Results for “YouTube”
1630 found

Music on YouTube, Now

by  Tyler Cowen in

You’ve all heard by now that Google might buy YouTube.  That means deeper pockets, and of course greater fear of copyright litigation.

It is time for intertemporal substitution.

Here are YouTube recommendations from Michael, at www.2blowhards.com; here is the best from that list.

There is a long and wonderful list of YouTube music videos, from all genres, on Terry Teachout’s page, scroll down all the way to the right.  And no, that video of Gyorgy Cziffra playing Liszt was not speeded up!  Art Tatum was pretty fast too.  On the guitar, Julian Bream was no slouch.

The mainstream view

by  Tyler Cowen in

Multiple studies have either shown that smartphone and social media use among teens has minimal effects on their mental health or none at all. As a 2024 review published by an American Psychological Association journal put it: “There is no evidence that time spent on social media is correlated with adolescent mental health problems.”

And this:

Advocates of bans compare social media to alcohol or tobacco, where the harms are indisputable and the benefits are minimal. But the internet, including social media, is more analogous to books, magazines or television. I may not want my sons watching “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” or reading “Fifty Shades of Grey,” but it would be crazy to ban books and films for kids altogether.

But that is the nature of these social media bans. Australia’s law not only restricted access to platforms such as Instagram and TikTok but also banned kids under 16 from having YouTube, X and Reddit accounts. Even Substack had to modify its practices.

Here is more from the excellent Sam Bowman.  And many teens make money through “digital side hustles,” in this day and age that is what a teenage job often means.

Natural and Artificial Ice

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Excellent Veritasium video on the 19th century ice industry. Shipping ice from America to India would hardly seem like a wise idea—it’s hard to imagine ever getting a committee to approve such a venture—but entrepreneurs are free to try wacky ideas all the time, and sometimes they pay off, resulting in great riches. That’s the story of the “Ice King,” Frederic Tudor, who lost money for years before figuring out the insulation and logistics needed to make the trade profitable.

What I hadn’t fully appreciated is how the ice trade reshaped shipping, diet, and city design before the invention of mechanical refrigeration. Ice created the cold chain, and the cold chain made it possible to move fresh meat, fish, and produce over long distances. That in turn enabled cities to grow far beyond what local agriculture could support and shifted the American diet from salted and smoked provisions toward fresh food.

The profits of the ice trade encouraged investment in artificial ice which initially was met with resistance—natural ice is created by God!—a classic example of incumbents wrapping their economic interests in moral language, a pattern we see repeated with every disruptive technology from margarine to ridesharing.

Lots of lessons in the video about option value, permissionless innovation, and creative destruction. New technologies destroy old industries and create new ones that no one could have foreseen. The moral panic over artificial ice replacing the natural kind is no doubt familiar.

Hat tip: Naveen Nvn

Tuesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. European T-Bill sales are not an effective threat.

2. Is the 1963 The Essex hit song “Easier Said than Done” actually about a white woman who cannot bring herself to confess her love for a black man?

3. New Zealand is contracting (NYT).  And Knausgaard overview (NYT).

4. “Our main result is that empirical markdowns respond only 0–25% as much as the monopsony model would have predicted.”

5. “We find that AI exposure and adaptive capacity are positively correlated: many occupations highly exposed to AI contain workers with relatively strong means to manage a job transition.”

6. In America, would fewer bus stops be better?

7. “The New York Stock Exchange is developing a platform to trade and settle tokenized stocks, though the initiative requires regulatory approval before launching.”

8. China fact of the day: “Put differently, there were fewer births in China in 2025 than in 1776”

9. Does the Japanese bond shock mean tighter global liquidity?

Podcast with Salvador Duarte

by  Tyler Cowen in

Salvador is 17, and is an EV winner from Portugal.  Here is the transcript.  Here is the list of discussed topics:

0:00 – We’re discovering talent quicker than ever 5:14 – Being in San Francisco is more important than ever 8:01 – There is such a thing like a winning organization 11:43 – Talent and conformity on startup and big businesses 19:17 – Giving money to poor people vs talented people 22:18 – EA is fragmenting 25:44 – Longtermism and existential risks 33:24 – Religious conformity is weaker than secular conformity 36:38 – GMU Econ professors religious beliefs 39:34 – The west would be better off with more religion 43:05 – What makes you a philosopher 45:25 – CEOs are becoming more generalists 49:06 – Traveling and eating 53:25 – Technology drives the growth of government? 56:08 – Blogging and writing 58:18 – Takes on @Aella_Girl, @slatestarcodex, @Noahpinion, @mattyglesias, , @tszzl, @razibkhan, @RichardHanania, @SamoBurja, @TheZvi and more 1:02:51 – The future of Portugal 1:06:27 – New aesthetics program with @patrickc.

Self-recommending, here is Salvador’s podcast and Substack more generally.

*Pee-wee as himself*

by  Tyler Cowen in

I loved this documentary, all three hours of it.  Perhaps you need to be American, and to have lived in Pee-wee’s decades?  In any case, the film is a wonderful reflection on self-knowledge, the changing status of “coming out” as gay in American history, celebrity, how fame happens, hippie culture, cancel culture, who your real friends are, narcissism, and much more.  Pee-wee collaborated with the making of the film, but it seems pretty honest in portraying his life and later legal troubles.  It turns out he was dying of cancer for years, but did not let on to the filmmakers.  Here is the official trailer.