1910: The Most Powerful Woman in U.S. Economic History, Janet Yellen (Encore)

Summary

So Money with Farnoosh Torabi

Episode 1910: The Most Powerful Woman in U.S. Economic History, Janet Yellen (Encore)
Guest: John Hilsenrath, Author of “Yellen: The Trailblazing Economist Who Navigated an Era of Upheaval”
Date: November 26, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the extraordinary life and career of Janet Yellen, the first woman to hold the three most influential economic policy positions in U.S. history: Treasury Secretary, Federal Reserve Chair, and Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. Host Farnoosh Torabi interviews John Hilsenrath, award-winning Wall Street Journal economics writer and author of Yellen’s new biography, for an in-depth look at Yellen’s professional journey, her partnership with Nobel laureate George Akerlof, her strategies for breaking glass ceilings, and her pragmatic worldview on economic policy. Through lively stories, thoughtful analysis, and memorable anecdotes, the episode offers both a humanizing portrait and crucial lessons for anyone interested in economics, public service, or career advancement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Write About Janet Yellen? The Story’s Heart (04:55)

• Firsts and Historic Breakthroughs: Yellen was first woman Treasury Secretary, first female Fed Chair, and second woman to head the Council of Economic Advisors.
• Human Dimension: The book is “also a love story”—of Janet and her husband George Akerlof, Nobel laureate, whom Hilsenrath describes as their partnership being “the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of economics” (05:32).
• Intellectual Partnership: The couple have jointly influenced and witnessed nearly every major economic debate of the past half-century.
• Hilsenrath: “The story is about economics, but it’s really a story about two people and how they traveled a journey to really interesting places together.” (06:17)

2. The Power of Partnership—Personal and Professional (06:34)

• True Equality: George Akerlof always saw Janet’s career as equally important to his, even while winning a Nobel Prize (07:15).
• Shared Parenting: “He picked up Robby at school and took care of his dinner,” reversing common gender expectations (08:06).
• Intellectual Evenings: “Imagine sitting with a Treasury Secretary, a Fed Chair, a Nobel Prize winner, and three PhDs... even now, they spend all their time talking about economics.” (08:22)

3. Gender Barriers in Economics and Yellen’s Early Obstacles (09:21)

• 1960s Yale: Only woman in her PhD class, at a university not yet admitting women as undergrads; faculty meetings in male-only clubs (09:37).
• Harvard in the 1970s: Women faculty barred from the single campus pool; isolation for female academics (10:19).
• Field Hostility: Economics as “a very argumentative field. They like to shout each other down. And that extends to women.” (11:16)
• Clinton Era: Progress in appointments but persistent “men’s locker room” atmosphere—even in pro-women administrations (11:38).

4. Breaking Glass Ceilings: When (and When Not) to Lean In (12:25)

• Selective Assertiveness: Yellen leaned in “only when it mattered... not just to make her voice heard.” (13:05)
• Example: After the 2008 crisis, Yellen “pushed the Fed hard... pounded the table when she thought something had to be heard from her and she had all her facts right.” (13:21)
• Authentic Approach: Outside key debates, she’s “very easygoing... liked to go out and have a drink with her colleagues... could down a martini with the best of them.” (13:54)

5. Other Keys to Career Success (14:07)

• Supportive Partnerships: Modeled gender-equal relationships—still rare decades later.
• Aiming for ‘Higher Ground’: Both Yellen and Akerlof motivated by deep concern for unemployment, human suffering, and a “higher purpose” in economic policy, likening themselves to “lighthouse keepers” (16:15).
• Memorable Quote: “They saw themselves as trying to do something to improve the human condition. Now, you could disagree with her policies…but that’s the way they saw it.” (16:41)

6. Yellen on Inflation and the Psychology of Policymaking (17:34)

• Transitory Inflation Misreading: Yellen and other policymakers believed inflation post-pandemic would be temporary—“they were wrong,” admits Hilsenrath (17:51).
• Recency Bias: Policymakers, shaped by the previous decade’s low inflation, responded to COVID-19 with massive stimulus, misjudging risks (18:38).
• Policy Lessons: Even “the best of minds get caught in psychological quirks... trying to figure out what ground am I standing on today?” (19:35)

7. Yellen’s Guiding Economic Philosophy (25:13)

• Keynesian Roots: Yellen believes markets sometimes fail and government intervention can be necessary—“there’s gotta be some role for the government to help navigate the tides and torrents of a shifting economy.” (26:09)
• Pragmatism over Ideology: Inspired by her upbringing, “she is almost compulsive about doing her homework... fact-check your facts. Go into debates with a sense that I want to be helpful... but also avoid doing more harm than good.” (27:02)

8. Will Yellen Stay in Office? (28:14)

• No Plans to Leave: Yellen told Hilsenrath directly “she has no intention of leaving,” likes the job despite being outside Biden’s inner circle, and is committed to her team at the Treasury (28:15).
• Lighthouse Metaphor Revisited: Saw her return to public service post-retirement as a duty during a time of national turmoil (28:40).

9. Hilsenrath’s Reflections & Current Concerns (29:27)

• Long Tenure at WSJ: Chose to stay because “there’s always something interesting happening... economic battlegrounds are the new front lines.” (30:05)
• Change and Trust in Journalism: “People are so suspicious of what we do and what our biases might be... I’ve got to work really hard every day to keep the trust.” (30:46)
• The Global ‘Disorder’ Era: Once-optimistic global order post-1990s is unravelling; rising global turbulence and uncertainty now define the landscape (32:33).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Yellen & Akerlof’s Marriage:
  “She had all the rights and privileges of a career that he did, but he also had all the rights and privileges of parenthood that she did.”
  — John Hilsenrath (08:08)

• On Evening Conversations:
  “Imagine sitting with a Treasury Secretary, a Fed Chair, a Nobel Prize winner, and three PhDs... That’s what a family dinner was like in the Akerlof home.”
  — John Hilsenrath (08:22)

• On Workplace Gender Barriers:
  “The economics profession in particular is a very male dominated field... Women had a hard time even getting into faculty meetings at Yale.”
  — John Hilsenrath (09:37)

• On Yellen Leaning In:
  “She didn’t lean in just to be heard. She decided to lean in when it mattered.”
  — John Hilsenrath (13:54)

• On Motivation for Public Service:
  “They saw themselves...as trying to do something to improve the human condition. Now you could disagree with her policies...but that’s the way they saw it.”
  — John Hilsenrath (16:41)

• On Responding to Inflation:
  “A lot of policymakers, including Yellen, said a year ago that the inflation we experienced was going to be transitory, and they were wrong.”
  — John Hilsenrath (17:52)

• On Policy Making:
  “You have to unblock yourself from ideologies or preconceptions about what the world should look like... just look at the facts on the ground.”
  — John Hilsenrath (27:12)

• On Global Disorder:
  “We’ve entered a new global disorder... there’s so much friction in this global system and it causes things like financial turbulence and war and uncertainty.”
  — John Hilsenrath (33:10)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Episode Introduction and Book Context: 02:10 – 04:55
• Yellen & Akerlof: The Partnership: 04:55 – 08:53
• Gender Bias & Academic Obstacles: 09:21 – 12:25
• Breaking Glass Ceilings/“Lean In, But Not Always”: 12:25 – 15:12
• Aspiring to Higher Ground/Lighthouse Metaphor: 15:24 – 17:34
• Yellen’s Inflation Record & Policy Psychology: 17:34 – 20:15
• Yellen’s Economic Worldview: 25:13 – 27:59
• Yellen’s Future at Treasury: 28:14 – 29:27
• Hilsenrath’s Career & Global Disorder Reflection: 29:27 – 34:47
• Closing & Book Promotion: 34:47 – 35:08

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Summary Tone

The discussion is insightful, candid, and warmly respectful, balancing biographical details with broader career guidance and economic reflections. Hilsenrath’s tone is deeply researched and nonpartisan, with Farnoosh creating a space for both admiration and honest critique. The tone reflects a genuine interest in both the personal and public legacy of Janet Yellen and offers thoughtful, actionable lessons for listeners.

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Useful Takeaways

• Trust and mutual support in personal and professional life are key accelerators for career success, especially for women breaking barriers.
• Selective assertiveness (“lean in, but not always”) and rigorous preparation are more influential than constant self-promotion.
• Yellen’s legacy is as much about her policy record as her pragmatism, humility, and sense of duty—values essential for navigating today’s complex world.
• Major economic missteps, even by the most experienced minds, often stem from psychological biases—not ignorance or incompetence.
• The current era is marked less by “order” and more by “disorder”—Americans should brace for uncertainty, with government and individual action more important than ever.

