Episode Ninety Eight

Introduction

0:00Welcome to Smith and Mark's Walk into a Bar, a History of Economics podcast. I am still here and still sick and still one of your hosts, Jennifer Jun, but I'm joined here today by a full house, Jinla Akhtar is back. Welcome back. We missed you. Thank you very much. I'm so happy to be here and see you.

0:31And Francois Alisson, you are not in Rome anymore. You are back in Lausanne? No, I'm back in Lausanne. Yeah. And I'm very happy also to see you, Jennifer. I hope you will be better soon. And I'm very happy to see back, Jinla as well. So the team is back on board.

Guest Introduction

0:50Yes, indeed. And today we are very excited to bring on board a good friend of the field of the history of economics and a colleague of mine at the center, Paul Dudenheffer, who is managing editor of both Politics and Society, which is a quarterly journal published by Sage and History of Political Economy, which is, I hear they publish articles in the history of economic thought. We do, yeah. We do. Believe it or not, we do. Paul, you've spent much of your career here in or around Duke University Center for the

1:23History of Political Economy. You've been a well-liked and admired member of the history of economics community for over 20 years now. We're so happy that you're here. Welcome to the show. Well, it's really an honor to be on the show. And I took the opportunity to listen to a few recent episodes and notice that you're coming up on your hundredth episode soon. So I really commend you all for keeping this up because I know it's a lot of work. Well, thank you very much. And thank you to my wonderful co-host and Scott, who's sitting

1:56invisibly back there as our producer for keeping the show going for so long. It's a great thing for us to have. But now that we're all here, Junla's got the first question for you. Are you ready, Paul? I am ready, yes. How did you become a writer? That's the main question. First of all, and second, how did you get involved in the history of economic thought? You are not yourself a historian of economics, yet you've spent the last several decades among historians of economics. How did this

2:32happen? How did you find yourself on the periphery of this community of weirdos? That's not your word, I'll point out.

2:43I call myself as weirdo, so saying that, and it doesn't bother me at all. And it doesn't bother anyone here, and hopefully it doesn't bother anyone in general. Yes, tell us a little bit about all that, please. Well, let me start with the second question first, how I got to Hope. So before I joined Hope, I was a copy editor and proofreader for a social science research institute

3:15at the University of Wisconsin. And I moved to Durham in 1999 and started applying for jobs, and this job came up with this journal called Hope, published by Duke University Press. I applied and got a couple of interviews and was hired for the job. So it was really kind of just good luck. I was, you know, I knew nothing about, virtually nothing about economics, virtually nothing about the history of economics.

3:51You know, I'd heard of, of course, Smith and Marx and Mill and Malthus, heard of Galbraith, heard of Friedman, maybe Samuelson, maybe not. Definitely not Ricardo or Marshall or Valras. Those names meant nothing to me. So that's, it really was just luck. And, and I didn't really think of it as my field,

4:23and I didn't even see it as a job that I would have for, it's going to turn out that it's going to be basically for the rest of my career. But, you know, I was working at the time very closely with Crawford Goodwin, who was a fantastic person to work with. And, you know, you grow into a job, you, the thing that I liked about it was, it was an intellectual subject. It was something that I could learn about and continue learning about.

4:54And there was this community attached to it. And I realized that I could become a part of this community. And, and so that's, that's how it all happened. Let me answer your first question, which is how I became a writer. I feel kind of like an imposter because I'm, I really don't have a lot of publications to my credit. Most of my published writing has been for things like the Hope Center

5:25website and things like that. But I've always been very interested in writing and the writing process and still am. And so, you know, it just sort of came with the territory. I was always interested in literature. I liked the idea of writing and I liked the idea of writers. I thought they were neat people. You know, but that's how, that's, that's how that all came about.

