Megan McArdle on Catastrophes and the Pandemic

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2021

⏱️ 79 minutes

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Summary

Whether it's a pandemic or a Texas-sized ice storm that leaves millions of people without power, we'd like to avoid a repetition. Megan McArdle of the Washington Post talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the challenge of learning the right lessons from the current crisis in order to prevent the next one. McArdle argues that we frequently learn the wrong lessons from the past in trying to prevent the harm from the catastrophes that might be waiting in our future.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics
0:07.0	and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover
0:13.0	Institution.
0:14.0	Go to econtalk.org where you could subscribe, comment on this episode and find links on
0:18.6	the information related to today's conversation.
0:21.6	You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.8	Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.
0:30.2	We'd love to hear from you.
0:37.6	Today is March 5th, 2021.
0:39.2	I guess this journalist and author Megan McCartle is Megan's fifth appearance on econ talk.
0:45.2	She was here last in October of 2017 to talk about internet shaming, unfortunately a very
0:50.6	pressure conversation.
0:52.6	The topic for today is the pandemic and the issue of preparedness for the next big thing.
0:57.6	We're going to draw loosely on a recent piece.
0:59.6	Megan wrote in the Washington Post, which we will link to.
1:03.2	I can welcome back to econ talk.
1:05.0	Thanks so much for having me.
1:07.0	Always an honor.
1:08.2	A few housekeeping matters.
1:10.5	I want to remind listeners we are now posting video versions of econ talk on YouTube.
1:16.6	You can watch this conversation if you prefer.
	...

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