Hayek Program Podcast

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Paul Dragos Aligica delivers a keynote lecture at the 2024 Markets & Society conference on resilience as a research frontier in mainline political economy. He traces how resilience has been largely absent from comparative economic systems scholarship, only to explode as a topic in the last decade, mostly imported from ecology and complexity theory rather than economics.

He maps how ...

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Bobbi Herzberg delivers a keynote lecture at the 2025 Markets & Society conference on Vincent Ostrom’s understanding of democracy and self-governance. Reflecting on Ostrom’s life, scholarship, and enduring influence, Herzberg explores four central themes in his work: the emergence of social order through shared beliefs and norms, the capacity of individuals to govern the...

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Emily Chamlee-Wright delivers a keynote lecture at the 2025 Markets & Society conference on the precarious state of liberalism and the cultural foundations necessary to sustain a free society. Drawing on the cultural economy framework she developed with Virgil Storr, Chamlee-Wright argues that liberalism faces not only overt constitutional threats but a deeper "soft tissue" problem:...

Welcome to our new series, The Hayekian Triangle. This series will feature a range of conversations between our hosts: Virgil Storr, Chris Coyne, and Peter Boettke.

On this episode, the three sit down to mark the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations — and to ask a deceptively simple question: why are we still reading a book written a quarter-millennium ago?

From the invisible hand to the division of labor, S...

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Peter Boettke and Liya Palagashvili reflect on her journey from undergraduate student organizer to public intellectual, policy analyst, and Director of the Labor Policy Project. They discuss how Liya has approached her career with a startup mindset — exploring her work on the gig economy and portable benefits to create more dynamic and resilient labor markets. Along the way, they ...

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Peter Boettke talks with Bill Easterly about his new book, Violent Saviors: The West’s Conquest of the Rest. Drawing on figures such as Adam Smith, P.T. Bauer, and Amartya Sen, Easterly argues that material progress alone cannot justify the denial of human dignity and consent. The conversation explores the idea of the “benevolent autocrat” and examines how both colonia...

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Chandran Kukathas delivers a keynote lecture at the 2023 Markets & Society conference arguing that an open society is best understood as a regime of toleration—one that can never be perfectly realized because every regime ultimately relies on power. He explores why toleration cannot be neatly limited by moral theory, why appeals to justice often beg the question, and how socie...

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Peter Boettke talks with former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm and Don Boudreaux about their new book, The Triumph of Economic Freedom, a sweeping challenge to seven persistent myths about American capitalism. The conversation ranges from the Industrial Revolution and the Great Depression to the financial crisis. Along the way, they reflect on why these myths endure, why economic freedom has d...

**Content Warning** This episode includes discussions of sexual assault, which may be distressing for some listeners. Please listen with care.

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, David Schmidtz delivers a keynote lecture at the 2024 Markets & Society conference on the idea of self-governance. Drawing on examples from economics, moral philosophy, and higher education, Schmidtz argues that rational choice is less about o...

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Peter Boettke speaks with historian David T. Beito about his new biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt. They discuss FDR’s record on civil liberties, including government surveillance and efforts to police speech; the administration’s approach to refugees and antisemitism; and early-career episodes like the Newport Sex Scandal. The conversation also covers how progressive-era i...

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Chris Coyne talks with Abigail Hall and Jayme Lemke about Kenneth and Elise Boulding’s insights into what it means to build and sustain peace. Drawing on her paper “In Search of Stable Peace,” Hall explores Kenneth Boulding’s framework for understanding peace and war, focusing on the roles of strain and strength and the shifting taboo lines that shape movement be...

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Chris Coyne delivers a keynote lecture at the 2023 Markets & Society conference on the foundations of peace. He contrasts “top-down” peacemaking driven by elites with “bottom-up” peacemaking that emerges from the everyday practices of ordinary people.

Coyne argues that much of the social-scientific and policy conversation treats peace as a public good best sup...

**This episode was recorded September 29, 2025.

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Chris Coyne speaks with Amy Crockett and Erwin Dekker about how economics shapes our understanding of peace, conflict, and cooperation, drawing on the work of Kenneth Boulding and James Buchanan.

First, Coyne speaks with Amy Crockett about her upcoming paper, “Addressing Peace in Undergraduate Economics Textbooks.” Crockett exami...

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Mario Small delivers a keynote lecture at the 2024 Markets & Society conference on financial institutions and racial inequality—using payday lenders as a lens to understand how place and institutional context shape economic life.

Small begins with a deceptively simple question: how often is it easier to reach a payday lender than a traditional bank—and does that vary by n...

On this episode, Chris Coyne speaks with Brigitta Jones, Nathan Goodman, and Karla Segovia about Kenneth Boulding’s insights on war, peace, and the political economy of conflict applied to contemporary questions about military organization and the dynamics of civil conflict.

First, Jones discusses her coauthored paper with Coyne, “The Political Economy of Milorg,” which uses Boulding’s concept of Milorg to ex...

On this episode, Peter Boettke chats with Angus Burgin, Simon Halliday, and Glory Liu to explore their innovative work at the Center for Economy and Society and the creation of a new undergraduate program in Moral and Political Economy. They dive into the revival of political economy as a cross-disciplinary field, the pedagogical innovations shaping the next generation of thinkers, the coming 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s...

On this episode, Chris Coyne speaks with Michael Romero, Mikayla Novak, and Anna Claire Flowers about the enduring influence of Kenneth Boulding on how we understand peace and cooperation.

Romero discusses his paper “Markets as a Peace Lab,” coauthored with Virgil Storr, which explains how markets act as spaces where individuals cultivate trust, empathy, and peaceful exchange. Novak joins to discuss her paper “Ken...

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Nina Bandelj delivers a keynote lecture at the 2023 Markets & Society conference on the social life of money for children. Drawing on research about what she calls the “parenting economy,” she shows that parents increasingly treat children as human capital investments, using savings plans, loans, and educational spending to secure their futures. Bandelj argues that the f...

On this episode, Chris Coyne and Peter Boettke explore the life and legacy of economist Kenneth E. Boulding, Boettke's former professor and mentor. Boettke recalls his experiences in Boulding's Great Books in Economics course and their conversations outside of class about peace, economics, and poetry. The conversation outlines Boulding’s path from studying chemistry at Oxford and an unusually early publication in the Economic...