Very Serious with Josh Barro

By Josh Barro, Very Serious Media

Society & Culture

What's Very Serious with Josh Barro about?

Very Serious is a weekly conversation with top political commentators, columnists and policymakers, focused on how events in the news relate to major, long-standing controversies in politics, economics and culture. Host Josh Barro is joined by a rotating set of regular guests to work out the ideas behind the arguments on topics serious and not-so-serious. It’s a great conversation across ideological lines that will leave you entertained, enlightened, and maybe even persuaded.

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David Schleicher on the Fis...

07.07.2023

How are state and local governments faring post-COVID? It's a pretty different picture than what we're seeing with the federal budget deficit. States enjoyed generous federal aid and surprisingly strong tax collections during the pandemic. In 2021, state governments were ...

Very Serious with Josh Barro episodes:

07.07.2023 David Schleicher on the Fiscal Whipsaw in State Governments How are state and local governments faring post-COVID? It's a pretty different picture than what we're seeing with the federal budget deficit. States enjoyed generous federal aid and surprisingly strong tax collections during the pandemic. In 2021, state governments were ...
04.21.2023 The Martini Police, with Peter Suderman We are back with Peter Suderman’s semi-annual visit to the Very Serious podcast! Getting ready for spring, Peter and I talked about best practices for muddling fresh fruit into cocktails. We talked about Peter’s philosophy of the 41-bottle bar, about ...
03.10.2023 Jason Furman on the Inflation That Keeps Going and Going and Going We’re back with another episode of the Very Serious podcast, and this episode has a friend of the show: Prof. Jason Furman, who teaches economics at Harvard. Or, as Jason put it to me, he’s a bit of a foul-weather ...
02.05.2023 National Lessons from New York's Red Wave, with Ross Barkan There was no national “Red Wave” in last November’s elections, but there sure was one in New York. Republicans won a clean sweep on Long Island, even washing George Santos into Congress. They lost Asian and Hispanic support in New ...
01.15.2023 The answer to homelessness and homeownership is supply, with Jerusalem Demsas A few weeks back, I wrote about the ethic of homeownership, and how I think it is unlikely to be dislodged from American society. If we’re going to improve our housing policy and ensure more adequate supply, we’re going to ...
11.02.2022 Tim Lee on Dads Who "Lean Out" Tim Lee is the author of Full Stack Economics and one of my favorite reads on business and the economy. He’s also a parent to three children under the age of seven, and a major reason he quit his full-time ...
10.10.2022 Why you should quit more, with Annie Duke This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.joshbarro.com Retired professional poker player Annie Duke says quitting well — promptly realizing when your efforts aren’t working and redirecting resources to something more likely to be ...
09.23.2022 Fall Cocktails with Peter Suderman This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.joshbarro.com Peter Suderman is back by popular demand to talk about cocktails for fall. We talk about Negroni variations, the right sour drinks for sweater weather, best ...
09.15.2022 'Help! I can't stop reading advice columns, even though I know the questions are fake!' This week's episode of Very Serious contains some un-bleeped profanity. Have you noticed that advice columns are everywhere now? Have you noticed that most of the questions are fake, and yet you cannot stop reading them? Why? My friend Ben ...
09.09.2022 Why Barack Obama, and the Democrats, Needed Joe Biden Remember the Joe Biden and Barack Obama friendship bracelets from the 2020 campaign? That — and the whole Obama-Biden bromance meme — was cringe, and it was also an oversimplification of a much more interesting story. Gabriel Debenedetti, national correspondent ...
08.05.2022 Adam Ozimek On Jobs, Remote Work, and Housing “I think remote work really is a general purpose technology… It's more comparable to electrification. It's more comparable to the invention of the internal combustion engine or automobiles or something like that in the way that it's going to ripple ...
07.19.2022 Any Given Tuesday, with Lis Smith Lis Smith is a veteran Democratic communications consultant, best known as communications director for the Pete Buttigieg presidential campaign. Her 'more is more' instinct about engaging with the media was an essential component of the strategy to bring Mayor Pete ...
07.13.2022 A Cold Winter Is Coming for Europe Nearly five months into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Western governments have a problem: despite international sanctions and rebukes for Russia's actions, the world's reliance (especially Europe's) on Russian energy is sustaining Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The world is already feeling ...
06.30.2022 Why Is Flying Such a Nightmare Right Now? A lot of things aren’t working quite like they’re supposed to these days, and air travel is a prime example. Travelers are getting increasingly unreliable airline operations with more flights delayed and canceled, and a more chaotic experience at the ...
06.22.2022 Allison Schrager on Why We Can't Have Nice Things Financial economist Allison Schrager says you can't have nice things anymore — or at least, you can't have all of them, not in this interest rate environment. After 40 years of falling interest rates, they're sharply rising again, and those ...
06.17.2022 The Political Purpose of the January 6 Hearings What happened on January 6 (and in the lead-up to it, with Donald Trump trying to steal the election) was very important. But I have been very bearish on the usefulness of talking to the public more about it — ...
06.01.2022 James Kirchick on the 'Secret City': How Closeted Gay Men Shaped 20th Century Washington Dear readers, Due to the holiday weekend, this week’s schedule for Very Serious is out of order. The podcast is out today, there will be a regular issue tomorrow, and a special Fire Island edition of the Mayonnaise Clinic will ...
05.26.2022 Matt Levine on Elon Musk and Compliance Elon Musk, the world's richest man, doesn't just behave in ways that run afoul of regulators. He does things most CEOs don't because they think it would cost them business relationships, and therefore money. JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon wouldn't ...
05.19.2022 On the Very Serious Podcast: Tyler Cowen on Identifying Talent Questions about identifying and matching talent underlie a lot of political and economic discussions in our society. Are we admitting the right people to universities? Giving them the right training? Preventing labor market discrimination? Setting policies around work and family ...
05.13.2022 The Vibe Is Shifting. Will the Media Follow? It's been a tumultuous decade for news media. Publications have been upended financially by technological shifts, and they face employee and subscriber pressure to become more openly ideological. The result is a media that's more siloed, more preachy, and more ...
05.05.2022 Can Jay Powell bring us to a 'soft-ish' landing? Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell says he thinks there's a good chance for a "soft-ish" landing: taming inflation without pushing the economy into recession. But how difficult will that be? Economist Jason Furman joins Josh to talk about this challenge ...
04.29.2022 Peter Suderman Schools Me (and You) on Cocktails Dear readers, I know, I said yesterday that today’s cocktail post was only going to be for paying subscribers. But this is the first edition of the podcast where we’re actually pushing the audio through Substack’s pipes. We’re still kicking ...
04.21.2022 Bad COVID economic predictions, with Jerusalem Demsas In early 2020, we were told the COVID crisis was supposed to cause a housing price crash. State government budget crises. The eviction of 30 million or more Americans. A "she-cession." None of these problems came to pass -- instead, ...
04.07.2022 Responding to the energy crisis, with Joshua D. Rhodes The war in Ukraine has added urgency to Europe’s efforts to end its dependency on Russian natural gas. In the US, a shift toward efficiency and renewables is important for both geopolitical and environmental reasons. So, how can we do ...
03.31.2022 Preparing for disaster, with Juliette Kayyem Disaster management hasn’t been a bright spot for Western governments lately. So, how can we do better? Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary of homeland security, says we need to “fail safer,” with more focus on mitigating the disasters that happen ...
03.24.2022 New Risks from China, with Patrick Chovanec It’s the other big global crisis right now: China faces a new COVID surge, and it’s responding with lockdowns that will worsen global shortages and inflation. China has other troubles, too: a bursting real estate bubble, and a geopolitical partner ...
03.17.2022 Ken White on defamation and Donald Trump It’s an All the Presidents’ Lawyers reunion with Josh and attorney Ken White! Josh and Ken discuss the implosion of the Manhattan DA investigation into Donald Trump’s financial statements. Did DA Alvin Bragg lose his nerve, or was this a ...
03.10.2022 Global shockwaves from Ukraine, with Michael Singh From German re-armament to the Iran deal to China's eyes on Taiwan, Russia's war on Ukraine is setting off big changes around the world. What do these shifts mean for America's interests? Can we get Saudi Arabia to help with ...
03.03.2022 "Won't somebody please think of the children?" with Elizabeth Bruenig and Tim Carney Children are necessarily central to our politics. Their lives are highly regulated by the state, which ensures (among other things) that they are educated rather than employed, that they are supported by their parents or someone else if their parents ...
02.24.2022 Improving your personality, with Olga Khazan Personality is a key determinant of life success, and we all have opinions about other people’s personalities, but can we change our own? Olga Khazan, science writer for The Atlantic, set out to change her personality in three months – ...
02.17.2022 Inflation, with economist Jason Furman Inflation is the highest it’s been in decades. Why? Economist Jason Furman talks with Josh Barro about where inflation comes from, and what we've misunderstood about it in the past. Fixes to the supply chain or to COVID aren’t likely ...
02.10.2022 David Leonhardt on COVID mitigation benefits and costs David Leonhardt, author of The Morning newsletter from the New York Times, is one of the most influential writers on COVID and COVID policy. He talks with Josh about how he synthesizes expert views for a broad audience, how to ...
02.03.2022 Matt Yglesias on popularism, Bernie Sanders, and the Joes (Biden and Rogan) Matt Yglesias joins Josh to make the case for popularism – the idea that politicians win by doing popular things and talking about them. Sounds obvious, right? Well, it’s controversial, and besides, figuring out what’s popular isn’t always easy. Matt ...
01.28.2022 Listen to these experts Two years into the COVID pandemic, the relationship between experts and the public is frayed. There is blame to go around. Josh talks with experts on expertise Tom Nichols and Lanhee Chen about what experts are for, how expertise has ...
01.21.2022 What do voters want, and how can we know that they want it? If your friends have ever struggled to choose a place to go to dinner, you know people aren’t always very good at accessing and articulating their preferences. This also matters in politics – how do you get voters to tell ...
01.14.2022 YOU are the economy It’s a question you hear a lot during COVID: How do you balance the economy with people’s well-being? But the economy is part of people’s well-being. On this week’s show, Josh talks with Elizabeth Bruenig of the Atlantic and Megan ...
12.22.2021 Coming soon! A new, weekly podcast from Josh Barro launching January 14! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joshbarro.com/subscribe