Hayek Program Podcast

On this episode, we’ll hear a book panel discussion on Christopher J. Coyne’s book,In Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Folly of American Empire and the Paths to Peace (Independent Institute, 2023). In his comments, Coyne challenges the notion that the US military is necessary for global order, explaining that without the US as the global police force chaos will not overtake the world, and questions the efficacy and morality of a militaristic, top-down approach to global conflict. Coyne breaks down the history of the American empires into three phases: continental expansion, overseas imperialism, and global hegemony, and describes the features of the present-day American empire and the interventionist mindset. He argues that foreign intervention and the effort to export democracy to other nations by illiberal means can only lead to illiberal ends. A liberal empire is ultimately illiberal. He calls for reimagining our understanding of peace as a community-driven process, emphasizing the role of human imagination in peacemaking. The panel is moderated by Stefanie Haeffele, and they are joined on the panel by:William Easterly, Professor of Economics at New York University, Co-director of the NYU Development Research Institute, and author of three books including The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006)Ginny Choi, Senior Program Director of Academic & Student Programs, Senior Fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and co-author of Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? (2019)Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, PGT Programme Leader and a Reader in Politics and International Relations at Loughborough University, and author or co-editor of five books including Tolstoy's Political Thought: Christian Anarcho-Pacifist Iconoclasm Then and Now (2021)Christopher Coyne is associate director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and F. A. Harper Professor of Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is also a Professor of Economics at George Mason University. If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season two, releasing now!Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Peter Boettke sits down with Bryan Cheang, discussing unveiling liberalism in Southeast Asia. In this conversation, Bryan begins with discourse on the synthesis of different schools of thought in economic growth and development, stressing the importance of considering the relationship between cultural differences, classical liberalism, and economic development. He points out that in Asia, many countries adopted capitalist practices but remained authoritarian, challenging the notion that capitalism and freedom always go hand in hand. Bryan also argues for a broadening of methodological approaches in economics to include cultural and historical contexts of individuals.Bryan Cheang is the Assistant Director of the Centre for the Study of Governance & Society. He received his PhD and MA in Political Economy from King’s College London and is a graduate of the National University of Singapore. He has authored three books including Economic Liberalism and the Developmental State: Hong Kong and Singapore’s Post-war Development (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Liberalism Unveiled: Forging A New Third Way In Singapore (coauthored with Donovan Choy, World Scientific, 2021) and Free Market Humanitarianism (Ally Press, 2019). Bryan is an alum of the Mercatus Adam Smith Fellowship.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season two, now releasing!Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

On this episode, we’ll hear a book panel discussion on David Schmidtz’s book, Living Together: Inventing Moral Science (Oxford University Press, 2023). In his comments, Schmidtz discusses his academic journey and the reshaping of his philosophical views, emphasizing real-world observations over theoretical debates, and comments on the work of Adam Smith and David Hume. He stresses the necessary role of humility in sciences and highlights how game theory has challenged the pre-existing theoretical frameworks of human behavior, underscoring the limitations of theories in explaining complex, human interactions. The panel is moderated by Peter J. Boettke, and they are joined on the panel by:Ryan Muldoon, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Philosophy, and the Director of the Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics Program at the University at Buffalo, and author of Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World: Beyond ToleranceMargaret Schabas, Canadian Philosopher and Professor of Philosophy and Economics at the University of British Columbia and author of A Philosopher's Economist: Hume and the Rise of CapitalismDavid Schmidtz is the Presidential Chair of Moral Sciences and the Director of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at West Virginia University. He is a Distinguished Affiliated Fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and editor-in-chief of Social Philosophy & Policy.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season two, now releasing!Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

We're celebrating 300 years of Adam Smith! On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, we'll hear a keynote from the 2023 Markets & Society conference given by Emma Rothschild, the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard University. In this lecture, Emma Rothschild begins by building an understanding of Adam Smith's conception of markets. She reanalyzes Smith's "invisible hand" metaphor, challenging the traditional interpretation and suggesting that it might not primarily refer to markets or economic equilibrium but rather the economics of uncertainty and trust. Emma also discusses Frank Knight, F.A. Hayek, Smith's frustration with the frivolity of markets, the abolition of feudalism, the four bad markets, Smith's hope for the future, and more.This lecture is part of the University of Glasgow’s Smith@300: Celebrating Adam Smith as Scholar, Educator, and Citizen supported by the John Templeton Foundation.The introduction is given by Craig Smith.Read more about Emma Rothschild.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season two, now releasing!Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Bobbi Herzberg discusses a polycentric approach to solving climate change. Topics include the meaning of 'polycentricity', voting with our feet, Elinor Ostrom's work, and the advantages of polycentric systems for coping with climate change.

