0:00

NPR.

0:12

Here on the indicator, we've always believed

0:14

that economics can be fun, but

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Can economics also be like,

0:20

Fun Me? That is the question we are

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gonna put to the test today. Because we're

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taking the day off from the news, to explore

0:27

a slightly nerdy or

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maybe extremely nerdy kind of

0:31

humor, economeme.

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Or if you will, economies. That

0:37

is what we're calling today's show and what we

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have done is reached out to some fellow Economeme

0:42

heads and asked What

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is your favorite economy? So

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after the break, we'll hear from an economeme grad

0:48

student and a TikTok star.

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Hopefully, we'll get some laughs. We'll learn

0:53

some econ. And if

0:55

not, at least we'll have helped

0:58

you put off whatever it is you were procrastinating for

1:00

the next ten minutes.

1:07

Explore the rainforest. While

1:10

you water your house plants, take

1:12

a science trip with Shortwave, one

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of NPR's daily podcasts, more

1:17

voices, all ears, NPR

1:19

podcasts,

1:22

Our first economeme comes from Kyla

1:24

Scanlon. You might know Kyla from her

1:26

TikTok and YouTube channels, that's

1:28

where she makes quirky explainers on

1:30

the economy and the stock market and

1:33

a whole lot

1:33

more. I don't think finance gets a lot of art

1:35

made about it, and I think it should. Because

1:37

it's so ridiculous. So that was kind of

1:40

the

1:40

goal. Yeah. For folks who maybe

1:42

don't know you, how would you

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describe your own

1:46

level of finance economeme.

1:49

Oh, I would say it's pretty intense.

1:51

Like, people call me

1:52

a Fed SimP. Oh,

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so

1:55

I think Internet

1:56

speak for what does that mean? You

1:57

know what sentence?

1:58

I do not.

2:00

Oh, really?

2:00

I'm a I'm a elder millennial, so I might have

2:02

missed this. What that word means is, like, you

2:04

really really like that. I mean, you're, like, infatuated with

2:07

them. And of course, I'm not really infatuated

2:09

with the photomasser but I'm very much into

2:11

them, and I think they're really fascinating. So

2:14

it was pretty fitting when Kylo revealed

2:16

her favorite economy into us. And

2:18

it turned out to be a picture of

2:21

the chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome

2:23

Powell with this sort of

2:25

intense expression on his

2:26

face. Staying in the wood paneled room. Like,

2:29

I believe this was when he was testifying in front

2:31

of congress. And he has his

2:33

glasses halfway down his nose. And he

2:35

just is looking, like, very pensive, very

2:37

thoughtful and a little bit angry,

2:39

I would

2:40

say.

2:40

Tell me, like, what goes on your head when you

2:42

see this? Like, how do you read this picture?

2:44

Well, so Jerome Powell right now is sort

2:46

of like the overwater of the economy. Like,

2:48

he has to pay attention to everything. Like, when markets

2:51

end up responding to what Jerome Powell says, Like,

2:53

I can imagine him doing this or, like, when we

2:55

get the high labor numbers or when we

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see bancshoying going up in

2:59

price, like, I'd imagine that that's how Jerome

3:01

Powell is your connect everything. And I think that's

3:03

that's kind of funny. Hopefully, I'm

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not the only person in the world that makes it funny,

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but yeah. Now in real life, Kylie

3:10

says Powell is actually spending a lot of his time

3:12

glaring at what people are spending

3:14

on

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services. We're talking everything

3:17

from child and pet care to

3:20

taxicabs and haircuts. It's just money

3:22

that you spend to, like, do things. And

3:24

so, like, when people are talking about getting a haircut,

3:26

you'd imagine that Jerome Powell is looking disapprovingly

3:29

down on his glasses at them. Oh.

3:32

How do you have you used this meme yourself?

3:34

Yeah. Totally. Like, one of my friends

3:36

texted me and they're like, oh, I got a haircut and they they sent

3:38

me the picture of the haircut. And I sent

3:40

them this picture because you don't want

3:43

you don't want people spending money on

3:44

haircuts. Yeah. Like, anytime anybody talks

3:46

about, like, oh, we're going out. I sent this.

3:49

A lot of people don't find it as funny as

3:51

I do

3:52

anymore. But yeah.

3:54

So so I send it quite a bit. Yeah. Do

3:56

you think he's judging? Is he like, you

3:58

may be contributing to inflationary activity.

4:01

Like I said, it's it's a meme. So,

4:03

like, everything with a grain of salt.

4:05

But maybe a little bit, maybe a little bit,

4:07

he's, like, in his ideal world, like, people

4:09

would just stop spending money. He said inflation. Eventually,

4:12

he can get back down to that two percent number.

4:14

But yeah. Yeah. One could imagine gerontologists

4:17

disapproving clean sitting in a

4:19

room, watching all these numbers to cross

4:21

this screen. The next time I

4:23

did a haircut, I'm gonna meet just imagining like

4:25

drumdial glaring from the corner

4:27

of the room.

4:27

Yeah. He's disappointed.

4:31

Now, from the glaring eye of Powell

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to an economy that should hit especially

4:37

hard for the data nerds in the crowd.

