Recent Podcast Episodes

Modern American culture is statist to the core. The typical school curriculum tells students that capitalism is evil and socialism is good.  This only gets worse in college. 

Totalitarianism is not compatible with a functioning economic system based upon free exchange and private property. Such regimes depend upon historicism and logical relativism.

While most of us know George Orwell as an authoritative critic of totalitarianism, few people know he was a committed socialist and a lifelong defender of communist Leon Trotsky. While he understood totalitarianism, he never understood socialism.

While it is often framed in the media as a battle between principled conservatives and an angry, non-ideological movement focused solely on personal loyalty to Trump, the current civil war on the American right is only the latest chapter in a much older story.

Is marijuana the magic elixir for economic performance and a cure for the Fed’s inflation?

If you thought federal deficits and spending would go back to normal after the covid panic, you were wrong. If anything, deficits are now on track to be bigger than the covid years.

Bob explains that the beloved Wizard of Oz movie involved an allegory of the bimetallism debates of the late 1800s.

Mises Institute President Tom DiLorenzo joins Ryan McMaken to look at the many ways that the taxes, known as "tariffs," destroy wealth and empower the state. 

Progressives are openly cheering the murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. However, it was progressive legislation that created this healthcare crisis in the first place.

Buchanan and Tullock‘s The Calculus of Consent influentially applies economic ideas to politics, focusing on methodological individual. However, there are a few pitfalls about which readers should be aware.

Employing the Labor Theory of Value, Marx claimed that entrepreneurial profits arise from exploitation of workers. In reality, entrepreneurs earn profits when they correctly gauge markets. Exploitation has nothing to do with it.

The watchword among progressives this election season is: “Nothing less than our democracy is at stake.” In truth, democracy itself is not in danger, but one can accurately say that “democracy,” as practiced in the US, endangers our lives.

Wage differences between men and women often are automatically attributed to sex discrimination against women. However, as research has shown time and again, other factors are at work. 

Not all news from the gold and monetary fronts is bad. In fact, gold made a number of advancements in seven states, including exemptions from taxes and attempts by states to restrict Federal Reserve behavior. Gold is alive and well.

Historical revisionism is nothing new, and recent attempts to label an “antiracist” approach to history have wrongly been called “revisionist.” To better understand revisionism, one must first be grounded in reality, then apply reality-based thought to studying the past.

Progressives blame the free market for insulin prices and want to impose price controls. But, government regulation is to blame. 

Birkin bags are pricey and the producer restricts its potential buyers. Unfortunately, disgruntled customers who don’t want to follow the company’s rules are now appealing to US antitrust law.

David Glasner shares his perspectives on the famous Sraffa-Hayek debate, a topic on which he has expressed disagreement with Bob in print.

Government spending does not reflect true economic value the way personal spending does.

Interest rates, inflation, home prices, and federal spending all pose big challenges to a Trump administration that is ill-prepared to deal with the deep-seated problems in the US economy.