"Hexapodia" Is the Key Insight: by Noah Smith & Brad DeLong

About "Hexapodia" Is the Key Insight: by Noah Smith & Brad DeLong

teach the world good economics through every means possible, & some means impossible... braddelong.substack.com (https://braddelong.substack.com/s/hexapodia-is-the-key-insight-by-noah?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Noah Smith & Brad DeLong

Category

business · science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

10 Feb 2021

Latest episode

24 Apr 2025

Latest episodes

64 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   24 Apr 2025

   PODCAST: Hexapodia LXIII: Plato's WereWolf, & Other Trumpist Topics

   Back after a year on hiatus! Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast They, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour... Sokrates: The people find some protector, whom they nurse into greatness… but then changes, as indicated in the old fable of the Temple of Zeus of the Wolf, of how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other sacrificial victims will turn into a wolf. Even so, the protector, once metaphorically tasting human blood, slaying some and exiling others, within or without the law, hinting at the cancellation of debts and the fair redistribution of lands, must then either perish or become a werewolf—that is, a tyrant… Key Insights: * We are back! After a year-long hiatus. * Hexapodia is a metaphor: a small, strange insight (like alien shrubs riding on six-wheeled carts as involuntary agents of the Great Evil) can provide key insight into useful and valuable Truth. * The Democratic Party is run by 27-year-old staffers, not geriatric figurehead politicians–this shapes messaging and internal dynamics. * The American progressive movement did not possess enough assibayah to keep from fracturing over Gaza War, especially among younger Democratic staffers influenced by social media discourse. * The left’s adoption of “indigeneity” rhetoric undermined its ability to be a coalition in the face of tensions generated by the Hamas-Israel terrorism campaigns. * Trump’s election with more popular votes than Harris destroyed Democratic belief that they had a right to oppose root-and-branch. * The belief that Democrats are the “natural majority” of the U.S. electorate is now false: nonvoters lean Trump, not so much Republican, and definitely not Democratic. * Trump’s populism is not economic redistribution, but a claim to provide a redistribution of status and respect to those who feel culturally disrespected. * The Supreme Court’s response to Trumpian overreach is likely to be very cautious—Barrett and Roberts are desperately eager to avoid any confrontation with Trump they might wind up losing, and Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Thomas will go the extra mile—they are Republicans who are judges, not judges who are Republicans, except in some extremis that may not even exist. * Trump’s administration pursues selective repression through the state, rather than stochastic terrorism. * The economic consequence of the second Trump presidency look akin to another Brexit costing the U.S. ~10% of its prosperity, or more. * Social media, especially Twitter a status warfare machine–amplifying trolls and extremists, suppressing nuance. * People addicted to toxic media diets but lack the tools or education to curate better information environments. * SubStack and newsletters may become part of a healthier information ecosystem, a partial antidote to the toxic amplification of the Shouting Class on social media. * Human history is marked by information revolutions (e.g., printing press), each producing destructive upheaval before stabilization: destruction, that may or may not be creative. * As in the 1930s, we are entering a period where institutions–not mobs–become the threat, even as social unrest diminishes. * The dangers are real,and recognizing and adapting to new communication realities is key to preserving democracy. * Plato’s Republic warned of democracy decaying into tyranny, especially when mob-like populism finds a strongman champion who then, having (metaphorically) fed on human flesh, becomes a (metaphorical) werewolf. * Enlightenment values relied more than we knew on print-based gatekeeping and slow communication; digital communication bypasses these safeguards. * The cycle of crisis and recovery is consistent through history: societies fall into holes they later dig out of, usually at great cost—or they don’t. * &, as always, HEXAPODIA! References: * Brown, Chad P. 2025. “Trump's trade war timeline 2.0: An up-to-date guide”. PIIE. . * Center for Humane Technology. 2020. “The Social Dilemma”. . * Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, & John Jay. 1788. The Federalist Papers. . * Nowinski, Wally. 2024. “Democrats benefit from low turnout now”. Noahpinion. July 20. . * Platon of the Athenai. -375 [1871]. Politeia. . * Rorty, Richard. 1998. Achieving Our Country. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. * Rothpletz, Peter. 2024. “Economics 101 tells us there’s no going back from Trumpism”. The Hill. September 24. . * Smith, Noah. 2021. “Wokeness as Respect Redistribution”. Noahpinion.. * Smith, Noah. 2016. “How to actually redistribute respect”. Noahpinion. March 23. . * Smith, Noah. 2013. “Redistribute wealth? No, redistribute respect”. Noahpinion. December 27. . * SubStack. 2025. “Building a New Economic Engine for Culture”. . & * Vinge, Vernor. 1999. A Deepness in the Sky. New York: Tor Books. . If reading this gets you Value Above Replacement, then become a free subscriber to this newsletter. And forward it! And if your VAR from this newsletter is in the three digits or more each year, please become a paid subscriber! I am trying to make you readers—and myself—smarter. Please tell me if I succeed, or how I fail… Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe (https://braddelong.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   25 Jun 2024

   PODCAST: Hexapodia LXII: Noah Needs Nuance!

   Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour... Key Insights: * Brad DeLong says: You say economics and economists in decline—I see bad economists in decline. * Brad DeLong says: You see missile defense as remarkably effective—I see it as marginally effective, at best. * Brad DeLong says: You say China Shock II—I say China Shock I required the GWB administration as witting and unwitting co-conspirator. * Noah Smith says: These are self-refuting prophecies: my defense of missile defense was to say that it can be remarkably effective in a few possible instances, but those plausible ones for the next two decades; my title “the decade of the second China shock” and my subhead “brace yourselves” were intended to spur action to keep there from being a second China shock. * Noah Smith says: Economists advising badly had a lot of influence in 2008 and after, and still have a substantial amount today—so the total influence of economists has decreased since 2008, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. * The only real way to get nuance is to write a whole book and then have people deeply engage with it, which requires that they be on a trans-oceanic flight with dodgy Wi-Fi, and be otherwise bored. * The internet makes us less nuanced than we should be. * &, as always, HEXAPODIA! References: * Smith, Noah. 2024. “Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense”. Noahpinion. April 15. . * Smith, Noah. 2024. “Twilight of the economists?” Noahpinion. April 12. . * Smith, Noah. 2024. “The decade of the Second China Shock”. March 23. . & * Vinge, Vernor. 1999. A Deepness in the Sky. New York: Tor Books. . Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe (https://braddelong.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   22 May 2024

   PODCAST: Hexapodia LX: DeLong Smackdown Watch: Snatching Back the Baton for Supply-Side Progressivism Edition

   Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour... Key Insights: * A number of years ago, Brad DeLong said that it was time to “pass the baton” to “The Left”. How’s that working out for us? #actually, he had said that we had passed the baton—that the absence since January 21, 2009 (or possibly January 21, 1993) of Republican negotiating partners meant that sensible centrism produced nothing—that Barack Obama had proposed John McCain’s climate policy, Mitt Romney’s health care policy, George H.W. Bush’s entitlement-and-budget policy, Ronald Reagan’s tax policy, and Gerald Ford’s foreign policy, and had gotten precisely zero Republican votes for any of those. Therefore the only choice we had was to pass the baton to the Left in the hopes that they could energize the base and the disaffected to win majorities, and then offer strong support where there policies were better than the status quo. * But my major initial take was that the major task was to resurrect a sensible center-right, in which I wished the Niskanen Center good luck, but was not optimistic. * But everyone heard “Brad DeLong says neoliberals should ‘bend the knee’” to THE LEFT… * That is interesting… * Should neoliberals bend the knee? * How has the left been doing with its baton? Not well at all, for anyone who defines “THE LEFT” to consist of former Bernie staffers who regard Elizabeth Warren as a neoliberal sellout. * It has, once again, never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. * But the conditions that required passing the baton to the left—High Mitch McConnellism, Republican unity saying “NO!” to everything by every Republican to make the Black president look like a weak failure—no longer hold. * And the principal adversaries to good governance and a bright American future are reactionary theocrats, neofascist grifters, and true-believer right-neoliberals to the right and cost-disease socialists to the left. * But in the middle, made up of ex-left-neoliberals and nearly all other right-thinking Americans, are we supply-side progressives. * Instead, there is a governing coalition, in the Senate, composed of 70 senators, 50 Democrats and 20 Republicans, from Bernie Sanders through J.D. Vance—a supply-side progressive or supply-side Americanist coalition. * It is therefore time to snatch the baton back, and give it to the supply-side progressivist policy-politics core, and then grab as many people to run alongside that core in the race as we possibly can. * The Niskanen Center cannot be at the heart of the supply-side progressivist agenda because they are incrementalists and critics by nature. * The principal business of “Leftist” activists over the past five years really has been and continues to be to try to grease the skids for the return of neofascism—just as the principal business of Ralph Nader and Naderites in 2000 was to grease the skids for upper-class tax cuts, catastrophic financial deregulation, and forever wars. * &, as always, HEXAPODIA! References: * Beauchamp, Zack. 2019. "A Clinton-Era Centrist Democrat Explains Why It's Time to Give Democratic Socialists a Chance." Vox. March 4, 2019. . * Black, Bill. 2019. "Brad DeLong's Stunning Concession: Neoliberals Should Pass the Baton & Let the Left Lead." Naked Capitalism. March 5. . * DeLong, J. Bradford. 2019. “David Walsh went to the Niskanen Center conference. He got hives…” Twitter. February 25. . (https://twitter.com/delong/status/1100166150845939712.) * DeLong, J. Bradford. 2019. "Carville & Hunt: Two Old White Guys Podcast." Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality. March 11. . * DeLong, J. Bradford. 2019. "I Said 'Pass the Baton' to Those Further Left Than I, Not 'Bend the Knee.'" Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality. March 27. . * Elmaazi, Mohamed. 2019. "Famous Neoliberal Economist Says Centrism Has Failed." The Canary. March 15, 2019. . * O’Reilly, Timothy. 2019. "This Interview with Brad DeLong is Very Compelling." LinkedIn. . * Douthat, Ross. 2019. "What’s Left of the Center-Left?" New York Times. March 5. . * Drum, Kevin. 2019. "A Neoliberal Says It's Time for Neoliberals to Pack It In." Mother Jones. March 5. . * Hundt, Reed, Brad DeLong, & Joshua Cohen. 2019."Neoliberalism and Its Discontents." Commonwealth Club. March 5. . * Konczal, Mike. 2019. "The Failures of Neoliberalism Are Bigger Than Politics." Roosevelt Institute. March 5. . & * Vinge, Vernor. 1999. A Deepness in the Sky. New York: Tor Books. . Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe (https://braddelong.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.4 / 5

55 ratings

Spotify

4.5 / 5

38 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 50 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

64

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

92

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