[ANNUAL LISTENER SURVEY: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZGY3G9W. Vote for your 2023 favorites!] Journalist Matti Friedman worked for the Jerusalem Bureau of the Associated Press from 2006 to 2011. Looking back at...
Donald Trump’s plan for a wall across the American southern border is one of the most controversial policy proposals in American history. Along with Trump’s usual dose of falsehoods and anti-immigration fear-mongering, the opioid crisis quickly became a favorite talking...
Physician and author Vivian Lee talks about her book The Long Fix with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Lee argues that we can transform health care in the United States, though it may take a while. She argues that the current...
Donald Trump’s plan for a wall across the American southern border is one of the most controversial policy proposals in American history. Along with Trump’s usual dose of falsehoods and anti-immigration fear-mongering, the opioid crisis quickly became a favorite talking point to support his flagship policy, specifi...
[ANNUAL LISTENER SURVEY: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZGY3G9W. Vote for your 2023 favorites!] Journalist Matti Friedman worked for the Jerusalem Bureau of the Associated Press from 2006 to 2011. Looking back at that experience, Friedman argues that little has changed in the journalism landscape. Listen as Friedman...
Do you suffer from scarcity brain? According to Michael Easter, the answer is, "probably." Many (perhaps most) of us often have the feeling that we can't get enough, and in this episode, host Russ Roberts welcomes Easter back to talk about it. Easter argues that modern technology has figured out how to get us not to ...
When you think of the future, how far out does your imagination take you? Next year, a century, a half million years? In this episode, Will MacAskill presents “longtermism” to us, suggesting that we have a moral responsibility to the people who will live after us, as their numbers will be substantially greater th...
Over the 25 years he's lived in Israel, author Daniel Gordis of Shalem College has seen many chapters of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, beginning with the Second Intifada that followed the Oslo Accords. Listen as he and EconTalk's Russ Roberts discuss why Hamas's massacre of October 7th is different and is an existe...
As capitalism falls in popularity among the younger generations, the opinion that free markets incentivize discrimination has become more common. Issues such as the racial and gender earnings gap and callback discrimination against black Americans are highlighted as proof of this conclusion. So, is American capitalism ...
John Gray is an English philosopher and author. Gray retired in 2008 from his position as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In this episode of EconTalk, host Russ Roberts hosts John Gray for a conversation on Gray’s book Seven Types of Atheism. Huma...
It seems obvious that moral artificial intelligence would be better than the alternative. But psychologist Paul Bloom of the University of Toronto thinks moral AI is not just a meaningless goal but a bad one. Listen as Bloom and EconTalk's Russ Roberts have a wide-ranging conversation about the nature of AI, the nature...
One word sums up this episode and topic: Wow! Explore the GOATs of economics as judged by Tyler Cowen in his zero-cost downloadable book embedded in a ChatGPT-4 option for user-friendly queries. Russ Roberts encourages us to read it in its entirety and we hope that his excellent interview with Tyler sharing highlights ...
Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur takes us on a deep dive into the origins of Israel--how European Jew-hatred gave birth to Zionism and the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. He then turns to the rise of Palestinian terrorism and explains why the Palestinian experience and the Israeli experience are so incompatib...
How can we create a radically different atmosphere at American universities? Easy, says historian Niall Ferguson of Stanford University's Hoover Institution--have meaningful rules about free speech, and ensure that they're upheld. As with humans, as with institutions: It's all about incentives. Ferguson discusses the c...
As much as we think we might know about Russ Roberts as listeners of his long-running EconTalk podcast, a great interviewer can unearth new gems. Paul Millerd does this in his Pathless Path podcast , Russ Roberts Is Reinventing Himself (Again). A self-proclaimed long time fan of Roberts’ podcasts and books, Millerd...
In 2018, author Yossi Klein Halevi wanted Palestinians to understand his story of how Israel came into existence. At the same time, he wanted Palestinians to tell him their personal and national stories, too, about the same land. The result was Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, a candid, heartfelt book that engaged ...
Who is the greatest economist of all time? In Tyler Cowen's eclectic view, you need both breadth and depth, macro and micro. You can't have been too wrong--and you need to be mostly right. You have to have had a lasting impact, and done both theory and empirical work. If you meet all these criteria, you may just be his...
What's different about companies that accomplish amazing things? Perhaps surprisingly, says Andrew McAfee of MIT, it has nothing to do with being agile or with better technology. Instead, they've developed what he calls "geek" cultures, which emphasize intense cooperation, rapid learning curves, and a lack of hierarchy...
Who was Milton Friedman? Jennifer Burns of Stanford University finds in her biography of Friedman that the answer to that question is more complicated than she thought. Listen as she and EconTalk's Russ Roberts discuss how the now-forgotten Henry Simons shaped Friedman's thought, the degree to which Friedman had a deep...