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Aging as gracefully as I can… looking back about ten years, here’s a repost of food economics in doggerel:
http://freakonomics.com/2009/06/04/why-are-kiwis-so-cheap
and also a link to my farewell to Purdue grad students when I moved to Tufts:
http://freakonomics.com/2010/06/10/toward-an-ethical-economics-of-food-policy

 

I had a lot of fun making the playlist of econosongs, so recently dove into songs about food.  It turns out that songs about food are actually about… well, you can guess.  Or listen, if you dare:

If you check it out you might notice a few patterns.

Some parts of the playlist are laugh-out-loud funny, like when Spotify’s random sequence gives you a head-full of Milkshake and Cheeseburgers in Paradise.

Hearing Fried Chicken from Nas & Busta Rhymes alongside Colt Ford’s country Tailgate is America at its most sublime, but the playlist also gets right into the culture wars like Ben Folds versus the Fat Boys.

I’ve censored out a few that are just too mean for my blood, such as the Rolling Stones’ nasty old Brown Sugar, but left in songs such as Chocolate Jesus or Cornbread and Butterbeans that I really like.

Mostly, this playlist is just kids like Aaron Carter wanting candy. Add your favorites, and enjoy!

 

I recently subscribed to Spotify premium, for more music during my daily commute.  Their categories and suggestions help solve the paradox of choice for a while, but soon I was looking for more songs about economics, about money and things.  Hence this playlist:

It’s public and collaborative, so please add tracks you think others might like.  Almost everything in life relates to economics in some way, but for me the high water mark of music about money and things is this lovely pop song from the radio when I lived in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, now available only on YouTube:

The title and refrain is “what’s nice is expensive”.  A universal, heartbreaking truth.

If this sounds good to you, please share your favorites on the Spotify playlist or add to my one-song playlist on YouTube!