"Nations move by unalterable rules."

Born this day in 1735, John Adams helped frame the American republic and shaped early ideas on rights and government. Explore his life and works: 🔗 buff.ly/ez7fhrv

Host Russ Roberts (@EconTalker) and guest Mike Munger (@mungowitz) explore the roles of humility and tolerance in liberal thought. At its core, liberalism requires more than defending our own convictions.

Adam Kirsch explores the relationship between belief, evidence, and personal experience, asking what authority extraordinary claims should hold when they cannot be independently verified.

Mike Munger (@mungowitz) explores the philosophical traditions behind these competing understandings of liberalism, from the Scottish Enlightenment to contemporary political thought.

Listen to the full episode here: econtalk.org/public-choice-…

Mike Munger (@mungowitz ) explores the distinction between what the law permits and what individuals ought to do, examining how unwritten norms can preserve the openness, judgment, and restraint that rigid rules cannot.

Russ Roberts (@econtalker) and guest Adam Mastroianni (@a_m_mastroianni) explore the relationship between individual character and political institutions. While better systems can encourage better behavior, lasting change also depends on the choices of the people within them.

Host Russ Roberts (@EconTalker) and guest James Marriott (@j_amesmarriott) explore one of fiction’s most remarkable powers: its ability to give us access to another human consciousness.

Host Russ Roberts (@EconTalker) and guest Adam Kirsch examine the persistent mystery surrounding UFO sightings and the gap between extraordinary claims and ordinary scientific evidence.

Russ Roberts (@EconTalker) and guest James Marriott (@j_amesmarriott) explore how literacy moved from the preserve of scribes and scholars to a defining feature of modern life.

Daisy Christodoulou (@daisychristo) and host Russ Roberts (@EconTalker) explore how examinations transformed institutions by shifting advancement away from wealth and connections and toward competence and merit.

What happens when incentives point you in the wrong direction?

Psychologist Adam Mastroianni (@a_m_mastroianni) joins Russ Roberts (@EconTalker) to explore the tension between incentives and morality.

The gap between what a university president is equipped to run and what they're actually responsible for is, in Ben Sasse's view (@BenSasse), why teaching quality rarely gets sustained attention.

Russ Roberts (@EconTalker), recalling Walter Williams's conversation on EconTalk, quotes Hayek's own principle for legislation: "All legislation that is passed going forward from today has to apply equally to everyone."

How many laws on the books today would survive that test?

A failed civil service exam. One of the deadliest wars in history. A 19th-century British reform that still shapes how bureaucracies hire today.

@EconTalker and @daisychristo trace the thread connecting them, and ask what it means for how we test people. buff.ly/vrTJXjp

@EconTalker talks with @daisychristo as they trace a surprising thread from the Taiping Rebellion through Britain's Northcote-Trevelyan reforms, Samuel Pepys's naval exams, and Macaulay's belief that a hard exam on anything. buff.ly/vrTJXjp

@afalkhatib envisions a demilitarized Gaza run by nonpartisan technocrats, a Palestinian identity defined by aspiration rather than opposition. @EconTalker buff.ly/WXUfOBz

@afalkhatib calls for Palestinian introspection and agency while also faulting Israel's settlement expansion and its undermining of moderates. Listen to the entire episode buff.ly/WXUfOBz @EconTalker

Happy birthday to John Locke! 🕯️ The philosopher who gave us "tabula rasa," natural rights, and the idea that government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. His ideas shaped the Declaration of Independence and modern democracy itself. 🎂📜

@calflyn explores spiritual quests at Mount Sinai, the return of predators to Europe, the uncomfortable economics of trophy hunting, & why we secretly crave discomfort in an age of endless comfort. Listen to the full EconTalk episode w/ host @EconTalker. buff.ly/XEFp8ud

What is wilderness when seven billion people share the planet and nowhere remains truly untouched? Author and journalist @Calflyn discusses her book The Savage Landscape with EconTalk host @EconTalker.

Harary traces his journey from selling grass-growing novelty heads at 23, through building Bakugan and Paw Patrol into global franchises touching the lives of millions of children. Listen in as @EconTalker dives into so much more with his guest. buff.ly/d4jnVWj

Happy Birthday, Alexis de Tocqueville! The French thinker who traveled to America and gave us Democracy in America — still one of the sharpest analyses of democratic life ever written. buff.ly/ZDQ6gdt

Ronnen Harary, co-founder of Spin Master and co-creator of Paw Patrol, talks about his book No Experience Necessary with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. @EconTalker buff.ly/d4jnVWj

Ego, pride, wrath, fear, gods, superheroes, mortals, and lots of killing. Welcome to Homer's Iliad, which reads at times like a script for a Tarantino film or the latest installment of the Avengers franchise. @EconTalker @IdoHevroni Full episode here buff.ly/w0oaSx2

In the first episode of the EconTalk Book Club on the Iliad, @IdoHevroni of Shalem College speaks with @EconTalker about the surprising relevance of a 2800-year-old epic poem. buff.ly/w0oaSx2

📚 Join us & Richard Gunderman for a read of George Eliot's Middlemarch — exploring freedom, sympathy & moral growth.

Thursdays, July 23–Aug 20 | 12–1pm EDT

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Webster vs. Calhoun on slavery & union — two speeches, two visions, one nation on the brink. Join the VRG Aug. 13, 1–2:30 PM EDT. 🇺🇸📜 #AmericanHistory #LibertyFund buff.ly/8LCTvhY

Adams vs. Jefferson on liberty — allies who became rivals 🇺🇸 Join us Tue. July 28, 2:30–4pm EDT for VRG: Liberty & the American Statesman with Cara Rogers Stevens. Free & open to all! #BookClub #AmericanHistory buff.ly/mG0k7Eb

@auerswald and @EconTalker discuss the role of little-known entrepreneurs such as Iqbal Quadir and innovators like Claude Shannon in bringing the mobile phone to the entire world. buff.ly/PAnGA6V

Did Gibbon secretly rely on the metaphysics he despised? Mark Packer argues that Decline and Fall couldn't work without universal moral claims — and free will — that no empirical method can prove.

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What can a 150-year-old novel teach us about freedom, responsibility & compassion? A lot. 📚

Join Richard Gunderman for Middlemarch — Thursdays July 23–Aug 20, 12–1pm EDT

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Can a phone be a cow? It could in 90's Bangladesh. This was the insight of a small number of mobile phone market pioneers who helped catalyze the spread of the greatest technological revolution in human history. @auerswald and @EconTalker episode here.
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Listen as George Mason University economist @auerswald speaks to @EconTalker about how the extension of connectivity to traditionally excluded populations led to wide-scale transformations in productivity. econtalk.org/can-a-phone-be…

"Summer's lease hath all too short a date" 🌞 Join Sarah Skwire Wed. July 15, 12:30–2pm EDT for a final One Fell Swoop session on Shakespeare's Sonnets. Love poems—but what else? Pre-registration required. buff.ly/Wnzsu9I

"Celebrating America's 250th? 🎉 Travel back in time with our Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain — fascinating voices from both sides of history. 📜 buff.ly/aaOibMU…"

Public Choice is more than "applying economics to politics." @mungowitz unpacks Buchanan's four essentials — and why removing any one of them leaves you with something else entirely. buff.ly/swhreQe

What did the Founders really think? 🇺🇸 On America's 250th, go straight to the source — explore our Founders Collection on the OLL.

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Why diagnosing skin cancer is on the rise, and why yesterday's sunscreens may have done more harm than good. Listen to this episode of EconTalk with guest @rowanjacobsen and host @EconTalker. buff.ly/JgcS3YW

Skin cancer comes from the sun. But so do many good things, according to author @rowanjacobsen. Check out this episode of EconTalk. buff.ly/JgcS3YW

📖 Join @SarahSkwire & Janet Bufton (#WealthofTweets) for Part 5 of our 6-part reading group celebrating Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations 250th anniversary!

🗓 July 13 | 2–3:30 PM EDT

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"Freedom is the first wish of our heart." Gibbon saw liberty as both natural aspiration & historical tragedy. Our new Liberty Matters essay explores what the author of Decline and Fall really believed about freedom. buff.ly/4zJSlHA…

@rowanjacobsen talks with @EconTalker about the health benefits of sunshine and makes the case for prudent sun exposure. buff.ly/JgcS3YW

Happy Birthday to Frédéric Bastiat, born this day in 1801. His sharp defense of liberty, free exchange, and the “unseen” consequences of bad policy still challenges us to think more clearly about economics, justice, and human flourishing. oll.libertyfund.org/people/frederi…

🇺🇸 1850: Two senators. Two speeches. The fate of a nation.

Calhoun demanded. Webster pleaded. Neither could stop what was coming.

Join Todd Estes for our VRG on the slavery debate.
Aug 13 | 1–2:30 PM EDT 👇 #AmericanHistory buff.ly/Crr6Hu1

Happy birthday to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born this day in 1712. Champion of liberty, education, and popular sovereignty, Rousseau challenged generations to ask what makes a society just—and what it means to be truly free. oll.libertyfund.org/people/jean-ja…

Were Adams & Jefferson really that far apart on liberty? 🤔 Join Cara Rogers Stevens Tues, July 28 (2:30–4pm EDT) to read the laws, speeches & letters that nearly ended their friendship. #VRG #AmericanHistory buff.ly/O53uWcd

Listen as @lukeburgis and @EconTalker trace the tension between individuals and their tribes through the foundational frameworks, such as family and school, that help forge our identities. buff.ly/3PWalzY

What happens when big dreams meet real life? 📖 Explore George Eliot's Middlemarch with Richard Gunderman — 5 Thursdays, July 23–Aug 20, 12–1pm EDT. One of literature's greatest novels awaits.

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What did Gibbon's Decline and Fall really say about liberty? Brian Young explores how Rome's collapse ironically gave birth to modern freedom. A must-read for history lovers. #LibertyMatters #Gibbon
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Shakespeare's sonnets: yes, love poems — but what ELSE is hiding in those 14 lines? 🎭 Join Sarah Skwire for a final One Fell Swoop session to dig deeper. Wed, July 15 | 12:30–2pm EDT. Pre-registration required. buff.ly/tA8Wya0