4:39

It might not be that funny though, but we'll

4:42

see. I am easily amused. So Chinamello

4:45

Ocaphor is founder of an organization called

4:47

Research in Color. And she's

4:49

a grad student at Harvard studying political

4:51

economy in Africa. Lately,

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she says she's been spending a lot of her time getting ready

4:56

for this big exam she has later in

4:58

the

4:58

semester.

4:58

And if I pass, I don't get kicked out of the program.

5:01

And yeah. Well, I'm sure

5:03

you're gonna pass. I'm sure that's And when

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she is not studying, Jinamello says

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she's often scrolling through

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Twitter, which is where she came upon her

5:12

favorite economy. For anyone who's on

5:14

econ Twitter, This move is obviously

5:16

from Coavu, KH0AVU.

5:19

He is a PhD candidate at

5:22

the University of Minnesota. And he

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supplies Twitter with the best

5:26

memes, like, literally, you're not gonna get

5:28

a better

5:28

meme. Oh, man. It's like multiple means

5:31

a day. I'm like, this man is good. He is

5:33

too good. Alright. I'm

5:35

excited. Can we take a look at this thing?

5:37

Yeah. Okay. Alright. What I

5:41

I'm not okay. This is strange. So

5:44

there is a a

5:46

guy in a blue shirt

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who's like smiling and he's holding what

5:50

looks like a giant bottle of olive

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oil. It's like this bottle of olive

5:55

oil. It's like as big as his torso. And

5:57

he's pouring it into, like, a little

5:59

salad bowl and

6:02

the labels, you

6:03

know, you're, like, cracking up for it. Sorry.

6:07

On the guide, there's a label that says

6:09

applied economeme, and then

6:11

the bottle is labeled fixed

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effects. And

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he's like dousing it into

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a salad bowl that has labeled

6:21

every regression. So am

6:23

I putting this together? Applied economists poor

6:26

fixed effects on every

6:29

regression.

6:31

Yeah. I think that's the that's the general

6:34

takeaway. I think it's not just the applied

6:36

economeme.

6:37

I mean, right now, I'm just I see a guy

6:39

who's, like, very into olive oil. That's, like,

6:41

the as much of the joke that I understand

6:43

right now. Yeah.

6:45

So let's let's take this one at a time. Okay.

6:48

What are fixed effects then? So in order

6:50

to understand fixed effects, you actually need to understand

6:52

what the regression is. And that's

6:54

just a specific statistical technique

6:57

that will allow you to assess

6:59

the causal

7:00

impact.

7:00

Like, regressions help economeme

7:02

figure out whether one thing caused

7:05

another thing. Howard Bauchner: Exactly. And it's not correlation.

7:07

It's cause. So that's a really difficult thing to

7:10

actually test. Right? So using

7:12

a regression, there are a number of things

7:14

that you can add into the regression that'll

7:17

help you tease out that direct causal

7:19

relationship. And fix

7:21

effects are one of those things.

7:23

Right? So let me see if I got this right. The

7:26

more fixed effects that you're able

7:28

to integrate into

7:30

your regression, the thing that you're using

7:33

to tease out cause and effect, the

7:35

stronger your conclusions will be

7:37

about how much one thing causes

7:39

another? I think it's you

7:42

should include them in there

7:43

so you can actually tease out the relationship that

7:45

you believe actually exists. Okay.

7:47

So this meme, this person

7:50

holding this giant bottle

7:53

of oil labeled fixed effects. I

7:55

can't tell whether they're saying that, like, this is

7:57

a good thing, like the more fixed effects

7:59

you put into your aggression the better or it's just

8:02

like making fun of economists

8:04

who who think that. Yeah, I

8:06

think it's more like, you know you're

8:08

probably gonna need fixed effects in your regression,

8:11

so they'll just slap on some fixed effects just

8:13

in

8:13

case. It's the difference between somebody

8:16

who's really thoughtful about the flavors

8:18

that they're adding to a dish

8:20

as opposed to somebody who's just automatically

8:22

says, oh, I'll just dump a bunch of oil and salt

8:24

on it.

8:25

Exactly. Exactly. You can never

8:27

go wrong. Just adding garlic to

8:28

something. It'll

8:29

be Like, maybe sometimes you

8:31

you can go wrong by doing that. Although

8:33

it's generally probably good

8:36

practice, I would stir some onion

8:38

in it. Some onion and some

8:40

bouillon

8:41

cubes? You're good. Yeah. Good. Onion

8:44

and bouillon cubes are your fixed

8:46

effects. And time for Nigerian's

8:48

time, onion, and beyond cubes.

8:50

Whatever you got, you'll be

8:51

alright. You're kicking Nigerian food.

8:54

You're fine. I love it.

8:58

That was Chinameleau Ocaphor. And

9:00

that is it for our first edition of

9:02

Economeme Was it

9:05

funny? Maybe what really matters?

9:07

Like for most memes, it's just whether

9:09

it was funny to you. If

9:11

you like what you heard, let us know. Or

9:13

on the Twitter's at the Indicator, and

9:16

our email is indicator at NPR dot

9:18

org. And if you have a favorite

9:20

economy, also feel free to

9:22

hit us up.

9:26

Episode, the indicator was produced by Britney Cronin

9:28

with help from Noah Glick and engineering by Alex

9:30

Strowenskas. was fact checked by Sierra

9:32

Juarez, VLA's our senior producer,

9:34

Kay content edits the show and the indicators

9:36

of production of NPR.