Recent Podcast Episodes

Strip away the mystique and ChatGPT is a next-word predictor with some randomness—the same trick as the spell-checker asking if you meant "dog." Peter Klein on the economics of AI, minus the hype.

The Singer Building and the panic of 1907. The Empire State and the Depression. The Burj Khalifa and 2008. Lucas Engelhardt on why the world's tallest buildings keep opening at exactly the wrong moment.

Tuition is up 1,200% since 1980. Enrollment is about to fall off a cliff. Peter Klein argues the real problem isn't any of the things people usually name.

Successful entrepreneurs are all Austrians, Per Bylund says. They just never had the words for it.

Tate Fegley uses Joseph Salerno's work to draw out the fundamental differences between Mises and Hayek arguing that treating the two as interchangeable obscures the distinctly Misesian paradigm.

Per Bylund takes up Mises's claim that the entrepreneur-promoter cannot be defined praxeologically.

Even in a world of gold, silver, and costly mining, whoever got the new money first still came out ahead. Jeffrey Degner on why hard money doesn't repeal the Cantillon effect, and why fiat makes it far worse.

A book so dangerous it couldn't be printed: it passed hand to hand in manuscript for twenty-five years. Mark Thornton on the underground text that founded modern economics.

Norway sits on large oil deposits, yet has managed to avoid the “resource curse” that has bedeviled so many nations that have abundant natural resources, but severely mismanage their economies.

"Their red ink is your black ink." Jonathan Newman on what MMT leaves out; namely, how the government actually makes the payment.

A game show finalist looked at a rigged final round and told his opponent, "I'm going to steal—and then split it with you." He didn't play the game. He changed it. Lucas Engelhardt on entrepreneurs and game theory.

Two of the best American Austrians feuded over a book review, trained no successors, and their school quietly died out. Paul Cwik and Shawn Ritenour on the Austrians you may not know, and the ones we almost lost.

While the democratic socialists are claiming to just want a society like they have in Denmark, their real aims are the seizure of all or most private property and especially private capital.

The Fed was sold as a check on Wall Street's power. Wall Street's share of the nation's bank reserves went up after it passed, not down. Patrick Newman on the Federal Reserve as cronyism.

Sociologists blame job instability. Legal scholars blame deregulation. Jeffrey Degner noticed all the clues point back to the same address: the Federal Reserve.

We assume people are self-interested in the market and selfless in government. Tate Fegley on why dropping that double standard explains almost everything about how the state actually behaves.

Everyone wants the one key to economic growth—capital, or technology, or trade. Shawn Ritenour argues there is no single key, and that's exactly what the models keep missing.

Washington locked up timberland to stop deforestation, while taxing Canadian lumber, which meant felling more American trees. Timothy Terrell on conservation policy, and following the money.

Marx said your logic depends on your class. The Nazis said it depends on your race. Mises had a name for that idea, and an answer to it. Wanjiru Njoya applies it to how we argue about race today.

A Nobel laureate says some markets are too repugnant to allow and need clever redesign instead. Sandy Klein has a simpler answer: repugnance is just a preference, and the price system already knows what to do with it.