Make Me Smart

Lessons from the rest of the world on politicizing economic data

Aug 4, 2025 · 18 min · Episode 1440 · 18.3 MB
0:00-18:53

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President Trump’s firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner is not without international precedent. Other countries have gone down the path of meddling with economic data for political gain. We’ll get into lessons we can take from the rest of the world. And, can the U.S. continue to be a bastion of scientific research in the wake of deep federal funding cuts? Plus, we’ll celebrate one listener’s feat of digitizing years of her great grandmother’s diaries.


Here’s everything we talked about today: