DiscoverThe Fifth ColumnUNLOCKED: Russ Roberts, on the Weight of History & the Elasticity of Memory
UNLOCKED: Russ Roberts, on the Weight of History & the Elasticity of Memory

UNLOCKED: Russ Roberts, on the Weight of History & the Elasticity of Memory

Update: 2025-10-071
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Last month, after years of you people begging us, we finally had on the great Russ Roberts—author, educator, and proprietor of the phantasmagorically influential podcast EconTalk. The extremely wide-ranging conversation, whose pre-Pivot-to-Video video is available to Never Fly Coach subscribers, one of the most could you please unpaywall this so I can share it? episodes in recent memory, and so here we are.

You SAID you wanted to share this. So share this! Pretty please?

* Russ’s drinks by the pool with Hitchens

* How potato chips are made. And what it tells us about economics

* Backwards towards “artisanal”

* How will a NatCon economy perform?

* It ain’t all doom and gloom (surprisingly)

* Do academic economists matter?

* Russ talks to Milton Friedman

* Do long-term economic trends tells us anything??

* On moving to Israel

* On returning to a (relatively) calm America

* Notes from Russ’s father

* A TikTok war

* Was Moneyball wrong? Or do people just not understand Moneyball?

* The Close Encounters mashed potato mountain

* And much, much more



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe
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UNLOCKED: Russ Roberts, on the Weight of History & the Elasticity of Memory

UNLOCKED: Russ Roberts, on the Weight of History & the Elasticity of Memory

Matt Welch