Russ Roberts

EconTalk podcast; weekly long-form interviews with economists.

Recommends

Books, films, shows, and podcasts they point to — tap a source to read the passage.

Books · 9

The True Believer

Eric Hoffer · 1951

The Self, the Crowd, and Social Contagion (with Luke Burgis) 6/8/26Russ Roberts

Context

Russ Roberts accepts this reference as a valuable explanation of how individuals join mass movements to escape their own fragile identities.

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The Minimal Self

Christopher Lasch · 1984

The Self, the Crowd, and Social Contagion (with Luke Burgis) 6/8/26Russ Roberts

Context

Russ Roberts allows the guest to use this work to support the argument regarding the dangers of an underdeveloped sense of self in modern society.

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book

A Phone is a Cow

Can a Phone Be a Cow? (with Philip Auerswald) 6/22/26Russ Roberts

Context

Russ Roberts values this work as it provides deep insight into how mobile entrepreneurs helped the poor overcome poverty.

The Iliad

Όμηρος · 1946

Can a Phone Be a Cow? (with Philip Auerswald) 6/22/26Russ Roberts Dwayne Betts on the Iliad 7/20/26Russ Roberts

Context

Russ Roberts recommends this book because he is hosting an Econ Talk book club series dedicated to it.

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book

In Defense of Sunlight, The Surprising Science of Sun Exposure

The Case for Sunshine (with Rowan Jacobsen) 6/15/26Russ Roberts

Context

Russ Roberts values this work for its clear explanation of complex scientific research regarding sunlight.

book

Truffle Hound

The Case for Sunshine (with Rowan Jacobsen) 6/15/26Russ Roberts

Context

Russ Roberts mentions this book to highlight the popularity of the guest's previous appearance on the show.

The Passions and the Interests

Albert Otto Hirschman · 1977

My favorite Smith bookRuss Roberts

Context

Russ Roberts recommends this book because it provides foundational economic insights that shaped the context leading up to Adam Smith.

“And for anybody who has not read that book, I would say that is one of my top five favorite books in in economics.”

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Iliad

Όμηρος · 1946

EconTalk Book Club on the Iliad (with Ido Hevroni) 7/6/26Russ Roberts Sawdust to Paw Patrol: The Spin Master Story (with Ronnen Harary) 7/13/26Russ Roberts

Context

Russ Roberts recommends it because he values it as a stunning, cinematic, and psychologically deep exploration of the human condition.

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book

No Experience Necessary: Why Betting on Yourself in Your 20s is the best decision you'll ever make

Sawdust to Paw Patrol: The Spin Master Story (with Ronnen Harary) 7/13/26Russ Roberts

Context

Russ Roberts values this book because it offers thoughtful and entertaining life and business lessons that encourage young people to take risks.

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Russ Roberts12d

The Death of Reading (with James Marriott) 9/21/26

Are we living in the new Dark Ages? Despite vast technological advances, our societies are increasingly looking like those that preceded the advent of literacy. So argues journalist James Marriott, who sees in our abandonment of reading a threat to democracy and a reversal of many of the Enlightenment’s gains. He and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts trace literacy from its fragile first days in ancient Mesopotamia through to the printing press and the “Reading Revolution” of the mid-to-late 18 th century, exploring how—and whether—its spread shaped major historical events. They analyze Marriott’s claim

Russ Roberts19d

Incentives Are for Losers (with Adam Mastroianni)

Incentives matter, sure. But what should you do when following the incentives means quietly participating in something wrong? Psychologist Adam Mastroianni argues that obeying bad incentives—shading a headline for clicks, keeping the found wallet because no one's watching—is "loser behavior," a surrender of the hardest and most human task: figuring out right from wrong for yourself. In this wide-ranging EconTalk conversation, he and Russ Roberts explore Le Guin's Omelas, the "big fish" you glimpse that could upend your whole life, and Charles Sumner's near-fatal courage. They wrestle with whet

Russ Roberts26d

Honing your brain

What does a failed 19th-century Chinese civil exam and one of the deadliest wars in history have to do with how we hire, educate, and test people today? In this EconTalk conversation, Russ Roberts and education expert Daisy Christodoulou 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--even alchemy or the Cherokee language--reveals the best minds. Christodoulou dismantles that idea with evidence that skills are stubbornly domain-specific: chess masters, surgeons, e

Russ Roberts26d

Bluffing your way through

Russ Roberts26d

Meritocracy, Exams, and the Knowledge That Matters (with Daisy Christodoulou) 9/7/2026

What does a failed 19th-century Chinese civil exam and one of the deadliest wars in history have to do with how we hire, educate, and test people today? In this EconTalk conversation, Russ Roberts and education expert Daisy Christodoulou 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—even alchemy or the Cherokee language—reveals the best minds. Christodoulou dismantles that idea with evidence that skills are stubbornly domain-specific: chess masters, surgeons, eve

