The Henry George School Podcast

For today’s episode, Cameron Sajedi examines the land question through the ideas of Henry George and Silvio Gesell. He uses Geographic Information Systems and real data to explore land use and the issues that informed their proposed solutions.

Cameron Sajedi is a scientist and systems architect with a background in geoscience, engineering, and financial modeling. His work brings together location data, decentralized technology, and alternative monetary systems.

To explore more of our content, including research, policy and tools, visit our website at hgsss.org.

For today’s episode, Mary Pilon, author of The Monopolists, explains how Monopoly began as a Georgist teaching tool. In 1904 Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord’s Game to show what happens when land rent goes to owners instead of the community. The game spread through single tax circles for thirty years before Charles Darrow sold it to Parker Brothers as his own.

Mary Pilon is a New York Times bestselling author, an investigative journalist and an Emmy-nominated filmmaker. She was a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal.

To explore more of our content, including research, policy and tools, visit our website at hgsss.org.

For today’s episode, Evan Atlas introduces Prosperity, a digital version of The Landlord’s Game, and discusses the history of Lizzie Magie’s original Georgist board game. He explains why both Magie and he see games as powerful educational tools.

Evan Atlas is an interdisciplinary philosopher, writer, entrepreneur, and game designer. He is the author of three books and writes Mapping with Atlas on Substack. His work explores how we can create more meaningful and purposeful lives across game theory, psychology, ethics, complex systems, metamodernism, personal development, and spiritual growth.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/

For today’s episode, Edward Dodson discusses what he sees as the systemic problems facing the American economy and society. He proposes unique solutions that require thinking and action, which to this point have escaped not only most elected officials but also economists and other social thinkers.

Mr. Dodson attended Shippensburg University and Temple University where he received an economics degree. Ed worked for Fannie Mae, a public-private partnership to help distribute home mortgage loans. During his time at Fannie Mae, Mr. Dodson held numerous management and analyst positions within the Housing & Community Development group, helping revitalize neighborhoods and local communities. This gives him an interesting perspective on land use and reform, and how it can reduce inequality. He also has extensive experience as a history lecturer at the Osher Life Long Learning Institute and the Learning is For Everyone program at Burlington County College. Edward has written many papers on history and the political economy and is the author of a three-volume book series titled The Discovery of First Principles.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For today’s episode, panelists Lucas Bernard, Stephen Giannetti, Sean Hagen, Caridad Muñoz, and Dr. Marty Rowland weigh in on the future impact of AI adoption and whether it will bring more progress or poverty.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For today’s episode, Edward Dodson examines the evolution in King’s thinking on how to address the issue of extreme poverty and the major ideas and events that influenced his life and work.

Mr. Dodson attended Shippensburg University and Temple University where he received an economics degree. Ed worked for Fannie Mae, a public-private partnership to help distribute home mortgage loans. During his time at Fannie Mae, Mr. Dodson held numerous management and analyst positions within the Housing & Community Development group, helping revitalize neighborhoods and local communities. This gives him an interesting perspective on land use and reform, and how it can reduce inequality. He also has extensive experience as a history lecturer at the Osher Life Long Learning Institute and the Learning is For Everyone program at Burlington County College. Edward has written many papers on history and the political economy and is the author of a three-volume book series titled The Discovery of First Principles.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For today’s episode, Greg Miller and Lars Doucet from the Center for Land Economics discuss vacant land being undervalued in Baltimore compared to utilized lots and what the mismatches mean for speculation, development, and fairness.

Greg Miller is Co-Founder of the Center for Land Economics. He brings experience from his role as a Program Analyst in the Office of Policy Development and Research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). After his time at HUD, he co-founded a startup focused on applying AI to make government more accessible. He holds degrees in Economics and Applied Mathematics from the University of Notre Dame.Lars Doucet is Co-Founder of the Center for Land Economics. He has decades of experience in software development. He was previously an indie game developer before co-founding ValueBase, a property assessment technology startup. As the former Chief Product Officer, he developed cutting-edge tools for accurate land value estimation. His book “Land is A Big Deal” has become a cornerstone text in contemporary discussions of land value taxation.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For today’s episode, four panelists (Prof. Hironori Washizaki, Prof. Willi Semmler, Prof. Aleksandr V. Gevorkyan, and Tato Khundadze) take part in a discussion on the extent of AI adoption in Japan, Germany, Armenia, and Georgia, who is truly benefitting from it, and what can be done to ensure that the technological progress is shared with everyone.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Professor John Muellbauer is a Senior Research Fellow of Nuffield College and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Econometric Society. He is best known for his work on household economics, housing markets, and on finance-real economy interactions. He has worked with many central banks and the OECD and is a frequent contributor to CEPR's VoxEU columns.

Together, we discussed how booming house and land prices can distort productivity, deepen inequality, and shape the wider economy through banking and credit cycles.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠https://www.hgsss.org/

For today’s episode, Honey B. Blues leads a discussion on what was lost when only the "winner-take-all" version of Lizzie Magie's The Landlord's Game was commercialized.

Honey B. Blues is an independent economic researcher and the author of the upcoming book Independent Economics: The People’s Guide to Moral Wealth and Perpetual Prosperity. Her work focuses on rediscovering forgotten economic ideas— especially the lost vision of Lizzie Magie — and translating them into practical, non-speculative savings systems for ordinary Americans. Blues’ research centers on moral wealth, community resilience, and perpetually circulating financial models that reduce dependence on unstable markets.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For today’s episode, Ed Dodson leads a discussion on Robert Morris, an American patriot in Revolutionary America.

The origin story of the United States of America is filled with numerous twists and turns. The fact that the people and leaders of the 13 British colonies managed to earn their independence from the 18th century’s most powerful naval and land power was anything but certain. However, winning independence required an army and a navy, as well as the capacity to provide all the goods necessary to match the enemy. In this lecture series, we present and discuss the role of Robert Morris, an American patriot who made it his life mission to coordinate and mobilize resources even when cooperation among the 13 States was difficult.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For today’s episode, Ed Dodson leads a discussion on Robert Morris, an American patriot in Revolutionary America.

The origin story of the United States of America is filled with numerous twists and turns. The fact that the people and leaders of the 13 British colonies managed to earn their independence from the 18th century’s most powerful naval and land power was anything but certain. However, winning independence required an army and a navy, as well as the capacity to provide all the goods necessary to match the enemy. In this lecture series, we present and discuss the role of Robert Morris, an American patriot who made it his life mission to coordinate and mobilize resources even when cooperation among the 13 States was difficult.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For today’s episode, host Josh Sidman sat down with Willem Buiter, Ahmed Anwar and Felix Fuders for a roundtable discussion on interest.

Interest has been a controversial subject since ancient times, drawing censure from all of the world’s major religions as well as important thinkers including Aristotle. But why does interest exist in the first place? Why does money have the power to grow? A number of different theories exist which attribute the existence of interest to such diverse causes as the fertility of nature, the productivity of capital, human nature, or a basic design flaw in our form of money. The panel consists of three distinguished economists who have written and taught on the subject of interest.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For today’s episode, host Josh Sidman sat down with Nicolas Franka to discuss why money is broken, why reform movements so often work in silos, and what it would look like to build a real dialogue across competing monetary reformers.

Nicolas Franka is an economist and founder of the Monetary Diversity network. His work focuses on alternative monetary systems and complementary currencies. He explores the intersections of ecology, economy, and society, and how money can become a tool for resilience and transition. Actively involved in cooperatives, he advocates for participatory democracy and collective intelligence as drivers of transformation.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For today’s episode, host Josh Sidman sat down with Guido Preparata to discuss Silvio Gesell's monetary economics, the nature and origin of interest, and the controversial relationship between Gesell and John Maynard Keynes.

