(9:25) Hoover Institution fellow Elizabeth Economy says the Chinese government will continue to use all the mechanisms they have at their disposal to keep their economy stable.

The publication of the rough transcript of the phone call — known as a “Memorandum of Telephone Conversation,” or TelCon for short — between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky inspires nostalgic memories for me. I used to participate in similar calls for President Barack Obama during my days at the National Security Council. Between the 2008 election and my departure for Moscow in 2012 to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Russia, I arranged, prepped and listened to dozens of such calls. Yet in terms of logistics and tenor, the infamous Trump-Zelensky call appears to be unlike the calls I worked on between Obama and other world leaders.

Carlos X. Lastra-Anadón, a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University and an Assistant Professor at IE University in Madrid, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss their co-authored paper, “Who Benefits from Local Financing of Public Services? A Causal Analysis.”

Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder talks about her book Lost in Math with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Hossenfelder argues that the latest theories in physics have failed to find empirical confirmation. Particles that were predicted to be discovered by the mathematics have failed to show up. Whether or not there is a multiverse has no observable consequences. Hossenfelder argues that physicists have become overly enamored with the elegance and aesthetics of their theories and that using beauty to evaluate a model is unscientific. The conversation includes a discussion of similar challenges in economics.