The Rhodes Center Podcast with Mark Blyth

By Rhodes Center

What's The Rhodes Center Podcast with Mark Blyth about?

A podcast from the Rhodes Center for International Finance and Economics at the Watson Institute at Brown University. Hosted by political economist and director of the Rhodes Center, Mark Blyth.

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The Rhodes Center Podcast with Mark Blyth episodes:

04.30.2024
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy citizenship abroad
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...
03.25.2024
How asset managers came to own everything and you failed to notice
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...
12.08.2023
The business side of fighting climate change
On this podcast, you’ve heard from a range of experts about the policies and politics of decarbonization. But what does the fight against climate change look like from the business side? Sophie Purdom is the Founder and Managing Partner of...
11.21.2023
An Immigrant Economist in the Land of Inequality: A Conversation with Sir Angus Deaton
In 2015, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a paper that revealed something startling: an increase in mortality rates in the United States among white middle-aged men and women between the years of 1999 and 2013. They published a...
10.21.2023
The new politics of growth and stagnation (part 3): houses, micro states, finance, carbon
This is part three in our companion series to the book “Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation” (co-edited by Mark Blyth, Lucio Baccaro and Jonas Pontusson). On this episode, Mark talks with four contributors for the book:...
09.22.2023
The new politics of growth and stagnation (part 2): growth models at scale
This is part two in our companion series to the book “Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation” (co-edited by Mark Blyth, Lucio Baccaro and Jonas Pontusson). In part one (which, if you haven’t listened to, we’d recommend...
08.10.2023
The new politics of growth and stagnation (part 1)
This is the first in a three-part series on Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation, a book co-edited by Mark Blyth, Lucio Baccaro, and Jonas Pontusson. Using examples from around the world, the book offers a new...
06.06.2023
Does economics do more harm than good? And if it does, how would we know harm when we see it?
In 1849, the historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle referred to economics as the “dismal science.” The pejorative stuck, and is still slung by critics of the field today. But what if economics is worse than “dismal”? What it’s…harmful? George DeMartino’s...
04.29.2023
Nazi billionaires, capitalist ethics, and other notable contradictions
On this episode Mark Blyth talks with this year’s invited speaker at the Rhodes Center’s annual 'Ethics of Capitalism’ lecture series, journalist David de Jong. David’s groundbreaking book “Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties”, looks at the...
04.14.2023
A wee podcast on the last 50 - and next 50 - years of the global world order
The history of international politics since 1945. The role of values in the global economy. The future of America’s relationship with China. All three of these would be ambitious topics for a work of political economy. But combining them? That’s...
03.31.2023
The ‘free market’ is a fever dream and Adam Smith wasn’t in it
One concept that comes up a lot on the Rhodes Center Podcast: the idea of the 'free market’. The idea, as you might know it, begins with John Locke, is fashioned fully by Adam Smith, and is delivered to us...
03.10.2023
State power in China: more "Parks and Rec" than command and control?
On the last episode of the podcast, Mark talked with two experts regarding the Inflation Reduction Act, and the political and logistical challenges of accelerating a ‘Green Transition’ in the US. Which makes for an interesting comparison to our topic...
02.17.2023
What Mark Blyth Got Wrong About Bidenomics and Climate Change
Over the last two years, if you had asked Mark Blyth if the Biden administration would ever do anything meaningful to fight climate change, he’d have said “no.” These feelings only got stronger in 2021, after the Democrats failed to...
12.16.2022
Why Undoing Globalization is Going to Be a Painful Affair
In the last few years, globalization has gotten an increasingly a bad rap. Whether because of increasing geopolitical tensions over high end computers chips, or the realization that when you outsource your manufacturing base it’s quite hard to make things...
11.04.2022
This Week in ‘Ask a Philosopher’: Is the ‘American Dream' Dead?
This episode is a little different than the type of conversation you normally have on the show. Last year, Mark spoke with Oded Galor about his book The Journey of Humanity, a long-run take on why humanity changed so little...
07.11.2022
How Did We End Up with the Idea of a Growing Economy? ‘The Journey of Humanity’ with Oded Galor
On this episode Mark talks with Oded Galor, Professor of Economics at Brown University, and author of the new book The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality. In this book Oded survey’s 200,000 years of human history...
06.17.2022
