Trump scores big wins by taking cheap shots at experts. Now, some worry he could try to oust Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. The typical centrist position is to defend the supposedly impartial, apolitical expertise of such figures. Yet, we know that is not right. Is there a better way to imagine a better bank?

For much of the 20th century, few economists studied inequality. Today, it's one of the most popular topics there is. Why is inequality back? Just as importantly, how could it have possibly disappeared? We survey the intellectual history of inequality studies in economics.

We're on break this week as everyone gears up for, and puzzles through, the results of this week's US election. However, we have an old Darts & Letters episode that is especially relevant to our ongoing season, the Use & Use of Economic Expertise.

Clinton's Third Way Democrats moved the party away from the unionized industrial labour that typically made up its base. Today, Clintonism is out, and Bidenomics in. Bidenomics was marketed as a political and theoretical break. Yet, beyond November 5th, Bidenomics might too be out. We look at shifting landscape of economic thinking within the Democratic Party.

We tell the story of the invention of the modern economy, or at least the idea of the economy. It starts with one measure: the GDP, or gross domestic product. Today, its a measure that dominates our politics. We have Simon Kuznets to thank for that. Yet, for Kuznets, the GDP was not what he hoped it would be.

In our finale, while the fisherman and fisherwoman of Prince William Sound hope for legal damages stemming from the Exxon Valdez disaster, Exxon fights back. In that fight, they marshal the most-respected psychologist of a generation.

A jury of ordinary Alaskans picks up the Exxon Valdez story. They muddle through the most devastating, and most complicated, environmental disaster in US history. How would they decide the case?

After the unprecedented Exxon Valdez oil spill, a jury of ordinary Alaskans decided that Exxon had to be punished. However, Exxon fought back against their punishment. They did so, in-part, by supporting research that suggested jurors are irrational. Part 1 of 3.

Early pollsters thought they had the psychological tools to quantify American mind, thereby enabling a truly democratic polity that would be governed by a rational public opinion. Today, we malign the misinformed public and dismiss the deluge of frivolous polls. How did the rational public become the phantom public?

This week, we're taking a little break before continuing our latest season, the Rationality Wars. This week, we're playing one of the our best documentary episodes from the large archive of our previous show, Darts and Letters. The episode called the Hippie High-Rise. For seven years, from 1968 to 1975, one eighteen story high-rise was the heart of Canada's counterculture. Rochdale College in Toronto, ON, was jammed full with leftist organizers, hippies, draft dodgers, students, artists, and others just looking for a good time. Although, Rochdale wasn't really a "college." It was something much bigger: a political, educational, communal, artistic, and psychedelic experiment. During its time, it was endlessly lambasted by conservatives and leftists alike--until it reached its inglorious end. Today, like much of the counterculture, it's often remembered for its problems: its ideological contradictions, drug-addled hedonism, bourgeois individualism, sexism, suicide, and more. However, is that the whole story? Were the kids in the hippie highrise onto something, ...or was it indeed just one giant waste of time? Marc Apollonio investigates.