Guido Preparata is an Italian-American economist who currently resides in Umbria, Italy. He did his PhD in Political Economy at the University of Southern California and also has a masters in Criminology from Cambridge University. He taught political economy at the University of Washington and was a Fulbright Scholar studying Middle Eastern international relations at the University of Amman in Jordan. Among his diverse professional interests is the economic perspective of Silvio Gesell, which he has been writing about since the 1990s. He wrote a paper in 2002 arguing that some of Keynes’s most important insights on money were inspired by, if not plagiarized from, Silvio Gesell.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠

For today’s episode, host Josh Sidman sat down with Felix Fuders to discuss the problems caused by the unnatural monetary system and potential solutions.

Felix Fuders is originally from Germany and is a professor of economics at the Universidad Austral de Chile, where he is the Director of the Economics Institute and the head of the Right Livelihood College. He is also the chairman of the Natural Economic Order Foundation in Frankfurt, Germany and one of the leading researchers in the world on the economic perspective of Silvio Gesell, having published multiple books and articles on Gesell’s ideas. His most recent book How to Fulfill the UN Sustainability Goals: Rethinking the Role and Concept of Money in the Light of Sustainability makes the argument that the root cause of unsustainable environmental practices and the so-called “growth imperative” is our irrational form of money and that achieving a more sustainable future requires a fundamental overhaul of our monetary system along the lines proposed by Silvio Gesell.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠

For today’s episode, host Josh Sidman sat down with Christian Gelleri to discuss Chiemgauer, a regional currency in Bavaria, Germany.

Christian Gelleri is a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Siegen in Germany and a leading innovator in the complementary currency space. He is the creator of the Chiemgauer, a regional currency in Bavaria, Germany which is intended to increase local employment, support local culture and make the local food supply more resilient. The currency incorporates Silvio Gesell’s proposal of demurrage, or carrying costs, to incentivize steady circulation of money. Christian is a former Waldorf School teacher, and he created the Chiemgauer in 2003 as a project with his students. Now, over 20 years later, it is one of the most successful and sustained complementary currency projects in the world, with an annual turnover of over 7 million Euros.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠

For today’s episode, host Josh Sidman sat down with Carlos Louge to discuss the life and ideas of Silvio Gesell (specifically, his thoughts on Keynes).

Carlos Louge is the Founder and Director of the Silvio Gesell Institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A lawyer and economist by training, Carlos has worked in the areas of alternative exchange systems and complementary currencies since the 1990s. He has written numerous articles as well as a book entitled Keynes and Gesell: A New Paradigm, in which he argues that many of the core ideas in The General Theory were previously developed by Gesell during his years in Argentina. He furthermore advocates for a more inclusive view of economic history, making the argument that many ideas which are ascribed to European and American thinkers were developed decades and even centuries earlier in South America.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠

Today’s discussion was recorded in August of 2025 between me, Nathan Greene, and our returning guest, Dr. Ansel Schiavone.

Before we get into today’s discussion, I have some updates for you all regarding the show. I have some bittersweet news to share: this is my final episode hosting the podcast. After 178 episodes, I, your host, Nathan Greene, am unfortunately moving on to a new role.

I am an inherently curious person, and I love to learn through conversation. This podcast presented a unique opportunity for me to meet many people with interesting ideas and gain insight into how they perceive the world. While I didn’t always agree with them, it was always a fascinating conversation nonetheless. I got to speak with thinkers I love, have read about, and even got to reconnect with some I had already met. Needless to say, it was an incredible opportunity.

By the time you’re hearing this, I will have already begun my new job. My last day with the Henry George School was September 14th, and this will be published shortly after. I hope you all loved listening to the podcast just as much as I enjoyed making it.

The show will go on, though. While it may not be me behind the mic, the Henry George School will continue to put out the content you all come to love and expect. The show will be taking a break until next year. They will let you know ahead of time when the show will be back. I’m not too sure when that will be, but I know I will be listening, and I hope you do too.

If you want to keep up with me and my work, I will leave some links below to my Twitter, LinkedIn, and Substack. I can’t promise I’ll be very active on either, though, since this new role will be quite consuming, but a follow is always appreciated, and free.

I can not thank everyone who gave me this opportunity enough: from the listeners, to my coworker Kuba who helped me put the episodes out, to Andrada, the president of the school, who trusted me enough to manage the show myself.
I am sad that I’m leaving. But I can’t wait to see, maybe I should say hear, what the podcast does next. I hope you all are just as excited.

Dr. Schiavone is a macroeconomist whose research focuses on inequality and structural change. He has worked as a Research Assistant at the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the International Labor Organization. He has published numerous articles in journals such as Economic Modeling, Metroeconomica, and Regional Studies. Dr. Schiavone is an Assistant Professor at St. John’s University where he teaches microeconomics, macroeconomics, and the economics of poverty and inequality. He earned his bachelor’s from Dennison University and his Ph.D. from the University of Utah, both in economics.

Together, we discussed why workers are receiving a smaller and smaller share of what they produce, some of the policies recently passed to try and correct this inequality, and why certain critiques of globalization may not be unfair.

This is your host, Nathan Greene, signing off for the last time. Stay curious and keep searching for the truth. It may not be what you expect, but nothing ever is in this world.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/

Nathan’s Links:

Twitter: https://x.com/Nathan_Greene16

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-greene-596466171/

Substack: https://nathangreene1620.substack.com/

What does it mean to be an economist? It’s something I have thought a lot about. I graduated from St. John’s with a bachelor's degree in economics, and I have been fascinated by it ever since. But, through reading, networking, job interviews, and taking courses on other subjects, I’ve begun to lose sight of what exactly an economist is, or what they are supposed to do.

If you work for a tech or logistics company, they hire economists to sort through data to help make better decisions. In this role, economists are more like data scientists. If you are just starting out at one of the Fed’s branches, you are spending a lot of time coding. But economists aren’t taught computer science. Many top-notch economics programs teach their students statistical methods that forecast outcomes, making these students more like weather forecasters than economists.

I’ve also heard a lot of different perspectives on how economists should approach their work. We’re supposed to think like auditors, architects, plumbers, or engineers. But, how can economists work like… economists?

I think part of this is the change the discipline has gone through. Economics used to be a discipline that looked at a narrow set of indicators. Now, economics has merged with other disciplines. Behavioral economics comes from psychology, natural resource economics comes from environmental science, and health economics comes from the study of medicine. Heck, you can even take courses on agricultural or neuroeconomics.

Needless to say, the role of an economist is one in flux, and for good reason.

As Esther Duflo, a recent Nobel-winning economist, noted in a UK survey, only 25% of people trust the opinion of economists. One of the lowest among any other profession. And this is, in part, because the current understanding of economics is highly flawed, and, in my opinion, not applicable to the real world around.

So today, I embarked on a mission to understand what economics education is like and how it can be improved. I’m hoping to turn this into a series or mini-series where I interview a host of economics professors to see how different universities approach their economics programs. For now, it may be a one-off episode, but I hope it continues.

Dr. Gevorkyan received his bachelor’s degree in international trade and finance from Louisiana State University, two master's in economics from The New School and Louisiana State University, and his Ph.D. in economics from The New School. He is an expert on Central Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union economies. He is the author of numerous journals and articles, as well as the author of two books: Transition Economies and Financial Deepening and Post-Crisis Development in Emerging Markets. He is a professor and Henry George Chair in Economics at St. John’s University, as well as a member here at the Henry George School.

Together, we discussed what the St. John’s curriculum entails, why economists tend to defend current paradigms instead of discovering new ones, and what type of economist he wants his students to become.

To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/