Recent Podcast Episodes

What does ChatGPT know about money? More than one might think. George Ford Smith asks the AI program some questions about money and gets some surprising answers.

While Henri Bergson did not point his intellectual abilities toward politics, lesser men who were unscrupulous commandeered his ideas to promote their own collectivist ideologies. 

When discussing the homeless situation in the US, Star Trek does not usually come to mind. However, one episode from about three decades ago was both insightful and prophetic in presenting what would be homelessness in San Francisco.

Ask most people why our economy is advanced, and they will likely will answer, “Technology.” Yet, technical knowledge is meaningless without capital development, and capital development is impossible without real savings.

The Ukraine war rages on and while the media and political classes repeat the “Putin started it” mantra, the evidence points elsewhere. The US government and its European allies have provoked Russia for years, hoping it would lead to an outbreak of war.

Remember when progressive governments outlawed church gatherings but sanctioned sex orgies? Yes, it really happened. 

In the past four years, a number of monuments honoring the Confederacy have been torn down or removed. As we have seen before, however, the activism behind this movement will not stop with just taking down Confederate symbols.

Dr. Philipp Bagus explains the main ideas from his new book which defends Misesian business cycle theory from a recent critique.

We must first build institutions that can replace the state. Institutions like families, churches, and schools.

Storms like Helene and Milton ought to drive us to recommit to and expand the very institutions that have made natural disasters more survivable for so many.

September's job numbers were driven by big increases in government jobs and part-time work.

Many proponents of free markets have tried to cast aside the name “capitalism” as a descriptor of the market system. They should take caution before doing so.

After Trump narrowly escaped another assassination attempt, the establishment seems uninterested in the motives of the would-be shooter. Perhaps that’s because he’s echoing the same simplistic narratives about the Ukraine war and Trump that they demand we all believe.

The political zeitgeist is to embrace protectionism, leading some who support free trade to embrace open borders. However, as Murray Rothbard explained, people and societies are complex entities and what may work for trade does not work for open immigration.

Banking systems around the world have huge effects on our lives, yet few people understand how banks work. Worse yet, even fewer understand the malign powers of central banks and how this system undermines economies. Thus, it is important to demystify these systems.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. In our present age of inflation, we are reminded of how Diocletian and other Roman authorities ordered price controls and other measures to hold down prices. None of these edicts were successful in bringing down prices.

This year's presidential election is presented in stark terms of right and left, Trump on the right and Harris on the left. However, it is more realistic to say that both candidates are to the left of where electoral politics was located just a couple decades ago.

The Fed’s specialty is propaganda through data, with a long record of failure. This is by design. Their communication tools must work in overtime, particularly in the face of a decision like this, to avoid “spooking markets”, though this veneer is easy to see through.

The Fed is desperate for you to think that “this time is different.” Unfortunately, Powell can’t seem to come up with explanation of why that is the case.

The only critical thinking in modern academia that stands out, is criticisms of capitalism—real and imagined.