To the Founding Fathers it was free libraries. To the 19th century rationalist philosophers it was a system of public schools. Today it’s access to the internet. Since its beginnings, Americans have believed that if facts and information were available to all, a democratic utopia would prevail. But missing from these well-intentioned efforts, says author […] The post David McRaney on How Minds Change appeared first on Econlib.
Philosopher William MacAskill of the University of Oxford and a founder of the effective altruism movement talks about his book What We Owe the Future with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. MacAskill advocates “longtermism,” giving great attention to the billions of people who will live on into the future long after we are gone. Topics discussed include […] The post Will MacAskill on Longtermism and What We Owe the Future appeared first on Econlib.
Author Amor Towles talks about his book, A Gentleman in Moscow, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Along the way they discuss the craft of writing, the wellsprings of persistence, and Towles’s reading habits. The post Amor Towles on A Gentleman in Moscow and the Writer’s Craft appeared first on Econlib.
Economist Raj Chetty of Harvard University talks about his work on economic mobility with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. The focus is on Chetty’s recent co-authored study in Nature where he finds that poor people in America who are only connected to other poor people do dramatically worse financially than poor people who are connected to […] The post Raj Chetty on Economic Mobility appeared first on Econlib.
How do you hone your craft on an everyday basis? It could be writing, meeting with experts, even listening to podcasts, just so long, argues economist and blogger Tyler Cowen, as it makes you better at what you already do. Perhaps more than anything else, he believes, it’s practice that divides middle managers from founders, […] The post Tyler Cowen on Talent appeared first on Econlib.
Waze and Google Maps tell us the best way to get to where we’re going. But no app or algorithm can tell us whether we should head there in the first place. To economist Russ Roberts, the reason is simple: Humans are dynamic and aspirational beings. When it comes to making life’s big decisions, from […] The post Russ Roberts and Mike Munger on Wild Problems appeared first on Econlib.
IBM’s super-computer Watson was a runaway success on Jeopardy! But it wasn’t nearly as good at diagnosing cancer. This came as no surprise to Max Planck Institute psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, who argues that when it comes to life-and-death decisions, we’ll always need real, not artificial, brains. Listen as the author of How to Stay Smart in a Smart World tells […] The post Gerd Gigerenzer on How to Stay Smart in a Smart World appeared first on Econlib.
Economist John List of the University of Chicago talks about his book, The Voltage Effect, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. He discusses what determines scalability and argues that the only good ideas that count are those that scale. Along the way, he draws on his experiences as chief economist of Uber and Lyft to peer […] The post John List on Scale, Uber, and the Voltage Effect appeared first on Econlib.
When it comes to the COVID-19 vaccination, is the risk of myocarditis greater than the benefit to a healthy male teen? Is natural immunity really better than vaccination–and were we right to mask the kids? Dr. Vinay Prasad of the University of California San Francisco talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about what we learned […] The post Vinay Prasad on the Pandemic appeared first on Econlib.
A language, a flag, a national anthem and shared history—like a heart that has to pump harder to support a heavier body, the bigger a nation gets, the harder to curate an identity. Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about scale and governance with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Taleb sings the virtues of smaller relative to larger […] The post Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the Nations, States, and Scale appeared first on Econlib.