What if I told you that international money is governed by no more than the beliefs of a handful of super-connected global elites…and yet there is no conspiracy. Would you be interested?
There’s a standard story economists and historians use to explain the global economy over the last 100 years: there was the gold standard, which gave way to the Bretton Woods system, which gave way to “neoliberal globalization”. But on this...
05.27.2022
Can Social Media and Democracy Co-exist? A Conversation with Frances Haugen
From 2019 to 2021, Frances Haugen worked as a Product Manager in Facebook’s Civic Integrity Department. During that time she got an inside view into how Facebook’s algorithms are deliberately designed to influence its users. She also saw something deeply...
04.08.2022
The Global Roots of Neomercantilism
In the last few years we’ve seen critiques of free trade from across the political spectrum. Trump focused on the US-China trade imbalance, while the left focuses its ire on free trade agreements themselves. It’s, of course, not the first...
03.11.2022
Fiona Hill on Deindustrialization, Despair and Demagoguery
On this episode Mark talks with Dr. Fiona Hill about her new book There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century. A foreign policy expert and key witness in President Trump’s first impeachment trial, she reflects...
02.25.2022
The Past, Present, and Contested Future of Central Banks
The Rhodes Center Podcast explores the most important issues in finance and economics through straightforward, candid conversations with the world’s leading experts. The show is hosted by Mark Blyth, political economist and Director of the Rhodes Center, at the Watson...
02.11.2022
‘How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Policy” with Elizabeth Popp Berman
On this episode Mark talks with Elizabeth Popp Berman, Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, and author of Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Public Policy. In it, she explains how in the middle...
01.28.2022
The Forgotten History of “The Labor Board Crew”: How Mediators at the US Labor Board Changed Organized Labor (and the World)
On this episode Mark talks with Ron Schatz, Professor of History at Wesleyan University and author of the new book The Labor Board Crew. In it, Ron  tells the story of a groups of young professionals who, during WWII, took...
12.08.2021
America Has Always Been a 'Credit Nation'
On this episode: a conversation with Claire Priest. Claire is a historian and Professor at Yale Law School, and author of the book Credit Nation: Property Laws and Institutions in Early America. In it, she explains how even before the...
10.01.2021
The Other Problem with Ratings Agencies
The Rhodes Center Podcast explores some of the most important and complex issues in the world of finance and economics through straightforward, candid conversations. The show is hosted by Mark Blyth, political economist and Director of the Rhodes Center at...
06.03.2021
'Bidenomics': Policy Change or Paradigm Shift?
On this episode Mark talks with economist and Brown Professor John Friedman. They discuss why decreasing income inequality is good for economic growth, the challenge of assessing inflation risk on the heels of a global pandemic, and whether 'Bidenomics' is...
04.08.2021
The Robots May Be Coming, But Probably Not for Your Job
Most discussions about AI and the future of work tend to go in one of two directions: either excitement for a ‘post-work’ utopia, or alarm over the end of work. On this episode Mark talks with Aaron Benanav, an economic...
03.16.2021
How Precarity Puts Capitalism on Edge
On this episode Mark talks with Albena Azmanova, IWM Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Human Studies in Vienna and author of ‘Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia’. In the book, Albena...
02.10.2021
Is Now the Time for a Federal Jobs Guarantee?
On this episode Mark talks with economist Pavlina Tcherneva about a policy proposal that’s bubbling under in the US policy debate: the creation of a federal jobs guarantee. Pavlina is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Bard College and author...
12.10.2020
The Left, Divided Over the Extraction Economy
On this episode Mark talks with Thea Riofrancos. Thea is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Providence College, and author of two essential reads on the challenges facing global left movements today: 'Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in...
11.22.2020
Austerity Myths and the Health of Nations: What Malawi Tells Us About the Construction of Scarcity
On this episode Mark talks with Luke Messac, physician, historian, and author of ‘No More to Spend: Neglect and the Construction of Scarcity in Malawi's History of Health Care.’ They discuss how Malawi’s politics over the last century has -...
11.16.2020
How Fraud Explains the Economy
On this episode Mark talks with economist Dan Davies about his book ‘Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World.’ Dan and Mark look at some of the great scams of modern history to explore how...
11.06.2020
Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?
On this episode Mark talks with political economist Brett Christophers. Brett’s a Professor at Uppsala University, and author of ‘Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?’. In the book, Brett explains how neoliberalism and financialization have...
