EP 962 Is GDP Still the Best Way to Measure the Performance of the Economy?
The ways that statisticians and governments measure the economy were developed in the 1940’s, when the urgent economic problems were totally different from those of our times. In her book “The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters”, Cambridge professor, Diane Coyle, helps us understand how inadequate our system for assessing the economy is as it is undergoing a radical digital transformation. Particularly lagging is the key measurement, that being the measure of Gross Domestic Product, the GDP. When policymakers rely on such an antiquated tool, how can they measure, understand, and respond with any precision to what is really taking place in today’s digital economy? In our discussion, Professor Coyle makes a compelling case for a new measurement that takes into consideration current economic realities. The practical, real- life examples we discuss will provide insight into the importance of doing so with urgency.
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Pope Leo XIV, the first American Pope, has been seen as a stabilizing force in the Catholic Church after a tumultuous papacy of Pope Francis. And while he is disciplined, thoughtful, and measured in his words and deeds, perhaps more traditional than Pope Francis, he has also been very vocal about his concerns about the actions of political leaders in the United State and elsewhere, as evidenced by his back and forth recently with President Trump. His watchword as Pope seems to be to spread the Jesus’s gospel of peace in an era of conflict. How he combines his traditional liturgical leanings with a willingness to comment on the negative effects of war over diplomacy, his concern about the ravaging of the environment, and the plight of immigrants here and abroad, will be an interesting juxtaposition as the years go on. With us today to discuss what to expect from this Pope is Paul Kengor, Ph.D., author of “American Pontiff: Pope Leo XIV and His Plan to Heal the Church.”
There is a largely invisible pricing structure in the American health care system that dictates the types of medical procedures that are most valued and therefore best compensated. It affects the way you interact with the system day after day. In her short, but clear-eyed, dissection of why specialists and surgery are often the weapon of choice to fight disease, as opposed to front end interventions focused on prevention, Dr. Robin Blackstone, author of “American Health: Who Gets Paid” unwraps how the process works. In it she shows how the system rewards procedural intervention and late rescue, while undervaluing early judgment, longitudinal care, prevention, and accountability at the time. The result is a system that incentivizes volume over health, fragmentation over continuity, and crisis response over risk reduction. Dr. Blackstone, herself a surgeon, is now writing on medical topics that are vital and little understood. Her newest book, touched upon as well in the conversation, is “Doctor AI: Reimagining Health Rebuilding Trust Delivering Health 4.0.”
If you’re paying attention these days, and in the wake of the NCAA basketball tournament, it’s hard not to notice how legalized gambling has crept into every facet of American life. You see it during sports games and with the full involvement of the leagues. You pass signs on the highway daily about games of chance being run by your state. And you see the proliferation of Native American and other gambling facilities sprouting up far from Las Vegas. And the bookie on the street corner is still there. What you may not see is the pernicious impact legalized gambling is having on young people, some of legal age and others not, as online gambling begins to ramp up across the country. Joining us today to discuss it is Les Bernal, the National Director of Stop Predatory Gambling, a 501(c)3 network built to reveal the truth behind gambling operators to prevent more victims. He will open your eyes to the devastation caused by gambling for so many in our society.
When one of your friends tells you that pickleball is now the all-consuming passion in their life, what do you say? Every day, thousands and thousands more people pick up a paddle and get hooked on the fastest growing sport in the land. What’s all the fuss about? As a long-time tennis guy, I had to find out so I turned to Clare Frank, former firefighter turned pickleball obsessive. She is the author of the new book, “Just One More Game.” In it she describes why she’s fallen in love with the sport, its many health benefits, the types of players you will meet when you wander onto a court, the gear you’ll need, the injuries you should try to avoid and the hold it will have on your life. We also discuss the growing sense that this sport may one day become part of the Olympics as its unfettered rise, among all age groups, continues.
