better sense of the education challenges we face coming out of the pandemic, as well as the reforms that will help us meet those challenges, I've brought on Rick Hess.

Rick is my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, where he is a senior fellow and director of Education Policy Studies. Among Rick's recent work on K-12 and higher education issues is "Education after the Pandemic," written for the winter 2022 issue of National Affairs.

Before Elon Musk was the world's wealthiest man, founder of a rocket company, and owner of Twitter, he was best known as one of the founders of PayPal. Other PayPal alumni went on to found companies like YouTube, Yelp, and LinkedIn. And the "don" of the PayPal Mafia, Peter Thiel, is now known for his political activism and contributions to Republican campaigns. So what can we learn about Musk and Thiel—and about Silicon Valley—from the early history of PayPal? To find out, I'm joined by Jimmy Soni.

Jimmy is an award-winning author of three books. His first two, co-authored with Rob Goodman, are Rome's Last Citizen, a biography of Cato the Younger, and A Mind at Play, a biography of Claude Shannon. His latest is The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, released earlier this year.

Last year, Facebook rebranded itself as Meta, signaling its shift from traditional social media to a big bet on the so-called metaverse. This network of 3D, online spaces is accessed through virtual reality headsets like Meta's Oculus and promises to revolutionize internet communications. But is there substance behind the hype, or is the metaverse just a fad? And if virtual reality worlds are here to stay, what do policymakers need to know about them? To answer those questions, I've brought Mark Jamison back on the podcast.

Mark is the director of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business and a nonresident senior fellow here at the American Enterprise Institute. Over the past several months, Mark has been writing about the metaverse and the challenges it faces.

In the early 19th century, English textile workers calling themselves "Luddites" destroyed machinery in an effort to save their jobs from automation. And two centuries later, those who resist technological change are still called Luddites. In the 2020 book The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel tells the history of textiles, including the Luddite movement. And in her 1998 book, The Future and Its Enemies, she describes the "stasist" view behind Luddism, as well as its natural antipode, dynamism. To discuss how this framework can help us understand the current moment, I've brought Virginia on the podcast.

Virginia is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University. She is the author of The Future and Its Enemies, The Substance of Style, and The Power of Glamour. Her latest is The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.

When economists set out to measure economic growth and progress over time, one challenge is accounting for striking differences in the quality of goods. Computers, cell phones, and cars on the market today are not easily comparable to those available in 1990. But over the centuries, remarkably little has changed about the common construction nail. For that reason, today's guest explores American economic history through the story of nails. Studying nail production and costs over the past three centuries, Dan Sichel joins this episode of "Political Economy" to explain what we can learn from the humble nail.

Dan is a professor of economics at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and the author of "The Price of Nails since 1695: A Window into Economic Change."