Changes in the Field

5:53So as an observer of, of the writing of the history of economics, how has the field changed since you first encountered it? What is your perspective on those, on those changes that have occurred? Any big shifts that you've seen? And just as a matter of personal idiosyncratic curiosity, I'm curious as to what you make of the debate between internalists and externalists of the history of economics. Well, let me start with that one first. I don't really know if I, it's not

6:27something that I really think about. It, but, but what it, what strikes me is that, so I think of internalists is looking primarily, maybe solely at the published record. So articles published in journals and things like that. And whereas the, the externalists look not only at the public, the public, the published record, but, um, non-published things, you know, archival, correspondence, documents, minutes of meetings, photographs, journals, diaries, you know,

7:03those kinds of things. And it seems to me that those are all pieces of evidence that should be consulted in constructing a history. Um, that's kind of the way that I see it. Um, you know, I, I don't really understand why someone would not look at all those contextual factors. Um, I'm sure there are good reasons. Um, and I'm sure there are people in the community who are

7:33internalists who can tell me what those are. Um, but, but, but my, my, my, my, my sense is that they're both, they're both pieces. They're all pieces of evidence that should be consulted. Um, that's, that's my sense about that. Um, does that, does that answer your question? Yeah, it actually does. Um, like in the sense that, in the sense that, um, I've, I've seen this methodological debate in, in amongst historians and, and historical literature, and I've always

8:08just been kind of, so without revealing my own preference, uh, I have a tendency towards one of these as well. And so I'm often puzzled, like why the other sticks to their guns so much that they do. Um, though, I guess, uh, okay, I'm just going to give my cards up. I, I think I tend towards externalism as far as my historical tastes go, but for the internalist credit, if someone were looking at my stuff and I mean, 50% of my emails are me corresponding with someone that, someone that,

8:46that I know. And it's usually something like me just going like, ah, yeah, I suppose that's not useful. So I guess it's a lot of noise. I think you raise a really good point. So, so when you, when something is formally published, you're kind of saying, this is the record of what I think, or this is, this is the record of what I did. This is the, this is the official record. Um, the, the, the unpublished things are things that

9:19need to be, uh, handled with some care for exactly the same reasons that the, for the reasons that you just, just stated, um, you know, you know, people write when they write in their diaries and when they write in their letters and they're, you know, well, I mean, here's a good example. I, I, I've been reading the letters of, uh, that Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, and I thought, well, I'm going to write a letter like that to this good friend of mine. So I got a steno pad and over several days,

9:52I just wrote a little bit every day. And, and the more I wrote, the more I realized, wait a minute, I might've been feeling that at that moment, but I don't really feel that way. Generally speaking, do I really want to send this to him and get him concerned? So, so I think you have to be really, I think you have to be really careful when you, when you look at the non-published record, um, and not over-interpret what you find and not over-interpret the fact that you didn't find

10:23something. So, I mean, I'm just, oh, I'm sorry. No, it's all right. I, I, I think those are too dangerous with looking at, at archival collections and things like that. And I think there's a sense in which the distinction that I've kind of drawn here between the internalist and the externalist is actually not really as sharp, um, as I'm making it out to be, because we have a whole bunch of evidence. We have a whole bunch of material to work with and everyone across the board has to be kind of selective about it somehow. So there's that. And the other thing with, with, with the

10:57published record is, I mean, and this is becoming increasingly the case, I think, is that there might be one name on the title page, but lots of people had a hand in that publication publication and you don't really know, you know, how that publication was particularly shaped by which particular people. And, um, you know, so, yeah, I mean, that's, but that's, all of that is, all of those complications are what make history fun to do.

11:29Thank you, Paul. Um, given your experience, um, as, as an editor, I would like to ask you these questions, according to you, what are some of the characteristics of a good editor of an academic journals, or if you prefer, you can turn it around and answer me what makes for a bad journal editor?

11:54Yeah. Um, so if you're talking about the editor as in, as in Kevin, um, you know, as opposed to someone like me, who's just the managing editor, um, I think the first thing is that they need to be prompt. They need to respond to submissions in a timely manner. I mean, we've all heard stories, horror stories of submissions that sit on an editor's desk for, you know, several months only to have

12:25the editor desk reject them in an afternoon. Right. Um, and that's, that's just not good. Um, so I think the first thing is, is to, to act promptly on what needs to be, to be acted on, um, beyond that. I mean, I think they, they certainly need to be fair and they need to, um, they need to be, they need to seek honest and open advice on papers that are submitted to the journal. Um, in the case of a

12:57revise and resubmit, I think a really good editor will guide the author through the referee reports. So they'll say, you know, here are the things that you absolutely have to do. Here are the things that you can leave to your discretion. Um, I think those were the things that, uh, that a good editor does, um, that a good editor should do, um, of, of a journal. So I've got a question about, well, have you, do you have any

13:30funny stories that about, about, you know, working in the journal publication process that you'd be willing to share with us? So this question is actually from Scott, who's got a bone with, to pick with, uh, with an overzealous copy editor from his past. So, so one thing that, that, that we wanted to ask was, so for instance, as academic writers, we've probably all had the unfortunate experience of working with, for instance, an overzealous copy editor. Scott talks about the time as time that a copy editor tried to correct the grammar of an epigram Scott had taken from the Grand Inquisitor

14:04chapter of Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. Um, it's one of the most famous passages in the world literature and it's emphatically not in need of copy editing. Um, do you have any stories like this? And what advice would you give to copy editors who are inclined either to torture their writers prose or maybe not to torture it enough? I wish I had a lot of funny stories. Um, one, one that comes to mind is, uh, Crawford Goodwin, who was the former editor of the journal before Kevin, the former editor of

14:39Pope, um, who died in 2017. Um, he once told me that he wrote a paper on Nassau Senior, and when it came back from the copy editor, the last name Senior had been changed to SR period in every case. Um, so I remember that one. I also remember, um, looking at a copy of the theory of moral, M-O-R-A-L, sentiments by Adam

15:11Smith, and the running head across the top of each page was the theory of mortal, M-O-R-T-A-L, sentiments. So that was something that, you know, was missed in the editing. Um, okay, so I, I, I've had to deal with this with the, with some of the people I work with at, uh, Sage. Um, and this is, this is, this is what I tell them. So when you copy edit, your first, your primary responsibility, your primary

15:45concerns are house style and consistency. Those are the primary concerns. So make sure that, you know, references are formatted in the way that the journal, uh, wants them to be formatted, making sure that names and words are spelled and capitalized consistently. And according to house style throughout those kinds of things, that's the first order of business beyond that. Um, you need to be really careful. So when I was, when I was younger and less experienced, I

16:20tended to over edit. I'm going to make this great, you know, it's good, but I'm going to really turn this into something that, you know, that's fantastic. And that's just not, unless you are asked to do that, that is just not the copy editor's role. I mean, yes, correct grammatical mistakes, correct spelling errors, correct factual errors, if you happen to notice them, but, um, um, you need to be, you need to be really careful about editing and author's prose and less is

16:52basically more here. Um, I mean, I try to do, uh, I try to intervene in the least way that I need to intervene, um, when I, when I, when I do these things. Um, so I will say that the papers that I get today are a lot better written than the papers I got 25 years ago. I suspect part of that is AI. You know, I know a lot of authors use AI to, I saw your thumbs down, Jennifer. Uh, a lot of them use AI.

17:31Um, and of course my workshop, no, I'm just kidding, but they don't, they do seem to be better written today, or maybe I'm just not as good as I used to be. I don't know. Maybe I just don't notice things like that. Oh, that's ridiculous. I don't know. You know, George Gopin, he was, he's a retired professor, professor of rhetoric at Duke, and he wrote this great book called Expectations, Teaching Writing from the Reader's Perspective. Um, and, uh, he says in that book that the number one thing your reader, the biggest mistake a reader makes is assuming that they

18:08understand what the author is trying to say. And so that's kind of the approach that I take. I'm much more likely to query than I am to just change something. Let's now move, um, to another subject, the fact that you have been animating, uh, since years, um, on behalf of the Journal of Economic South, uh, Jihad, uh, for the last few years, um, academic writing workshops. And I've been

18:41one of the many, I think that followed, uh, this, this workshop. And so how, how did the workshop come about and what, and what service are they meant to provide to the community and what's your, uh, uh, feeling about, about it? So the workshops began as, uh, I think it was 2018 or 2019 as one of the HES's new initiatives, which is a program that the HES, um, used to have. And it was, um,

19:18proposed by Pedro Duarte, um, and, and Ximena, who the previous editors of J-Hat, um, uh, Ximena Hurtado. And, um, they saw it as a, the way that they were thinking about it was, um, J-Hat is an English language journal. A lot of the people who try to get published in J-Hat are not native English speakers. We don't want that to be a barrier. We want to make the journal more inviting and

19:54inclusive. So let's, let's offer some writing workshops as a way of doing that to help people improve their written English. And that's how they started. Um, and, um, and they've just continued. I mean, I had no idea that they were going to continue. I really thought it was just going to be a one year thing, but then they decided to, to continue the workshops. Um, and so, you know, we've been doing it now for five or six years and I've been in touch with Haro, one of the current

20:29editors of J-Hat Haro Moss, one of the current editors of J-Hat to, uh, figure out what we're gonna, what we're gonna do this year. Um, but, um, you know, so, so I haven't really developed a curriculum that I follow every year. Um, I've kind of made it up as I go along, but for the most part, um, it's, it's, I try to, um, explain how to write clearly and simply. Um, I try to explain

21:01what academic articles are supposed to do. Um, we've talked about writing for general audiences and how that differs from writing for an academic audience. We've talked about making presentations, um, those kinds of things. Um, I am one of the participator, uh, of that workshop. I participated to many of these workshops, uh, because I'm Turkish and I always had difficulties writing in English. Um, actually, first of all,

21:36uh, I would like to say that, um, they have a therapeutic effect. This is like a little therapy. These workshops always, uh, even though you, for example, it's happened to me to participate, uh, two times to the same workshop because it's, uh, repetitive. Sometimes same subjects come out again. Uh, it makes me feel really good and thank you very much. We always thank you in the end of the workshops, but now it's time to, uh, thank you in general because, uh, you, you did it. How many

22:10years it has happened, uh, for how many years now? Maybe Francois said it, but five or six years. Yeah. Thank you, Jen. I really appreciate that. Um, I really do. And, um, I mean, I guess, I guess what I should say is that, um, what I really hope, um, so I'm glad, I really appreciate what you just said, because what I really hope is that by the end of the workshop, the participants feel better about writing and about themselves as writers than they did at the beginning of the

22:43workshop. That's, that's, that's what I hope to achieve, you know, um, at all of these, at all of these workshops and about the workshop, actually, uh, all explanations, uh, in the workshops are clear and the workshop itself emphasizes the importance of clarity of the language. Um, and that, that's really helpful. Yes. Uh, I got, uh, really help from this workshop. I have a question. I have

23:13another question. Um, at what point in one's career should a young scholar start thinking about

Writing Quality

23:20the quality of their writing? Given the priority to become expert in the content of one's field, matters of form, like the quality of one's writing are often neglected in graduate school. What advice do you give to new historians of economics about that? Well, I think you should start thinking about your writing from the very beginning, um, and, and not see it as a, an activity that's separate from learning the content,

23:51but as something that goes hand in hand with learning the content. So I think, I think everybody should be writing as they're learning the content, even if that means just after you read something, you try to record and writing from memory, what you've just read. I mean, that I do that all the time. I mean, that, that could be a very valuable, a valuable, um, uh, a valuable practice to have. Um,

24:25so yeah, I think, I think people should be writing from the get go and should, uh, should, should use writing as a way to, to master the content that you're trying to master. Um,

24:44there are, there, there are some good books out there that can help you. I mean, there's a book by someone named Wendy Laura Belcher and it's called writing your journal article in 12 weeks. Um, and she talks about the conventions of an academic article, which is what a lot of people need to learn early on. Um, and what you really, you rarely get explicitly taught, right? You sort of

25:14learn this by reading the literature and through inferring from comments that your advisors give you and things like that. Um, there's also a series of books that it's geared a little more towards social scientists, but there's still a lot of valuable things in them. It's, but it's a series of books published by Michigan by, um, um, Feek, F-E-A-K and Swales, John Swales and Christine Feek,

25:44F-E-A-K. She's it's, it's a, it's a, it's a great, it's a great, great series. Um,

25:51and I think the thing to understand, you know, I think the thing to, when, when you're starting out, I think the thing to do is to commit to getting better. And, and let me just explain what I mean by that. Nobody expects you, well, nobody reasonably expects you to know how to do it right from the beginning. This is something that you will learn over time. Um, and so give yourself that time, think about it as a process, think about it as something that you're going to spend the rest of

26:24your career, uh, getting better at, um, commit yourself to that process. And, and I think, um, I think that's the way to go. I mean, I think that's the way to look at it. Can I jump in with a follow-up question? Yeah. Okay. I was actually wondering, um,

26:46we've, you've said a bit about when basically we should think about the quality of our writing right away and kind of just all the time. Um, one thing that I was curious about was how writers should cultivate voice in their writing. This is something that I think about, um, in my own field where, um, there are certain kinds of moves that we make in papers that I see over and over again. And sometimes I worry for myself, um, whether the way I talk about things

27:20is going to get lost, um, you know, under this set of constraints that I really have to be operating under. So what do you, do you have any advice for, for students who are thinking about cultivating that as part of good quality writing?

27:39Cultivating your voice as a writer. Um, so I mean, what I, what I do is, um, um, I take a writer that I really like, like George Orwell or Susan Sontag. Um, and when I write, I try to write like them. And of course I'm not going to succeed. I'm not going to write just like

28:10them. Um, I'm going to inevitably write like me, but with their voice in my head, um,

28:25that's, I mean, it's sort of like an inspiration. It's, it's, it's, it's a model to strive for. I know I'm not going to reach it. I don't even know if I want to reach it. Right. I want my own voice. Um, but it's extremely helpful. I think to, um, for me, it's been extremely helpful to get really familiar with a particular writer that you like, um, and have that, have the voice of that

28:55writer in your head as you write your own stuff. Um, and I don't think you have to worry about, oh, I'm going to sound like Susan Sontag. Well, if I do sound like Susan Sontag, I'm going to be ecstatic, but it's not going to happen. I'm going to sound like somebody else, but you know, it's, it's, it gives you a basis to start from. Um, and you know, I, I think the more that you, the more that you write and the more familiar writing is to you as a, as, as something

29:31that you do, I mean, I just think, I think whatever voice you have is, is going to come out, is going to be developed. That's what I think. Um, I can't prove that, you know, but that's what I think. I was, I was reading someone the other day. Gosh, who was it? It was the weirdest thing, but, but, um, but, but, but he, he said that before he ever writes, whenever he writes, I'm sorry,

30:04I can't remember who this person is, but I do remember that they said they always read something from Marx before they write, because it, it sort of preps their mind in the way that they want to be prepped. And I guess that's kind of what I'm talking about. Okay. So it's also an invitation to read and, um, uh, even not only academic writing. Um, yes. I mean, yeah, I think, I, I think that it's

30:35important to, to read people who are general essayists who write very well. Um, yeah. Thanks. So, uh, still on academic writing, uh, in your view, what is the relationship between technique and substance? Does a good technique lend itself to convincing argument, or can weak style undermine the substance of a piece? How do you feel about this tension?

31:07Well, I definitely think skillful writing can be persuasive, even if what you're saying is not true. Um, I mean, think about fiction writers, right? I mean, a good fiction writer, you know that these events didn't happen, but you kind of believe that they did, you know? I mean, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a trick, right? It's like a trick. Um, so yes, I definitely believe that, that,

31:41that good writing can, um, can make your ideas more persuasive. I mean, I've been, I, I, I, I really like John Stuart Mill. Um, I love reading Mill. I think he's brilliant. I think he's, we can never, we can't pay too much attention to Mill as far as I'm concerned. And, you know, I'm not, you know, so take the essay on liberty, right? Do I really believe his central argument? Maybe, I mean, but

32:15the way that he says it, as I'm reading it, I do believe it. And it's, it's all because of the way that he, that he, that he writes, and I can't really put my finger on it, but there's a certain intelligence and style to the way that he writes that for me makes it persuasive. I mean, that's probably one reason why Smith was so influential is, is he, he's generally a good writer. And that's probably one reason why it was him and the wealth of nations and not, you know, there are lots of books

32:47that basically say the same things, but we don't, they're kind of lost to history. Well, they're not lost to us, but the history in general. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, so yeah, I, I, I, and by the same token, Francois, I think, you know, something poorly written, you know, your, regardless of how fantastic your ideas might be or original they are or intriguing or compelling, if something is poorly written, you're probably not going to succeed in, in convincing people. Um, you know, there's that

33:23story that, that McCluskey tells in the rhetoric of economics about the Muth article, right? Where she, she basically says that the reason it took so long to get, to have an influence is because it was so poorly written. I don't know if that's entirely true, but I'm sure that's part of it. I mean, that, that it was written in a way that, that wasn't ready for its readers at that moment. Um, and had he written it a different way, who knows? Maybe it would have been recognized sooner.

33:56Um, okay. Just changing the subject a little bit, um, to come to more popular questions, maybe. How does AI affect writing and editing in the history of economic talks? Should we use it or so? How and how not?

34:14So if we're talking about generative AI, um, you know, Jennifer, get ready for your, your thumbs down here. I'm, I'm open-minded. I'm giving, I'm giving it a thumbs down too, but, but, um, um, I, I, I mean, it's, it's going to become a normal part of the writing process. Um, probably sooner than we think, uh, maybe within five years. Um, and so what it means to write, what it means to be

34:51original, um, what it, what it means to, um, to be a scholar, all of that stuff is going to have to be, um, rethought. Um, my, my primary concern with generative AI is that we're going to let it do our thinking for us. You know, I think that's a lot of people's concerns. Um, because, you know, I really believe that thinking through and writing through a problem is one of the important ways that we

35:27develop as human beings. And I think if we abdicate that, if we, if we, if we outsource that to AI, we're just going to be all the poor for it. Um, I'm not very optimistic. Now, if we're talking about general artificial intelligence, um, then I think we, I mean, that's even scarier, right? I mean, so I listened to, you know, the big Davos meeting every year where all the billionaires gather and,

35:59you know, um, so, uh, Yuval Harari, uh, spoke there about AI and it's, it's a fantastic talk. I mean, it's, he began by saying, um, the first thing you need to know is that this is not a tool. This is an agent. And as an agent, it has the potential to take over everything we do that involves words, religion, scholarship, uh, business, you name it. Um, and I mean, I suspect he's right. I mean,

36:36I, I guess so. I don't know. I mean, I don't, I don't fully know. Um, but it worries me. Um, it really worries me. Um, but yeah, as far as generative AI,

36:48you know, I wish people didn't use it, but they do, they're going to continue using it. It's going to become part of the normal writing process. And when it does, uh, we're going to have to completely rethink, um, what it means to be an author, what it means to write, what it means to be original, all those kinds of things and what that's going to look like. I don't know. I don't, I don't know what the answers are going to be to those, to those questions.

37:17It often happens that a person writing in history has a lot of material, a lot of good ideas, but doesn't know how to get these ideas on paper or how to arrange them in a convincing way. Do you have advice about how a writer should even get started? And we're not including using generative AI. We're going to take it off the table for now. Um, what about, yeah, what advice do you have for writers who are struggling to turn all this good material into good writing? Well, I think it starts with articulating in a single sentence, what your main

37:53point or argument is. Um, and, um, that that's where it all starts. And then you follow that up by listing the pieces of evidence you have that make you think that that's true or reasonable. And that's how you begin to get a handle on, on these things. Um, there are also, I haven't explored these, but, but your question, uh, has made me think about them.

38:25So Roger Backhouse's biography of Samuelson. Um, I, uh, you know, I've read it. Um, what, one of the interesting things is in the preface, and this completely took me by surprise. At the end of the preface, he says that the book was written with the help of Scrivener, which is a software program. And he says it did more for him than any normal word processing programs can do. Um, so, you know, there, there, there are now things like that out there that can help you that are

38:59specifically designed to help you organize material. Um, I think they're, they're mostly used by fiction writers, but, but obviously, um, scholars can use them, can use them as well. Um, I have Scrivener. Oh, you do? Do you use it? I do.

39:20I used to use it a lot. I use it less now. I, for whatever reason, I've replaced Scrivener, which is like this wonderful program where you can put all of your stuff kind of just in one place, what research you're doing, your drafts, your, your rewritings of re of drafts and all that just kind of in one place. I have a, for whatever reason, I moved to an even more inefficient strategy, which we don't have to get into. So I don't know why I moved away from it, but it is a lovely program. Well, that's good to hear. Steve Madama uses something too. It might

39:52be Scrivener as well, but it might be something different. Um, but I know that he's told me that he uses and I emailed him to ask him, but I, I didn't have time to check to see if he responded. Um, have you ever seen that, that clip of David Lynch talking about how to write a screenplay? Cause that might be relevant here. He says, here's how you write a screenplay. You get a pack of three by five index cards, which most people probably don't know what those are anymore. You get a pack a three by five index cards on each card. You write a scene. And when you have 70 cards, you have a script

40:30and maybe that approach can work for the person who's trying to organize an abundant supply of material.

