The Way the World Works: A Tuttle Twins Podcast for Families

On today's episode, Stephen Kent, host of the podcast "Beltway Banthas" joins Connor and Brittany to talk about Star Wars and what this classic story can teach us about liberty.

As we prepare to celebrate the holidays, Brittany and Connor spread some cheer with an uplifting Christmas story. During WWI, soldiers on opposing sides of the war practiced civil disobedience by laying down their weapons and refusing to fight on Christmas Day. Instead, they sang carols and exchanged gifts with each other, showing the world that there are no differences too big to overcome.

We're all familiar with the classic story, "A Christmas Carol," where Ebenezer Scrooge is the classic miser, demonized by all who have read the book. But what if we got some aspects of the story wrong? Today, Connor and Brittany talk about this classic tale and whether or not Scrooge is a villain or simply misunderstood.

Changing the world is a task unfit for the faint of heart. But before we can embark on a challenge this great, we have to make sure that we start small, improving and organizing our own lives before we try to enact change on a grander scale.

Many people regard FDR's "New Deal" as having saved the American economy from the Great Depression. But was it really so great? Today Brittany and Connor talk about the New Deal and how it had disastrous impacts on our economy that we still see today.

Whether it's a movie or a book, we often think of fiction as a break from the seriousness of the real world. But fiction plays a very important role in our human lives and it's how many of us learn important life lessons. Today Connor and Brittany discuss the role fictional stories play in our lives.

For people to be truly free, they must live in a society that values free speech. All too often, governments suppress speech that is contrary to their ends in order to maintain control. But it's not just governments. Lots of people use censorship to try and control the narrative instead of letting people freely voice their opinions and beliefs.

Governments like to claim they know enough to be able to control and plan out entire economies. But with so many individual actors contributing to the economy, it is impossible for one central body to have enough information to make informed decisions. Economist F.A. Hayek explained this conundrum with what if called "the knowledge problem."

Health care is one of the hottest topics in our country today. While American health care is in need of reform, many have tried to argue for a government takeover of the entire system. These people often justify this by claiming that health care is a human right. But what is a human right and why is it so important for us to understand how health care and the market go hand in hand.

People are always complaining about our present day by telling us that back in the "good ol' days" things things used to better. But every generation seems to think that their era was "the good ol' days." So the real question is, did such a time even exist? And if so, when were these "great" times we've built up in our minds?