When does the pursuit of safety lead us into danger? Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal and author of Foolproof talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in his book--the way we publicly and privately try to cope with risk and danger and how those choices can create unintended consequences. While much of the conversation focuses on the financial crisis of 2008, there are also discussions of football injuries, damage from natural disasters such as hurricanes, car accidents, and Herbert Hoover. Along the way, Herman Melville's insights into the mesmerizing nature of water make an appearance.

The "economic way of thinking" is something we at Econlib emphasize...a LOT. This week, EconTalk host Russ Roberts sat down again with "the Economic Naturalist, Cornell'S Robert Frank. Their subject...almost anything! They explored some puzzles, what Roberts calls "dinner table economics," such as why do brides buy their gowns, while grooms rent their tuxes. (Presumably, the gown will be worn once, while tuxes may have a longer useful life.)

So now let's see how we can liven up your dinner table conversation. Give some thought to the prompts below...Your puzzle(s) could even become the subject of a future episode!

1. Frank suggests that only a half dozen or so concepts "do the heavy lifting" in economics. What do you think those half dozen concepts are, and why? (Hint/Spoiler: Russ seems to think there are ten...)

How can you learn to think like an economist? One way is to think about what might be called dinner table economics--puzzles or patterns that arise in everyday life that would be good to understand. Robert Frank of Cornell University and author of The Economic Naturalist talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about a number of these puzzles including why grooms typically rent tuxedos but the bride usually buys her gown, why bicycles can be more expensive to rent than cars, the effects of the price of corn on the price of pork, and why scammers who invoke Nigeria keep using the same old story.

At the suggestion of YOU, our followers, EconTalk host Russ Roberts sat down with Bloomberg View columnist and professor of economics Noah Smith about whether economics is a science, how people's minds are changed, and more.

Let's hear what you have to contribute to our conversation...Share your thoughts with us below. And stay tuned next week for our annual survey of listeners!

1. Early in the conversation, Roberts admits he has an ideology. If you have listened to EconTalk for a while, how would you describe Roberts's philosophical and methodological worldview? How would you describe Smith's based on this conversation?

Noah Smith of Stony Brook University and writer at Bloomberg View talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about whether economics is a science in some sense of that word. How reliable are experiments in economics? What about the statistical analysis that underlies much of the empirical work in modern economics? Additional topics include the reliability of the empirical analysis of the minimum wage, the state of macroeconomics, and the role of prejudice or prior beliefs in the interpretation of data and evidence.

Why does it seem that pundits' and politicians' predictions are always right? How can you assess the accuracy of a probabilistic prediction? This week, EconTalk host Russ Roberts sat down with Superforecasting author Phillip Tetlock, and their conversation ranged over these topics and more.

Let us know your reaction to this week's episode, and let's continue our conversation here. As always, we love to hear from you!

1. As Tetlock told Russ about his earliest forecasting tournaments about the Soviet Union, he noted how different the predictions of liberals and conservatives was. Still, he explains, none of them foresaw the rise of Mikhail Gorbechev or the collapse of the USSR, describing an "outcome-irrelevant learning situation." What does he mean by this? What sorts of outcome-irrelevant learning situations have you found yourself in and/or witness to? How might they have turned out differently?

Can you predict the future? Or at least gauge the probability of political or economic events in the near future? Philip Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania and author of Superforecasting talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his work on assessing probabilities with teams of thoughtful amateurs. Tetlock finds that teams of amateurs trained in gathering information and thinking about it systematically outperformed experts in assigning probabilities of various events in a competition organized by IARPA, research agency under the Director of National Intelligence. In this conversation, Tetlock discusses the meaning, reliability, and usefulness of trying to assign probabilities to one-time events.

How much credit (or blame) should the Fed receive for its response to the 2008 financial crisis? What about former Fed chief Ben Bernanke? This week, EconTalk host Russ Roberts sat down with George Selgin of Cato's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives to discuss just that, and we think some of their answers might surprise you...

So please let us know what you thought and learned this week, and let's keep learning from one another. You're our inspiration!

1. Selgin and Roberts both seem to think that the Fed policy of paying interest on reserve held at the Fed neutralized any stimulative effects of monetary policy. What empirical evidence would you need before accepting this claim? How might Bernanke respond?

Did Ben Bernanke and the Fed save the U.S. economy from disaster in 2008 or did the Fed make things worse? Why did the Fed reward banks that kept reserves rather than releasing funds into the economy? George Selgin of the Cato Institute tries to answer these questions and more in this conversation with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Selgin argues that the Fed made critical mistakes both before and after the collapse of Lehman Brothers by lending to insolvent banks as well as by paying interest on reserves held at the Fed by member banks.

In this week's EconTalk episode, host Russ Roberts and Canice Prendergast of the University of Chicago talked about an innovative new allocation system for a nationwide network of food banks. But maybe there's an even better way to get food to the poor.

I'd heard rumors of this venture in the past, but today I came across this piece on a new store in Boston called Daily Table, started by a former president of Trader Joe's, Doug Rauch. The means by which Daily Table acquires its inventory bears some similarity to that of Feeding America.

But what most struck me was this:

Some are seeing this as an alternative to food banks. The benefit of cheap food, opposed to free food, is that it allows customers to buy with dignity.

According to the article, Daily Table allows anyone to shop there, but they must become a member so that Daily Table can better track demand. Daily Table also has an in-house kitchen that seems remarkably flexibly in its ability to prepare ready-to-eat meals with its always uncertain inventory. Does this offer any sort of advantage over food banks that distribute unprepared food? What would be some of the other impacts of having customers who pay prices rather than recipients who accept donations of food without charge? If you were running Daily Table how would you price one item relative to another or relative to prices in for-profit groceries? How might this low-price non-profit option affect the profitability of for-profit groceries?

Here's another alternative to think about. What about a grocery for the hungry that didn't rely on donations as Daily Table does but simply lowered prices below those of for-profit groceries and financed their losses from donations of cash? How would this differ from Daily Table?

Share your thoughts...As always, we love to hear from you.