Show Notes
What would an actually good tariff policy look like? Can the U.S. ever bring back manufacturing jobs, and should it? How bad is the deficit and what can we do to address it?
In the first episode of Solutions, Henry asks Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman about the most pressing problems facing the U.S. economy — and how he would fix them.
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Paul Krugman writes a newsletter on Substack and teaches at City University of New York Graduate Center. He was a New York Times Opinion columnist from 2000 to 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
More from Solutions with Henry Blodget
The media industry is under assault. This week, we turn to one of the world’s most experienced and trusted media observers for a solution: Ken Auletta, who has covered the industry for almost 50 years for the New Yorker. Auletta has studied the rise of cable TV, the Internet, and today’s tech giants, and profiled figures such as Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, and Barry Diller. We discuss how trust in the media broke and what might fix it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
President Trump surprised many people a few weeks ago when he signed an executive order accelerating research into psychedelics. Compounds like psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, ketamine, and others have developed large and enthusiastic followings in the past decade, and some seem quite promising in the treatment of depression, PTSD, addiction and other conditions. Unusually, they are also one of the very few issues that have support across the political spectrum. This week, we discuss why this is a turning point for psychedelics and what might come next with Anne Philippi, a former journalist at Vogue, Vanity Fair, and GQ who now runs The New Health Club, a media organization dedicated to psychedelics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Anil Seth is concerned about the “mythology of conscious AI” – the growing argument that LLMs and other AI systems might one day achieve consciousness. Seth is a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and a leading expert on consciousness. He’s skeptical that AI will ever achieve true consciousness, and argues there’s danger in perceiving these technical systems as feeling beings. Today, we discuss that danger, and what science even defines as "consciousness." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Dr. Kira Hoffman once fought fires as a firefighter. Now she works on starting them - for the sake of wildfire prevention. Dr. Hoffman is a fire ecologist at the University of British Columbia and an expert in why wildfires are getting worse and the solutions that can mitigate their damage. We discuss why she forecasts a “dire” wildfire season this year, how fire policy has transformed over the past century, and what Americans can do across the country to protect their homes now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices