🎉 Welcome to 2024 and Season 2 of Economics Happy Hour! 🌟
In this episode, we set the stage for the year ahead. We'll discuss our goals, both personally and for the podcast, share insights about the ASSA conference (the "Comic-Con" of economics), and more. Join us for a fantastic new season!
In this episode, we discuss:
Personal, professional, and podcast goals
What we learned from launching a podcast
The annual ASSA Conference
And a whole lot more!
Catch up on some old episodes:
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Watch this episode on YouTube:
Some show notes:
While our official 2024 episode is here, we recorded this episode at the same time as the last one in December so that we could have a break over the holidays. Mindful of the back-to-back recordings, Jadrian opted for a refreshing sweet tea. Matt was broadcasting from his office, so he kept it simple with a Diet Coke.
Since it’s the start of a new year, it’s worth mentioning our New Year's resolutions. Matt's embarking on a Dry January challenge again, making his choice even more fitting for our first episode of 2024. Jadrian is gearing up for a massive economics conference in San Antonio and confidently assures us that at least one drink will be needed on that trip!
Since this is the first episode of 2024, we are officially calling this the start of Season #2. We each discussed three goals for 2024:
Personal
Professional
Podcast
Matt's aiming for a healthier lifestyle and podcast growth, while Jadrian has exciting plans including writing another book (stay tuned for updates!), continuing on his stadium tour adventure, and cutting back on how often he agrees to new things.
But here's the exciting part—we want YOU to be a part of our podcast journey! We're eager to create more episodes that answer your burning questions. So, drop your suggestions and questions in the comments, and let's make this year’s content more interactive and tailored to your interests!
Matt and I also talked about our growth over the past year and discussed how many people have been listening on Spotify and Substack. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at our numbers from Substack:
We also talked for a bit about the annual Allied Social Sciences Association (ASSA) Annual Meetings, which is the largest gathering of economists in the world. Jadrian will be there along with thousands of other economists. In the past, this was the main location where people interviewed for jobs. Most of that is done on Zoom now, but you can get a sense of the experience thanks to this NPR Planet Money episode from 2017.
This week’s pop culture references:
Jadrian didn’t discuss pop culture but discussed his upcoming project on trying to measure the size of bias in peer grading. It’s part of a long list of projects from 2023 that needs to be wrapped up in the next few months.
Matt discussed a voting situation from Game of Thrones and related it to Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. When there were more than three candidates, Kenneth Arrow showed that no voting scheme was perfect. Here is a clip of the voting within Game of Thrones.
Season 2 Launch and 2024 Goals