After nearly 12 years as general manager for the L.A. Rams, Les Snead has learned the power of humility when it comes to making big...
Russ Roberts hosts this episode of EconTalk with guest Eric Jacobus. Jacobus is a stuntman, actor, and martial artist who also produces action codes for movies and video games. In this wide-ranging conversation, Roberts and Jacobus talk about mirror neurons,...
Annie Duke is angry that quitting gets such a bad rap. Instead of our relentless focus on grit and "going for it," the former professional poker player, decision strategist, and author of Quit wants us to recognize the costs associated with...
Russ Roberts hosts this episode of EconTalk with guest Eric Jacobus. Jacobus is a stuntman, actor, and martial artist who also produces action codes for movies and video games. In this wide-ranging conversation, Roberts and Jacobus talk about mirror neurons, violence, and how animals and humans are different with regar...
Les Snead is in his twelfth year as General Manager of the Los Angeles Rams. Snead is the fifth-longest tenured GM in the NFL today. Snead and the Rams won Super Bowl LVI in 2022. In this episode of EconTalk, host Russ Roberts welcomes Les Snead to explore the role of the NFL GM. The two discuss how Snead operates in ...
After nearly 12 years as general manager for the L.A. Rams, Les Snead has learned the power of humility when it comes to making big decisions--who to draft, who to hire as head coach, and how to create a shared vision for his team. Listen as he and EconTalk's Russ Roberts discuss what it's like to manage a professional...
Author and consultant Luca Dellanna talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the importance of avoiding ruin when facing risk. Along the way Dellanna makes understandable the arcane concept of ergodicity and shows the importance of avoiding ruin in every day life.
When there's no vaccine on the market, people will look for other ways to be safe, including school closures and the handwashing of groceries. Listen as economist Casey Mulligan of the University Chicago talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the costs of delaying a vaccine, the hidden costs of FDA regulation, and wh...
Economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason University talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the benefits and dangers of artificial intelligence. Cowen argues that the worriers--those who think that artificial intelligence will destroy mankind--need to make a more convincing case for their concerns. He also believes that ...
If you've been paying any attention to EconTalk over the last few months, you know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is very much on host Russ Roberts' mind. This episode may end up being the most frightening of them all, as Russ welcomes Eliezer Yudkowsky, a Research Fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institu...
Eliezer Yudkowsky insists that once artificial intelligence becomes smarter than people, everyone on earth will die. Listen as Yudkokwsky speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts on why we should be very, very afraid and why we're not prepared or able to manage the terrifying risks of AI.
While operating on a 16-year-old girl who suffered from severe seizures, neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried stumbled on the region of the brain that makes us laugh. To neuroscientist Patrick House, Fried's ability to produce laughter surgically raises deep and disconcerting questions about how the brain works. Join Fried, Hous...
You've probably heard the phrase, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." What has it meant to you in the past, and might there be a way to apply this caution to the way we approach politics? That's what this episode is about. It's fan favorite Mike Munger's 44th appearance on EconTalk, and one of my favorit...
Is the perfect really the enemy of the good? Or is it the other way around? In 2008, Duke University economist Michael Munger ran for governor and proposed increasing school choice through vouchers for the state's poorest counties. But some lovers of liberty argued that it's better to fight for eliminating public schoo...
When he was a child, poet Dana Gioia's mother would come home from a long day of work and recite poems while she cleaned. It was a way, he realized later, for her to express the feelings she didn't want to describe directly, and to vent her sorrows without burdening her son. This, he believes, is what makes poetry so c...
As Israel turns 75, has it fulfilled the promise of its founders? Daniel Gordis of Shalem College talks about his book, Impossible Takes Longer, with EconTalk's Russ Roberts looking at the successes and failures of Israel. Topics discussed include the history of Zionism, the plight of the Palestinians, the Jewishness o...
They operate according to rules we can never fully understand. They can be unreliable, uncontrollable, and misaligned with human values. They're fast becoming as intelligent as humans--and they're exclusively in the hands of profit-seeking tech companies. "They," of course, are the latest versions of AI, which herald,...
Photographer, author, and visionary Kevin Kelly talks about his book Excellent Advice for Living with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. His advice includes how to have a deep conversation, why it's better to control time than money--and whether, in the end, we should give advice in the first place. Other topics of discussion ...
We've long been told how much we can learn from our mistakes. (This week's guest even wrote a book about it!) But what if a mistake is so awful, not only do we not learn from it, we can't even live with it. This is the sort of mistake Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle calls an Oedipus trap. In this episode, Econ...