EconTalk
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EconTalk: Conversations for the Curious is an award-winning weekly podcast hosted by Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford's Hoover Institution. The eclectic guest list includes authors, doctors, psychologists, historians, philosophers, economists, and more. Learn how the health care system really works, the serenity that comes from humility, the challenge of interpreting data, how potato chips are made, what it's like to run an upscale Manhattan restaurant, what caused the 2008 financial crisis, the nature of consciousness, the conflicts and history of the Middle East, and more. EconTalk has been taking the Monday out of Mondays since 2006. All 1000+ episodes are available in the archive. Go to EconTalk.org for transcripts, related resources, and comments.
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The Hidden Cause of the Industrial Revolution (with Ben Southwood)
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17 Aug 2026
What if the Industrial Revolution wasn't sparked by the steam engine, but by a quiet legal revolution in how England handled property rights? Ben Southwood of Works in Progress argues that the
Ben Sasse on Faith, Family, and Facing Death
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10 Aug 2026
Six months into a stage-four pancreatic cancer diagnosis that gave him 90 days to live, Ben Sasse sits down with EconTalk's Russ Roberts for a conversation that refuses easy comfort. The former U.S.
The Political Economy of Palestine (with Hussein Aboubakr Mansour)
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3 Aug 2026
Most discourses about Israel or Palestine are morality plays of good guys vs bad guys. Egyptian-born Hussein Aboubakr Mansour takes a different approach, seeing the conflict as a self-reproducing
Savage Landscapes (with Cal Flyn)
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27 Jul 2026
What is wilderness when seven billion people share the planet and nowhere remains truly untouched? Author and journalist Cal Flyn discusses her book The Savage Landscape with EconTalk host Russ
Dwayne Betts on the Iliad
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20 Jul 2026
What happens when a poet who survived prison sits down with the world's oldest war story--and reads it in three sleepless, wandering days? In this second episode of the EconTalk Book Club on the
From Sawdust to Paw Patrol: The Spin Master Story (with Ronnen Harary)
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13 Jul 2026
A nylon stocking filled with sawdust that grows grass for hair launched one of the most successful toy companies in the world. Ronnen Harary, co-founder of Spin Master and co-creator of Paw Patrol,
EconTalk Book Club on the Iliad (with Ido Hevroni)
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6 Jul 2026
Ego, pride, wrath, fear, gods, superheroes, mortals, and lots of killing. Welcome to Homer's Iliad, which reads at times like a script for a Tarantino film or the latest installment of the Avengers
Do Less, Heal More: The Case for Medical Conservatism (with John Mandrola)
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29 Jun 2026
What if the surgery that fixed your knee did no better than fake surgery? EconTalk host Russ Roberts speaks with Dr. John Mandrola about a striking clinical trial in which patients who received sham
Can a Phone Be a Cow? (with Philip Auerswald)
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22 Jun 2026
Can a phone be a cow? It could in 1990s Bangladesh. This was the insight of a small number of mobile phone market pioneers who helped catalyze the spread of the greatest technological revolution in
The Case for Sunshine (with Rowan Jacobsen)
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15 Jun 2026
Skin cancer comes from the sun. But so do many good things, according to author Rowan Jacobsen. Jacobsen talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the health benefits of sunshine and makes the case
The Self, the Crowd, and Social Contagion (with Luke Burgis)
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8 Jun 2026
Finding community can be difficult. But author Luke Burgis thinks the real challenge begins once we've found it and we're subject to social pressures to conform. Listen as Burgis and EconTalk's Russ
Making Your 80,000 Hours Count (with Benjamin Todd)
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1 Jun 2026
If you want to change the world, how you spend your 80,000 working hours may be the most important decision you can make. Benjamin Todd, founder of 80,000 Hours, joins EconTalk's Russ Roberts to
Facing Death (with Sebastian Junger)
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25 May 2026
What does a lifelong atheist do when his dead father appears above him in the emergency room? Author and war reporter Sebastian Junger nearly bled to death in 2020 from a ruptured aneurysm, and what
Tom Cruise's Body of Work (with Aled Maclean-Jones)
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18 May 2026
What can Tom Cruise's last impossible mission teach us about usefulness in the digital age? Aled Maclean-Jones argues that dangling from cargo planes, soldering hard drives, and skydiving nineteen
Thinking Inside the Box (with David Epstein)
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11 May 2026
