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Policy@McCombs

Policy@McCombs

A data-driven conversation on policy and economics. Policy@McCombs is produced by the Salem Center for Policy at The McCombs School of Business.

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Caplan Family School Graduation Podcast

 In 2017, 8th graders Aidan and Tristan Caplan talked to their dad, Bryan Caplan, about their homeschooling experience in middle school. Spoiler: After three weeks of regular high school, they resumed homeschooling and are now at Vanderbilt University.

August 31, 2023

The Myth of Left and Right: Caplan and Hanson Interview the Lewis Brothers

Brothers Hyrum Lewis (BYU – Idaho) and Verlan Lewis (Utah Valley University)’s new The Myth of Left and Right attacks the “essentialist” view that “left” and “right” are coherent political philosophies in favor of a “social” view that “left” and “right” are incoherent bundles of issue positions. In this interview, Bryan Caplan and Robin Hanson […]

August 21, 2023

Bryan Caplan Interviews Chris Rufo

Bryan Caplan interviews Chris Rufo on his best-selling *America’s Cultural Revolution*. In this wide-ranging interview, Rufo tackles some tough questions, including: How bad were the founders of critical theory, really? How fake is Continental philosophy? What would Rufo had done if he’d had Freire’s job in Guinea-Bissau? Are fanatics evil? And, does he really hate […]

August 4, 2023

Bryan Caplan’s interview with Ron Baker and Ed Kless

Full video of Bryan Caplan’s interview with Ron Baker and Ed Kless, hosts of *The Soul of Business* podcast.

July 31, 2023

Rousseau and the Collectivist Concept of Freedom pt. 2

George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. This two-lecture series on Rousseau, delivered in the late 1980s, shines a spotlight on the great intellectual outlier of the Enlightenment. While Voltaire, the Physiocrats, Locke, Smith, and Hume promoted rationalism and individual freedom, Rousseau was a harsh, if sometimes veiled, […]

July 27, 2023

Rousseau and the Collectivist Concept of Freedom pt. 1

George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. This two-lecture series on Rousseau, delivered in the late 1980s, shines a spotlight on the great intellectual outlier of the Enlightenment. While Voltaire, the Physiocrats, Locke, Smith, and Hume promoted rationalism and individual freedom, Rousseau was a harsh, if sometimes veiled, […]

July 27, 2023

Adversaries of Classical Liberalism

Historian and polymath Ralph Raico explores the classic criticisms and seminal critics of classical liberal thought.

July 17, 2023

Foundations of Classical Liberalism

Historian and polymath Ralph Raico explores the basic ideas and seminal thinkers of classical liberal thought.

July 13, 2023

George Walsh on The Enlightenment

George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. This lecture on the Enlightenment, delivered c.1992, gives a typically insightful and humorous intellectual tour of the Enlightenment.  The Salem Center’s Bryan Caplan, who heard Walsh live in 1989, has plans to make all of Walsh’s “lost” lectures on the […]

May 18, 2023

George Walsh on Protestant Fundamentalism, Lecture 2: Ethics and Politics

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 […]

May 11, 2023
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