This week, Peter Boettke interviews Jennifer Burns, author of Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative. Milton Friedman achieved tremendous sucess as an economist including being a John Bates Clark Medal winner, a Nobel Prize winner, and the president of the American Economic Association (AEA). In this episode, they discuss Friedman's time at Columbia University, the origin of his economic theory, the influence of Frank Knight, Friedman's female coauthors including Anna Schwartz and Rose Friedman, Friedman's association to conservatism, and more.Jennifer Burns is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. She is the author of Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (November, 2023) and Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (2009). An expert on this history of conservative ideas and politics, she has written for The NewYork Times, The Financial Times, Bloomberg, and Dissent, and has discussed her work on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and elsewhere.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season one on digital democracy.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

This episode of the Hayek Program Podcast is a special crossover episode from Virtual Sentiments, S1E9, with a special introduction by Jayme Lemke to celebrate the start of Season 2! Go check out S2E1 of Virtual Sentiments featuring Christopher Coyne today!On this, the last episode of Season 1 of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins interviews Eileen Hunt, a Professor and Political Theorist at the University of Notre Dame, on Mary Shelley and the Ethics of AI. Hunt begins by providing historical context of Mary Shelley regarding her parents and Shelley as a child of the Enlightenment. Hunt explains the interdisciplinary nature of Mary Shelley’s work, rooted in a Grecian philosophical past and concerned with future-oriented questions about the rights of human beings, tying in Mary Shelley’s famous Gothic novel, Frankenstein, to modern considerations of the ethics and rights of artificial life. She encourages us to think of ourselves as artificial, technological creatures and to contemplate the rights of all artificial creatures, including humans and other forms of artificial intelligence. Additionally, Hunt discusses issues of genetic engineering, humanity as a built environment, Jeremy Bentham and reproductive justice.Read more about Eileen Hunt.Read more work from Kristen Collins.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season one on digital democracy.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Continuing our series on Enviromental Economics, host Jordan Lofthouse chats with Katie Wright about sustainability, extensive and intensive margins, intellectual humility in statistical analysis, how her experience in Mercatus fellowships has aided her research, the nature of the water scarcity problem in the Western United States, and more.Katherine (Katie) Wright is a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). She is an expert on water policy and her current work includes exploration of solutions to western water scarcity. Katie is an alum of the Mercatus Oskar Morgenstern Fellowship.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season one on digital democracy.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

On this episode, we’ll hear a book panel discussion on Randall Holcombe’s book, Following Their Leaders: Political Preferences and Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2023). In it, Holcombe examines how expressive voting preferences are determined and how we tend to adopt the preferences of the political elite. The panel is moderated by Christopher J. Coyne, and they are joined on the panel by:Roger D. Congleton, Truist Professor of Economics at West Virginia University Bobbi Herzberg, Distinguished Senior Fellow for the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and a Senior Research FellowMichael C. Munger, Professor of Political Science, and Director of the PPE Certificate Program at Duke UniversityRandall G. Holcombe is the DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season one on digital democracy.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Welcome to our new series, Environmental Economics, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse!Jordan Lofthouse sits down with Megan Jenkins to talk about endangered species, Prairie dogs in cemeteries, issues of incentive alignment, the rise of private conservation, the willing buyer and willing seller approach, and more.Megan E. Jenkins is the Senior Director of Research at the Center for Growth and Opportunity where she manages the Center’s portfolio of policy-relevant research while ensuring student fellows receive quality mentorship and hands-on research experience. Megan is an alum of the Mercatus Frédéric Bastiat Fellowship. To learn more about her work at CGO.Learn more about the Center for Growth and Opportunity's fellowships.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season one on digital democracy.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium