Recent Podcast Episodes

Mark Thornton discusses a lesser-known factor in the American Civil War: the Confederate “impressment” policy and its impact at Vicksburg.

On Power & Market, the group looks at the political legacy of Elon Musk, the moral costs of Keynesianism, and the absurdity of Harvard and NPR as public goods.

Bob breaks down the recent Soho Forum immigration debate between Dave Smith and Alex Nowrasteh, clarifying the critical libertarian questions around property rights, open borders, and government authority.

Polish professor of political theory Łukasz Dominiak joins us to talk about how Poland embraced a market economy after the Cold War ended.  We discuss some of the factors behind Poland's rise from poverty. 

This brief historical sketch brings us to how the American and Israeli militaries of today have adopted a nineteenth-century-style war of extermination against what they consider to be another “lesser race.” 

The free market replaces the struggle for survival found in the animal world with social cooperation in which everybody benefits. Capitalism is a system of peace, not war.

Rumor has it that the Federal Reserve was able to resist the president‘s demands to enable funding of the Korean War. However, a look at the record demonstrates conclusively that the Fed bowed to Harry Truman‘s wishes to do what it has done for a century: finance America‘s wars.

President Trump's so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is more of the same: big and bloated. It adds billions to the federal deficit and does nothing to deal with the government‘s ruinous debt. Naturally, the Republicans support it.

David Brady, Jr. reviews Jonathan Newman's latest children‘s book that explains money in a way that even modern adults can understand.

Establishment figures erroneously claim Trump’s recent frustrations with Putin prove them right—that Putin can’t be reasoned with.

The transatlantic slave trade from Africa is a well-known chapter in the history of slavery in the Western Hemisphere, but much lesser known is the enslavement of Native Americans. Many of them were shipped to plantations in the Caribbean where they were worked to death.

Mainstream economists define inflation as the increase in an imaginary “price level” that is relatively neutral in its effects. Austrian economists, however, know better, as they realize that the effects of inflating the money supply are anything but neutral.

Ours in an age when people panic, sometimes for good reasons but often for bad. Governments benefit from panicked citizenry, which is why we always should question those political decisions that can turn our lives upside down.

Amtrak is always on the verge of reviving intercity rail traffic in the US, or at least that is what politicians want us to believe. The truth is that the case for defunding Amtrak has never been stronger.

The transatlantic slave trade from Africa is a well-known chapter in the history of slavery in the Western Hemisphere, but much lesser known is the enslavement of Native Americans. Many of them were shipped to plantations in the Caribbean where they were worked to death.

A free market economy does not generate jobs or money. Instead, it creates wealth through exchange and production. Government intervention, contrary to what mainstream economists believe, does not enhance wealth, but instead destroys it.

The Trump White House has enacted tariffs in the belief that other countries are “cheating” by enacting tariffs against US goods and “manipulating” their currencies. However, with the US dollar being the world's reserve currency, the US has engaged in dollar manipulation through inflation.

William Nordhaus coined the term “political business cycle” a half-century ago. The idea was that government authorities, particularly the central bank, would manipulate the economy to correspond with election cycles, a practice that continues to this day.

We know what happened on November 22, 1963, at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, but there is a lot about that terrible day we don't know.

From Reconstruction to George Floyd, the left‘s guilt industry has run at full speed. As Murray Rothbard wrote, it is time to stand up to those that use guilt as a social weapon.