EconTalk

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, talks about his book No Experience Necessary with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. Harary traces his journey from selling grass-growing novelty heads at 23, through Devil Sticks and Air Hogs, to building Bakugan and Paw Patrol into global f...

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 franchise. In the first episode of the EconTalk Book Club on the Iliad, Ido Hevroni of Shalem College speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the surprising relevance of a 2800-year-old epic poem. Hevroni also provides useful backgroun...

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 knee surgery (a real incision, but no actual repair) did as well or better than those who had the actual procedure--one performed 700,000 times annually in the U.S. The conversation ranges from the power of placebo and nocebo effects (h...

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 human history. Listen as George Mason University economist Philip Auerswald speaks to EconTalk's Russ Roberts about how the extension of connectivity to traditionally excluded populations led to wide-scale transformations in productivity...

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 for prudent sun exposure. Topics discussed include the "heliotherapy" movement that peaked in the early 1900s in response to rickets and tuberculosis, why diagnosing skin cancer is on the rise, and why yesterday's sunscreens may have done...

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 Roberts trace the tension between individuals and their tribes through the foundational frameworks, such as family and school, that help forge our identities. Burgis argues that the disappearance of traditional rites of passage bodes il...

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 dismantle the career advice you've been fed since childhood. "Follow your passion" turns out to be a trap. Chasing a big paycheck barely moves the happiness needle. And being a doctor has a smaller impact than you might think, says Todd. To...

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 he saw in those moments sent him on a journey into physics, near-death experiences, and the nature of consciousness itself. In his third appearance on EconTalk, Junger discusses his remarkable book In My Time of Dying with host Russ Rob...

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 consecutive times is really an extended tribute to embodied knowledge. Listen as MacLean-Jones and EconTalk's Russ Roberts analyze the unique concept of competence presented in Cruise's films. Along...

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 former editor of ESPN The Magazine Gary Belsky and EconTalk's Russ Roberts discuss how golfing alone can create flow, develop physical mastery, and enhance self-awareness. Along the way, they explore what makes golf different from other spo...

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 more unsettling. Listen as Dean Ball and EconTalk's Russ Roberts trace the collision between Anthropic and the federal government over Claude's use in classified military operations, exploring thorny questions about autonomous weapons, dom...

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 that our deepest hunger isn't for wealth but for respect--and that this hunger, left unexamined, leads individuals and societies alike into serious trouble. The discussion moves from the personal (why do highly successful people keep gri...

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 a catalyzing figure behind the AI revolution and built the most valuable company in the world. Listen as journalist Stephen Witt speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about how Jensen pivoted from manufacturing processing units for video ...

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 be the hidden force behind success and failure in nearly every domain of human endeavor. EconTalk's Russ Roberts speaks with Stewart Brand --creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, founder of the Long Now Foundation, and one of the great con...

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 reasons for his optimism, and argues that college classes should devote significant time to learning how to use AI. They discuss the future of writing (and thinking) in an academic context, and Cowen's solution to dealing with worries ab...

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 joins EconTalk's Russ Roberts to unravel these mysteries through his book Out of the Sky, revealing why a failed mission became one of Israel's most powerful founding myths. At the heart of the story is Hannah Senesh, a 23-year-old Hungari...

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 of camping in tents, a 58-question trivia exam, border guards with air horns at 3 AM, and a 50-page student-written constitution with its own appeals court. In this special 20th-anniversary episode, EconTalk's Russ Roberts and returnin...

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 book The Invention of Good and Evil with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. Sauer tackles a fundamental puzzle: in a Darwinian world of selfish genes, how did humans become so extraordinarily cooperative? Sauer traces a fascinating journey from sm...