From Uncommon Knowledge by the Hoover Institution

Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank dedicated to applying economic analysis, including cost-benefit analysis, to proposed policies around the issues of the day. He’s also a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He’s the author of many books, including the 2001 bestseller The Skeptical Environmentalist.

His latest book, and the topic for this interview, is Best Things First. Offering cost-benefit analyses of many of the top-line policies of industrial and developing nations, Dr. Lomborg discusses which policies we should prioritize and which we should pay less attention to or end. Lomborg also asserts the benefits of economic growth and says that by spending on technology, we can solve all kinds of big problems, including hunger.

Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend imbeciles— Dostoyevsky

We are continuing our trek across the continent, and so find ourselves in Toronto this week researching our next project, a contemporary history of The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies at St. Michael’s College. Yes, a slight divergence from our new book Deal With It: The Greatest Trades In NHL History and How They Changed The Hockey World. Self-published, it should be out this month (if we can get the website to work).

Toronto also means a return visit with our friend Toronto Mike for his popular podcast TorontoMike’d. The quintessential antidote to corporate media, he operates out of his basement near Lake Ontario in the west end of Toronto. To describe him as prodigious understates the case. Our show this week— the fourth appearance for us— was No. 1464 for the show.

Mike sells his own advertising, produces other podcasts and generally has made himself a must-appear for people in Toronto’s media, film, TV and pop culture from the 1970s to the present. Our penultimate show as a Tony Bennett versus Frank Sinatra showdown with Steve Paikin of TVO. Yup.

The best part is that Mike will talk to anyone without inserting himself into the show, especially if the craic is good. We discussed that at length in Ep.1464 about the current media mania for demonizing people with whom we disagree.

The list of guests is a prodigious snapshot of a time and place, the time being now and the place being Toronto. In any event, this episode we talked for one hour, fifty minutes on a range of topics from Joe Flaherty, our Montreal Expos fandom, Shohei Ohtani, civil war battlefields, PEI’s fabulous East Pointers  and much more.

So for this week, Usual Suspects brings you an audio, not a print stroll through current events. Enjoy and subscribe to Mike or else we won’t get any more Palma Pasta lasagnas or beer from Great Lakes Brewery. Or future considerations from Ridley Funeral Home.

https://www.torontomike.com/2024/04/bruce-dowbiggin-toronto-miked-podcast-episode-1464/

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.