The “Fear the Boom and Bust” Rap — Who Said Economics Can’t Be Fun?

Through the personae of John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek, a rap video by George Mason University economist Russ Roberts and Spike TV executive John Papola explains the two major competing hypotheses around boom-and-bust cycles. It’s a great primer on economics, and definitely fun to watch.

A sidelight is around how this video gained prominence and legitimacy through an NPR story. It seems to me that NPR has been drawing more from the social media space recently, in what strike me as a concerted effort to find stories that have that particular edginess — or is it a natural side-effect of the fact that NPR has done a magnificent job of reinventing itself as a modern news entity, with great offerings in audio, text, and online?

But even NPR needs to legitimize its choice (securing, as they put it, “street cred”) when it comes to rap (surprising, since rap and hip-hop have been around for more than 30 years now), so they had to ask Ke$ha if Roberts and Papola are good rappers.

Ke$ha verified they are.

Happy Friday!