EconTalk

Why do we keep doing things we know we shouldn't? And is that really a failure of will? Author Meghan O'Gieblyn spent years trying to answer that question, first in response to her struggle with alcoholism and her loss of faith, and then by means of Simone Weil, William James, and Iris Murdoch, who argue that the will is powerless over the things we want to change most. Listen as she speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about her new memoir, Will and Attention, which explores why paying attention does what effort alone can't, why we can reason ourselves into doing destructive things, and why the choices that most shape our lives are the "choices in between the choices," or the ones we barely notice making at all.

Before you give the government new powers, try the Munger Test: cross out "government" and insert the name of the politician you trust least. Then see if you still like the idea. In his 52nd EconTalk appearance, Mike Munger talks with host Russ Roberts about public choice, politics without romance, and why treating government like a loving family (or your family like a business), ends badly. Along the way, they talk about why Edmund Burke's famous defense of legislators voting their conscience cost him his seat in Parliament, how a group lunch explains politics, and why voters rationally know so little.

Are we living in the new Dark Ages? Despite vast technological advances, our societies are increasingly looking like those that preceded the advent of literacy. So argues journalist James Marriott, who sees in our abandonment of reading a threat to democracy and a reversal of many of the Enlightenment's gains. He and EconTalk's Russ Roberts trace literacy from its fragile first days in ancient Mesopotamia through to the printing press and the "Reading Revolution" of the mid-to-late 18th century, exploring how--and whether--its spread shaped major historical events. They analyze Marriott's claim that reading grounds politics in rationality, consider the role of the Republic of Letters in driving Europe's Industrial Revolution, and debate whether a book or a movie is better at conveying complexity. Marriott ends with a consolation: Just as fast food gave rise to the gym, informational junk food may give rise to reading as an intentional discipline.

Incentives matter, sure. But what should you do when following the incentives means quietly participating in something wrong? Psychologist Adam Mastroianni argues that obeying bad incentives--shading a headline for clicks, keeping the found wallet because no one's watching--is "loser behavior," a surrender of the hardest and most human task: figuring out right from wrong for yourself. In this wide-ranging EconTalk conversation, he and Russ Roberts explore Le Guin's "Omelas," the "big fish" you glimpse that could upend your whole life, and Charles Sumner's near-fatal courage. They wrestle with whether good incentives or good people matter more, why lavish academic salaries may attract exactly the wrong scholars, and the moral lessons of marriage.

What does a failed 19th-century Chinese civil exam and one of the deadliest wars in history have to do with how we hire, educate, and test people today? In this EconTalk conversation, Russ Roberts and education expert Daisy Christodoulou trace a surprising thread from the Taiping Rebellion through Britain's Northcote-Trevelyan reforms, Samuel Pepys's naval exams, and Macaulay's belief that a hard exam on anything--even alchemy or the Cherokee language--reveals the best minds. Christodoulou dismantles that idea with evidence that skills are stubbornly domain-specific: chess masters, surgeons, even Steven Spielberg couldn't simply transfer their brilliance elsewhere. Along the way they wrestle with meritocracy, why bureaucracies fail without feedback, and whether great teachers must resist irony. A rich, wide-ranging discussion that will change how you think about testing and expertise.

He lost his childhood homes, dozens of family members, and most of his hearing in his left ear to Israeli bombs, yet Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib insists that Palestinians must also take responsibility for Gaza's destruction and for peace. Most Gazans, he insists, have turned against Hamas for oppressing them, enriching itself, and bringing catastrophe to Gaza in the aftermath of October 7th. Alkhatib calls for Palestinian introspection and agency while also faulting Israel's settlement expansion and its undermining of moderates. He envisions a demilitarized Gaza run by nonpartisan technocrats, a Palestinian identity defined by aspiration rather than opposition, and direct Israeli-Palestinian dialogue--starting with a "Great Reset" of 100 days without violence on either side. EconTalk host Russ Roberts, more skeptical that Hamas will ever truly disarm, shares Alkhatib's hope that the two peoples might one day live as peaceful neighbors.

Has the earth been visited by extraterrestrials? Are we alone? Despite no formal evidence for conscious life outside of earth, the belief that we are not alone has become more common among both scientists and everyday people. Listen as author Adam Kirsch talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the urge to believe that there are sentient beings elsewhere in the universe and that these aliens want to connect with human beings. Topics discussed include why belief in extraterrestrials has become more mainstream, existential loneliness, religion, extinction, and Elon Musk's desire to get to Mars.

What if the Industrial Revolution wasn't sparked by the steam engine, but by a quiet legal revolution in how England handled property rights? Ben Southwood of Works in Progress argues that the Glorious Revolution of the 1680s unleashed British growth by empowering a Parliament composed of landowners who simplified their own tangled, inefficient property rights. Through thousands of case-by-case acts, they freed up land for investment, consolidated inefficient farm ownership, and enabled a boom in privately-built roads, canals, and navigable rivers that created national markets. Along the way you'll learn why roads once moved at 1.5 miles per hour, and how these centuries-old lessons about buying off holdouts might solve today's housing and infrastructure gridlock.

Six months into a stage-four pancreatic cancer diagnosis that gave him 90 days to live, Ben Sasse sits down with EconTalk's Russ Roberts for a conversation that refuses easy comfort. The former U.S. senator and University of Florida president is candid about his physical challenges but the heart of this exchange is elsewhere: what actually matters when time is short. Sasse reflects on faith and mortality, the "shattering of idols" like his own workaholism, and his pride in his marriage. Along the way he offers sharp diagnoses of Congress's abdication of responsibility, the crisis inside American universities, and a republic distracted by the "digital casino" in its pocket. Funny, unflinching, and deeply human, it closes with a meditation on raging against the dying of the light while walking with your head bowed.

Most discourses about Israel or Palestine are morality plays of good guys vs bad guys. Egyptian-born Hussein Aboubakr Mansour takes a different approach, seeing the conflict as a self-reproducing system of political and economic extraction where Arab regimes, opposition movements, rival states, Western academics, NGOs, and Gulf monarchies like Qatar all convert Palestinian victimhood into their own forms of power, money, and meaning. Listen as Mansour speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about his childhood in an Egypt organized around the liberation of Palestine and explores why any exit from the system must run not through policy, but rather through the human need for meaning itself.