Cato Event Podcast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We typically think of school choice as something that benefits students by helping them find the educational options that work best for them. But teachers also benefit from more options. In the past, the vast majority of teaching jobs have been in conventional public schools. But educational entrepreneurship—encouraged by expanded school choice programs—is changing the landscape.A recent Morning Consult teacher survey found high levels of support for a variety of school choice programs. For education savings accounts, which let parents use a portion of state education funding for a variety of education‐​related expenses, 76 percent of teachers expressed support—including 73 percent of district school teachers. But many teachers are unfamiliar with school choice programs and alternative education opportunities or don’t realize how they can benefit from these options. Red tape, lack of autonomy, and inability to serve kids’ needs are some of teachers’ biggest complaints. School choice would help solve each of those problems.The Cato Institute will be hosting a virtual panel of former public school teachers sharing their experiences within a variety of teaching environments. This will be an opportunity for teachers to learn about other options and see how they can create their own paths with nearly limitless possibilities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the more than 50 years that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has been on the books, it has helped revolutionize Americans’ understanding of how their government works in practice. But the agencies and departments of the executive branch that are covered by the FOIA have persistently attempted to thwart its effective implementation.The most recent statutory update to FOIA took place in 2016, and with several years of experience with the revised law behind us, it’s fair to ask: Is FOIA working better now? If not, why not? What is it like to battle federal agencies and departments weekly to pry loose information dealing with immigration policy, telecommunications policy, and the national security establishment? What additional changes to FOIA are needed to truly make the law work as intended? Join our expert panel as we discuss these and related issues. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With massive U.S. debt and deficits, inflation at a 40‐​year high, and popular/​political pressure for expanding the Fed’s mandate, it’s time to assess the Fed’s performance and future. Please join leading scholars and policymakers to discuss “The State of Monetary Policy after 40 Years.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Racial classification is ubiquitous in American life. Job applications, university admissions, government contracts, and much more involve checking a box stating whether one is black, white, Asian, Hispanic, or Native American.David Bernstein has written a surprising and revealing book on how these classifications came about, with the federal government playing a leading role. It asks:Should Pakistani, Chinese, and Filipino Americans be in the same category despite obvious differences in culture, appearance, religion, and more?Why does the government not allow Americans to classify themselves as biracial or multiracial?How did a dark‐​complexioned, burka‐​wearing Muslim Yemeni come to be classified as generically white while a blond‐​haired, blue‐​eyed newcomer is classified as minority if arriving from a country where Spanish is spoken?Why does the government require biomedical researchers to classify study participants by official racial categories that have no scientific basis?Bernstein’s provocative book ends with a call for a separation of race and state. Commenting will be Jane Coaston, host of the New York Times’s podcast The Argument, and Prof. Robert Cottrol, a scholar of race and legal history at George Washington University Law School. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Generations of people have been taught that population growth makes resources scarcer. In 2021, for example, one widely publicized report argued, “The world’s rapidly growing population is consuming the planet’s natural resources at an alarming rate.… The world currently needs 1.6 Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources … [a figure that] could rise to 2 planets by 2030.” But is that true? After analyzing the prices of hundreds of commodities, goods, and services spanning two centuries, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley found that resources became more abundant as the population grew. That was especially true when they looked at “time prices,” which represent the length of time that people must work to buy something. The authors also found that resource abundance increased faster than the population―a relationship that they call “superabundance.” They conclude that, on average, every additional human being creates more value than he or she consumes. Please join us for the official launch of Cato’s latest book: Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The virus that causes COVID-19 has now become endemic after it first emerged two and a half years ago. In the pandemic’s early days, many countries’ public health officials curtailed economic and social activity to various degrees, prescribed social distancing, enforced lockdowns, required masking, and pushed for other nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce illness and death. Those NPIs imposed an enormous economic and social cost by greatly reducing individual liberty in exchange for promised health benefits. Elsewhere, most famously in Sweden, public health officials were fiercely criticized for implementing less‐​harsh “light touch” NPI measures. Sweden’s approach presents a fascinating quasi‐​natural experiment to evaluate the merits and demerits of the more liberal approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic and to evaluate whether the loss in personal and economic freedom was partly compensated by a decrease in illness and death. Sweden’s outcomes on viral spread, excess mortality, and the socioeconomic consequences of COVID-19 compare well with other countries and suggest that strict NPI policies imposed more harm than good.Joining us to discuss how well Sweden’s approach worked are Jeanne Lenzer, an independent investigative journalist and regular contributor to The BMJ who has studied this issue; Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH, an epidemiologist and public health policy analyst who is an associate professor at University of California San Francisco School of Medicine; Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and coauthor of the Great Barrington Declaration that urged a pandemic policy of “focused protection”; and Johan Norberg, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who resides in Stockholm, Sweden, and has studied as well as experienced his country’s pandemic policy. The discussion will be moderated by Cato Institute senior fellow Jeffrey A. Singer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Planning difficult conversations in your classroom this year? Join us for the last of our Summer with Sphere webinar series and learn techniques and how to plan for these conversations. Hear from a MS and HS teacher on how they prepare their students for civil discourse in their classes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.