When there's no vaccine on the market, people will look for other ways to be safe, including school closures and the handwashing of groceries. Listen...
If you think you've never heard of Leigh Steinberg, you may want to rethink. Steinberg is an accomplished sports agent, who is loosely depicted by Tom Cruise in the film, Jerry Maguire. In his 41-year career, Steinberg gas represented over...
Eliezer Yudkowsky insists that once artificial intelligence becomes smarter than people, everyone on earth will die. Listen as Yudkokwsky speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts on why we should be very, very afraid and why we're not prepared or able to manage the...
If you think you've never heard of Leigh Steinberg, you may want to rethink. Steinberg is an accomplished sports agent, who is loosely depicted by Tom Cruise in the film, Jerry Maguire. In his 41-year career, Steinberg gas represented over three hundred professional athletes. In this 2013 episode, EconTalk hos...
Why do you visit museums, and what do you hope will "happen" while you're there, or after you've left? How do the objects within a museum affect your experience, and how do we know that a given piece "belongs" there? Tiffany Jenkins, author of Keeping Their Marbles, and EconTalk host Russ Roberts' guest in this episod...
We've talked a lot about data over the years here, but this episode offers a unique take on data-driven decision making. EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomed Bill James, an American writer whose work includes baseball history and statistics, has been extremely well accepted. His application of Sabermetrics and creation ...
When there's no vaccine on the market, people will look for other ways to be safe, including school closures and the handwashing of groceries. Listen as economist Casey Mulligan of the University Chicago talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the costs of delaying a vaccine, the hidden costs of FDA regulation, and wh...
Economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason University talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the benefits and dangers of artificial intelligence. Cowen argues that the worriers--those who think that artificial intelligence will destroy mankind--need to make a more convincing case for their concerns. He also believes that ...
Eliezer Yudkowsky insists that once artificial intelligence becomes smarter than people, everyone on earth will die. Listen as Yudkokwsky speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts on why we should be very, very afraid and why we're not prepared or able to manage the terrifying risks of AI.
While operating on a 16-year-old girl who suffered from severe seizures, neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried stumbled on the region of the brain that makes us laugh. To neuroscientist Patrick House, Fried's ability to produce laughter surgically raises deep and disconcerting questions about how the brain works. Join Fried, Hous...
You've probably heard the phrase, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." What has it meant to you in the past, and might there be a way to apply this caution to the way we approach politics? That's what this episode is about. It's fan favorite Mike Munger's 44th appearance on EconTalk, and one of my favorit...
Is the perfect really the enemy of the good? Or is it the other way around? In 2008, Duke University economist Michael Munger ran for governor and proposed increasing school choice through vouchers for the state's poorest counties. But some lovers of liberty argued that it's better to fight for eliminating public schoo...
When he was a child, poet Dana Gioia's mother would come home from a long day of work and recite poems while she cleaned. It was a way, he realized later, for her to express the feelings she didn't want to describe directly, and to vent her sorrows without burdening her son. This, he believes, is what makes poetry so c...
As Israel turns 75, has it fulfilled the promise of its founders? Daniel Gordis of Shalem College talks about his book, Impossible Takes Longer, with EconTalk's Russ Roberts looking at the successes and failures of Israel. Topics discussed include the history of Zionism, the plight of the Palestinians, the Jewishness o...
They operate according to rules we can never fully understand. They can be unreliable, uncontrollable, and misaligned with human values. They're fast becoming as intelligent as humans--and they're exclusively in the hands of profit-seeking tech companies. "They," of course, are the latest versions of AI, which herald,...
Photographer, author, and visionary Kevin Kelly talks about his book Excellent Advice for Living with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. His advice includes how to have a deep conversation, why it's better to control time than money--and whether, in the end, we should give advice in the first place. Other topics of discussion ...
We've long been told how much we can learn from our mistakes. (This week's guest even wrote a book about it!) But what if a mistake is so awful, not only do we not learn from it, we can't even live with it. This is the sort of mistake Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle calls an Oedipus trap. In this episode, Econ...
When physician Walter Freeman died in 1972, he still believed that lobotomies were the best treatment for mental illness. A pioneer in the method, he was a deeply confident and charismatic man who eagerly spread the technique in America, long after the rise of alternative treatments that were less destructive. Listen...
Tolkien read it as a tale about mortality. The poet David Whyte said it was a metaphor for the psychological demons deep in our minds. And that, insists the cartoonist and writer Zach Weinersmith, is precisely Beowulf's appeal: Its richness opens the door to endless interpretation. Listen as the author of Bea Wolf, a g...