Stacey Vanek Smith: How Storytelling Can Demystify Economics

Announcer (VO): The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the St. Louis Fed or the Federal Reserve System.

Scott Wolla: Welcome to Teach Economics where we bring you conversations with leading voices in the field who share stories and viewpoints that can help shape your approach to teaching and understanding economics.

On this episode, we’re joined by Stacy Vanek Smith.

Stacy has built a remarkable career translating complex economic issues into compelling stories. She’s a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek, a co-host of the podcast Everybody’s Business from Bloomberg Businessweek, and is a special correspondent for public radio’s Marketplace. Before that, she was a correspondent and cohost for Planet Money, the founding host of the Indicator from Planet Money, an acclaimed author and more.

We’ll start our conversation with Stacy telling us about the unusual path she took to reporting on economics.

Wolla: Stacy, how did you find your way to economics?

Stacy Vanek Smith: It was very roundabout. I was not a natural economist. And by the way, Scott, it’s really nice to be here. Thank you for having me. I am such a big fan of the St. Louis Federal Reserve. Well, you are educators.

Wolla: It’s really intimidating for me to interview you on a podcast because, as one of my colleagues have said, you’ve been the voice in my head in this whole economics field for a long time.

Smith: Well, that is very kind. I have to say, I get intimidated answering questions. I like the asking part better. But but, yeah, I came to economics in a very roundabout way. It was not anything I really had any interest in all the way through the end of college. I did want to be a journalist.

I wanted to be an arts journalist. And when I went to journalism school, I was very focused on that and a radio. And but I needed a job when I graduated. And public radio is not, you know, usually a super dynamic workplace. So you know that job openings don’t come. You kind of take what you can get.

And there was a job opening at Marketplace as a production assistant on the graveyard shift in Los Angeles. And so I moved to Los Angeles and started working on the graveyard shift. And the host was Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace, and we were getting it was for the morning show. And so that was my crash course in economics. That’s how it started, and I just loved it.

I loved it.

Wolla: So, did you find yourself, just doing a lot of reading on the side, like, how did you learn the economics that you use, that you explained so well, in your radio, in your podcasting.

Smith: Mostly like a mixture of fear and necessity. So one of the first conversations I can remember having with with Kai. So one of my jobs was to write up little blurbs, little news blurbs, for him to read on the air for the morning report. And one morning it was like two in the morning. I was so exhausted.

And he was like, you know, can you write me this company? Just iPod. And I was like, oh, he’s like, can you write me up a paragraph? And I didn’t know what an IPO was. So I typed in E pow. I was like IPO, like, what is that? And so I turned around. I was so and I was also just so tired.

So turn around. I was like, I don’t what is it? He’s like an initial public offering. And I turned around and I just felt so overwhelmed. I was like, I have no idea what he’s talking about, what do I do? And I sort of thought I was going to start crying. So I turned back around and I said, what is an initial public offering?

And he looked at me just this look like he was counting on me. I was his only producer was me and an engineer. And he said, it is when a company goes public and still nothing. And then he said, it is when a company starts selling stock. And I was like, oh, okay. And just the look of horror on his face was quite extreme.

But I think that was the moment where I was like, I’ve got to get really serious about learning this. So I was up reading about this was also kind of, Enron was happening this Enron crisis. So I was starting to look at this. I tried to get in really early. I never wanted to get that look from Chi again.

And so I would come in really early and read, and I was, you know, reading The Wall Street Journal and following these stories and I don’t remember when I just started to love it, but I just immediately, like, took to it. And now I would never want to cover anything else.

Wolla: That’s good. That’s good. So, do you see Guy from time to time? Do you say, hey, remember that time or,

Smith: You know, I haven’t that specific memory. No, but we I mean, I was so lucky to get to work with him, because he was so, so smart, and so, he was not a native to economics, either, but he was very smart and sort of learned on the fly, and he was a real pro. So I got this kind of amazing training.

