What’s the role of a university in a democratic society? What responsibility do universities have to foster the public good, and what responsibilities does the public have to support centers of education and research? 

These have become some of the most fraught and pressing questions in our current moment. But of course, they’re also timeless questions — ones that are as old as the United States itself. 

On this episode, Mark explores these questions (and more) with literary scholar Kevin McLaughlin and historian Karin Wulf. In addition to having thought deeply on just these types of issues, Kevin and Karin are also the co-chairs of “Brown 2026,” an initiative marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. and exploring the past and future role of universities in a democratic society. 

Guests on this episode:

• Kevin McLaughlin is a literary scholar and director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study at Brown. 
• Karin Wulf is a historian and director and librarian of the John Carter Brown Library.

Learn more about Brown 2026. 

Transcript coming soon to our website.

On this episode, Mark talks with two guests to try and understand why, despite growing right populist movements emerging and winning elections in countries around the world, the left seems to be stalling. It’s a simple question with an incredibly complex answer. Hopefully, though, these two guests will help you to see both the question and its possible answers in a new light. 

Guests on this episode:

• Björn Bremer: political scientist at Central European University, John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) at Harvard University, and author of “Austerity from the Left: Social Democratic Parties in the Shadow of the Great Recession”
• Paul Pierson: professor of political science at UC Berkeley and author of, most recently, “The American Political Economy Politics, Markets, and Power”  

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On this episode, Mark Blyth talks with Małgorzata Mazurek, a historian, associate professor of Polish Studies at Columbia University, and author of the forthcoming book “The Economics of Hereness: The Polish Origins of Global Developmentalism 1918-1968.”

Mazurek explores how, between World Wars I and II, a group of thinkers led by economists Michał Kalecki and Ludwik Landau began to re-envision Poland’s economy – and future. Their work, and Mazurek tells it, threatened many of the assumptions held by those in power about economic development in the mid-20th century, and would go on to influence thinkers around the world in the decades to come. 

In telling the story of these thinkers, Mazurek also recounts a fascinating moment in Poland’s history, when a unique confluence of attitudes towards trade, immigration, and ethnic diversity created a laboratory for new economic ideas. 

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In this episode, Mark Blyth talks with two inequality experts to try and understand something that’s been bugging him for years.

It goes like this: inequality has profound effects on our economy, society, and lives. It has also been growing, and today is at historically high levels. Given all that, why does inequality never seem to be a topic around which we organize our politics? 

Too complicated? Too boring? Too unsolvable? 

The answers that Mark got made him rethink the question itself, and hopefully will make you see inequality in a new light, too. 

Guests on this episode:

• Charlotte Cavaille is an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and author of “Fair Enough? Support for Redistribution in the Age of Inequality”.
• Branko Milanovic is a senior scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at the CUNY Graduate Center.
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To state the obvious, there are many hurdles to addressing the climate crisis in a meaningful way. However, there’s been one relatively bright spot on this front in the last decade: the price of renewable energy — particularly solar and wind power — has dropped dramatically. By many measures, they’re now cheaper to produce than fossil fuels. 

So does that mean when it comes to a “green transition” can we just sit back and let the market take care of it? 

According to Brett Christophers, a professor at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University and author of the new book “The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet”: absolutely not.

On this episode, Mark and Brett discuss the many reasons why cheap renewable energy production won’t lead to renewables dominating the energy market. In doing so, they also put the entire energy economy under a microscope and challenge the notion that the private sector will ever be able to lead us through a green transition.

Learn more about and purchase “The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet”

Watch Brett’s October 2024 talk at the Rhodes Center

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This is a new experiment we’re trying at the Rhodes Center Podcast. 

From time to time, going forward, instead of focusing on one expert and their latest research, Mark will take a deeper dive into one issue (or one question) that’s been bothering him. 

Future episodes will examine the politics of immigration and the persistence of inequality. But the first episode in this new series will explore a topic especially near and dear to Mark: inflation. Specifically, the stories we tell about what causes inflation, how those stories affect our efforts to curb it, and who wins and loses depending on which stories our leaders believe. 

In the first half of this episode, Mark talks with economist Nicolò Fraccaroli about a book he and Mark wrote called “Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers” (coming out in Spring 2025). 

