Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

An economics textbook that a student might buy today is not so different from books written a quarter century ago.

That is a problem. The field has moved on and students have concerns the books don't tackle.

We look into the effort to rewrite them.

And in the 1980s, two British Pakistani teenagers threw together an album that didn't get very far.

A few years ago, a copy unearthed in New York so captivated the DJ who found it that she's now re-releasing it.

We take a listen to see what the fuss is about.

But first... Today, American warships will take part in exercises in the Indian Ocean as part of the so-called

quad, a loose coalition with Australian, Indian, and Japanese forces widely viewed

as a counter to China. Yesterday, Japan's Prime Minister, Suga Yoshihide, said that peace in Taiwan

is key to wider stability in Asia, a key subject for Mr. Suga's visit next week to the White

House. Diplomatic, economic, and even hints of military tensions have been rising between China

and America and its allies.

Last month, internationally coordinated sanctions on Chinese officials, based on the

mistreatment of the Muslim U.S. minority in the province of Xinjiang, were swiftly met with

Chinese sanctions on American officials.

Nowhere were those troubled China-U.S. relations more apparent

than at a hostile meeting of the two sides last month in Alaska.

Well, I think we thought too well of the United States.

We thought that the U.S. side will follow the necessary diplomatic protocols.

Some had hoped that the two countries' relationship would become less confrontational than it had become during Donald Trump's presidency.

Instead, it seems only to be deteriorating.

...