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I'm Dorothy Wickendon.

On today's Politics and More podcast, New Yorker staff writer James Surawicki talks to Daniel Juergen, a writer and energy consultant.

Juergen is the author of The Prize, a history of the oil industry, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991.

Let's do a little economics 101 for a moment.

We know that low oil prices are supposedly great for the economy.

Cheap oil stimulates manufacturing, goods become cheaper, people travel more, and so on.

Higher oil prices equals recession.

It turns out that cheap oil doesn't seem to be delivering an economic boom.

All you have to do is look around and the picture is much more complicated.

James Surawicki is the New Yorker's explainer in chief on anything related to the economy,

and he called up Daniel Juergen, an energy consultant and the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on oil, politics, and history.

James wanted to know how oil got so cheap and what that means today.

Three things have come together to bring down the price of oil.

...