Russ Roberts1mo

Hamas and the Future of Gaza (with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib) 8/31/26

He lost his childhood homes, dozens of family members, and most of his hearing in his left ear to Israeli bombs, yet Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib insists that Palestinians must also take responsibility for Gaza's destruction and for peace. Most Gazans, he insists, have turned against Hamas for oppressing them, enriching itself, and bringing catastrophe to Gaza in the aftermath of October 7th. Alkhatib calls for Palestinian introspection and agency while also faulting Israel's settlement expansion and its undermining of moderates. He envisions a demilitarized Gaza run by nonpartisan technocrats, a Pale

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The Hidden Cause of the Industrial Revolution (with Ben Southwood) 8/17/26

What if the Industrial Revolution wasn't sparked by the steam engine, but by a quiet legal revolution in how England handled property rights? Ben Southwood of Works in Progress argues that the Glorious Revolution of the 1680s unleashed British growth by empowering a Parliament composed of landowners who simplified their own tangled, inefficient property rights. Through thousands of case-by-case acts, they freed up land for investment, consolidated inefficient farm ownership, and enabled a boom in privately-built roads, canals, and navigable rivers that created national markets. Along the way y

Russ Roberts1mo

Ben Sasse on Faith, Family, and Facing Death 5/10/2

Six months into a stage-four pancreatic cancer diagnosis that gave him 90 days to live, Ben Sasse sits down with EconTalk's Russ Roberts for a conversation that refuses easy comfort. The former U.S. senator and University of Florida president is candid about his physical challenges but the heart of this exchange is elsewhere: what actually matters when time is short. Sasse reflects on faith and mortality, the "shattering of idols" like his own workaholism, and his pride in his marriage. Along the way he offers sharp diagnoses of Congress's abdication of responsibility, the crisis inside Americ

Russ Roberts2mo

The Road to the Arab Spring

Most discourses about Israel or Palestine are morality plays of good guys vs bad guys. Egyptian-born Hussein Aboubakr Mansour takes a different approach, seeing the conflict as a self-reproducing system of political and economic extraction where Arab regimes, opposition movements, rival states, Western academics, NGOs, and Gulf monarchies like Qatar all convert Palestinian victimhood into their own forms of power, money, and meaning. Listen as Mansour speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about his childhood in an Egypt organized around the liberation of Palestine and explores why any exit from

Russ Roberts2mo

Horrifying, terrifying, but beautiful

What is wilderness when seven billion people share the planet and nowhere remains truly untouched? Author and journalist Cal Flyn discusses her book The Savage Landscape with EconTalk host Russ Roberts, weaving together journeys to some of Earth's most remote places, including a live volcanic eruption in Iceland she hiked toward despite the danger. Flyn rejects the myth of pristine, unpeopled wilderness, revealing that the wildest-looking landscapes have been shaped by humans for centuries. She explores spiritual quests at Mount Sinai, the return of predators to Europe, the uncomfortable econo

Russ Roberts2mo

Savage Landscapes (with Cal Flyn) 7/27/26

What is wilderness when seven billion people share the planet and nowhere remains truly untouched? Author and journalist Cal Flyn discusses her book The Savage Landscape with EconTalk host Russ Roberts weaving together journeys to some of Earth's most remote places including a live volcanic eruption in Iceland she hiked toward despite the danger. Flyn rejects the myth of pristine, unpeopled wilderness, revealing that the wildest-looking landscapes have been shaped by humans for centuries. She explores spiritual quests at Mount Sinai, the return of predators to Europe, the uncomfortable economi

Russ Roberts2mo

The secret of immortality

Russ Roberts2mo

Dwayne Betts on the Iliad 7/20/26

What happens when a poet who survived prison sits down with the world's oldest war story—and reads it in three sleepless, wandering days? In this second episode of the EconTalk Book Club on the Iliad, Dwayne Betts and EconTalk host Russ Roberts trade their impressions of the Iliad, discovering it's less about war than about fathers, friendship, and the stubborn dignity people find inside fates they can't escape. Betts connects Achilles's rage and grief to his own experience of incarceration and depression, while Roberts marvels at Homer's cinematic style and the strange tenderness between enem

Russ Roberts2mo

Sawdust to Paw Patrol: The Spin Master Story (with Ronnen Harary) 7/13/26

A nylon stocking filled with sawdust that grows grass for hair launched one of the most successful toy companies in the world. 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. Harary traces his journey from selling grass-growing novelty heads at 23, through Devil Sticks and Air Hogs, to building Bakugan and Paw Patrol into global franchises touching the lives of millions of children. Along the way, he reflects on the artistry of commercial creation and what it means to build something that outlives