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Book Referenced:
Yellen: The Trailblazing Economist Who Navigated an Era of Upheaval by John Hilsenrath

Guest:
John Hilsenrath, Wall Street Journal economics writer
Pulitzer finalist and author

Host:
Farnoosh Torabi, So Money

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Transcript

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Visit T mobile.com okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first. There the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes. Stone Money episode 1910 John Hills in Rath. Author of the new book Yellen the trailblazing economist who navigated an era of upheaval.

[A]

You're listening to so Money with award winning money guru Farnoosh Karabi. Each day get a 30 minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top top business minds, authors, influencers and from Farnoosh herself. Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons. Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life. Welcome to so Money. She was the only woman in her PhD class Yale in the late 1960s was still not accepting women as undergraduates. And just to give you a sense of how imbalanced it was, faculty meetings were held at a restaurant, a club, a private club called Maurice at yale in the 1960s, which didn't admit women.

[B]

Welcome to so Money, everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. We're in conversation today with John Hills and Rath, who is an award winning economics writer for the Wall Street Journal and the author of Yellen, the Trailblazing Economist who Navigated an Era of Upheaval. The New York Times says the book is a vivid portrait of an exceptional woman and a lively history of the economic and financial crises that helped make the Treasury Secretary and former Fred chair who she is today. John and I discuss the beginnings of her career, the challenges, the hurdles she jumped to become one of the most powerful women in American economic history. John is a Pulitzer prize finalist in 2014 for his coverage of the Federal Reserve. He's part of a Wall Street Journal team that was a Pulitzer finalist in 2000 for coverage of the financial crisis. And he contributed on the ground reporting to the Wall Street Journal's 911 coverage, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002. He is nonpartisan and he's been a contributor to Fox News, cnbc, pbs, msnbc, C Span, and now, proud to say so money, here's John Hillsenrath. John Hilsenrath, welcome to so money.

[A]

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to do this.

[B]

Yeah, I'm excited. It's a different kind of show for us. We're going to be focusing on a essentially a biography that you wrote of Janet Yellen. The book is called Yellen the Trailblazing Economist who Navigated An Era of Upheaval. Not to suggest that the upheaval is over, but she reigned during a very tumultuous time in our global economy. And you like her a lot. There was a review that I read where it just said this book is both an important economic book, but it's also a love story. So maybe we can start, John, with just your admiration for Janet Yellen and describe this woman to us through your lens.

[A]

I'm glad you mentioned the point of the love story. So my starting point for deciding to do the book was after Yellen was nominated to be Treasury Secretary. She's the first woman in American history to be the Treasury Secretary. She was also the first woman in American history to be the chair of the Federal Reserve. And she was the second woman to chair as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. In the White House. So she has actually had the three top policy positions in American economic life. I call her sometimes the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of economics. But what really drew me to this story, that was a starting point was my recognition that there's a really interesting love story underneath this resume that I just talked about. So she's married to an economist and Nobel prize winning economist named George Aof, who's a really interesting person in his own right. Quite the absent minded professor who's come up with a lot of theories that prove to be have a lot of foresight. And I realized in thinking about the two of them that between the two of them they've been in the middle of almost every major economic debate of the last 50 or 60 years. So they became a vehicle through which to examine the broader economy, but also to examine the partnership of this really interesting woman. Because it's a profound partnership and it's just really a cool family. So the story is about economics, but it's really a story about kind of two people and how they traveled a journey to really interesting places together.

[B]

How was being married to George for her helpful in her career? He, I understand, had some contrarian views about the economy and where it was headed. And that actually ended up maybe even setting her up for some success as she had to then take on the, the global financial crisis in America.

[A]

The most important part, I would say is that it was a partnership. It was a full on partnership from the very beginning. Janet and George met at the Federal reserve in the 1970s, ironically when inflation was raging and they were both coming off disappointments in life. Yellen had been a professor, assistant professor at Harvard, and they denied her tenure. He was denied a promotion at Berkeley and they took a year off and met at the Fed from the very. And this was the 1970s when women were really just starting to come into the workforce in large scale. And there was some backlash towards that. The economics profession in particular is a very male dominated field. But from the very beginning in their relationship was seen by both of them as a full partnership. And by that George, her husband, saw her career as just as important as his, which is something because this is a guy who went on and won a Nobel Prize. And he also saw his role in the family and his responsibilities to raise their child Robbie as just as important as hers. What I like to say is she had the partnership they forged. She had all of the kind of rights and privileges of a career that he did, but he also had all the rights and privileges of parenthood that she did. He picked up Robby at school and took care of his dinner. And this became really important as she started to rise in the policy arena in the 1990s. He became the traveling spouse. He went where. They left Berkeley together and came to Washington. And he was her support system. They were also intellectual, their dinners together. Imagine sitting with a Treasury secretary, a Fed chair, a Nobel prize winner, and three PhDs. That's what a family dinner was like in the Akerlof home because their son got a PhD too. They spend even to this day all their time talking about economics and all the issues around it.

[B]

In your conversations with Janet, what were some instances that maybe she talked about her gender stymieing her or being something that was a potential roadblock as she was rising through the ranks? We have to assume that there were some instances of bias or whether it was implicit or direct. How was it at work? We know at home it was a completely feminist experience. But what about in the workplace?

[A]

Right, the work. The workplace was different. And it goes all the way back to the 1960s when she shows up at Yale to get her PhD under a great economist named James Tobin. She was the only woman in her PhD class. Yale in the late 1960s was still not accepting women as undergraduates. And just to give you a sense of how imbalanced it was, faculty meetings were held at a restaurant, a club, a private club called Maurice at Yale in the 1960s, which didn't admit women. So women had a hard time even getting into faculty meetings at Yale. She goes on to Harvard and she becomes an assistant professor, and there are very few other women on faculty. To give you a sense of how bizarrely imbalanced it was at Harvard in the early 1970s, there was one swimming pool on campus, and it was a men's only swimming pool, and the men swam naked in it. And this became an issue in Janet Yellen's career because the other woman on faculty was a swimmer and she. She couldn't swim in the university's pool. She took up rowing instead and became a. An Olympic rower. But Yellen at Harvard in the 70s, had. She found she had a hard time finding research partners. It wasn't clear if she was a. Because she was a junior professor or because she was a woman. But she didn't really hit her stride until later on, interestingly, when she met Akerlof and they started writing about the labor market together. The field was male dominated from the very beginning. It's a very. If you have ever been in A room with economists. It's a very argumentative field. They like to shout each other down. And that extends to women. So wherever she went, she was breaking glass ceilings. But I should say this. When she got to Washington in the 1990s, there was more of a push and a pull. So on the one. And the Clinton White House was a great example of this. On the one hand, Clinton wanted to promote women to prominent positions, so Yellen became his chair of his Economic Council of Economic Advisors. She's only the second woman to get that job. Before her was Laura Tyson, also a Bill Clinton employee. Okay, so that's great. Bill Clinton put these women in important positions. But if you talk to most women in that White House, they would tell you that it still felt like you were in a men's locker room a lot of the time. Women. A number of women. Diddy Myers talked about this shortly after she left Clinton's White House felt out of place and uncomfortable, often in a very tightly cramped Oval Office West Wing that was. Had a lot of testosterone flying around, sometimes the inappropriate comment. And even though there have been efforts to push women ahead in the field, it wasn't always comfortable or natural. Or natural. Even when she got into some of these more senior positions.

[B]

Yeah. You say one of the lessons that you took away from her ability to break glass ceilings was lean in, but not always. What were the not always times?

[A]

Well, so I walked away from the work on this book with kind of 4 thoughts about not only how to break glass ceilings, but also for anyone, male or female, how to advance your career. And one of those was lean in. Right. So this was Sheryl Sandberg's career comment, lean in. And what I saw in Yellen's career is that she did lean in, but she leaned in only when it mattered. She didn't lean in and make her voice heard. Just to make her voice heard.

[B]

She how.

[A]

And she did pound the table. In some cases, she pounded the table when she thought there was something important that had to be heard from her. And she had all of her facts rate. So when she was at the Federal Reserve after the financial crisis in 2007, 2008, she was pushing really hard internally for the Fed to move aggressively to try to get the economy going again. It was an issue that she felt strongly about because high unemployment is something she's always felt was a problem that she wanted to address. And so she pushed the Fed hard and she leaned in, but she was behind the scenes when they weren't in these really intense debates. She's very easygoing character. She liked to go out and have a drink with her colleagues. She liked to have a laugh. She could down a martini with the best of them. So she didn't lean in just to be heard. She lended let. She decided to lean in when it mattered. If you want me to talk about the other three lessons that I took away, I'd be happy to do that. Or if you pass the baton back to you if you want to.

