Matt and Jadrian are back again with another guest from their weekend at the Journal of Economics Teaching’s Symposium on Economics Teaching. We recorded multiple episodes during the weekend, but we’re rolling them out more slowly so that you can enjoy them. This week’s episode features a chat with Chris Clarke from Washington State University and at @EconChrisClarke on TikTok. Jadrian and Chris went to graduate school together at WSU, so it’s a special chance to get to spend some time together talking about both of our passion projects. In this episode, Chris shares his love of teaching economics, especially when it comes to teaching public policy.
In this episode, we discuss
Dr. Clarke’s presence on TikTok and the decision to make economic videos
Why public policy is so important to teach
How the video game The Last of Us teaches about public policy
And a whole lot more!
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Watch this episode on YouTube:
Some show notes:
This was the second episode we recorded from 16 Lots Brewery in Newport Kentucky and we were excited to have Dr. Christopher Clarke as a guest. Drink-wise, Jadrian opted for a fruited version of his previous drink, the Brother Hubbard Raspberry Berliner Weisse while Matt went with a Cincy Hammer. Chris played it safe and went with a root beer.
Dr. Christopher Clarke has one of - if not the - most popular economics TikTok channels, with over 40,000 followers, and makes good content regularly. We started our conversation by discussing how and why he started making video content. It all started with a passion to give back to the greater public while being an educator at a public university. Learn more by checking out this KHOU piece that was recorded when Chris was at the University of Houston.
We then asked his favorite topic to teach, and it was public policy. He’s a trained public policy economist and loves to get to the end of macroeconomics to start talking about public policy with his first-year students. The three of us talked about what the broader public thinks the government spends a lot of money on and what areas of the government the public believes the government should fund more.
In this episode, we talk about an AP/NORC poll that found Americans want less government spending overall, but more spending in key sectors. Those key sectors happen to be the sectors the government already spends a lot of money on. Here is just one chart from those poll results:
We also got to talk a little bit about whether it’s more fun teaching microeconomics, macroeconomics, or managerial economics. These are not normal conversations at a bar, but they are definitely normal conversations among economists.
This week’s pop culture references:
Given the NFL season is about to start, Matt shared a video he recently dropped using game theory to help in an NFL survivor pool, you can watch that here:
Chris shared the lessons from The Last of Us - a video game that was made into a TV series in 2023 and how it shows the impact of institutions and public policy failing and how this scene seems to show the breakdown:
Since Jadrian isn’t super knowledgeable about public policy, he skipped this week’s pop culture contribution and opted to double up next week. Instead, Matt contributed a second reference that is based on a public policy-related parody Twitter/X account, Make a Stadium Foundation. When we recorded this episode, they had 179 followers. Perhaps you can help them get that number up some!
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