In the fourth of this six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman ask if advances in artificial intelligence will reshape the working world as we know it. Or are we hearing an old familiar story that has been told many times before?

Paul Krugman’s Cultural Coda

Loretta Lynn - "Coal Miner's Daughter": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9eHp7JJgq8&list=RDf9eHp7JJgq8&start_radio=1

Martin Wolf’s Cultural Coda:

Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, published in 1924.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Mountain

Read Martin Wolf's selection of the best economics summers reads for 2025 here

Read Martin’s FT column here

Subscribe to Paul’s substack here

If you’d like to get in touch and ask Martin and Paul a question, please email economics.show@ft.com

Subscribe and listen to this series on The Economics Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Episodes are also available on the FT’s YouTube channel.

The Wolf-Krugman Exchange is produced by Sandra Kanthal and Mischa Frankl-Duval, and the broadcast engineer is Andrew Georgiades. The sound engineer is Jean-Marc Eck. Manuela Saragosa is the FT’s acting co-head of audio.

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The Wolf-Krugman Exchange: AI hype vs reality

The Economics Show

The Wolf-Krugman Exchange: AI hype vs reality