Episode 20: Non-Heterodox Scientificity

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Episode 20: Non-Heterodox Scientificity continues the primer on neoclassical economics, focusing on a few prime examples where the purity of the discipline was threatened, and on a few structural buffers that protect that orthodoxy from the heterodox threats that occasionally develop. I do hope this deep look at what happened in education in general and economic academic life in specific can be taken as I intend it, as a look at what lengths monied interests will go to protect their privileged positions in society, just as they do as advertisers to the media in which their ads appear.

I read from several books and online sources in this episode. In order of appearance, they are: Brian Czech, "Supply Shock", New Society Publishers, 2013, p. 54 and p. 79; A.C. Pigou, "Economics in Practice", Macmillan & Co., 1935, p. 2; Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable", Random House, 2007, pp. 260-261, p. 270; Yves Smith, "EConned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism", St. Martin's Press, 2010, p. 81; Steve Keen, "Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor Dethroned?", Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 163; the Last Will and Testament of Alfred Nobel (taken from the Official Nobel Prize Website); Ha-Joon Chang, "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism", Bloomsbury Press, 2008, p. 154; and Thomas Piketty, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2014, p. 32.

You also heard from Richard Wolff being interviewed by Ellen H. Brown on the October 8, 2014 episode of her podcast "It's Our Money With Ellen Brown."

Music—in keeping with the gentle primer theme established in Episode 19—was exclusively Podington Bear. You hear "Black Eyed Susan," "Gentle Heart," "Really Real," and "Towl," all from the album Tender.