He was also just an amazing host, an on air personality, naturally. Like he’d come to radio quite late. And so I guess watching him and kind of apprenticing in that way was a really important training for me. How he explained what I stole. I still use Chi Rizal’s definition of GDP, and, you know, GDP, the sum total of all the goods and services an economy produces.

I would steal his phrases, because he worked so hard for this. Like a economy word. You’ll appreciate economy of words to explain these complicated things in a fast but not dense way. So I used to steal his wording all the time. I still use it. I still use it.

Wolla: So looking back a little bit, how do you think your background outside of economics shapes the way that you, tell stories and write their stories today?

Smith: I think about that a lot, actually. I have come to think of it now as, as a strength. Like I still consider myself. It’s very funny at this point. One of my colleagues was like, you, haven’t you been covering this for, like, more than 15 years? Like you’re not really an outsider, but I think of myself as an outsider in economics.

Like, I, I don’t feel like I’m in the club. I always feel like a little outside of it, which I think can be helpful because a I’m never embarrassed when I don’t. Well, that’s not true, but I’m usually not embarrassed when I don’t understand things. So I think, and it’s very easy for me to go into the part of my mind that does not know economics.

So it’s it’s very easy for me to access the part of like, wait, this is going to be too dense. I can go back to beginner’s mind very easily. So it makes it easier for me to explain things because I understand where I should start and like what would pull me in as a non econ person, even though now I’m definitely an econ person.

No one gets this excited about visiting a Federal Reserve Bank who is not an econ person, but I still think of myself as an outsider.

Wolla: Yeah, no. That’s great. I could see how that would be, really useful. So economics instructors want to make sure their ideas are relevant. And educators want their lessons to stick. What do you think it is about story storytelling that makes it an effective way to communicate economic concepts?

Smith: I mean, part of it is, for me, early on, those stories really illuminate they they were the doorway into economics for me because I was a literature major. So I didn’t know economics by news stories. I knew motivation, I’d thought deeply about those things and relationships and things like that. And economics is really a kind of relationship, and I think it’s probably the interesting thing about covering economics is it it’s such an emotional thing.

People always talk about it like it’s numbers and data, but it’s I think some of the most personal, important stuff of life that there is. And so I really feel like it often gets covered in a bad way. But if you just tap into what is already there, like, you know, people say losing your, you know, people losing their jobs, it’s a very straightforward one.

Will that is much more than the sum of its parts. Right? It’s much more than just like, oh, I don’t have a paycheck. What shall I do? It’s identity. It’s emotional, it’s scars. People, people are terrified of that. It’s their identities wrapped up in their job. All kinds of things are wrapped up in the economy. Animal spirits is one of my favorite concepts in economics, because I do think I do appreciate that.

Like, Keynes tried to put it in a bucket like, oh, we’re mostly logical, but every once in a while, animal spirits take over. I think it’s much more woven together. And so I think if you’re approaching teaching it, that is a is a good thing to remember. Justin Wolfers, who I know has been on this podcast, and Betsy Stevenson in their great textbook, had this great, analogy for sunk cost, which I will never forget, where he says sunk cost dilemma is, you know, so you’ve been he’s like, I have to deal with my students all the time.

They’ve been dating someone for two years. It’s not great, but they’ve invested two years. And so they’re like, well, now what do I do? He’s like, that is a perfect sunk cost dilemma. And I think things like that can bring things to life. And say like, oh, economics is not just about investing or spending money. It’s the whole world around us and how we relate to each other and how we relate to the world and resources and the, you know, in the finite amount of time and with the finite amount of money, we have.

Wolla: So walk us through the process of, turning an act, an abstract concept into a story. You know, we were actually just upstairs for the professors conference, and you were talking about some of the strategies that you use in crafting, like, like a story. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Smith: Yeah, yeah. So, okay. I think for me. I always try to find like, well, not always, but often try to find sort of a narrative within the data. So let’s say, I don’t know, inflation is a big one. So these inflation numbers are coming out. This is a big deal. It’s just very easy to find a human story.