Russ Roberts2mo

EconTalk Book Club on the Iliad (with Ido Hevroni) 7/6/26

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 Taratino film or the latest installment of the Avengers franchise. In the first episode of the EconTalk Book Club on the Iliad, Ido Hevroni of Shalem College speaks with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about the surprising relevance of a 2800 year old epic poem. Hevroni also provides useful background for first-time readers and what it's like to read the Iliad with combat veterans. Links and more information: https://www.econtalk.org/econtalk-book-club-on-the-il

Russ Roberts3mo

Do Less, Heal More: The Case for Medical Conservatism (with John Mandrola) 6/29/26

What if the surgery that fixed your knee did no better than fake surgery? EconTalk host Russ Roberts speaks with Dr. John Mandrola about a striking clinical trial in which patients who received sham knee surgery (a real incision, but no actual repair) did as well or better than those who had the actual procedure — one performed 700,000 times annually in the U.S. The conversation ranges from the power of placebo and nocebo effects (how expectation of harm can cause real suffering) to the broader philosophy of "medical conservatism" — the idea that humility, watchful waiting, and honest counsel

Russ Roberts3mo

Born or Made?

Can a phone be a cow? It could in 1990s 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. Listen as George Mason University economist Philip Auerswald speaks to EconTalk's Russ Roberts about how the extension of connectivity to traditionally excluded populations led to wide-scale transformations in productivity. They 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. Other

Russ Roberts3mo

It becomes the chip

Russ Roberts3mo

My favorite Smith book

Russ Roberts3mo

The Case for Sunshine (with Rowan Jacobsen) 6/15/26

Finding community can be difficult. But author Luke Burgis thinks the real challenge begins once we’ve found it and we’re subject to social pressures to conform. Listen as Burgis and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts trace the tension between individuals and their tribes through the foundational frameworks, such as family and school, that help forge our identities. Burgis argues that the disappearance of traditional rites of passage bodes ill for major life commitments such as marriage, and recounts his personal journey from Wall Street through the Great Books in search of a strong, differentiated self.

Russ Roberts3mo

Can a Phone Be a Cow? (with Philip Auerswald) 6/22/26

Can a phone be a cow? It could in 1990s 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. Listen as George Mason University economist Philip Auerswald speaks to EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about how the extension of connectivity to traditionally excluded populations led to wide-scale transformations in productivity. They 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. Other

Russ Roberts3mo

The Self, the Crowd, and Social Contagion (with Luke Burgis) 6/8/26

Russ Roberts4mo

What does education mean?

The Self, the Crowd, and Social Contagion (with Luke Burgis) Finding community can be difficult. But author Luke Burgis thinks the real challenge begins once we've found it and we're subject to social pressures to conform. Listen as Burgis and EconTalk's Russ Roberts trace the tension between individuals and their tribes through the foundational frameworks, such as family and school, that help forge our identities. Burgis argues that the disappearance of traditional rites of passage bodes ill for major life commitments such as marriage, and recounts his personal journey from Wall Street throu

Russ Roberts4mo

Who am I?

Russ Roberts4mo

What makes a good job?

If you want to change the world, how you spend your 80,000 working hours may be the most important decision you can make. Benjamin Todd, founder of 80,000 Hours, joins EconTalk's Russ Roberts to dismantle the career advice you've been fed since childhood. "Follow your passion" turns out to be a trap. Chasing a big paycheck barely moves the happiness needle. And being a doctor has a smaller impact than you might think, says Todd. Todd and Roberts wrestle with the real ingredients of a fulfilling career--engaging work, supportive colleagues, meaningful problems--while debating whether Jeff Bezos

Russ Roberts4mo

How to have a socially impactful career

Russ Roberts4mo

Making Your 80,000 Hours Count (with Benjamin Todd) 6/1/26

What can Tom Cruise’s last impossible mission teach us about usefulness in the digital age? Aled Maclean-Jones argues that dangling from cargo planes, soldering hard drives, and skydiving nineteen consecutive times is really an extended tribute to embodied knowledge. Listen as MacLean-Jones and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts analyze the unique concept of competence presented in Cruise's films. Along the way, they cover London cabbies who refuse to use Waze, a fatal dive at the sound barrier, solo sailing around the globe, and the small triumph of fixing a broken toilet by oneself. They conclude by ex

Russ Roberts4mo

Scared work

What does a lifelong atheist do when his dead father appears above him in the emergency room? Author and war reporter Sebastian Junger nearly bled to death in 2020 from a ruptured aneurysm, and what he saw in those moments sent him on a journey into physics, near-death experiences, and the nature of consciousness itself. In his third appearance on EconTalk, Junger discusses his remarkable book In My Time of Dying with host Russ Roberts. He reflects on covering wars from Sarajevo to Afghanistan, the strange phenomenon of dying people seeing the dead, and why he's still an atheist. Along the way

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Russ Roberts

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