In the second half, Mark talks with economist Claudia Sahm about the history of inflation, the role central banks play in it, and what’s lost when we try to take politics and politicians out of the inflation debate. 

(One thing to note: both of these conversations were recorded before the election, but the ideas explored in these conversations are just as relevant now as ever.)

Guests on this episode:

• Nicolò Fraccaroli is an economist at the World Bank
• Claudia Sahm is Chief Economist for New Century Advisors and former Section Chief at the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors

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Remember the supply chain problems of 2020 and 2021? The story we were told was that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the global economy's ability to make and transport goods of every type imaginable: Surgical masks. Car parts. Infant formula. 

But as New York Times' global economic correspondent Peter Goodman explains in his new book, “How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain,” the story is more complicated than that. 

On this episode, Goodman and Mark Blyth discuss how, over decades, consulting firms and shareholders built a system that drove up profits but imperiled our economy, ultimately making COVID-related supply shocks (and the inflation that followed) much worse than they needed to be. Furthermore, if Goodman is right, it’s only a matter of time before we risk running out of everything again.

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When it comes to governing our economy, estimates rule the day. We want to know what effect a policy might have on the government’s budget, on economic growth, on employment…in the next 1 year, 5 years, 10 years…you get the idea. If you want to make (or critique) public policy, you better have numbers to back it up. 

To get those types of estimates, economists and politicians often rely on institutions like the Office for Budget Responsibility in the UK, or the Congressional Budget Office in the United States. As a result, their estimates and fiscal projections form crucial data points in our modern politics and policymaking. 

We like to think that these estimates and projections (not to mention, the people who make them) come from somewhere outside of our partisan politics. That while our values might be debatable, the numbers, at least, aren’t.

But, as Mark Blyth’s guest on this episode explains: that idea is a fantasy, and to the extent it obscures the values and politics that are baked into organizations like the Office of Budget Responsibility, it’s a dangerous one. 

On this episode, Mark Blyth talks with Ben Clift, author of “The Office for Budget Responsibility and the Politics of Technocratic Economic Governance.” In it, he pulls back the curtain on Britain's Office for Budget Responsibility, and reveals the hidden processes and ideologies that shape the estimates and projections that come out of it. In doing so, he shows how the OBR – and other institutions like it – are much more political than they appear. 

Learn more about and purchase “The Office for Budget Responsibility and the Politics of Technocratic Economic Governance”

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When you think of high-end luxury commodities, you might imagine yachts, private jets, or even whole islands. But in the last few years, another commodity has started to receive a lot of attention from the world’s wealthiest people: citizenship. 

With enough money, people can buy their way into becoming a citizen of a growing list of countries around the world. While this trend has garnered lots of attention in the last few years, as our guest on this episode explains, there’s so much more to the story than meets the eye. 

Kristin Surak is a sociologist and author of the new book “The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires.” In it, she pulls back the curtain on this rarified luxury market — who’s buying, who’s selling, and the complex web of middlemen that make it all work. 

On this episode, Mark Blyth talks with Surak about what might be called the “citizenship industrial complex”’ and what it says about our global economy. 

• Learn more about and purchase “The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires”
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Listeners of the Rhodes Center Podcast have probably heard of companies like Black Rock, State Street and Vanguard. You’ve also probably heard how, through ETFs and other investment products, these types of investment firms own a staggering share of the world’s biggest companies (20-25% of the S&P 500 by some estimates). 

But in this episode, you’ll hear about a whole other side of asset management; one that’s more opaque, and possibly much more influential (and corrosive) to our daily lives.  

Brett Christophers is a geographer and professor at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research, and author of the new book “Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World.” In it, he explains how asset management companies like Blackstone and Macquarie Asset Management do more than passively own shares. Over the last few decades, they've begun to invest in and actively run a growing portion of our infrastructure and essential services: hospitals, care homes, water treatment plants, bridges and even parking meters. 

On this episode, he talks with Mark Blyth about the economics of this new subspecies of asset management, and how they’ve begun to reshape our society, economy and planet in ways we don’t fully understand. 

Learn about and purchase “Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World”

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