So I remember talking this is for NPR, talking to this woman in Texas who had seven kids and she had a full time job. She’s a pretty good earner, but her husband was not employed at the time, and she knew how much everything cost at all of these different stores. She’s like, well, at Costco, eggs are, you know, $5.

And at WinCo, because this was such a fun, like she was stretched so tight that she knew how much everything cost at all of these stores and was like driving around just trying to find, like the lowest possible grocery prices. And to me, that really makes it seem urgent. What is happening with the CPI like you see these numbers, but like how they play out for us, how they play out for different people, what it means.

Or, you know, I talked to, I remember talking to, when the, the stimulus checks went out, but they were, they got all caught up, remember, because they went out really fast and they were going out through the unemployment offices. And there was one woman I talked to, there was the man at the unemployment office who was trying really, really hard to get the checks out and like pulling out all the stops, made this, these computer programs from the 80s.

And then there was the woman who was waiting for her check. She’d been laid off from Subaru, and she had started it out of desperation, started this group of people like this network of people on Facebook, and they were trading diapers and all kinds of things in the early pandemic and just this sort of they had created like a little barter economy because she had no money.

So things like that, I think are, tactics I always try to use because the economy does affect us in really personal ways. When I started, I started right before the housing crash. I started reporting right before the housing crash. And nothing is more personal, I think, than a home. Often, like, it’s so much is wrapped up in that.

And so I just talk to people in the very beginning of my career, who were underwater on their homes, who had taken out these subprime loans and felt cheated and were angry. And, and at the same time, all these technical things were happening, synthetic CDOs and credit default swaps and all this very cerebral financial instrument stuff.

At the same time, it was a profoundly human story. So I always try to connect those two.

Wolla: So many of our listeners are teachers and professors trying to make economic ideas come alive in the classroom. What lessons from your work, what lessons from a work could help them think about telling good stories in the classroom?

Smith: I think one of the things, I think there are a lot there are a lot of different things. One of them, obviously, is putting a human face on the data. I think that’s always helpful. The other thing is to look at what actually is in the data, like how it gets collected, where it comes from. I think there are a lot of stories in there, like people talking about GDP a lot right now.

Well, GDP is a big number. It’s a big important number. But there’s all this like what exactly goes into it and then, you know, there’s like there are some sort of comical, interesting stories, like when Italy decided to include the black market in its GDP because they felt like they were leaving a lot of economic activity on the table, and they surpassed, I believe it was England, the UK, and they called it elsewhere, peso.

And they were very excited about it. But the idea of like GDP not quite telling the whole story. So like what exactly is in it? I think that can be really interesting and it helps the numbers seem come alive and not it’s not just a number. It’s more of this interactive collection of data. I mean, you know, they say all charts are lies, right?

And that’s true, but they’re all they all come from, you know, very granular things. Also, I think the Beige Book, I would just say you can always use the Beige Book, which is one of my favorite economic indicators out there.

Wolla: That’s right. Yeah. We’re, we love the Beige Book too. So looking back, is there a particular story you’re especially proud of? Brow and helplessness. Feel an economic concept or principle?

Smith: Yes. The one that comes to mind immediately to my mind is it was about the tragedy of the commons. So the tragedy of the Commons is this idea that if there’s a public resource there and it is it is basically this dilemma where if I think it was, I can’t remember it was a Scottish anyway.

It was, it was a, it was this theory that someone came up with. It’s like, okay, so you have a common area of grass and everybody around has sheep as free to graze. The sheep. The people who own the sheep are now incentivized to have as many sheep grazing as often and eating as much of the grass as possible because it’s free.

So if they’re acting in their self-interest, then the sheep are going to eat as much of this free grass as they can. In the end, the common is destroyed. And I think this is such a fascinating description of a really human dilemma that we are seeing play out all around us in all kinds of ways, right? Like public goods, things like clean air, clean water.

It is in our personal interest to use them as much as we can. They’re free. So how do you deal with this? Well, I went out to California, which was dealing with a big drought at the time. There they were, having to drill down like 1213 hundred feet. They were bringing oil equipment, to, to drill these wells, which they had never had to do before.

