Bob Murphy Show

Bob interviews Lindsay Goldwert on her years performing at and organizing stand-up comedy shows in NYC, the interaction between comedy and finance, and her new book, BOW DOWN.

Bob uses the media coverage of the December Inspector General (IG) report on the FBI to illustrate how the establishment is gaslighting America. Specifically, some of the FBI's tactics when applying for permission to spy on the Trump campaign are jaw-dropping, and yet the corporate media have used the report to refute Trump's "conspiracy theories" about an FBI plot against him.

Bob conducts a friendly but challenging interview of Bryan Caplan, focusing on his new book making the case for open borders. They also discuss Bryan's essay, "Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist," and close with some brief remarks on pacifism.

Bob goes through much more scandalous and corrupt activities from Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, and why Hillary Clinton has a much worse record on self-dealing than Donald Trump.

David Gordon is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute who has a long history in Austrian economics and libertarianism. He talks with Bob about his personal story, including taking an undergrad class at UCLA with Hayek as his professor. Then they turn to philosophical issues in economics, and end with an analysis of the Strauss/Jaffa critique of libertarianism.

Bob tackles a common objection from atheist libertarians: Doesn't Mises (in Human Action) refute the very notion of the Biblical God? Specifically, why wouldn't an omnipotent, omniscient being remove all uneasiness with one action?

Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder is a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, where she heads the "Analog Systems for Gravity Duals" group. Bob first asks her to explain why physicists began using the concepts of "dark matter" and "dark energy" to explain their observations of galaxies. Then they discuss her June New York Times column in which she explained that existing computer models can't tell us if climate change poses an existential threat or is merely an inconvenience.

Due to listener request, Bob offers further thoughts on Hoppe's argumentation ethics, following his discussion (on ep. 79) with Stephan Kinsella. Bob then discusses Hoppe's profound essays on praxeology, in which he argues that Mises has solved the famous mind-body problem in philosophy.

Wojciech Kopczuk is a Columbia economics professor who co-authored (in 2004) one of the leading estimates of wealth concentration in the literature, along with current progressive darling Emmanuel Saez. But ever since Thomas Piketty's bestselling book on wealth inequality, Saez has published research with Gabriel Zucman, showing dramatically different results. Kopczuk explains why economists can disagree on the basic facts of wealth concentration, and why there is controversy about Saez and Zucman's latest claim that billionaires pay a lower income tax rate than the working class.

Along with Carlos Lara, David Stearns, and the late Nelson Nash, Bob has been heavily involved in educating the public and financial professionals about the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC). This is a process of using a dividend-paying Whole Life policy as a cash management tool, to "become your own banker" (in Nelson's famous words). Bob gives the quick explanation of how this works.