Policy@mccombs

Lecture 1: Theology and Epistemology George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. These two lectures on Protestant Fundamentalism, delivered in the late-80s, distill decades of study of Protestant Fundamentalism with great insight and humor, handling the ideas with the same seriousness that intellectual historians normally reserve for the Great Thinkers of Western Philosophy.  Lecture 1 covers fundamentalist theology and epistemology; lecture 2 delves into fundamentalist ethics and politics.  The Salem Center’s Bryan Caplan, who heard Walsh live in 1989, has plans to make all of Walsh’s “lost” lectures on the history of ideas once again available to the curious public.  Warning: The first few minutes of Lecture 1 are sadly missing.

George Smith (1949-2022) was a learned and extraordinarily charismatic autodidact. A wunderkind, or close to it, Smith published his most famous book, *Atheism: The Case Against God* when he was only 25.  He once bragged that he dropped out of high school to start college, dropped out of college to start a Ph.D., and then dropped out his Ph.D. program to become one of the most beloved Liberty and Society speakers for the Institute for Humane Studies.  This lecture, delivered around 1990, promotes *Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies*, a book of essays. The intro is R-rated, but the body of the talk is a deep – and deeply-entertaining - intellectual history of the ethics and psychology of puritanism.

Bryan Caplan and Robin Hanson interview – and challenge - Alex Epstein about his controversial new book, *Fossil Future*.  How many “climate denialists” really exist – and what should they take away from Epstein’s book?  How widespread is the view that “nature is sacred” – and what’s the best way to deal with it?  Why should we trust Epstein instead of most of the leading experts?  Why did he write *Fossil Future* instead of *Nuclear Future*? And much more.

George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. These four lectures on Marxism, delivered in the mid-80s a few years before the collapse of the Soviet bloc, distill decades of study of Marxist ideas with great insight and humor. Lecture 1 covers the Marxism’s intellectual precursors; lecture 2 delves into Marxist philosophy; lecture 3 goes into Marxist economics; and lecture 4 finishes with Marxist politics. The Salem Center’s Bryan Caplan, who heard Walsh live in 1989, has plans to make all of Walsh’s “lost” lectures on the history of ideas once again available to the curious public.

George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. These four lectures on Marxism, delivered in the mid-80s a few years before the collapse of the Soviet bloc, distill decades of study of Marxist ideas with great insight and humor. Lecture 1 covers the Marxism’s intellectual precursors; lecture 2 delves into Marxist philosophy; lecture 3 goes into Marxist economics; and lecture 4 finishes with Marxist politics. The Salem Center’s Bryan Caplan, who heard Walsh live in 1989, has plans to make all of Walsh’s “lost” lectures on the history of ideas once again available to the curious public.

George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. These four lectures on Marxism, delivered in the mid-80s a few years before the collapse of the Soviet bloc, distill decades of study of Marxist ideas with great insight and humor. Lecture 1 covers the Marxism’s intellectual precursors; lecture 2 delves into Marxist philosophy; lecture 3 goes into Marxist economics; and lecture 4 finishes with Marxist politics. The Salem Center’s Bryan Caplan, who heard Walsh live in 1989, has plans to make all of Walsh’s “lost” lectures on the history of ideas once again available to the curious public.

George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. These four lectures on Marxism, delivered in the mid-80s a few years before the collapse of the Soviet bloc, distill decades of study of Marxist ideas with great insight and humor. Lecture 1 covers the Marxism’s intellectual precursors; lecture 2 delves into Marxist philosophy; lecture 3 goes into Marxist economics; and lecture 4 finishes with Marxist politics. The Salem Center’s Bryan Caplan, who heard Walsh live in 1989, has plans to make all of Walsh’s “lost” lectures on the history of ideas once again available to the curious public.

Sergiu Klainerman is Princeton University’s most vocal and articulate dissident professor.  Find out what this famed mathematician, a refugee from Communist Romania, thinks about (a) how the Marxist-Leninism education of his youth compares to the woke education of today, (b) the decline of academic freedom and intellectual meritocracy at Princeton and higher ed generally, and (c) the best way to reverse this decline.

Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He joins the podcast to talk to Richard Hanania about his involvement in Operation Warp Speed, a uniquely successful federal government project. Richard asks how broadly applicable its lessons are, whether or not we could do something similar for cancer, and why economists and public health officials had such divergent opinions on the need to speed up the process of approving and distributing a vaccine.  Alex also discusses the Baumol effect, which he argues can explain much about rising costs in healthcare and education. Richard pushes back on the theory as a sufficient explanation, and asks whether a simple libertarian story better fits the facts, arguing that government support for these industries also plays a role. The conversation then goes on to talk about the rise of crypto, why America is severely under-policed, and how recent years have seen the collapse of challenges to liberal democracy. 

Part one of the conversation with Luigi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKwZqNOeGg4 Luigi Achilli's CV: https://me.eui.eu/luigi-achilli/publications-other/

Human Smuggling is Underrated substack Luigi Achilli

Philippe Lemoine joins Salem Center visiting scholar Richard Hanania to discuss epidemiology in the US and across the globe.

Matt Ridley's books have sold over a million copies, been translated into 31 languages and won several awards. His books include The Red Queen, The Origins of Virtue, Genome, Nature via Nurture, Francis Crick, The Rational Optimist, The Evolution of Everything, and How Innovation Works. His TED talk "When Ideas Have Sex" has been viewed more than two million times. He writes a weekly column in The Times (London) and writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal. As Viscount Ridley, he was elected to the House of Lords in February 2013. He served on the science and technology select committee 2014-2017. With BA and DPhil degrees from Oxford University, Matt Ridley worked for the Economist for nine years as science editor, Washington correspondent and American editor, before becoming a self-employed writer and businessman. He was founding chairman of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle. He was non-executive chairman of Northern Rock plc and Northern 2 VCT plc.

Bryan Caplan interviews Richard Hanania, head of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, on international relations, war, peace, sanctions, grand strategy (and the lack thereof), partisanship, ideology, wokeness, academia, discrimination, civil rights, legal reform, and Hanania’s unique career path

Jay Battacharya is a Professor of Economics and Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

Dr. Tyler Goodspeed is the Kleinheinz Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. From 2020-21 he was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President, having previously served as Member, Chief Economist for Macroeconomic Policy, and Senior Economist for public finance and macroeconomics. Before joining the Council, he was a Junior Fellow in Economics at the University of Oxford, and Lecturer in Economics at King’s College London. His primary research and teaching fields are economic history and monetary economics, with secondary interests in macroeconomics and political economy. Prior to earning his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2014, he received his A.B. from Harvard, summa cum laude, in 2008, and from 2008-2009 was a Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge.  Goodspeed’s second book, Legislating Instability, examines the effects of unlimited liability and regulatory capture on financial stability in “free banking” Scotland.  He

Jason F. Brennan is an American philosopher and business professor. He is currently the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. Brennan writes about democratic theory, the ethics of voting, competence and power, freedom, and the moral foundations of commercial society. His work focuses on the intersection of normative political philosophy and the empirical social sciences, especially on questions about voter behavior, pathologies of democracy, and the consequences of freedom. He argues that most citizens have a moral obligation not to vote.

Dr. Charles Calomiris joins Dr. Scott Bauguess and Dr. Cesare Fracassi to discuss FinTech.  Charles W. Calomiris is the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at Columbia Business School and a Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. He recently served as Chief Economist and Senior Deputy Comptroller […]

Three writers with different approaches to foreign policy reflect on 20 years of America’s military response to 9/11. Speakers: Peter Brookes, (Heritage Foundation) Senior Research Fellow, Weapons of Mass Destruction and Counter Proliferation, Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy Elan Journo (Ayn Rand Institute)Specializes in the application of Rand’s ethics of rational egoism to […]