In this episode, Eric Kohn, Acton’s director of communications, sits down with David L. Bahnsen to discuss his new book, There’s No Free Lunch. In his book, Bahnsen explores how the free market has enabled hundreds of millions of people to rise from the depths of poverty and achieve a higher quality of life. In fact, there is no better economic system for human flourishing. However, a contagion has begun infecting public opinion with regard to capitalism in general and free markets specifically. Call it socialism, progressivism, or leftism, more and more people each day are turning away from the time-tested free market that has been absolutely essential to the prosperity of nations around the world. The question is, Why?
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There's No Free Lunch: 250 Economic Truths
David Bahnsen on GameStop, RobinHood and market populism
About David Bahnsen
‎Capital Record Podcast
Sirico & Bahnsen: Liberty & Morality in the Midst of Crisis 
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There’s no free lunch

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There is no question today that new technology is changing the way we think about and experience work. Speculation abounds about how the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies will affect the workplace. Worries about machines replacing humans on the job are common. Others, however, are optimistic about the way AI is changing how we work—they see AI as an important tool to promote better efficiency and productivity in the workplace. How will AI change the way work is done? How will it affect the workforce? How will it affect the economy? 
To answer some of these questions and more, we bring you a panel discussion from our February Business Matters Conference. Acton’s director of programs and education, Dan Churchwell, leads Brent Orrell, Mark Johnson, and Máté Csak in a conversation looking to the future of work and the role disruptive technology will play in it.
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Business Matters 2024: Hope for Work and Enterprise | Acton On-Demand

AI, Disruptive Technology, and the Future of Work

Gertrude Himmelfarb was one of the foremost historians of Victorian life. She produced page-turning biographies of some of the age’s most intriguing and influential figures, including Lord Acton, Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot. She also produced social histories of the period and brought a Victorian sensibility to American politics as a leading conservative public intellectual.
In this episode, Acton librarian and research associate Dan Hugger speaks with Nicole Penn, author of an essay just published in National Affairs entitled “The Historian’s Craft,” which deftly explores the life and legacy of one of the conservative movement’s most accomplished women.
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The Historian's Craft | National Affairs
Middlemarch | George Eliot
The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments | Gertrude Himmelfarb
The Moral Imagination: From Adam Smith to Lionel Trilling: Gertrude Himmelfarb
Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals: Ronnie Grinberg
Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics | Gertrude Himmelfarb
The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age | Gertrude Himmelfarb
The New History and the Old: Critical Essays and Reappraisals, Rev. Ed. | Gertrude Himmelfarb
Glad to the Brink of Fear | Nicole Penn
A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 | Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
The Forgotten Greatness of PV Narasimha Rao | The Seen and the Unseen
Historian of the Liberal Paradox | Gertrude Himmelfarb
Remembering Gertrude Himmelfarb with Yuval Levin | Acton Line
Learning from Victorian Virtues | Interview with Gertrude Himmelfarb

The Historian's Craft: Gertrude Himmelfarb

Many Christian congregations now offer hybrid worship services: you can worship in person or online. While these options have become increasingly popular, our understanding of them has not kept pace. Furthermore, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence will only complicate matters further. The contemporary church needs a way to make sense of the dizzying influx of emerging technologies, practices, and possibilities.
In this episode, Acton director of programs and education Dan Churchwell talks to Rev. A Trevor Sutton, senior pastor of St. Luke Lutheran Church in Lansing, Michigan, and coauthor of “Redeeming Technology,” about hybrid worship, the effect AI will have on the church, and how to respond to concerns from laity and clergy alike.
AI and the Discipline of Human Flourishing | Religion & Liberty Online
Church in a Digital Age: Must We Worship Bodily to Worship at All?
‘Redeeming Technology’ | Concordia Publishing House 
Acton Lecture Series

Understanding Hybrid Worship

In this episode, Noah Gould, Acton’s alumni and student programs manager, speaks to Jane Clark Scharl about her verse play, Sonnez Les Matines, which asks, What if John Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola, and Francois Rabelais had their convictions put to the test while navigating their involvement in a brutal crime?
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Sonnez Les Matines | Wiseblood Books 
Calvin, Loyola, Rabelais: A Murder Mystery | Religion & Liberty
The Violent Faith of Cormac McCarthy | Acton Unwind

The Reformation, the Body, and a Murder

Our culture tells parents there’s one best way to raise kids: enroll them in a dozen activities, protect them from trauma, and get them into the most expensive college possible. If you can’t do all that, don’t even bother. How’s that strategy going? Record rates of anxiety, depression, medication, debts, loneliness, and more.
In his new book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, bestselling author and father of six Timothy P. Carney says it’s time to end this failed experiment.
In this episode, Acton director of marketing and communications Eric Kohn speaks to Carney about why he wrote his new book, why we should have more kids, and how to give kids deeper meaning for their lives than material success.
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Family Unfriendly | HarperCollins

There’s no free lunch

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