40:40Okay. Um, now, um, for the last question, uh, we would like to ask you, what are your pet peeves about academic writing? What annoys you when you see it? Uh, what are, uh, what are some of the tendencies of academic writers writers that you hope to never encounter again?

41:04Well, I'll, I'll talk about, um, a couple of sentence level things, uh, that are pet peeves of mine. One is the fact that whenever there are two items in a series,

41:21the author feels obligated to use a both and construction. So I commend the creators of this podcast for not naming it both Smith, Smith and Marks walk into a bar. Um, cause I think if that sentence occurred in an academic article, both would be in there somewhere. Um, so both, both and is actually supposed to be used for emphasis, use sparingly for emphasis. When you really want to stress that it's not just one or the other, it's both,

41:54but if you overuse it, which people do, it loses that function. Um, the other one, and, and McCluskey talks about this in her economical writing is the, the overuse of that, those, this, and these, when in most cases, a simple V will do. Um, so those are, those are, those are two things. Um, looking at it from a bigger perspective, um, you know, there's the, there's the conventions of an academic article, um, which is,

42:36I mean, basically what you have to do is situate your question in the context of the secondary literature. That's how that's, that's basically what the introduction of the article does. I mean, that's something that you have to do that if you want to get published. Um, should you have to do that? Is that really the, you know, is, is that really something that is desirable? I mean, I, I don't know. I mean, if you, if you look at non-academic essays and are better, well, probably in any magazine,

43:15I mean, none of them will begin with a discussion of what other people have written about the subject. None of them will begin with the equivalent of this paper. Um, this essay will provide a profile of Yuval Harari, you know, you just wouldn't see that. So, um, you know, as long as we insist on these conventions, you have to follow them, but sometimes those conventions are, I just think, oh my God, can't we figure out other ways to start an academic paper? So that's my, that's,

43:53those are some of my, the last one's not really a pet peeve, but it's just an observation. Pet peeve of mine. So it's a pet peeve of yours. Yeah, it is. Well, so, so here's a, here's the thing that I, I see a lot in philosophy papers and it's reinforced because I mean, like even, even I do it. Um, but there's always a paragraph at the end of the introduction of a philosophy paper. That's like in section one, I'm going to do this. And then in section two, I'm going to do this. And then

44:24in section three, and then section four will conclude. And it's like, oh, I didn't know that that's very common in economics papers and history of economics papers. I didn't know that that was common in philosophy as well. At least in the circles I run in, it's, it's very, very common. And I'm, I'm starting to chafe at it a little bit, by the way, audience members, audience members can't see this, but once you mentioned note cards, Francois got really, really excited and started waving all of his note cards around in the background. I did not see that. I'm sorry.

44:55I missed that. Look at all of his note cards. You're like David Lynch. I like index cards. Good. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we never answered the question about changes in the field. I don't know if you want to do that or not. Oh yeah. We can totally go back to that. Of course. I'd like to know. Well, um, so, you know, I started with the journal in 1999 and I think a lot of the changes that have occurred, uh, since then were already underway in 1999. Um, I think the biggest,

45:33not going to call this a big, one of the far reaching changes is just the decline in numbers of historians of economics in the U S in North America and the UK. And I was thinking about this when I started in 1999, we had, of course, there were the guys at Duke. There was Crawford, there was Neil, there was Roy, but at Wake Forest, there was Dan Hammond, a guy named Alan Cottrell, a guy named Mike Lawler at UNCG, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. There was Bruce Caldwell at UNC. There was a

46:11guy named Vincent Tarasio. Um, and so, you know, just in North Carolina, when I first started, there were like seven or eight historians of economics within 50 miles of where, of where I sat. And now it's basically just, well, Spencer's now what Spencer Bonsoff is at North Carolina state. Um, now we're happy to have him in the area. Um, but you know, I, I, I looked at the editorial board of hope as it

46:41existed in 1999 and like half of the 20 board members were North Americans or Brits. Um, and now it's like two or three. And one of those is from France. So, you know, uh, so that that's, so, so that's been a big shift. Um, it's all shifted, you know, I mean, it's always been done in Europe and South America and Asia. Now it's exclusively done, I think, and almost exclusively, not exclusively, almost exclusively done in Europe, uh, South America and Asia. So, so there's been that kind

47:14of shift. Um, other things I've seen, um, and again, I think these changes were underway in, uh, in 1999. Um, but certainly the use of archival materials, things other than the published record. So journals, diaries, photographs, letters, um, minutes of meetings, um, those, those kinds of things, um, that, that, that, that has, um, increased, um, the focus on post-war economics,

47:49I think is, is something, I mean, if you look at the older issues of hope, it's all Ricardo and Walras and Marx and Smith and Keynes. And, you know, you don't really see, but of course, you know, what's interesting is, you know, post-war economics is now like, I mean, 1970 was 55 years ago. You know, it wasn't, it was 30 years ago. So, you know, yeah. Right. So it's not, it's not, it's not as recent as, as you might think if you didn't bother to, you know, work out the,

48:23the chronology. Um, so that's been a, that's been a shift. Um, the attention paid to non North American and UK economists. Um, so a lot of South American economists, um, European economists, of course, um, that's that, I think that's been a, that's been a big change in the field. Um, we're beginning to look at economists, not just as they function as academics,

48:55but, you know, in think tanks and government business and, and things like that. So, um, that's been a change. And of course the, there's been a change in, in, in the hope conference volume that's coming out at the end of this year, edited by Philippe Fontan and Joel Isaac, their introduction is all about how, um, now it's not just, just not just economists who are writing about the history of economics. It's people from, you know, history proper and science studies and

49:30intellectual history and, and folks like that. Um, so those are, those are, you know, some of the changes that, that I've, that I've seen. I think they were all underway starting in, you know, when I started with the journal in 1999. Does that sound, does that all sound, does that all like sound reasonable to you all? Yeah, it does. Um, I think the field is a lot more exciting now than

50:00it ever was before. I mean, we, Andres Ferencic was at the Hope Center a couple of years ago and when, when he was there, he, well, I love Andre. When he was there, he read the entire run of hope, like from the first issue to the most current issue. And I said, uh, what'd you think of the early stuff? He goes, it was boring. Well, the best is yet to come. Well, you know, I think,

50:33you know, a lot of the early stuff, it was, a lot of it was, what did Volros mean by value? Or, you know, what exactly was Smith's labor theory of value and that kind of stuff? Um, um, you didn't have as much of the contextual, you know, studies that I think you have today. And that's probably what he was reacting to. Um, you know, I think too, there's, there's this, there's now a sensitivity or awareness that economists, you know, I think before we would treat these people as

51:06discrete individuals. Um, and, and there's much more awareness now that they were members of various communities and those communities affected their work, influence their work, those kinds of things. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Paul. I learned something new whenever I talked to you. So thank you for stopping by the show and visiting us here today. Well, it was really my pleasure. I really enjoyed this. Um, thank you so much for your questions and for your support of the workshop and

51:37for doing this podcast, because I, as someone who for a short while, um, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. But, uh, I was, uh, one of the participants of the, of the workshop and, uh, I keep the documents that you have sent it to us, uh, and the PowerPoint. But for me, what was really important is that it was clear and it was, um, really like we are like little children there because we are on that subject. And as we have difficulties, it was very pedagogical and,

52:14uh, very empathic actually. I found all the workshops like that. And I will thank you. Well, thank you so much. And I'll, I'll try to keep doing a good job. And here's a really quick plug for our audience members. Those of you who are interested, or we know who's someone, someone who's interested, J-Hat runs the online writing workshop. Paul, uh, spearheads this. Um, we're hoping for, for a long time to come. It's a, it's a good experience, learn how to write. And yeah. Well, like I said, I'll be, I'll, um, I'll be, I've been conferring

52:51with Haru to, to figure out what we're going to be doing this year. You know, trust them all. And, and this was really, this is really a delight to, to be on, on the podcast and to participate. Join us again next month for another episode of Smig's and Mark's Walk into a Bar, a History of Economics podcast.