It’s true. The headline in Fortune on-line screamed “The Treasury Just Declared the U.S. insolvent. The media missed it.” Well maybe the media missed it, but Congress and the President also have been asleep at the nation’s wheel on this issue for a very long time. The Treasury’s own consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2025, released just a few weeks ago, show $6.06 trillion in total assets against $47.78 trillion in total liabilities as of September 30, 2025. And, folks, that’s just the public debt which you can see above the waterline. When you add about the implied obligations to citizens going forward, like Social Security and Medicare obligations, the roughly $41 trillion in debt rises to around $100 trillion. It is mind blowing. So, what can the federal government do? Simply put, it could curb spending, raise taxes or hope that economic growth can grow our way out of this mess. Or you can look away, keep printing money and continue borrowing, until the interest payments on the debt wreck the economy or borrowers scatter to the hills. We’re on the verge. Our guest today, the Honorable David Walker is the former Comptroller General of the United States and CEO of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). His words are clear and provocative as to the hole we have dug for ourselves. He thinks we need a good old talking to, as the citizenry, about our problem. Will anyone listen? You can begin today with this podcast.
The test scores for 4th and 8th graders in math and reading have not been great lately. The lag may be due to the time lost during the pandemic, but there may be another remnant of that time that is affecting things. As teachers hurried to adopt EdTech practices in that time, much gave way to the computer becoming a dominant force in the classroom, not just in computer labs. The Chromebook was the symbol of this change. This Google portable laptop option with cloud-based applications promised future-readiness, engagement and innovation for students. A few years down the road, there are crusader parents who sense different impacts on their children, including six-minute attention spans, normalizing the need for constant stimulation and academic mediocrity. Not to mention that these devices track students’ personal data. Julie Frumin, one such mom, founder of HealthierTech and a licensed family and marriage therapist, joins us to discuss.
While some states are making it easier to vote, with automatic registration when you renew a driver’s license, or aggressive campaigns to bring voter registration to you, other states are working aggressively to restrict voting by requiring proof of citizenship, which goes beyond basic voter identification. And President Trump and the GOP-proposed SAVE Act is considered by many to be a solution for a problem that does not exist. It is not a Voter ID bill but rather a ‘show me your papers’ bill with the government seeking your birth certificate or passport to vote. Birth certificates will often not include a woman’s married name, those born outside a hospital may not have one and only about fifty percent of Americans do not have a passport. C’mon, this is a burden meant to suppress voting by some. The big concern raised by those who are attempting to put more restrictions in place is non-citizen voting. Even conservative groups who’ve studies that issue find it to be a red herring, representing at most .004 percent over a sweep of time. In this conversation with Anjali Enjeti, author of “Ballot,” I share my greater concern–that too few people go out and vote. In fact, the numbers in municipal elections, which used to be in the 70-80 percent range in many places have dwindled to about 25 percent. And presidential elections now hover in the 60-70 percent range. How do we really know the will of the people when a dwindling share decides to participate? I believe we should be making it easier, not harder, to vote. At the end of the conversation, I mention that Australia has mandatory voting or you are fined. Would that work in America? We discuss it today on this podcast.
At the moment many of us see and use AI as a quicker and more comprehensive search engine. Truth is, it really is a game changer. So much so that our guest, Fred Voccola, author of “The Coming Disruption: How AI Will Force Organizations to Change Everything or Face Destruction,” says, (are you sitting down), AI is the single most important development in the history of our species. He posits that it will have more impact than the steam engine, electricity, penicillin, and the Internet itself. Recently, Elon Musk said that AI is good enough TODAY to replace half of white-collar jobs, and he argues that it’s ‘pointless’ to go to medical school except for social reasons. He suggests that robots will being doing surgery at scale within three years. Is all of this imaginable? Or remotely possible? And talk about societal dislocation. All this change based on something that doesn’t require huge investments in new infrastructure but simply changes in leadership and adoption of what is available to us. And it’s all coming at breakneck speed. Are you ready? Find out today on this podcast.
Do you think very often, if at all, how it is that when you turn on a light switch in your home, instantly there is light. Given that there are so many factors upstream from your home–generating the power, transmitting it, distributing it and, finally, consuming it, the whole thing is pretty miraculous. And we’ve heard time and again that there is always a fragility to it. We have aging infrastructure, increasing demand (never more so than now with the oncoming data centers for AI), cybersecurity threats, climate change impacts and the integration of renewable energy sources. And it’s all driven by 11,000 power plants, 3,000 utilities, and more than 2 million miles of power lines. In 2016, a great book which I’ve kept on my shelf at home, came out. It was titled “The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future” and was written by Gretchen Bakke, PhD, explaining the history and current (no pun intended) status of the grid. I interviewed her ten years ago on radio and thought it was time to update that important discussion. So here it is.