Home Podcasts Economics Matters with Laurence Kotlikoff
Economics Matters with Laurence Kotlikoff

Economics Matters with Laurence Kotlikoff

Economics Matters 143 Episodes Aug 20, 2026

Economics Matters is a podcast hosted by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, a prominent economist, author, and policy advisor. In each episode, he talks with experts about how economics influences modern society, covering topics such as personal finance, fiscal policy, social security, and income inequality. The show explores pressing economic challenges and aims to make complex issues accessible to listeners.

Episodes

Is AI the End of Mathematics, or Its Most Exciting New Beginning?
Is AI the End of Mathematics, or Its Most Exciting New Beginning? Aug 20, 2026 01:18:08 What does it feel like to watch an AI solve a problem in a single prompt that you've spent years working on, and produce a stronger result than your own published papers?Professor Kotlikoff grew up academically alongside two economists, Yuri Dadush and Michael Pomerleano, who were his classmates when he began his PhD at Harvard in 1973. In this episode, he sits down with their sons: Daniel Dad
Your Medicare Premium Is Rising Twice as Fast as Your Social Security Check — Here's What to Do About It
Your Medicare Premium Is Rising Twice as Fast as Your Social Security Check — Here's What to Do About It Aug 19, 2026 01:09:38 What if the Medicare premium increases heading your way aren't just a number, they're a signal that the entire system is heading somewhere most retirees aren't prepared for?Phil Moeller has co-written a New York Times bestseller on Social Security, authored the definitive consumer guide to Medicare, and spent decades covering personal finance for US News, PBS NewsHour, and Money Magazi
Why Putin Can't Win, China Won't Fold, and Trump Is Running Out of Options
Why Putin Can't Win, China Won't Fold, and Trump Is Running Out of Options Aug 6, 2026 01:08:47 What if the three most dangerous regimes on earth — Russia, China, and Iran — are all weaker than they appear, and yet America is still losing ground to all three at once?Sir Niall Ferguson has spent a career studying how empires rise, overreach, and fall. He watched the Soviet Union collapse from the inside out while everyone in Washington assumed it would last forever. He's been warning about Ch
The Illiquid Jenga Tower: Inside the Private Credit Timebomb Nobody's Talking About
The Illiquid Jenga Tower: Inside the Private Credit Timebomb Nobody's Talking About Aug 2, 2026 01:16:15 What if the passive investing revolution (the idea that just buying the index and holding is the smartest thing most people can do) has quietly turned into something that no longer resembles the efficient market it was designed to track?Every month, $33 billion flows automatically from 401(k) contributions into U.S. equity index funds. That money doesn't stop to ask whether Nvidia is fairly va
Why the Most Important Economic Story of Our Time Isn't the Tariffs — It's the Institutions
Why the Most Important Economic Story of Our Time Isn't the Tariffs — It's the Institutions Jul 31, 2026 01:09:51 What if one of the most famous and widely cited findings in modern economics (that money doesn't really make you happier) turned out to simply be wrong? And what does the economist who proved it wrong have to say about where America is heading next?Justin Wolfers is not a typical economist. He's written landmark papers on happiness, divorce, racial discrimination in NBA officiating, corrup
Social Security Is Broke. Here's What That Actually Means for Your Check
Social Security Is Broke. Here's What That Actually Means for Your Check Jul 29, 2026 00:59:51 The headlines say Social Security is running out of money. But what if the real numbers are actually far worse than what the headlines are showing you, and the trustees' report is burying the truth in an appendix table that almost nobody reads?The 2026 Social Security Trustees Report just dropped, and the media coverage has been loud, alarming, and, still understating how serious the problem a
The Man Who Beat Goldman Sachs at Stock Picking — From a Trading Desk in Memphis
The Man Who Beat Goldman Sachs at Stock Picking — From a Trading Desk in Memphis Jul 23, 2026 01:21:27 What does it actually take to consistently beat the market when 90% of professional fund managers can't, and what is a Wall Street veteran seeing right now that has him warning ordinary investors to get off margin immediately?Steve Laffey has lived several lives in one. Raised in genuine poverty in Cranston, Rhode Island, he earned his way to Bowdoin College and Harvard Business School, landed
The Man Who Invented the HSA Thinks We're Still Doing Healthcare All Wrong
The Man Who Invented the HSA Thinks We're Still Doing Healthcare All Wrong Jul 9, 2026 00:59:17 What if the most powerful tax-advantaged account in your financial life was designed by one economist with a better idea, and the full version of that idea was never actually implemented?You've probably heard of the Health Savings Account. You may even have one. But the man who invented it says the version Congress passed is a watered-down shadow of what it could be. And that's just the be
"We're Running a 20th Century Operating System on a 21st Century Economy — And It's Crashing"
"We're Running a 20th Century Operating System on a 21st Century Economy — And It's Crashing" Jul 2, 2026 01:05:26 What happens when five completely unrelated thinkers, writing across five different decades, all point to the exact same moment in history as a coming crisis point...and that moment is now?Samuel Huntington, Neil Howe, Ray Dalio, George Friedman, and Peter Turchin never collaborated. All of them landed on the 2020s. In this episode, Larry Kotlikoff sits down with Bruce Mehlman — founder of Mehlman
The Man Who Turned Down $1.3 Million to Stay in School — And Changed Medicine Forever
The Man Who Turned Down $1.3 Million to Stay in School — And Changed Medicine Forever Jun 25, 2026 01:20:29 What does it actually take to solve a scientific puzzle that stumped researchers for fifty years — and why are the same AI tools that cracked it still getting basic financial math catastrophically wrong?In 2024, Demis Hassabis won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for something that sounds almost too ambitious to be real: teaching artificial intelligence to predict the three-dimensional shape of any pr
The Regime We Were Supposed to Topple Just Got Stronger
The Regime We Were Supposed to Topple Just Got Stronger Jun 25, 2026 01:07:27 What if everything you've been told about the new Iran deal — and what "winning" the war even meant — is built on a comparison that doesn't hold up, and a strategic outcome that's the opposite of what most commentators are claiming?A 14-point memorandum is about to be signed in Switzerland, and the headlines are already calling it weaker than the 2015 Obama-era nuclear deal t
The $83 Billion Scam Hidden Inside Medicare (And the Economist Who Proved It)
The $83 Billion Scam Hidden Inside Medicare (And the Economist Who Proved It) Jun 9, 2026 00:58:32 What if the system designed to protect your health in retirement was actually engineered (from the inside) to profit from keeping you confused, underserved, and locked out of the care you've already paid for?You've spent decades paying into Medicare. You've done everything right. And yet, as you approach the years when healthcare matters most, the system greeting you on the other side

Recommended