Jenny Schuetz of the Brookings Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about zoning, boarding houses, real estate development, and the housing market.

Author and oncologist Azra Raza talks about her book The First Cell with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Raza argues that we have made little progress in fighting cancer over the last 50 years. The tools available to oncologists haven't changed much--the bulk of the progress that has been made has been through earlier and ...

By Amy Willis

How are you satisfying your urge to connect in these strange new times in which we find ourselves? What are you worried about? What will be the economic impact of the coronavirus? The social and cultural impact? These questions and more were the core of a special conversation between EconTalk host Russ Robert and Tyler...

Economist and infovore Tyler Cowen of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the political, social, and economic aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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, wild oxen, and an ever-wider variety of birds and bugs. The conversation c...

By Amy Willis

Economics isn't well known for dangerous fieldwork. That's traditionally been thought of as the realm of anthropologists, archaeologists, etc. But this week's guest, Richard Davies, goes to"places where humans have been put in a kind of extraordinary test, an extraordinary test of resilience." In this week's episode, D...

Economist and author Richard Davies talks about his book Extreme Economies with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. The conversation explores economic life in extreme situations. Examples discussed are the Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, two Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, the rain forest in the Darien Gap in Panama, a...

By Amy Willis

Are America's social and political institutions to blame for the culture wars we witness today? Have the norms and rules for civil interaction irrevocably decayed? Questions such as these are at the heart of this week's episode, in which EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomed back Yuval Levin to discuss his latest book. I...

Author and political scientist Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute talks about his book A Time to Build with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Levin argues that institutions in America are less trustworthy than they have been in the past. The cause, in Levin's view, is that the participants in these institutions...

Economist, author, and investor Richard Robb talks about his book Willful with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Robb is interested in what motivates and explains the choices we make. He explores alternatives to the optimizing model of economics including what he calls "for-itself" behavior--behavior that isn't purposive. To...

By Alice Temnick

In this week's episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomes philosopher Peter Singer to the program to discuss the 10th anniversary of his book, The Life You Can Save. Roberts questions Singer’s plea to all of us with disposable income to overcome our nature of caring most for those close to us and to see foreign ch...

Philosopher and author Peter Singer of Princeton University talks about his book, The Life You Can Save with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Singer argues that those of us in the developed world with a high standard of living can and should give/forgo some luxuries and donate instead to reduce poverty and suffering in poor...

By Amy Willis

Health care has been a big topic on EconTalk this year, and this week's episode continues our exploration. This week, host Russ Roberts welcomed physician Marty Makary to talk about his new book, The Price We Pay, in which he describes a wretched system of price gouging, shadow pricing, and predatory pricing and colle...

Physician and author Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins University talks about his book The Price We Pay with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Makary highlights some of the stranger aspects of our current health care system including the encouragement of unnecessary or even harmful procedures and the predatory behavior of some h...

Economist, author, and Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller of Yale University discusses his book Narrative Economics with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Shiller proposes a novel idea--that the narratives that people believe and use to understand the world affect their economic behavior and in turn affect the macroeconomy. Shill...

By Amy Willis

Is the pursuit of material gain moral? Is it just? Which is more important ethically- how you earn  your money or how you spend your money? These and a plethora of other tricky questions were at the heart of this week's episode. EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomed back economics Professor Dan Klein to discuss a provo...