And what happened was the farmers knew they were all taking pumping water out of the same aquifer. This was some of the most valuable farmland in California. And so they started pumping as much of it as they could because it was just like no holds barred, because they knew if I don’t pump this water, my neighbor’s going to pump this water and I’m going to maybe lose my farm.

So they were trying to make hay while there was still any hay to be made. And ironically enough, the thing they all started planning were pistachio trees, which were some of the thirsty crops, most water demanding crops out. There. But pistachios are demanding this really high premium because they are so thirsty. And so all of a sudden, in the middle of this drought, these farmers are planning acres and acres of pistachio trees and drilling down 2000ft.

And it was such a perfect illustration of this tragedy. Now, there was also a group of farmers up north who had created a collective where they had agreed to sort of portion out the water, which was really interesting, mean they had a really hard time. But it was it was just a really beautiful illustration to me of that dilemma.

And I felt like I it was just like one of those moments when it really came to life for me. And just all of the, you know, these farmers who were really dealing with a very difficult situation. I mean, it’s easy to say, well, you should you shouldn’t be so greedy. But, you know, these are this is their life, their livelihood, their farms.

And everyone around them is doing the same thing.

Wolla: So for educators, they get immediate feedback from their students. They can see the facial reaction, their students fill out evaluation forms at the end of the semester. How do you get feedback for, for a podcast?

Smith: Well, listener letters. Yeah. Feedback is always been, Oh, yeah, it’s always a part of the job. I mean, there’s feedback at a bunch of levels from my editor. Sometimes, like, the host will have thoughts about it or, or, you know, listeners will write in. It’s really interesting to me sometimes what resonates and what doesn’t. I learn a lot from it.

Still, for instance, at NPR, I think it was in 2023 or something. They were they got really into metrics. So they were always tracking how many things got listened to and how many times. And but the story that I had that was I had two stories that were listened to so far in a way, more than anything else on two topics.

One was eggs and one was tipping. And these two topics, I mean, they we got letters from them. They were getting listens. Like months later it was really interesting and I would never have guessed that. Meanwhile, I was doing stories about joblessness and all kinds of things, but it was those two things that really grabbed people. You kind of, I mean, you can have a sense of what you think will land, especially when you’ve been doing the job for a long time, but you kind of never know.

You never know what will resonate with people.

[cut to VO]

Wolla (VO): We’re going to take a quick break.

When we come back, Stacy will discuss how she uses economic storytelling to address misconceptions and meet audiences where they are.

[Federal Reserve Education.com promotion]

Wolla (VO): Welcome back.

Before the break, Stacy Vanek Smith spoke about her path to becoming an economic storyteller and shared insights about making complex economic concepts accessible through narrative technique.

We pick back up our discussion with her breaking down the elements of a good econ story.

[cut to interview]

Wolla: What makes a great economic story in your view?

Smith: I think for me, for my audience, which is maybe a little different from a teacher, for me, it’s illuminating something for people where, you know, you take the job market right now, it’s very confusing. No one knows what’s going on. The numbers still look pretty good. People feel terrible about the job market. So digging into that, explaining some small part of it, maybe it’s, you know, well, the layoffs are happening in industries that get a lot of attention, like tech and media and the industries that are growing, like health care tend to be a little bit quieter.

So explanations like that, that can kind of help people make sense of the world around them, or just help shine a little bit of a light into something that is confusing or that people feel, scared of. And I think the economy can be very scary. It’s such a powerful force around us. That that to me is it is a successful story that to me feels important.

Wolla: So if you were having an economics and story workshop for, for educators, what would be the first lesson?

Smith: I guess for me, the first lesson would be to think about what the students are thinking about. That’s what I always do as a reporter. I’m always thinking about, like, what are the questions the audience has right now? What are they worried about? What are they thinking about? And sometimes I know and sometimes I don’t. But, you know, if there’s a question like this, I feel like my most the thing that I have learned to sort of hone in myself is, is a sense of curiosity.

So if something strikes me and it seems funny or strange or puzzling or confusing or paradoxical, I get very interested because there’s usually something interesting going on, a moment of change or something that’s not quite unfolding the way you thought it would. So I would say the first lesson is to think about, okay, where are what are these students interested in?

What are they looking at? What do they want to talk about? It’s a really good place to start because that, first of all, makes it seem like economics, like, oh, this is a part of my life. It always has been. I just wasn’t necessarily aware of it. But then also it’s sort of meeting them where they’re at, which is something I try to do, as well.

And it’s a little bit easier for me, than maybe for an econ professor was like curriculum to get through and things that have to be explained that might not always relate to whatever, fortnight or, you know, something that people are, like, really excited about or interested in. But I think, I think that’s a good, a good way to think about it.

You know, it’s like they might be worried about jobs. What should they major in? Student loans, work. You know, like getting a summer job, like, all kinds of things. The the cost of food, the cost of travel, and kind of find, find some of the economic points in their, in those issues.

Wolla: So people have a lot of misconceptions about the economy. And, how do you how do you address those and kind of tackle them through storytelling or your story?

Smith: I feel like misconception. There’s always truth in misconceptions. And for me, like I always like to find the truth in it and then explain maybe why it’s not quite as simple as that. Because I think our instincts, even though they’re not always true. I know we were talking earlier and, the great journalist Peter Coy made the point about, immigration.

And there can always or, you know, there can always be this feel, this feeling of zero sum game like, oh, well, if if someone else gets this job, that’s one fewer job for me, that means I don’t get this job. And we and economists will say, well, that is not true. And that is correct. It’s not true. But there is some truth to it in some ways.

And so starting there and then going out from that so that you’re not just saying, like, like, oh, you just don’t get it right. You don’t want to start there, you don’t want to start with like, oh, you just you’re too pure. I feel like you don’t understand. Instead of starting with like, I know it can seem like this, but actually that, I think it’s more interesting.

And then people feel like they are getting smarter instead of feeling like you’re telling them that they’re dumb.

Wolla: No, I think that’s great. I have to believe that storytelling is a really great way of addressing those kind of things. Because of there’s, like, an empathetic, aspect to storytelling, whereby, you know, the listener might actually start to relate with the person that you’re talking about. Do you, like when you’re tackling one of these stories and you’re thinking, I want to use a human story to tell this?

How do you find that human on the other side?

Smith: All kinds of ways. Now, social media is very helpful with that because you can look up. I did a story for marketplace last year, and it was about women, dropping out of the labor force because of the cost of childcare was making it a really difficult financial decision for them. And so I was just able I was like, I wanted to find a young, a mother of really young kids.

So I just looked on TikTok and there were dozens and dozens and dozens of people, and they were all they were all describing their stories so I could find someone whose story I semi knew and then talk with them, and they were also putting their story out there already, which is just it’s made my job much easier in the past.

What I would do is depending on the story, if you want a small business owner, you could call small business association. I would look at local press all the time. You know, you kind of just, you find any way that you can think of to find, someone. Sometimes I would look up. Oh, sometimes I would look up like,

Oh. See, what did I do? I would look up an industry article. I would see which, businesses would. Right. Like, if I were doing something on farming, I would find there are all these like publications that farmers read, and farmers will write articles for them or op eds. So I would look in there. And so I was like, oh, this person has thought deeply about this issue and just anything, I mean, one of the most common things that I used to hear from people when I call them is like, how did you get my contact information?

But, you know, you just get good at tracking people down and and figuring out what’s so easy now. That I at least to find a certain demographic of people because of social media and everyone’s sort of out there telling their stories anyway. But that still does leave a lot of people on the table. And I try to be very conscious of that, too, that, you know, not everybody who has a story to tell is on TikTok.

Wolla: Sure. One of the stories that I’ve heard you talk about, and I’m pretty sure this episode was the the CPI statistician. Right along.

Smith: Yes.

Wolla: And I’m really intrigued by that story. I don’t know if you want to tell the listeners a little bit about that, but also, do you do things like that to get people kind of a view of how the other sausage is made or how the data are collected? I don’t know. Go ahead and tell us a little bit about that.

