Your Favorite Episodes of 2023

For the year 2023, your favorite episodes were recorded as a standalone podcast episode by Russ Roberts. See The Top EconTalk Conversations of 2023 (with Russ Roberts) for the full discussion.

Here is a summary of the results:

Russ Roberts: So first, some survey results. 1,105 people voted.

One bit of feedback I asked you for is: How do you usually listen?

• 29% of you usually listen while commuting,
• 17% while exercising,
• 13% while doing household chores, and
• 21% said there is no ‘most of the time.’

Here are your favorite episodes as you voted. It’s a funky list for reasons not worth going into. I’ll do it in reverse order, tenth down through first, the top 10 most popular or favorite episodes of yours in your voting.

• Tenth, a tie:
  • Dwayne Betts on Beauty, Prison and Redaction,
  • Lydia Dugdale on the Lost Art of Dying.
• The seventh most popular was a three-way tie–yeah, I think so, which is why the numbers are funny the way they are:
  • Adam Mastroianni on Peer Review and the Academic Kitchen,
  • Yossi Klein Halevi on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,
  • Vinay Prasad on Pharmaceuticals, the FDA ,and the Death of Duty.
• Fifth place, Vinay Prasad on Cancer Screening–tie:
  • Vinay Prasad on Cancer Screening,
  • Peter Attia on Lifespan, Healthspan, and Outlive.
• Tie for second place, a three-way tie:
  • Tyler Cowen on the GOAT of Economics–that is, the Greatest of All Time [GOAT],
  • Roland Fryer on Race, Diversity, and Affirmative Action, and
  • Michael Munger on Obedience to the Unenforceable.
• First place–the most popular or your favorite episode of the year of 2023 was:
  • An Extraordinary Introduction to the Birth of Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (with Haviv Rettig Gur).
    And that, I think, got 34% of all ballots: 34% of you who voted said that was in your top five.

A couple of thoughts on that list of Top 10. There were two episodes with Vinay Prasad. There were two of the 10 on what we might call traditional economics or economists–Tyler Cowen and Roland Fryer. And, there were two episodes on Israel: the Haviv Rettig Gur, and the Yossi Klein Halevi.

For more, see:  The Top EconTalk Conversations of 2023 (with Russ Roberts) for the full discussion.