08.07.2020
Why Does the EU Have a Legitimacy Problem?
In this episode Mark talks with Boston University Professor Vivien Schmidt. Schmidt is an expert in the political economy of the European Union, and one of the keenest analysts of its institutions. Her new book, ‘Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing...
07.15.2020
Do Deficits Matter? (MMT Explained)
On this episode Mark talks with Stephanie Kelton, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Stony Brook University and author of 'The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy'. Kelton is one of the leading...
06.25.2020
The Fraught, Complex, and Important 'Economics of Belonging'
On this episode Mark talks with Martin Sandbu, a journalist at the Financial Times and author of 'The Economics of Belonging.' In addition to having a great title, the book provides a penetrating explanation for why so many people have...
06.17.2020
Populism, or 'Anti-System Politics'?
On this episode Mark talks with Jonathan Hopkin, author of 'Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies.' Unlike most analyses of populism and the breakdown of party systems, Hopkin argues that the way countries' have governed their markets in...
06.12.2020
How US Hegemony Ends
On this episode Mark talks with Alex Cooley and Dan Nexon, authors of 'Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order.' Scholars and pundits have been predicting the US's decline as the singular world power since at least...
05.29.2020
Possibilities for a Post-Covid Economy
Megan Greene is an economist who actually sticks her head out the window, and takes real world observations as seriously as the models. For that reason (and many others), she’s currently a Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and...
05.15.2020
The First Globalist: Sandy Zipp Talks Wendell Willkie’s World
At a time when globalization is being contested by nationalists and battered by coronavirus, Mark talks to Samuel (Sandy) Zipp, Associate Professor of American Studies and Urban Studies at Brown, about the first American globalist: ex-Republican Presidential Candidate Wendell Willkie....
05.03.2020
The Corona Oil Shock
Something strange happened in late April: the price of oil went negative. This below-zero price tag didn’t last long, but it remains unusually cheap. And thanks to the coronavirus, it will likely stay that way for a while. In this...
04.27.2020
State Capacity, Growth Models, and Coronavirus in Latin America
In this episode, Mark talks with Jazmin Sierra, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame, who is a specialist in the political economies of Latin America. This interview was on the books before the coronavirus pandemic; Mark and Jazmin...
03.25.2020
'Leftism Reinvented' with Stephanie Mudge
For decades, left-leaning political parties were defined by their advocacy for the working class. But in the 1990s that started to change, as left voters were asked to adapt to a more technocratic, market-driven world and parties themselves changed, becoming...
03.12.2020
Experts and the National Interest: The Curious Case of China and the US
Between 2016 and 2018, relations between the United States and China went from focusing on engagement to competition to something bordering on threat management. If you think that's because of President Trump...you're wrong. On this episode Mark talks China, foreign...
03.04.2020
What’s Next? The Post-American Global Economy
First, there was Bretton Woods. Then, globalized neoliberalism. On this episode of the Rhodes Center Podcast, Mark and his guests ask: what’s next? Is the ‘American order’ over? And if not, how will we know when it is? Mark talks...
02.14.2020
Rethinking Economic Paternalism
On this episode Mark talks with Mario Rizzo, co-author of “Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy.” In the book, Rizzo makes the case that economists, policy makers, and psychologists have developed an overly restrictive view of ‘rational behavior,’...
12.09.2019
The 'Code of Capital' with Katharina Pistor
On this episode guest host and Watson Professor Nick Ziegler talks with Katharina Pistor, Professor at Columbia University Law School and author of “The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality”. They discuss how the law defines...
11.19.2019
Corporate Governance in the Digital Age
On this episode Mark talks with Benjamin Braun, Cornelia Woll, and Jennifer Heerwig about corporate governance in the digital age. As their discussion illustrates, behind the neutral phrase ‘corporate governance’ lie so many pressing economic, financial, and political issues: the...
11.01.2019
Economic Narratives and 'Uncertain Futures'
There are uncertainties in our economy that go beyond measurable risk. Simply put: there are some things we can not know. So how do economic actors form expectations and decide how to act despite this existential uncertainty? On this episode...
10.24.2019
The 99% Economy with Paul Adler
We live in a time of crises — economic turmoil, workplace disempowerment, unresponsive government, environmental degradation, social disintegration, and international rivalry. Paul Adler's book, 'The 99 Percent Economy: How Democratic Socialism Can Overcome the Crises of Capitalism,’ argues that these...

What's The Rhodes Center Podcast with Mark Blyth about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Rhodes Center Podcast with Mark Blyth episodes:

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy citizenship abroad

How asset managers came to own everything and you failed to notice

The business side of fighting climate change

An Immigrant Economist in the Land of Inequality: A Conversation with Sir Angus Deaton

The new politics of growth and stagnation (part 3): houses, micro states, finance, carbon

The new politics of growth and stagnation (part 2): growth models at scale

The new politics of growth and stagnation (part 1)

Does economics do more harm than good? And if it does, how would we know harm when we see it?

Nazi billionaires, capitalist ethics, and other notable contradictions

A wee podcast on the last 50 - and next 50 - years of the global world order

The ‘free market’ is a fever dream and Adam Smith wasn’t in it

State power in China: more "Parks and Rec" than command and control?

What Mark Blyth Got Wrong About Bidenomics and Climate Change

Why Undoing Globalization is Going to Be a Painful Affair

This Week in ‘Ask a Philosopher’: Is the ‘American Dream' Dead?

How Did We End Up with the Idea of a Growing Economy? ‘The Journey of Humanity’ with Oded Galor

What if I told you that international money is governed by no more than the beliefs of a handful of super-connected global elites…and yet there is no conspiracy. Would you be interested?

Can Social Media and Democracy Co-exist? A Conversation with Frances Haugen

The Global Roots of Neomercantilism

Fiona Hill on Deindustrialization, Despair and Demagoguery

The Past, Present, and Contested Future of Central Banks

‘How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Policy” with Elizabeth Popp Berman

The Forgotten History of “The Labor Board Crew”: How Mediators at the US Labor Board Changed Organized Labor (and the World)

America Has Always Been a 'Credit Nation'

The Other Problem with Ratings Agencies

'Bidenomics': Policy Change or Paradigm Shift?

The Robots May Be Coming, But Probably Not for Your Job

How Precarity Puts Capitalism on Edge

Is Now the Time for a Federal Jobs Guarantee?

The Left, Divided Over the Extraction Economy

Austerity Myths and the Health of Nations: What Malawi Tells Us About the Construction of Scarcity

How Fraud Explains the Economy

Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?

Why Does the EU Have a Legitimacy Problem?

Do Deficits Matter? (MMT Explained)

The Fraught, Complex, and Important 'Economics of Belonging'

Populism, or 'Anti-System Politics'?

How US Hegemony Ends

Possibilities for a Post-Covid Economy

The First Globalist: Sandy Zipp Talks Wendell Willkie’s World

The Corona Oil Shock

State Capacity, Growth Models, and Coronavirus in Latin America

'Leftism Reinvented' with Stephanie Mudge

Experts and the National Interest: The Curious Case of China and the US

What’s Next? The Post-American Global Economy

Rethinking Economic Paternalism

The 'Code of Capital' with Katharina Pistor

Corporate Governance in the Digital Age

Economic Narratives and 'Uncertain Futures'

The 99% Economy with Paul Adler