Hey Weed's fans, I am Ezra Klein, one of the hosts of Box.com's and Panably Network's

podcast of the Weeds.

And I'm here with a special extra midweek episode.

I got a chance recently to sit down and interview Ben Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve

chairman.

He just released a really great memoir actually of his time running with Federal Reserve

called Courage to Act.

I recommend it if you like reading memoirs of financial crisis.

This is definitely one of the ones you should read.

This is a very in the Weeds interview.

We sat down and talked about what it is like to be the Federal Reserve chairman, to sort

of how the mechanisms of control work, what the staffing is like, had you get the information

during something that is fast paced and very opaque like a financial crisis.

So this is really down deep in the mechanics of his job, which I found really interesting

to hear and I hope you will too.

So here we are, Ben Bernanke, former Federal Reserve chairman.

Hope you enjoy.

I'm going to start with a question that is actually a little bit simple.

What does the Federal Reserve chair do?

Well, the multiple jobs, very important job of course is managing monetary policy, which

means following the economy very closely, following financial markets closely, then consulting

with and talking with the members of the Federal Market Committee, the policy committee,

...