http://www.econ.ucla.edu/newsletter/spring09/interview.html

For ten years, you hosted a very popular syndicated radio show called the “Midnight Economist,” where you brought to a wide-reaching audience your professional wisdom on a variety of “real-world” topics. How did the show come about?

In the late 1970s, I became acquainted with Phil Reed, of KBIG, who did a little part-time work for my organization, The International Institute for Economic Research, with offices in the Village. It must have been from that beginning that I was invited in 1979 to give a daily recorded KBIG broadcast at midnight on Truth. The series appeared in several formats and with different institute sponsorships for nearly fourteen years, ending in November 1992. The series was mainly on radio, but there were segments on television, in particular, for a year and a half on Channel 22 (or whatever). The bulk of the scripts was published in several forms, including monthly flyers, semi-annual pamphlets, and three book-length collections. The flyers and pamphlets were distributed to several categories of people with a mailing list of some 15,000. My designation was the “Midnight Economist,” stemming from the original KBIG broadcasts and the appearance in the late '70s of the famous movie, “Midnight Cowboy.” Some series were one-minute quickies, but the basic form was two minutes and forty seconds (with brief intros and sign-offs), quite a long time by broadcast standards.

Initially, the pearls were recorded in the KBIG studio. When the material became syndicated, I visited a recording studio in Hollywood once a month to tape from twenty to twenty-three pieces, i.e., for daily broadcasts Monday through Friday. Many stations repeated the pieces a second time in the day and also on weekends. The number of participating stations varied a good deal, starting with just KBIG and at the peak numbering around 230, I believe. I can claim international syndication, for a Tokyo hotel broadcast them. Some stations indicated appreciable enthusiasm for the program, which cost them no money to broadcast, but in general it was an ongoing struggle to persuade stations to sign on. Most people, including radio and television program directors, have little conception of what economics is and what economists do and why they do it, but they are very fearful that economics analysis will be either very dull and difficult to follow or very controversial or both. The broadcast business is not characterized by boldness, sophistication, and sense of propriety. Much the same can be said of the numerous policy-type institutes; such imagination and initiative as they have is almost entirely directed to publications and occasional conferences, and they are uneasy with broadcasting. I did not become a fascinating personality kid through the program, but over the years I received many dozens of letters from a great variety of types of people who were grateful for a low-keyed, patient, pleasant, sane, sometimes light-hearted, systematic review of economic analysis applied to genuine problems and issues. Some giants of the profession gave me at least mild applause -- Friedman, Stigler, Alchian, Buchanan, among others. Friedman wrote a very nice and flattering introduction for the first book-length collection of scripts, and it was reprinted in each of the following editions….I looked upon the “Midnight Economist” activity as an extension of my teaching beyond the classroom. The effective classroom was thereby greatly enlarged: My audience probably reached 250,000 or more at least five days a week.

Through most of the “Midnight Economist” period, I had the highly useful assistance of Bill Dickneider, who years before had earned an M.A. in this department and has since worked in several capacities as a free-lance economist. He had caught the real UCLA/Alchian tune of using elemental economics as a tool better to understand the workings of the world, and he was ingenious in gathering data and finding illustrations on which to build commentaries, many of which he initially drafted.

As the Midnight Economist, you have been credited for giving economic instruction to thousands of lay people by making economics “fun” and accessible. How important has public scholarship been to you, and do you think economists are doing a good job of educating and informing the public on the current economic crisis?

I confess to some feelings of frustration in no longer having such a forum as the “Midnight

Economist.” The community could use help in making sense of today's turmoil. They are typically misled in analytic basics by politicians, beginning with the President and his glamorous advisers. (Perhaps the advisers do not deserve their high reputations; perhaps, as members of a governmental team, they feel, with some reason, that they cannot properly rock the boat by disagreeing with the party line; perhaps they do speak truth to power, but the chief holder of power does not find it expedient to listen.) Of course, journalists commonly have no clue with respect to sound analysis. And many of the younger generation of economists are too involved with exotic doodling to devote energy to fundamentals of public policy and to conveying the fruits of their meditations with the unwashed masses.

We all are doomed.