What do the inventor of the periodic table, the novelist Isabel Allende, and the almost-creators of the iPhone have in common? Join author David Epstein and EconTalk's Russ Roberts to explore a
Golfing Alone (with Gary Belsky)
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4 May 2026
No rush, no noise, no one else on the golf course: solo golf is an entirely different game, offering physical, mental, and spiritual benefits that playing with others can't. Listen as author and
Claude, War, and the State of the Republic (with Dean Ball)
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27 Apr 2026
The Department of War wanted to deploy Anthropic's Claude for "all lawful use." What begins as a policy dispute between a tech company and the Department of War quietly unfolds into something far
Adam Smith's Warning About Wealth, Fame, and Status (with Ross Levine)
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20 Apr 2026
What can Adam Smith teach us today? In this conversation between Ross Levine of Stanford's Hoover Institution and EconTalk's Russ Roberts, Smith emerges as a penetrating psychologist who understood
The Man Who Built NVIDIA (with Stephen Witt)
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13 Apr 2026
He arrived in America as a child with no English. He was mistakenly sent to a school for juvenile delinquents. He faced rampant prejudice--yet Jensen Huang, the under-the-radar CEO of NVIDIA, became
The Unseen Work: Stewart Brand on Maintenance and Civilization
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6 Apr 2026
What does a lone sailor circling the globe have to do with the fall of empires, the Model T, and the rise of AI? Everything--because maintenance, the quiet act of keeping things going, turns out to
AI, Employment, and Education (with Tyler Cowen)
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30 Mar 2026
Tyler Cowen is bullish on the integration of AI into higher education. He's also not worried about its effects on the future workplace. Listen as Cowen speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the
The Match That Lit the Flame: Hannah Senesh and the Creation of Modern Israel (with Matti Friedman)
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23 Mar 2026
Why would a group of young Jews who escaped the Holocaust choose to parachute back into Nazi-occupied Europe? How did they become heroes despite the failure of that mission? Author Matti Friedman
The Economics of Scarcity and the UNC-Duke Basketball Game (with Michael Munger)
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16 Mar 2026
Duke University leaves millions of dollars on the table every year by giving away free tickets to the most sought-after game in college basketball. The bizarre ticket allocation system includes weeks
How We Tamed Ourselves and Invented Good and Evil (with Hanno Sauer)
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9 Mar 2026
What if humanity's capacity for cruelty was actually one of our greatest moral achievements? That's just one of the provocative ideas philosopher Hanno Sauer explores in this conversation about his
The Power of Introverts (with Susan Cain)
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2 Mar 2026
Introverts are underrated. So says Susan Cain in her conversation with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about her book, Quiet. She explains why introversion isn't the same thing as shyness and she speaks
The Man Who Would Be King of Saudi Arabia (with Karen Elliott House)
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23 Feb 2026
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been dragging Saudi Arabia into the modern world over the last decade. Journalist and author Karen Elliott House lays out the Saudi leader's motivations, hopes,
Seiko, Swatch, and the Swiss Watch Industry (with Aled Maclean-Jones)
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16 Feb 2026
How did an industry survive a technology that should have made it obsolete? Aled Maclean-Jones explains to EconTalk's Russ Roberts how Japanese quartz watches nearly wiped out Swiss watchmaking with
A Military Analysis of Israel's War in Gaza (with Andrew Fox)
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9 Feb 2026
What does war look like when fought under the harshest scrutiny? Veteran soldier and military researcher Andrew Fox talks about his first-hand experience in Gaza with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. He and
How to Flourish (with Daniel Coyle)
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2 Feb 2026
Author Daniel Coyle talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts on the art of flourishing: why it's a natural phenomenon rather than mechanical; how taking life's "yellow doors"--or detours from a straight,
Zionism, the Melting Pot, and the Galveston Project (with Rachel Cockerell)
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26 Jan 2026
What happens when a writer discovers her "boring" great-grandfather was actually a household name across the Russian Empire who helped 10,000 Jews escape to Texas? Rachel Cockerell's The Melting
Nature, Nurture, and Identical Twins (with David Bessis)
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19 Jan 2026
Are your genes your destiny? Despite famous studies of identical twins that seem to answer in the affirmative, mathematician David Bessis says: Not so fast. He and EconTalk's Russ Roberts take a deep
The Mattering Instinct (with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein)
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12 Jan 2026
Philosopher and author Rebecca Newberger Goldstein discusses her new book, The Mattering Instinct, which argues that our lives are a quest to validate our inherent self-centeredness. Tracing this
Conversation, Interintellect, and Arcadia (with Anna Gat)
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5 Jan 2026
If technology is ruining the art of conversation, maybe it can save it, too. Anna Gat--poet, screenwriter, playwright, and founder of Interintellect--talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts on how she's
In Defense of Intuition (with Gerd Gigerenzer)
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29 Dec 2025
Psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer explains the power of intuition, how intuition became gendered, what he thinks Kahneman and Tversky's research agenda got wrong, and why it's a mistake to place intuition
David Deutsch on the Pattern
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22 Dec 2025
A world-class physicist makes a shocking claim: across 2,500 years and every kind of society, there has been a recurring moral exception carved out just for Jews--the idea that hurting Jews is, in
Free Will Is Real (with Kevin Mitchell)
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15 Dec 2025
Are we truly characters with agency, or are we just playing out our programming in the great video game of life? Contrary to those in his field who claim that free will is an illusion, neuroscientist
Colonialism, Slavery, and Foreign Aid (with William Easterly)
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8 Dec 2025
Can the promise of economic progress ever justify conquest, coercion, and control over other people’s lives? Economist William Easterly joins EconTalk's Russ Roberts to argue no--and to rethink
The Perfect Tuba: How Band, Grit, and Community Build a Better Life (with Sam Quinones)
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1 Dec 2025
Journalist and author Sam Quinones talks about his newest book, The Perfect Tuba: Forging Fulfillment from the Brass Horn, Band, and Hard Work with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. Known for his reporting
The Status Game (with Will Storr)
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24 Nov 2025
Will Storr talks about his book The Status Game with EconTalk host Russ Roberts, exploring how our deep need for respect and recognition shapes our behavior. The conversation delves into how we
The Wonder of the Emergent Mind (with Gaurav Suri)
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17 Nov 2025
How is your brain like an ant colony? They both use simple parts following simple rules which allows the whole to be so much more than the sum of the parts. Listen as neuroscientist and author Gaurav
Shampoo, Property Rights, and Civilization (with Anthony Gill)
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10 Nov 2025
Why is it okay to take the little shampoo bottles in hotels home with you but not the towels? And what stops people from taking the towels? Listen as political scientist Anthony Gill discusses the
Primal Intelligence (with Angus Fletcher)
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3 Nov 2025
What do Shakespeare, Hollywood storytelling, and military special operations have in common? They all excel at inventing new plans, or improvising when we're facing radical uncertainty. Listen as
A Mind-Blowing Way of Looking at Math (with David Bessis)
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27 Oct 2025
What if math isn't about grinding through equations, but about training your intuition and changing how your brain works? Mathematician and author David Bessis tells EconTalk's Russ Roberts that the
Twenty Years of Freakonomics (with Stephen Dubner)
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20 Oct 2025
Quantitative, contrarian, and nuanced: these are the hallmarks of the Freakonomics approach. Hear journalist and podcaster Stephen Dubner speak with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the 20th anniversary
The Magic of Tokyo (with Joe McReynolds)
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13 Oct 2025
What drives the seeming relentless dynamism of Tokyo? Is there something special about Japanese culture? Joe McReynolds, co-author of Emergent Tokyo, argues that the secret to Tokyo's energy and
The Invisible Hierarchies that Rule Our World (with Toby Stuart)
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6 Oct 2025
Status isn't fixed; it's transferred and "bestowed," shaping who gets resources, attention, and opportunity. So argues author Toby Stuart of UC Berkeley in his book, Anointed. He and EconTalk's Russ
Eating with Intelligence (with Julia Belluz)
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29 Sep 2025
Losing weight should be simple: eat less, exercise more. But according to author and health journalist Julia Belluz, it's complicated. Listen as Belluz talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about her
Steven Pinker on Common Knowledge
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22 Sep 2025
Why are Super Bowl ads so good for launching certain kinds of new products? Why do we all drive on the same side of the road? And why, despite laughing and crying together, do we often