An owl will eat a rabbit whole, but owls can't digest the fur or the bones. So how do they survive? Why do their eyes...
...people are utility monsters when it comes to themselves. But something happens when you have children. This is how Erik Hoel begins this thoughtful conversation with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. According to new parent Hoel, life is no longer "a constant,...
Author and conservationist Isabella Tree talks about her book Wilding with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Tree and her husband decided to turn their 3500 acre farm, the Knepp Castle Estate, into something wilder, a place for wild ponies, wild pigs,...
An owl will eat a rabbit whole, but owls can't digest the fur or the bones. So how do they survive? Why do their eyes face forward rather than to the side? Long-eared Owls don't have ears, so what's up with the name and how do they hear? How can dogs help us track owls--that seems impossible. Owls don't make nests, so ...
...people are utility monsters when it comes to themselves. But something happens when you have children. This is how Erik Hoel begins this thoughtful conversation with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. According to new parent Hoel, life is no longer "a constant, almost exhausting game of optimization." He has found a gr...
Johns Hopkins surgeon Dr. Marty Makary talks about his book Blind Spots with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. Makary argues that the medical establishment too often makes unsupported recommendations for treatment while condemning treatments and approaches that can make us healthier. This is a sobering and informative explorati...
British Army major and Sandhurst lecturer Andrew Fox recently spent a week with the Israel Defense Forces including a day inside Gaza. He was struck by the IDF's control of Gazan territory and shocked by the level of physical devastation. Listen as Fox and EconTalk's Russ Roberts discuss Fox's analysis of Israel's...
Many boys and men in America are doing worse than girls and women in education while struggling with a culture that struggles to define what masculinity is in the 21st century. Is this a problem? Richard Reeves thinks so which is why he started the American Institute for Boys and Men. Listen as Reeves discusses the sta...
Physicist J. Doyne Farmer wants a new kind of economics that takes account of what we've learned from chaos theory and that builds more accurate models of how humans actually behave. Listen as he makes the case for complexity economics with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. Farmer argues that complexity economics makes better ...
Ian Leslie’s work focuses on human behavior. He has appeared on two earlier episodes of EconTalk (Ian Leslie on Curiosity and Ian Leslie on Conflicted). In this episode, host Russ Roberts and Leslie continue the discussion of human behavior, discussing Leslie’s thesis that AI is already changing how we think. It is...
Physician Adam Cifu keeps a binder of every patient of his who has passed away. Every once in a while, he opens it and remembers the lives of his past patients. Morbid? Maybe a little. But it's just one of the ways Cifu tries to make his practice of medicine more mindful. In this conversation with EconTalk's Russ Rob...
In his latest book, American Covenant, Yuval Levin says he tried to provide a re-introduction to the United States Constitution. In this episode, he tells EconTalk host Russ Roberts he wanted to take a step back in a moment of division to better understand how we can hold together and how we might understand national u...
A soldier goes off to war. Damaged in combat, he returns home, forever changed. Master sculptor Sabin Howard captures this tragic and powerful journey in bronze, for the new World War I Memorial that will be unveiled in Washington, D.C. on September 13, 2024. Howard talks about his craft with EconTalk's Russ Roberts a...
Was it divine intervention or simply the fact of being right that makes the infamous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” timeless, profound and even life-changing for some readers? If you haven’t met Dwayne Betts in an earlier EconTalk episode, get ready for Russ Roberts’s phenomenal friend and guest. Betts is so pre...
The universe, points out economist Noah Smith, is always trying to kill us, whether through asteroids hurtling through space or our every-few-hours hunger pains. Why, then, should we expect anything but a gravitational pull toward poverty? Listen as Smith explains to EconTalk's Russ Roberts why he believes that poverty...
In this episode, host Russ Roberts welcomes Zvi Mowshowitz to discuss the merits of AI, causes for optimism and concern, AI as a ‘man of system’, and technology as a last bastion of the freedom to innovate. Artificial intelligence is still in its infancy, but learning to walk quickly. What was once just some cha...
Neuroscientist and author Sam Harris of the podcast Making Sense talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about rising Jew-hatred in the West and what Harris sees as the dangers of radical Islam and Jihadism.
For all those who have taken an economics course, you've no doubt heard plenty about market failure. I suspect you've heard relatively less about government failure. Part of the allure of the public choice tradition for me has always been its very clear explication of the latter. But in this episode, leave it to perenn...
Does parenting make you a better person? Can it improve your life? Neuroscientist Erik Hoel makes the self-interested case for parenting arguing that it makes you less jaded and more heartbroken (in a good way) for how you experience the world. Listen as new father Hoel speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ...