From 1961-1963 Richard Feynman — one of the preeminent physicsts of his day — taught an undergraduate class in physics at Cal Tech, a gig that was nominally well below his paygrade, and gave such a virtuoso performance that "They Feynman Lectures" have gone down in the annals of physics history as some of the best introductory material on physics in existence.
Mariana Mazzucato is one of the leading market-sceptic economists of our age, whose instant-classic 2013 book The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths upended the debate over the supposedly efficient and innovative private sector, showing how the signal innovations attributed to private business were simply recombinations of publicly funded basic research.
Mazzucato is now a professor at University College London, with her own centre, the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), and, like Feynman, she's teaching an introductory course that is well below her paygrade, and she is brilliant
The course is called Rethinking Capitalism, and the IIPP has just posted a video of the introductory lecture, which is nothing short of a tour-de-force (the accompanying textbook also looks promising).
I'm really looking forward to watching the rest of these as the semester goes on.
(via Four Short Links)
