Resources

Last weekend, one of my Father's Day presents was something I had been heavily lobbying for during the past couple of months, an MP3 player. Now before you try to envision me jogging, exercising or even mowing the lawn while bopping to various tracks of moldy oldies, let me assure you I had much nerdier uses in mind. I saw the little gadget as a way to escape boring talk-radio, news programs and commercial-laden, "commercial free" rock-blocks during my daily commute. Yes, I listen to downloaded podcasts about economics.

With that as some background information, I want to direct you to an interesting resource. I'm not sure you could use this with most of your students, but you may find the information interesting and useful. I am talking about the collection of podcast interviews conducted by Russ Roberts at EconTalk.

Russ regularly conducts interviews with stellar economists on a variety of topics. But the interviews, which typically last about an hour, don't stop there. He also provides transcripts and links to additional resources which may be of use. It's a great way to build up your knowledge on a specific topic or gain insight to a specific topic. Just this morning, I finished Russ's interview with Tyler Cowen on monetary policy. As a result, over the next week or so I intend to download and listen to his interview from August 2006 with the late Milton Friedman, and his interview from May of this year with renowned Fed scholar, Alan Meltzer.

I suggest you give them a try. It's likely a better economic discussion than you'll catch on talk-radio, satellite-radio, or even (in many cases) public radio. I look forward to your comments.