50 episodes listed below
Economic ideas in history, and the craft of research.
Ceteris Never Paribus sits where economics meets history, interviewing authors and researchers about where economic ideas came from. It also looks at academia itself, with a multi-part series asking supervisors and PhD students what makes doctoral supervision work.
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Ceteris Never Paribus takes its name from a twist on a familiar phrase, and its tagline spells the twist out: all other things are never equal. That idea runs through the episodes. Economic ideas come across as the products of argument and struggle, not settled truths. Two of the interviews here each center on one piece of research, a book in one case and a doctoral thesis in the other. In one, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, an associate professor of British history at the University of Chicago, and Carl Wennerlind, a professor of history at Barnard College, discuss their book 'Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis'. Their argument is that today's dominant view, endless desires demanding endless growth, emerged only over centuries of debate. Bernard Mandeville appears along the way, treating ever-growing consumption as natural to humanity. So does the South Sea bubble, after which that dream of infinite expansion was ridiculed. In the other interview, Maria Back talks with Dr. Saarang Narayan, a historian of twentieth-century South Asia whom she met at the Indian Conference for History of Economic Thought in New Delhi. His subject is the Swadeshi movement. The conversation reaches a rare fault line: the 1990s tension within Hindu nationalist networks between Swadeshi and pro-globalization positions. The show's blog adds a list of key terms with short explanations, a small help for listeners new to the subject. The show's range also goes beyond the history of ideas into the working life of research. Its series on supervision asks what makes a good doctoral supervisor, and the answers come from both sides of the desk. One supervisor describes students who simply disappear, and how hard it is to rebuild trust once it breaks. A student named Adele recalls leaving a meeting ready to drop one thread of her research for a second one that felt simpler. The episode billed as a conversation with Peter Boettke, a sort of PhD coach, covers peer-to-peer workshops where graduate students present proposals and chapters, with the emphasis on constant engagement over any cookie-cutter method. The series closes by boiling its conversations down into ten commandments for supervisors and students, starting with a practical one: use a reference manager. Its presenter also thanks their own supervisor for one lasting image, the reminder to see the forest and not only the trees. A recurring introduction quotes John Maynard Keynes on the foolish things a man thinking alone can come to believe, answers that no one here has to think alone, and includes audio of Paul Krugman's 2008 Nobel Prize banquet speech. What a listener gets is two things at once: the history of economic ideas, and a candid look at how the people who study them are trained.
Made for: Suits a listener curious about how ideas such as scarcity and economic nationalism took shape. It also suits someone working on or supervising a PhD who wants candid, practical talk about that relationship.
What sets it apart: Alongside interviews on the history of economic ideas, it gives a whole multi-part series to doctoral supervision, combining what supervisors and students have been through with a closing list of ten commandments. Its subjects run from Mandeville and the South Sea bubble to Swadeshi debates in 1990s India.
History of Economic Thought, History of Economics, History of Economic Ideas, Philosophy of Economics, Political Economy, Economics
A paper dies in a drawer, then scarcity gets 500 years of scrutiny; your economics curiosity has room for both.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A history of scarcity reframes economic common sense as a debate over desire, nature, and the climate crisis.
Scarcity comes through here as an argument with a history, not a natural law. The episode follows the authors as they show how a modern faith in endless wants and endless growth took shape over time, replacing older ideas about fixed resources and disciplined desire.
A careful conversation on Swadeshi, economic nationalism, and whether far-right politics simply opposed globalization.
Maria Back speaks with Dr. Sarang Narayan about his work on the Swadeshi movement, economic nationalism, and far-right politics in India. The discussion turns on a 1990s debate over whether economics could be framed in a Hindu nationalist register, and whether that debate really…
A thoughtful account of doctoral supervision as shared practice, not just private scholarly work.
Doctoral supervision comes through as a matter of building conditions where graduate students can keep moving without losing ownership of their questions.
A grounded look at how supervision can turn uncertainty into research confidence and practical independence.
Supervision comes through as a craft of attention: a conversation can help a researcher see that one promising argument belongs in a drawer, then leave with a stronger thread and more confidence.
A candid look at supervision when independence, distance, and damaged trust collide.
Supervision is often most difficult in the space between a student's freedom and a supervisor's responsibility to keep the work moving. This episode stays with those awkward cases: a student grows confused under self-direction, a relationship loses its footing, or a PhD student…
Zionist argument with consequences attached.
Serious ideas, heard at seminar length.
Phoebe Judge narrates true crime history and interviews the authors who uncovered it.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Dana Schwartz narrates the violent lives of monarchs, warlords, and queens.
An interview with authors of a book tracing the history of the concept of scarcity from capitalism to the climate crisis.
Host Maria Bach interviews historian Sarang Narayan about his research on the Swadeshi movement and its relationship to economic nationalism and far-right politics in India.
This episode discusses in-between cases in academic supervision, drawing on the history of economic thought.
The host introduces himself and the podcast's focus on the history of economic thought, sharing his academic background and current work with dissertation students.
An interview discussing how successful students advance economic ideas and the importance of reflecting on teaching methods.
The host reflects on PhD supervision lessons and presents ten key tips for supervisors and students, framed within the history of economic thought.
An interview with historian of science Kapil Raj about the circulation of knowledge between South Asia and Europe, challenging Western-centric models of global exchange.
An interview with historian Ola Inset about his prize-winning dissertation on early neoliberalism and the distinction between history of economics and intellectual history.
The hosts discuss the enduring popularity of Eric Roll's book 'A History of Economic Thought' and investigate why it has survived.
This episode discusses Tom Staperford's method of doing history of economics as a history of practices, introduced through a methods workshop for young scholars.