[B]

Yeah. So we've talked about choosing and supportive partners. That is clear. And I think we covered that. You covered that very well. And talk about being ahead of their times because we're still struggling with this today and they were models of this decades ago.

[A]

Yeah. She was coming into the workforce at a time when there were movies, for instance, to give you a sense of what the popular culture was like, the movie Kramer vs Kramer painted the professional woman as the. As the family breaker or, or the World According to Garp. The woman, the male was this guy who's wife left him. And like women weren't painted in the most popular light back in the 70s and 80s. Professional women. And George's view, in part because he came from a family of strong women, was this was. This is an equal partnership. And he totally supported that. So I, and I think that counts both ways for male, female, what. Whatever your place in life is, it's obviously important to have supportive partners whose interests and goals align with yours.

[B]

You don't have to tell me. I'm fully in agreement. You also talk about how she often aspire to a higher ground. And I'm wondering what if there's a story that speaks to this especially one.

[A]

Of the reasons that Yellen and Ackerloff, as I call them, Janet and George, hit it off, was they both had these really early life preoccupations with unemployment. George, as I mentioned, was. This has this kind of fascinating mind. When he was a little boy, his. His father was moving from job to job. And when he was like 11 years old, he said, if my father loses his job and stops spending money, then the baker down the street isn't going to have money and then he might lose his job. And so from childhood he was concerned about unemployment. Yellen also grew up at a dinner table where the family talked about the Great Depression. Her father was a doctor. He used to talk about the problems that his patients brought home in terms of alcohol abuse or family problems when they lost jobs. So when they met, literally the first conversation they had, they talked about problems of unemployment and the Real life effects that a damaged economy has on humans. And, and that was why they got into economics, is they saw themselves as trying to do something to improve the human condition. Now, you could disagree with her policies and say that they were the wrong policies to improve the human condition, but that's the way they saw it. So they watched a movie together some years ago. It was a Japanese movie called Big Joys and Small Sorrows. It was about a family of lighthouse keepers who moved from lighthouse to lighthouse in the Post World War II period on the short coastline of Japan and ran these lighthouses to protect ships on the shoreline. And their whole world was built around this life as lighthouse keepers. It was a lonely life, but their friendships and their family and their work was all built around the lighthouse life. And that was the, the theme that they used to describe their own lives. They saw themselves in some ways as lighthouse keepers. They had this kind of higher purpose that was bigger than either one of them or bigger than their marriage. And it was that purpose that I think formed and strengthened the partnership that they had in, in work and in family.

[B]

You recently spoke to Janet Yellen for a Wall Street Journal piece. It was about inflation. And just. I'm, I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I assume like her thoughts on the current economy and where we're headed. Where's her. Where's she leaning? Is she hopeful?

[A]

Don't we all wish. The problem right now is that a lot of policymakers, including Yellen, said a year ago that the inflation we experienced was going to be transitory, and they were wrong. And it's still with us heading towards the end of 2022. And so they've been off about that. I think they're hopeful that inflation is going to start slowing down, but it's proven to be a much more vexing problem than either she expected or her successor at the Federal Reserve, Jerome palace, expected. And that, that, that's going to be one of the stains, frankly, on her record. She's been working in policy circles since the 1990s, and this inflation caught her and others off guard.

[B]

But can you blame her? It was unprecedented in her lifetime.

[A]

So this is my story about what happened. A lot of people there's this idea in psychology called recency bias where we're driven to make judgments about the world we live in. And our views are often shaped by what happened to us. Most recently and the decade before COVID was a period of slow growth, very low inflation and high unemployment. And those were the experiences that she brought into the post Covid job as Treasury Secretary. And they shaped her thinking. They shaped the thinking of really all of Washington and the Federal Reserve. And so the response of policymakers, this included the Trump White House and then the Biden White House, was to throw a lot of money at the problem in the form of relief checks, in the form of paycheck protection program for small businesses, in the form of rental relief, in the form of very low interest rates. And the debt increased by trillions in Trump's last year. And then Biden added onto it. And they were driven really by this sense that inflation wasn't a problem anymore and that they needed to avoid the problems of the most recent cycle. And so it for me, it's an interesting study in human psychology and how even like the best of minds get caught in some of these psychological quirks that even affect our investment behavior, where we try to figure out all right, what ground am I standing on today? And you look back at the last few months and you figure that the world is going to look like that in the future.

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If you had to distill her overall view of how we should think about the economy in order to help it grow and fix it at times of distress. Like, what is it? Like, what is. How does she really see our economy in terms of how it informs her when she's trying to pull the. Pull the country back out of, say, the financial crisis or during the pandemic?

[A]

So I'd say that there's, like, a big idea and a smaller idea. So the big idea underlays. This whole book that I've written about her and George is for the last 60, since the great Depression, really, there's been a debate going on in America about what is the right balance between government and free markets and guiding and driving economic activity, when Republicans have had the view that markets should be left to themselves, and Democrats have had the view that the government has some role to play when. For people who are suffering or when the economy is struggling. And I. And that would be called the Keynesian view. And she's very much of a Keynesian mindset. Right. So she's. Her view is that the markets aren't perfect. They're sometimes prone to fail, and there's gotta be some role for the government to. To help navigate the tides and torrents of a shifting economy. Now. So that's always been her view, but I think her experience as a policymaker has been that this is easier said than done. The world is complicated. The market. The government's interventions into the markets are complicated, and the market's propensities to fail. We're seeing it right now in cryptocurrencies are also complicated. And this leads me to the kind of smaller view, which is one of my four points for breaking glass ceilings, and that's do your homework. Yellen had a. She grew up in Brooklyn. She had a mother who was a retired schoolteacher who drove her crazy, frankly. Her mother drove Yellen and her big brother John not only to have their homework done every night, but it had to be done correctly. All homework assignments were checked by mom before they were turned in, and nothing could be wrong in the homework assignment. And so Yellen is almost compulsive about doing her homework. And this leads to what she told me about the lessons that she's learned about policymaking is you have to look at the facts on the ground. You have to unblock yourself from ideologies or preconceptions about what the world should look like or what you want it to look like, and just look at the facts on the ground and get a clear picture of what am I looking at here and then make a judgment from there. And she's done a good job of that in her career, with the possible exception of this, of this inflation outbreak. But that's really her worldview is do your fact check your facts. Go into debates with a sense that I want to be helpful in this situation as a public policymaker, but you also have to try to avoid doing more harm than good.

[B]

And to finish your story in the Wall Street Journal, you left a cliffhanger as to whether she would continue working in her post in the next election cycle or the next presidential cycle. What's your gut telling you?

[A]

I'll tell you what she's telling me, which is she has no intention of leaving. So I talked to her right before the midterms, and there were, there have been, there's been a lot of rumor mongering in Washington the last couple of years about how Yellen doesn't have a close relationship with Biden. It's true. She's not part of his political inner circle. He. The first time his people asked her to take the job as Treasury Secretary, she said no. She was happy in her retirement. And then this gets back to the lighthouse metaphor. She sat with George and Robbie, her husband and son, and they said, all right, wait. The country is in a state of turmoil and the president has asked you to do something. You have a duty to do it. So a lot of people thought that she was going to leave after the midterms, but I talked to her before the midterms, and she said she liked the job. She said it's challenging and she's enjoying the work and is committed to the people at the treasury that she's brought in and she intends to stay. She's a very careful person. I doubt she would have said that to a Wall Street Journal reporter publicly if she hadn't let the White House know she was going to say it. So it looks, whether you like or her don't, it looks like Janet Yellen is going to be the Treasury Secretary for a little while longer.

[B]

John, before we go, I want to let everyone know about all the great work that you do. You've been at the Wall street journal since 1997. First of all, what's it like to be at one company for the majority of your career? As so many of us, we're like, we change jobs every few years now.

[A]

It might just be a sign that I'm a. That I'm a person of few goals.

[B]

So I wouldn't say that.

