Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchLessons from Lincoln, Then and Now (with Diana Schaub)
Episode 954
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? L…
2 years, 3 months ago
Reading, Writing, and Fighting (with Mark Helprin)
Episode 953
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 f…
2 years, 3 months ago
Is Israel Occupying the West Bank? (with Eugene Kontorovich)
Episode 952
To international law expert Eugene Kontorovich of George Mason University, all the arguments that make Israel out to be an occupying force collapse u…
2 years, 4 months ago
René Girard, Mimesis, and Conflict (with Cynthia Haven)
Episode 951
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 Gira…
2 years, 4 months ago
Does Market Failure Justify Government Intervention? (with Michael Munger)
Episode 950
Economics students are often taught that government should intervene when there is market failure. But what about government failure? Should we expec…
2 years, 4 months ago
How the Constitution Can Bring Us Together (with Yuval Levin)
Episode 949
Can a document unify a nation? Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute and author of American Covenant argues that the Constitution unified …
2 years, 4 months ago
Injustice and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (with Dwayne Betts)
Episode 948
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 …
2 years, 4 months ago
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Covid Vaccine (with Vinay Prasad)
Episode 947
The Covid vaccine saved many lives but so many mistakes were made in how public health officials discussed it, implemented it, and assessed its effec…
2 years, 5 months ago
Purpose, Pleasure, and Meaning in a World Without Work (with Nicholas Bostrom)
Episode 946
If you didn't have to work to enjoy material abundance, would you do it anyway? If an algorithm or a pill could achieve better results, would you bot…
2 years, 5 months ago
Glenn Loury Tells All
Episode 945
Economist and social critic Glenn Loury talks about his memoir, Late Admissions, with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. In a wide-ranging and blunt conversati…
2 years, 5 months ago