Your Weekend Podcast Roundup

According to the latest Infinite Dial survey from Edison Research and Triton Digital, the percentage of people listening to podcasts weekly grew 17 percent in 2021.

Whether you’re hitting the road this weekend, or re-organizing the kitchen cupboards (again), here’s a list of podcast interviews with some of the brightest minds in economics and development, as selected by our editors at Finance & Development.

Ruchir Agarwal with a Proposal to End the Pandemic: There will be no durable end to the economic crisis until enough people around the world are vaccinated against Covid-19. Economist Ruchir Agarwal and IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath have joined forces to come up with a plan that would make that happen.

Nikita Aggarwal on the New Morality of Debt: Nikita Aggarwal is a research associate at the Digital Ethics Lab at Oxford University's Internet Institute. In this podcast, Aggarwal says our increasingly online lives prove a valuable source of data for lenders and add new dimensions to debt’s morality.

Biyamin Appelbaum on Why Distribution Matters: Rising inequality is weighing on growth and straining the fabric of liberal democracy. In this podcast, Appelbaum says while there has been a surge of interest among economists to study the inequities of distribution, some still question its importance.

Luc Eyraud on Wooing Investors to Africa’s Development : With public finances stretched to the limit, new IMF research looks at innovative ways to get the private sector more involved in financing Africa's development needs. In this podcast, economist Luc Eyraud says that while fixing the business environment is a good place to start, sometimes it is simply not enough.

Rana Foroohar on the Economic and Social Force of Big Tech: Rana Foroohar is the Global Business Columnist and Associate Editor at the Financial Times. In this podcast, Foroohar discusses what the exponential growth of Big Tech firms might mean for the global economy.

Trevor Manuel on South Africa’s Lost Decade: Trevor Manuel—a veteran of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle and former minister of finance—looks back at what drove the country's longest phase of economic growth and how he believes the ruling party he helped establish has lost its way.

Oral Williams on How Technical Assistance Translates into Better Live: Oral Williams heads the IMF Regional Capacity Development Center for Anglophone West Africa and is coauthor of a study that shows a direct relationship between technical assistance and an improvement in tax revenues. In this podcast, Williams says providing technical assistance and training means better living standards for more people.

Janet Yellen on Womenomics: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva celebrate International Women's Day with a conversation about the advancement of women in the field of economics.

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