The Pie: An Economics Podcast

In this wide-ranging conversation, Nobel Prize–winning economist Roger Myerson reflects on a career studying how rules shape human behavior, from optimal auction design to Ukraine's decentralization reforms. Myerson explains the foundations of mechanism design and incentive constraints, tracing economics back to Xenophon and arguing that local democracy is what holds democracies together.

Large gaps in language skills between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds emerge early and persist throughout schooling. In this episode, Ariel Kalil, Professor of Public Policy at UChicago's Harris School, discusses her research on "Chat2Learn," a technology intervention that sends open-ended conversation prompts to parents' phones. The low-cost behavioral nudge increases vocabulary, encourages back-and-forth conversation, and fosters curiosity in young children.

What's the greatest driver of economic growth? Love. In this episode, UChicago economist Pablo Peña presents his new book Human Capital for Humans, inspired by Nobel laureate Gary Becker's legendary doctoral course. In conversation with host Tess Vigeland, he discusses how simple economic principles illuminate life's biggest matters, from parenting and marriage to jobs and schooling.

Deirdre McCloskey argues the world's jump from $2 to $50 per day in average income came from a radical 18th-century shift: equality of permission, or letting ordinary people have a go at bettering themselves. She traces how liberating human creativity through what she calls the "bourgeois deal" sparked innovation from Holland to Scotland to America, while state control stifled it elsewhere. McCloskey critiques modern economics for reducing humans to "vending machines" and argues we need "humanomics" that recognizes love, ethics, and human complexity alongside mathematical models. She challenges the field's statist turn, defends Adam Smith's complete vision beyond self-interest, and explains why India may become the next great creative economy while Europe's trillion-dollar spending plans repeat the old mistake of top-down investment instead of unleashing individual creativity.

According to the TIAA Institute, American adults correctly answered just 49% of basic financial questions in 2024, suggesting a fundamental gap in economic literacy. In this episode Robert Shimer, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, and John List, Professor of Economics and Director of the Becker Friedman Institute, discuss Economics for Everyone, a groundbreaking program that teaches economic reasoning without the math. From classroom experiments that predict market equilibrium to 60 professional videos watched worldwide and teacher training programs across Chile, Colombia, and Saudi Arabia, they explore how economic thinking shapes everything from Instagram scrolling to tariff policy, and why critical thinking about causality versus correlation has never been more important.