[A]

I decided shortly after I got out of college that the Journal was the place I wanted to be. And then I got there and I've just stay. But it's. It's been a great ride. It's been a fascinating ride. I've gotten to have a front row seat on so many important moments in American economic history, which is really the foundation for what I wrote in this book. When I was younger, when I was a young guy, I wanted to be a war correspondent. And for a variety of reasons, that never happened, lo and behold, I became an economics writer anyway. And I've come come to see that the battlegrounds of like, modern American, modern global economy have really been economic battlegrounds, going back to the Asian financial crisis in the 1970s, to the Internet bubble burst, to the tech bubble burst. I'm sorry. To the mortgage burst, to Covid. There's always something interesting happening. And it's been, it certainly hasn't been a static life being a journalist, as I'm sure it's challenging in this day and age. People are so suspicious of what we do and what our biases might be. And like, we have to accept that we're part of what some parts of the country see as elites and are suspicious of. And I think that one of the lessons I've learned is I've got to work really hard every day to keep the trust of the people who are reading my work or watching or listening and to build trust for people who are walking into any article they read or any conversation they had with some suspicion about who I am and what side I might be on.

[B]

Who you are is your big deal. Your big deal.

[A]

You tell that to my kids. I still.

[B]

You're on a winning political prize team. Okay. You are a Knight Badgett fellow from Columbia University. I went to Columbia Journalism. But I always admired the Knight Badgett Fellows and thought, one day maybe I'll do that. And then never got around to it. As if it's like something that I could have just done. Like, you really have to apply. I have to take it.

[A]

I took the First Amendment class in the J school and I loved so much in that.

[B]

That was a great class. That was a great class. And you've covered almost every modern economic ups and downs, including those that were led by tragedy. Like September 11th.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What's capturing your interest right now? What's a story that you feel like isn't getting enough coverage? I was just talking to an ex Twitter employee, recent ex Twitter employee, who's the media is just not covering this Twitter implosion accurately and giving Elon too much Runway as an example. Like, I feel like maybe that's an area that needs more investigation. But from your end, like, what's sparking your curiosity these days?

[A]

Yeah, the story is always shifting. Right. And that's one of the really cool things about being a journalist is you're writing on the edge of this wave and trying to figure out where it's going to crash. And I think one of the big stories that kind of defines this moment that we need to understand better and we've started looking at is that. And this also is a sub story of this book that I just wrote is we. The United States was the lead architect of what George Herbert Walker Bush called the New World Order. It was supposed to be this global system where countries cooperatively traded with each other and did finance with each other and lived this kind of peaceful cooperation. And coming out of the 1990s, there was a lot of optimism in the United States that we had built this new order, that Russia and China were following our lead, and that it was going to lead to a period of global prosperity for everybody. And on one level, there's some truth to that. The last 30 years, we actually had the greatest reduction in human poverty in the history of mankind. More than 700 million people in China alone were lifted out of poverty because of this global system. But the truth is that it didn't work out the way we expected. For the United States, trade was a huge disruption. Financial markets were hugely disruptive. People have a lot of skepticism about this global order. And I. And what I said in a recent piece was we've entered a new global disorder. And China and Russia, who we thought were following our lead, are now going in a different direction. There's so much friction in this global system and that it causes things like financial turbulence and it causes things like inflation that we're gonna and war, sadly, that an uncertainty that I think defines this new period. We're in a new period of disorder. And I think it's something that every American is going to have to find ways to navigate in terms of how it affects your monthly bills and how it's affecting the markets that you're investing in.

[B]

We will certainly lean on you for some of that coverage and we thank you so much for all these insights. I want to remind everybody of the title of your new book, Yellen, the Trailblazing Economist who Navigated an Era of Upheaval. John Hilsenrath, thanks so much for joining.

[A]

Us on the show you for having me. You're a voice a lot of people listen to, so I'm honored that you had me on to to talk about all this.

[B]

Appreciate you. Thanks. Thank you to John for joining us again. The book is called Yellen the Trailblazing Economist who Navigated an Era of Upheaval. I hope your day is so. If you love to travel, Capital One has a rewards credit card that's perfect for you. With the Capital One Venture X card, you earn unlimited double miles on everything you buy. Plus you get premium benefits at a collection of luxury hotels when you book on Capital One Travel. And with Venture X, you get access to over 1000 airport level lounges worldwide. Open up a world of travel possibilities with a Capital One Venture X card. What's in your wallet?

[A]

Terms apply. Lounge access is subject to change. See capital1.com for details. Hey, it's Adam Grant from Ted's podcast Work Life, and this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into. That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 companies use the ServiceNow AI platform. While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data workflows, and AI connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters Most. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for [e-mail].