Smith: Yes. That story that was for the indicator from Planet Money and I, got, well, the idea I had gotten I got from Caitlin Kenney, who was a reporter at Planet Money and had, talked about the consumer price index and had gone with one of the people gathering data. So I knew how this worked. But I loved that story, and it had been from the very, very early days of Planet Money.

And when I was thinking about doing this, it was in the middle of the pandemic. So inflation was suddenly this very big deal. And I was like, first of all, I wonder how data is being collected and what’s what is this look like right now? So I called the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and I wasn’t sure if they would be very open at that time, because it was such a crazy time in every way for the economy.

And it was such a stressful thing, and I wasn’t even sure how the data was getting collected at that point was the whole world was watching that data and everything was shut down. They were so generous and wonderful. And they immediately said, you know, if you would like to, to jump on a call with people this basically it’s all phone calls and, zoom calls right now.

And then a little bit of checking prices on the internet. And so they they partnered me up with Emily Myositis, who’s an economist working for them, who knew this stuff, like the back of her hand. It was so impressive, watching her go through. And they they had these forms and, you know, she would go through the form and it would be these very specific items, you know, it would be like white moisture wicking tube socks from a particular company.

And it was this shot. It was the sporting goods store in Delaware, and they always called the same store in Delaware. To check on the price of this pair of socks. And just the granularity of it was amazing. And the dedication and the time. And, you know, Emily was so kind to everybody. There was a, moment in the story when she calls this grocery store in Philadelphia to check the price of butter, and it looks like it’s gone up 25% from the month before.

And the special form comes up, this special form, if something’s over 20%, I believe special form comes up. And then she has to ask a series of other questions, all these protections in place to make sure that this data, which is very tediously and arduously collected and very precisely collected, is protected from from human error because, as it turned out, the guy had just mis he just had the wrong brand of butter.

So it wasn’t 25% more expensive. But I think about that a lot because with things like AI or you can just run, you know, look at Amazon, look at prices on Amazon and I think what that illuminated for me the like I love process stories. Those are always fun. It takes you inside this world and then you’re sort of connected to this data in a way you weren’t before.

But for me, I think at first I was just like, I can’t believe they’re doing it this way. This is so old school and inefficient. And I think by the end I was like, no, this data is so important that you cannot play fast and loose with it. I mean, sure, you can look at Amazon. That’s fun data, but this is serious data that moves global markets.

You cannot mess around with this data. It has to be right. So it’s worth it to invest in it. And maybe to not have it be like the up to the moment technological sophistication, but to be a little bit slower and just make sure it’s right because so important and you know, some of the most important data in the world right now.

So I think for me, it, I think I just I gained a great appreciation for it. You know, I always loved the CPI but I was like, oh, this is really serious. And sometimes really serious things can’t change immediately. They need to change slowly. You know, you change when you know that things will still be correct.

Wolla: Yeah, definitely. So, the work you do is pretty similar to not the same, but pretty similar to what economic educators do when they walk into a classroom. They encounter, their students who don’t have any prior economic knowledge. They’re seeking understanding. They’re seeking a grade two, but they’re hoping to understand. Do you have any words of advice for any last words of advice for educators as they think about, the power of story?

How to use, podcasting? I know a lot of teachers who use the podcast that you’ve been involved in, in their classroom as part of the course content. So I’m wondering if you have any thoughts about that as well?

Smith: Oh, yeah. I mean, first of all, I think it’s such an important job teaching economics. And I mean, no matter where those I want to say kids, I know they’re not kids, those young adults end up going in their lives. I mean, this is something that will protect them in a lot of ways, enable them to navigate life in a better way.

I mean, it’s it’s a pretty amazing job. And calling to me, teaching economics, and, and a big commitment, I’m very honored that my work is used. And I think it can be a great supplement. Obviously, it doesn’t have enough substance, you know, that because of time limits and other things. But to to really teach people like you could not become an economist listening to podcasts, but I think you could have a great depth of understanding.

