Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy.

I'm Catherine.

And I'm Robin.

On this show, we believe the U.S. economy can be better,

and we talk about how to get there one problem and solution at a time.

But actually, kind of not this actual show, because we wanted to do an episode where we just answer questions that we got at our email address, optimist.com.com. So this is a question

and answer episode. And it remains to be seen if you all suggested either problems or

solutions so i just don't want to i don't want people to think that we're going to do something

constructive here like i don't i don't yeah we're going to see how this goes actually this is also

for me it's a game show i'm going to turn on my stopwatch to see how much time it takes Catherine to go through the entire backstory of every answer she wants to give.

Oh, God, that's Robin.

I forgot about that.

So you need to tell me right now, did my sister tell you to do this?

She did not.

Was it my brother?

Don't say mom.

Damn it. Anyway, we have like about an hour to record this. Okay. I'm not nervous. And so I think we're going to try to do that. So I did want to

just say optimist.com. I read all your letters. Catherine reads a lot of your letters. And we read your reviews too. I'm going to share this one that we got on Apple Podcasts. It says, economists on economics. Now I'm just going to say, I'm an editor, so I'm going to tell you there's only one economist on this show. I am not an economist. Otherwise, this is a fantastic review. It says that for the past

couple of decades of pop economics, where economists have gained large platforms for, quote,

applying economic principles to fields they know nothing about, that's left a bad taste in my

mouth. This podcast is a breath of fresh air. Aw.

Anyway, that's really all about you because, again, not an economist.

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