Cato Event Podcast

Popular legend has it that before the Federal Radio Commission was established in 1927, the radio spectrum was in chaos, with broadcasting stations blasting powerful signals to drown out rivals. Tom Hazlett, a distinguished scholar in law and economics and former chief economist at the FCC (the commission’s successor), debunks that idea. Instead, regulators blocked competition at the behest of inc...

Over the past 25 years, more than 2,000 individuals have been exonerated in the United States after being wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. There is good reason to believe that tens or even hundreds of thousands more languish in American prisons today. How this can happen unfolds in the riveting new book from Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington. The Cadaver King and the Country De...

The President has linked tariffs on aluminum and steel to the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations, although he has exempted Canada and Mexico for now. Negotiations on a new NAFTA had been looking positive, but linking the trade deal to tariffs could undermine that progress. What is the future of continental free trade? And how should a renegotiated NAFTA be different? Hosted on Acast....

Representative Smith and Christopher Preble will discuss the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, including their findings from a new article they are copublishing in  Strategic Studies Quarterly  about BRAC, its impact on defense communities, and the future. For a number of years, the U.S. military — with support of presidents from both parties — has sought congressional authori...

Each year since the early 1900s, the world has recognized March 8th as International Women’s Day, an opportunity to celebrate women’s social, economic, cultural, and political achievements while calling for global gender equality. What is the state of global gender equality? How free are women around the world today? What role has government historically played in women’s oppression and liberation...

Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life,...

On February 28, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky , an important First Amendment case that could clarify voters' speech rights nationwide. Lead plaintiff Andy Cilek (executive director of the Minnesota Voters Alliance) voted in the 2010 election in a Tea Party T-shirt that said "Don't tread on me." Because Minnesota prohibits badges, buttons, or other...

The infamous “Nunes memo” has landed. Produced by Congressional staff and declassified by the President, the document alleged surveillance warrants on Trump campaign officials from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) were obtained without providing the court with important information. Intelligence experts have generally been skeptical of the memo’s conclusions, but the fight over t...

On February 26, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), a case that has the potential to overturn a 40-year-old precedent ( Abood v. Detroit Board of Education ) that allows public-sector unions to charge nonmembers “agency fees.” Currently, half the states have laws that enable such fees. Mark Janus&...

How can advanced democracies modernize their economies and reform their welfare states? Drawing on the successful experiences of Sweden and Australia, Nils Karlson will explain the ways in which competing political parties can promote more dynamic economies and more flexible and open societies. He will discuss how distinct reform strategies, the development of new ideas, and policy entrepreneurshi...

In 1994, responding to a terrible murder, Congress passed a law requiring all 50 states to set up sex offender registries. Now many states closely control where and with whom persons on the registries may live, while public maps showing offenders’ places of residence lead to social shunning and occasional harassment. They also scare parents from letting their children play outside. But does the re...

Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass rose to become one of the nation’s foremost intellectuals—a statesman, author, lecturer, and scholar who helped lead the fight against slavery and racial oppression. But unlike some other prominent abolitionists, Douglass embraced the U.S. Constitution, insisting that it was essentially an anti-slavery document and that its guarantees for individual ri...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration exists to certify the safety and efficacy of medical technologies. Yet all too often, the FDA polices not drugs and medical devices, but speech. The agency prohibits many people from sharing truthful and non-misleading information about lawful uses of FDA-approved products. When the FDA restricts what people can say about drugs and medical devices, it violates...

It has long been believed that the education system must assimilate new and different groups into American society. Public school assimilation efforts, however, have often been wrenching for students and families, seemingly based on an assumption that some groups will refuse to assimilate or will even rebel against prevailing norms. This worry has animated opposition to school choice and may be pa...

Education is  important , and the more of it you and everyone else get, the better. More years in school, more college degrees, means a better economy, country, and world for everyone. Right? Wrong, argues Bryan Caplan in a brand new book that challenges almost all the understandable, powerful—but perhaps ultimately damaging—assumptions people make about education. We hope you’ll join us for...

A year into President Trump’s term, what can we say about the Trump Doctrine? As a candidate, Trump promised dramatic changes for American foreign policy. As president, many would agree he has delivered on that promise. In just one year, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and the Paris climate treaty, launched cruise missiles at Syria for using chemical weapons, increased...

A year into President Trump’s term, what can we say about the Trump Doctrine? As a candidate, Trump promised dramatic changes for American foreign policy. As president, many would agree he has delivered on that promise. In just one year, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and the Paris climate treaty, launched cruise missiles at Syria for using chemical weapons, increased...

Like the country’s overall education discussion, the national school choice debate is far too often reduced to “which schools get better test scores” and maybe even “who gets kids to graduation.” But there is so much more to education than blunt academic outcome measures, including shaping character, transmitting culture, and just plain advancing freedom. In this special, National School Choice We...

Trade, tariffs, and America’s role in the global economy have taken center stage in the public policy debate during the first year of Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency. That’s not surprising to economic historian and Dartmouth economics professor Douglas A. Irwin, whose latest treatise on the subject documents in exquisite detail how “the Tariff” has sparked passionate political, economic, and...

For just one week every year, roughly 70,000 people from around the world come together in the Nevada desert to create Black Rock City, home to Burning Man, billed by its organizers as an “annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance.” Because cash exchanges and the barter system are largely banned in Black Rock City (Burning Man instead r...

Public corruption is the silent killer of our economy. We’ve spawned the thickest network of patronage and influence ever seen in any country, a crony capitalism in which business partners with government and transfers wealth from the poor to the rich. This is a betrayal of the Framers’ vision for America, and of the Constitution they saw as an anti corruption covenant. This state of affairs repel...

The second session of the 115th Congress is underway, and congressional leaders have to address a number of wide-ranging and contentious issues before the midterm campaign and election season begins. Among those, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program expires early in March, and whatever happens in the short term will still leave reform opportunities for policies that satisfy both the...

Since Colorado became the first state to allow for the sale of recreational marijuana, United States drug policy has been on shaky and unpredictable ground. Just this month U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has thrown out Obama-era guidance to protect businesses and individuals in states that have legalized cannabis for medical and recreational purposes. Now that federal prosecutors have additio...

Governments across the globe have begun evolving from lumbering bureaucracies into smaller, more agile special jurisdictions. Private providers increasingly deliver services that political authorities formerly monopolized, inspiring greater competition and efficiency. In Your Next Government?: From the Nation State to Stateless Nations , Tom W. Bell, professor at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowle...

Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler have written a book about the hidden motives in all of us: quite often, our brains get up to activities that we know little or nothing about. This isn’t just a question of regulating hormone levels or involuntary reflexes. Many of these involuntary behaviors are social signals, such as laughter or tears. Involuntary motives appear to underlie many forms of human socia...