The Cato Weekly Podcast

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The Cato Weekly Podcast episodes

August 25 Heller's Sequel Has a New Weapon
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Vermont versus Cook County, its biggest Second Amendment case since Heller. The Cato Institute's Clark Neily, who worked on the original Heller case, joins Rikki Schlott to explain what's at stake for the 20 to 25 million Americans who already own an AR-15 style rifle.
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35 min
August 20 How Do You Solve A Problem Like Affordability?
Rep. Kevin Fitzpatrick (R) and Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D) lead one of Washington's only bipartisan caucuses, the Problem Solvers Caucus, and they've teamed up on an affordability agenda that touches housing, energy, health care, and immigration. Ryan Bourne walks through where their plan overlaps with Cato's own affordability handbook, and where free market and interventionist solutions still diverge.
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31 min
August 18 Can Government Run a Grocery Store?
New York City Mayor Mamdani wants five city owned grocery stores selling staples 30% below cost, at $70 million to build and $100 million a year to run. Cato's Rikki Schlott talks with Don Boudreaux about why private supermarkets survive on 2% profit margins, and what actually happens when government tries to run a store.
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29 min
August 13 Bad Ways To Improve Housing Affordability
Nearly 60% of housing markets in the United States have been characterized as “unaffordable.” Cato's Ryan Bourne talks with Howard Husock of the American Enterprise Institute about why rent freezes, vouchers, and government run housing tend to make the problem worse, using New York City as a cautionary case study. They lay out what actually works instead: zoning reform, faster permitting, and more small multifamily housing.
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43 min
August 11 The Eternal Quest for More Tariffs
Earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled that the president could not use the "International Emergency Economic Powers Act" (IEEPA) to impose tariffs and the administration immediately turned to other legal mechanisms to assert that power.

Laura Bondank-Harmon interviews Clark Neily and Ilya Somin to unpack the legal battles over Trump’s tariffs, the statutes the administration is now invoking, and the constitutional limits on the president’s power to tax.
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28 min
August 06 Wealth Taxes Failed Abroad. Why Try Them Here?
Most rich countries that tried annual wealth taxes eventually scrapped them, but now California and Elizabeth Warren want to run the experiment in the United States. Ryan Bourne talks with Adam Michel about how a “modest” 3 percent levy can swallow 60 percent of an asset’s 5 percent return—and leave workers footing much of the bill.
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39 min
August 04 Iran: Schrodinger's War
The conflict with Iran is simultaneously ending and escalating, and Justin Logan says that's no accident. He tells the Cato Institute's Laura Bondank-Harmon why the strategic case never existed, even as the death toll, price tag, and oil prices keep climbing.
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27 min
July 30 AI: Must We Act Now?
Artificial intelligence could transform productivity, employment, and living standards. But does that mean governments should “act now” to “steer” the technology? Economist John Cochrane joins Cato’s Ryan Bourne to explain why he thinks a prominent economists’ letter gets the problem wrong, whether fears of mass job loss are justified, and how speculation about AI’s potential is already shaping public policy.
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42 min
July 28 Happy 60th Birthday, Now Pay the Bill
Medicare spent $1.2 trillion in 2025 and still can't show it's saving lives. The Cato Institute's Laura Bondank-Harmon is joined by Michael Cannon and David Hyman to mark the program's 60th anniversary, explaining how it broke health care pricing and why "Medicare for All" would only make it worse.
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27 min
July 23 The Wisdom of Crowds: An Intro to Prediction Markets
Prediction-market pioneer Robin Hanson joins Cato's Ryan Bourne to explain this new industry's promise, how betting can improve decision-making, and whether we should worry about insider trading, manipulation, and sabotage as these markets proliferate.
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43 min

About The Cato Weekly Podcast

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Every Tuesday on The Cato Weekly Podcast, leading scholars and policy analysts from the Cato Institute delve into the big ideas shaping our world: individual liberty, limited government, free…