The Indicator from Planet Money

Episode: Why are veterinarian bills getting so ruff on the wallet?
Date: October 20, 2025
Host: Greg Rosalski (NPR)
Guest: Joel Mokyr (Economic Historian, Nobel Laureate)

Episode Overview

This episode dives into a fresh Nobel Prize in Economics—awarded for groundbreaking work on growth and innovation—and uses the achievements of economic historian Joel Mokyr to unpack the engines behind centuries of technological progress. With Mokyr’s expertise, the hosts trace how humanity's approach to knowledge and societies’ openness to change have shaped economic growth, emphasizing why our era of constant innovation might be more fragile than we think.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Celebrating the Nobel Prize in Economics

• The episode opens with excitement over the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Economics going to leading economic historians, notably Joel Mokyr, for work on understanding the engines of technological and economic growth.
• Mokyr’s famous quip:

  "Work without economic history is like an evolutionary biologist without paleontology. And if you don't have paleontology, you just miss 99.5% of all the species that ever walked this earth."
  (00:44 – Joel Mokyr)

2. Why Did Historical Inventions Not Make People Richer?

• Hosts note that while medieval Europe produced many important inventions (eyeglasses, mechanical clocks, deep ploughs), these alone didn’t result in increased wealth for the population.
• Joel Mokyr describes pre-modern European life as marked by backbreaking labor and scarcity:

  "Terrible. Lots of hard work, backbreaking work. Always a danger of not having enough to eat. Threat of famine looming over one's life every day. Third of all, newborns died in infancy or before the day aged of one."
  (03:00 – Joel Mokyr)

3. Mokyr’s Two Kinds of Knowledge: Prescriptive vs. Propositional

• Prescriptive Knowledge: Practical instructions, how-to knowledge passed via trial and error (e.g., building cathedrals without understanding the physics).
• Propositional Knowledge: Abstract laws of nature, scientific theories (e.g., mathematics, physics), traditionally held by scholars and not widely shared with practitioners.
• Middle Ages: These two forms of knowledge were kept largely separate, hindering progress.

• "Basically the book learning wasn't meeting the street smarts."
  (04:03 – Greg Rosalski)

4. The Scientific Revolution: Merging Theory and Practice

• Around the 1600s, figures like Francis Bacon championed scientific inquiry, promoting rigorous testing, measurement, and the merging of theory with practice.
• This “feedback loop” between ideas and real-world testing fueled refinements such as improved steam engines and other industrial breakthroughs.

5. The Persuasive Power of Scientific Explanations

• When practical advice is linked to basic scientific explanations (e.g., germ theory for handwashing), new practices face less resistance, promoting faster adoption of beneficial innovations.

6. Openness to Change and Economic Institutions

• Mokyr argues: Societies grow more when their institutions are open to new technologies. Resistance often comes from those who benefit from the status quo.
• Example: The early British Parliament allowed broader advocacy for innovations like railways, benefiting more groups despite upending existing interests.
• Downside: There’s no permanent trend toward greater openness; societies can—and do—become less open, as with the global setbacks between the World Wars.

• "There is no way that we can show that they get better over time. They do go up, they do go down...and it seems that there's some evidence to show that that's what's happening today."
  (06:38 – Joel Mokyr)

7. Modern Parallels: Disruption and Resistance

• Hosts reference current tensions (e.g., coal industry decline vs. new energy technology, Hollywood writers’ strike over AI): technological progress leads to long-term prosperity, but “there are costs,” including job losses and social dislocation.

• "The price we pay for progress is bankruptcies, layoff, and dislocation. While the world as a whole is better off in the long run, there are costs."
  (07:22 – Greg Rosalski)

8. Technological Progress: Double-Edged Sword

• Mokyr emphasizes: all technologies have side effects, capable of both harm and good.

• "You make a hammer, you build a technological tool, it can be used to build a home, and it can be used to bash Abel and Cain's heads in...Gunpowder can be used to fight wars and it can be used to build tunnels."
  (08:57 – Joel Mokyr)

9. The Fragility of Sustained Growth

• Mokyr warns that the kind of relentless innovation seen over the past few centuries is vulnerable and must not be taken for granted.

• "Technological progress is like a fragile and vulnerable plant whose nourishing is not only dependent on the appropriate surroundings and climate, but whose life is almost always short and can easily be arrested by relatively small external changes."
  (08:14 – Greg Rosalski, quoting Mokyr's "Lever of Riches")

10. Looking Forward: The Great Human Challenges

• Mokyr concludes by stressing that humanity’s major problems—climate change and demographic shifts—require further technological innovation:

• "The human race faces two of the greatest challenges that it has ever faced, and those are climate change and the demographic change. But given that the only way in which we can cope with this crisis is inventing ourselves out of it, I strongly urge the world to keep putting effort and money and resources and incentives to the people who [are] trying to invent us out of these two crises."
  (09:35 – Joel Mokyr)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Work without economic history is like an evolutionary biologist without paleontology."
  Joel Mokyr, 00:44

• "Terrible. Lots of hard work, backbreaking work...Threat of famine looming over one's life every day."
  Joel Mokyr, 03:00

• "Basically the book learning wasn't meeting the street smarts."
  Greg Rosalski, 04:03

• “There is no way that we can show that they get better over time. They do go up, they do go down…”
  Joel Mokyr, 06:38

• "Machines don't replace us. They move us to more interesting, more challenging work."
  Joel Mokyr, 08:00

• “Technological progress is like a fragile and vulnerable plant...whose life is almost always short and can easily be arrested...”
  Greg Rosalski (quoting Mokyr), 08:14

• “The only way in which we can cope with this crisis is inventing ourselves out of it..."
  Joel Mokyr, 09:35

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:17 – 01:01: Introduction, Nobel Prize background, Mokyr’s analogy
• 02:32 – 03:21: Medieval inventions vs. lack of wealth gains, grim realities
• 03:23 – 04:03: Prescriptive vs. propositional knowledge explained
• 04:32 – 05:12: Scientific Revolution: merging theory and practice
• 05:42 – 06:38: Role of open institutions, historical shifts in openness
• 07:22 – 07:57: Modern parallels: innovation resistance, labor disruption
• 08:00 – 08:57: AI, technology's double-edge, Mokyr’s optimism
• 09:35 – 10:12: The need for technological solutions to current crises

Conclusion

This episode offers a brisk, insightful tour of the philosophical and institutional underpinnings of technological and economic progress. Drawing on Mokyr’s research, the conversation traces the historical merging of theory with practice, the necessity of open institutions, and the perpetual tension and fragility underlying modern prosperity. It ends as a call to action: The future depends on our collective willingness to innovate our way out of humanity’s biggest challenges.