And I think how I think about my job is a bit of a translator or bridging the gap, kind of connecting people who aren’t necessarily inherently interested in economics or maybe a little bit interested, but don’t know anything about it, maybe intimidated with all of these forces and all of these things that are shaping our lives all the time.

So my advice would be just to know that that is an incredibly important thing. It’s not easy. A lot of these concepts are complicated and dense, and I don’t fully understand most of them. But I do think, you know, using anything. I think podcasts are just a great tool. Like it can make people excited. I think the the real tool of podcasts is excitement.

And like you said, empathy. It connects people with other people. It connects people with economics so they can feel emotional about economics. It’s not just this like, cerebral exercise. It’s it’s like, oh, this is shaping the world around me. This is affecting people’s lives. I think any responsible economist will tell you that they take that job seriously.

Especially so many economists are policymakers and and making huge decisions for the country. And I think that knowing that sort of emotional emotionality and how alive economics is, is very important. I think that’s the role that, that podcast can play.

Wolla: So, we can edit this out, but is there anything else that you want to kind of,

Smith: Not that I can think of, I don’t know. Is there anything else? I feel like I was just rambling and rambling, was really fun to talk about.

Wolla: The questions that, like, you kind of covered in other aspects. So, like, what’s one story about economics that you think everyone should know? Oh, like I can.

Smith: Yeah. Okay. That’s interesting.

Wolla: All right. Stacy, you spent many years helping people understand the economy through story. What’s one story about economics that you think everyone should know?

Smith: That’s a good question. One. If I could pick one story that everyone understood. You know, right now, for me, it would be. It would be tariffs and trade. I feel like that. We’ve been talking about that so much. And I do feel like it is a nuanced issue. And very much at the foundations of economics. So, you know, starting at the end of World War II, the world is really move towards more open trade.

We were up until very recently moving towards this world of kind of free trade, and that has had huge benefits for the economy. It’s just our quality of life. The cost of it brought the cost of things down so dramatically. Our quality of life as far as like stuff we can afford, has gone way up. It’s helped countries all over the world.

It’s it’s really transformed our lives in so many ways. It’s made us a global economy which has come with huge benefits. There have also been real costs to that, and I feel like those two things can coexist. And what I love about economics is there are always trade offs. It’s a big it’s a balance. It’s like life in anything.

And I think so often politicians use economic concepts and they never want to talk about trade offs. Right. So it’s like either free trade is like the best thing since sliced bread or free trade is the reason that all of these towns shut down when textiles completely pretty much moved to to Mexico and then to Asia. But it’s both, it’s both.

And so I feel like if there was one concept to understand, I feel like it would be that balance and how that works. Before I got to Planet Money, they did something called the T-Shirt Project, which followed a t-shirt, how it was made. They decided to make a t-shirt. They followed, they got, they found the cotton and they just followed it all over the world to see this process.

I think about that show all the time. It’s the thing that really made me want to work at Planet Money, and they did such a beautiful job of illustrating all of this, the good parts and the bad parts and the difficult parts and the advantages and disadvantages and I feel like that is such a great introduction to economics, because you understand that there are always winners and losers and, but it helps you make an informed decision, you know, it helps you participate in the economy where you’re not just being sort of tossed around, by the winds of you can you can try to control your destiny in some way, but but in understanding the pluses and minuses of all these things happening around us.

Wolla: That’s a great lesson. I want to thank you for being here today. Yeah. Again. It’s, a pleasure for me. So intimidating to, to interview you. I been listening to your work online, and podcasts on the radio for years. And so, again, thank you for being with me today. And, I wish you well.

Smith: Thank you. Scott. And please, like, thank everybody at the the St. Louis Fed for me. I think you guys do such great work.

Wolla: Thank you. I appreciate that.

Wolla (VO): Thanks for listening to my conversation with journalist and podcast host Stacy Vanek Smith. If you liked the show, please subscribe anywhere you get podcasts. Also, be sure to leave us a review—each one really helps. From the St. Louis Fed, I’m Scott Wolla, and you’ve been listening to Teach Economics.