EconTalk

How can we cultivate a sense of awe in our lives? Easy, says physicist and author Alan Lightman: Pay more attention. When we take the time to examine the world around us, from shooting stars to soap bubbles to everything in between, we can feel a sense of wonder and appreciation akin to spirituality. And the best part is, you can take your scientific worldview with you on your awe-inducing journey...

After filmmaker Penny Lane decided to donate a kidney to a stranger, it took three years and a complex, often infuriating, sometimes terrifying process to make it happen. Along the way, being a filmmaker, she eventually decided to chronicle her experience and explore the question: How can a choice that seems so obvious to the donor seem so strange to everyone else? Listen as she tells EconTalk's R...

Why do we like sad music or that poignant feeling that comes from attending a funeral? Author Susan Cain talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about her book Bittersweet and the seductive and sometimes deeply satisfying power of melancholy.

Housing is artificially expensive. Bryan Caplan of George Mason University and the author of Build, Baby, Build talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the causes behind high housing prices and what can be done to bring prices down.

How big a problem is misinformation for a democracy? How do we arrive at the truth? Listen as economist and author Arnold Kling talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about how we should think about truth-seeking. The conversation also revisits Kling's classic work, The Three Languages of Politics , and the relevance of its framework for the current moment.

Is tribalism destroying democracy? According to cultural psychologist Michael Morris of Columbia University, just the opposite may be the case. As he explains in his new book, Tribal , our tribal instincts can also be the source of our success--in politics, society, business, and even professional sports. Listen as Morris and EconTalk's Russ Roberts discuss real examples of how smart leaders pulle...

Friedrich Hayek credited Bruno Leoni with shaping his ideas on laws and legislation. James Buchanan said that Leoni identified problems that led to his own work on public choice. How is it possible, then, that so few of us know of the groundbreaking Italian political philosopher? Listen as Duke economist Michael Munger talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about Leoni's ideas and the gruesome murder...

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 where do they live? Listen as Jennifer Ackerman, author of What an Owl Knows , t...

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 exploration of a number of key findings in medicine that turned out to be wrong and based...

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 performance in the Gazan war, why Fox believes that Israel is succeeding, and what h...

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 state of boys and men and what might be done about it with EconTalk's Russ Roberts.

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 predictions than standard economic theory and does a better job dealing with the...

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 Roberts, Cifu explores the human side of medicine and the challenges of being a good...

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 as they discuss Howard's hatred of war, his love for humanity, and what makes art...

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 will always be our "elemental foe," and how what he calls "industrial modernity...

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.

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 universal and particular truths surrounding parenting, and why the perception pr...

What lessons can we take from the speeches of Abraham Lincoln for today's turbulent times? How did those speeches move the nation in Lincoln's day? Listen as political scientist Diana Schaub of Loyola University, Maryland talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about three of Lincoln's most important speeches and what they can tell us about the United States then and now.

For many men, surviving the test of battle intensifies the joy of being alive. A provocative claim, perhaps, but to novelist Mark Helprin, simply a fact, and one that drives his new book about men who commit themselves fully both to service during wartime and to the women they love. Listen as Helprin tells EconTalk's Russ Roberts how his service in the Israeli and American militaries, his decades...

To international law expert Eugene Kontorovich of George Mason University, all the arguments that make Israel out to be an occupying force collapse under the weight of a single, simple fact: A country cannot occupy territory to which it has a legal claim. Listen as Kontorovich speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the legal issues surrounding occupation as well as the moral issues of Israel's...

If you're always imitating others or aspiring to be something else, what's left of the "authentic" you? According to the French philosopher René Girard, not much: Nothing can be truly authentic, he argued--everything comes from somewhere else. This is just one of the many original and counterintuitive claims put forth in Girard's sweeping approach to human history. He argues it is sameness, not ou...

Economics students are often taught that government should intervene when there is market failure. But what about government failure? Should we expect government intervention to outperform market outcomes? Listen as Duke University economist Michael Munger explores the history of how economists have thought about this dilemma and possible ways to find a third or even fourth option beyond governmen...

Can a document unify a nation? Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute and author of American Covenant argues that the Constitution unified the United States at the founding of the country and that understanding the Constitution can help bring the country together today. Listen as Levin speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about how the Constitution not only took into account fractious pol...

When poet, lawyer, and MacArthur Fellow Dwayne Betts was imprisoned for nine years at the age of 16 for carjacking, he only wept twice. One of those times was when he read Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." In this powerful conversation with EconTalk's Russ Roberts, Betts explains why he cried, what he learned from King, King's urgency in the face of injustice, and Betts's tho...

The Covid vaccine saved many lives but so many mistakes were made in how public health officials discussed it, implemented it, and assessed its effectiveness. Epidemiologist Vinay Prasad of the University of California, San Francisco talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about what went wrong, the costs of the mistakes that were made, and what we can do better the next time.