Category: Interviews

MIT Professor Luis Perez-Breva on Innovation

Mike talks with Luis Perez-Breva, a successful serial innovator and director of the Innovation Teams Program at MIT. Dr. Perez-Breva holds degrees in Chemical Engineering, Physics, Business, and Artificial Intelligence. He’s an expert in the process of technology innovation, an entrepreneur, and the the author of Innovating: A Doer’s Manifesto for Starting from a Hunch, Prototyping Problems, Scaling Up, and Learning to Be Productively Wrong. (MIT Press 2017).

Mike and Dr. Perez-Breva discuss:
– whether or not innovation is lagging
– if we should be concerned about AI taking millions of jobs
– whether 21st century companies are failing at job creation
– how innovation works
– what government can do to help innovation
– what government does that hinders innovation
– if government itself needs to be innovated

Follow Luis Perez-Breva on Twitter

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Harvard’s Nancy Koehn on Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times

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Mike talks to historian Nancy Koehn, who holds the James E. Robison chair of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Dr. Koehn’s research focuses on effective leadership and how leaders, past and present, craft lives of purpose, worth, and impact.

She’s the author of multiple books, including Ernest Shackleton: Exploring Leadership, The Story of American Business: From the Pages of the New York Times, and Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers’ Trust from Wedgwood to Dell. Her latest book is Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times, which has just been released.

Mike and Dr. Koehn discuss the common traits great leaders possess, reasons for declining trust in our political leaders, her advice for those who aspire to be great leaders, her leadership comparison of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and lots more.

– follow Dr. Koehn on Twitter
– Dr. Kohen’s website
– Forged in Crisis (Amazon)

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Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com and click on the Patreon link.

Glenn Hubbard on Tax Cuts, Growth, Inequality, & Secular Stagnation

Mike talks to economist Glenn Hubbard. Dr. Hubbard is dean and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School.

In addition to writing more than 100 scholarly articles in economics and finance, Dr. Hubbard is the author of three popular textbooks, as well as co-author of The Aid Trap: Hard Truths About Ending Poverty, Balance: The Economics of Great Powers From Ancient Rome to Modern America, and Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Five Steps to a Better Health Care System.

Dr. Hubbard also has a wealth of real-world economic policy experience. From 1991 – 1993 he was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. From 2001 until 2003, he was chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, where he played a key role in the design of the 2003 Bush tax cuts. He also served as an economic advisor to the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney, and the 2016 campaign of Jeb Bush. In the corporate sector, he serves on the boards of ADP, BlackRock Closed-End Funds, and MetLife.

Dr. Hubbard is co-chair of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, a past Chair of the Economic Club of New York, and a past co-chair of the Study Group on Corporate Boards.

Mike and Dr. Hubbard discuss the fall of great powers throughout history, whether economists are too disconnected from the real world, pro-growth tax reform, what economists agree on, the value added tax, and lots more.

Dr. Hubbard Recommends:
– The Economist
– Think tank research. Two of our favorites at The Politics Guys are the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute and the left-of-center Brookings Institution.

Dr. Hubbard’s Website

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Congressman Jim Jordan on the Debt Limit, Tax Reform, and the 2016 Election

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Jay talks to Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH), co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus. Jay and Rep. Jordan discuss the debt ceiling, tax reform, the Obama administration’s attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election, and more.

As a lead-in to the interview, Mike and Jay talk about the history of the Freedom Caucus. After the interview they discuss Rep. Jordan’s policy positions and recommendations.

– Follow Rep. Jordan on Twitter

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Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com and click on the Patreon link.

Henry Petroski on The State of American Infrastructure

Mike talks with Henry Petroski, a Professor of Civil Engineering and History at Duke University. Dr. Petroski is a prolific scholar and public intellectual – in addition to publishing nineteen books and hundreds of articles in newspapers, magazines, and trade publications, he’s authored over seventy-five academic journal articles. His many books include: The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance, The Evolution of Useful Things, The House with Sixteen Handmade Doors, and The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure.

In this episode, Mike and Dr. Petroski discuss learning from failure, how bad US infrastructure really is, why so many big projects seem take longer and cost more than projected, what a good infrastructure bill would look like, and lots more.

Dr. Petroski’s Recommendations:
– American Society of Civil Engineers Smart Brief
– US Department of Transportation
– American Infrastructure Weekly
– Trump Administration Infrastructure Initiative

Dr. Petroski’s Duke University Page

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Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com and click on the Patreon link.

Saadia Madsbjerg on Changing the Status Quo with Innovative Finance

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Mike talks with Saadia Madsbjerg, a Managing Director at the Rockefeller Foundation. Ms. Madsbjerg’s work focuses on innovative finance solutions that change the status quo and raise private sector investment capital to further the Foundation’s goals of building greater resilience and promoting inclusive economies.

In this episode, Mike and Ms. Madsbjerg discuss what the Rockefeller Foundation does, why government programs alone can’t meet the economic needs of communities across the globe, the importance of private sector involvement in helping to build more resilient and inclusive economies, and the challenges of developing partnerships with the private sector.

Saadia Madsbjerg Recommends:
– Finance and the Good Society. Bob Schiller
– Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment
– Impact Alpha Brief (newsletter)
– The Innovative Finance Revolution

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Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com and click on the Patreon link.

Journalist & Environmental Activist Mark Lynas

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Mike talks with author, journalist, and environmental activist Mark Lynas. He’s a frequent speaker around the world on climate change, biotechnology and nuclear power, and was climate change advisor to the President of the Maldeeves from 2009 – 2011. In 2013 he was appointed a Visiting Fellow at Cornell University’s Office of International Programs, and now works with the Cornell Alliance for Science, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

His books include Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, winner of the 2008 Royal Society Science books prize, The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans, and, most recently, Nuclear 2.0: Why a Green Future Needs Nuclear Power.

Mark’s Recommendations:
– Pandora’s Promise (documentary)
– Food Evolution (documentary)

Follow Mark on Twitter

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Court Appointed, a podcast where co-hosts Mike and Tommy educate and entertain while exploring where laws – and all things legal – have originated and how they currently apply.

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Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com and click on the Patreon link.

Former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter on The New Energy Economy

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Mike talks to Bill Ritter Jr., director of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University. Prior to that he served as Governor of Colorado from 2007 to 2011.

During his term, Governor Ritter established Colorado as a national and international leader in renewable energy by building a New Energy Economy that’s creating thousands of new jobs and establishing hundreds of new companies. He also enacted an aggressive business-development and job-creation agenda focused on knowledge-based industries of the future like energy, aerospace, biosciences, and information technology.

Governor Ritter is also the author of Powering Forward: What Everyone Should Know About America’s Energy Revolution.

Governor Ritter Recommends
– The Advanced Energy Legislation Tracker
– Spot for Clean Energy
– Sue Tierney – The Analysis Group
– The Atlantic Magazine

Follow the Center for the New Energy Economy on Twitter

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Lawrence Lessig on Campaign Finance Reform

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Mike talks with Lawrence Lessig, the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Prior to his time at Harvard, Professor Lessig clerked for not one, but two of Mike’s intellectual heroes: Judge Richard Posner and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Professor Lessig is the author of numerous books on law, commerce, culture, and ideas. His latest, Republic, Lost, Version 2.0, is a revised and expanded version of Republic, Lost, which Mike says is the best introduction to, and analysis of, not only campaign finance, but the fundamental incentives that drive public policy in the United States.

Professor Lessig followed up on Republic, Lost with a major campaign to enact the reforms he believes to be vital to restoring American democracy, including launching a political action committee, giving a number of TED talks, and most notably, running for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 2016.

Professor Lessig Recommends
Fifty Shades of Green: High Finance, Political Money, and the U.S. Congress. Thomas Ferguson, Jie Chen, Paul Jorgensen

Citizens Divided: Campaign Finance Reform and the Constitution. Robert C. Post

Unlock Congress. Michael Golden

Follow Lawrence Lessig on Twitter

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This week’s show is sponsored by:
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Kenneth Rogoff on Eight Centuries of Financial Folly & The Curse of Cash

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Mike talks with Dr. Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University. From 2001–2003, Dr. Rogoff was Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. He’s a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the Economic Advisory Panel of the New York Federal Reserve, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Dr. Rogoff’s books include Foundations of International Macroeconomics, the standard graduate text in the field, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, and, most recently, The Curse of Cash: How Large-Denomination Bills Aid Crime & Tax Evasion and Constrain Monetary Policy, which just came out in an updated paperback edition.

In this interview, Mike and Dr. Rogoff discuss:
– commonalities in financial crises
– the challenges of analyzing eight centuries of financial data
– whether Dodd-Frank was a step in the right direction
– why stability is inherently destabilizing
– the inevitability of financial crises
– why there are so many $100 bills in circulation
– who benefits from large denomination bills
– recommendations for macroeconomic literacy
– and lots more!

Dr. Rogoff Recommends
– Lords of Finance. Liaquat Ahamed
– Economix. Michael Goodwin
– The Economist

Follow Dr. Rogoff on Twitter
Dr. Rogoff’s Website

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