Latest Posts

February 14, 2022

Terrorists and your valentine have more in common than you think

Economics is the study of human action; it’s the study of individuals making choices. As a result, we can use the “economic way of thinking” to understand the decisions people make when it comes to all types of behavior, including dating and marriage, Spring break and Vegas vacations, and, yes, even why terrorists commit acts of violence or voluntarily die for their cause. Continue Reading...
February 13, 2022

Joe Rogan is not a problem, but a mirror

The Joe Rogan Experience is one of the world’s most popular podcasts and, for the past two weeks, the world’s most controversial. Launched in 2009 by comedian and martial arts enthusiast Joe Rogan, the show was originally recorded in his home and is known for its meandering interviews, sometimes surpassing three hours in length, with comedians, athletes, businessmen, conspiracy theorists, journalists, musicians, fringe political figures, magicians, and doctors. Continue Reading...
February 09, 2022

Ilya Shapiro’s ill-worded tweet and the crying game

Ilya Shapiro, a Russian émigré, a serious scholar of the American Constitution, and formerly of the libertarian Cato Institute until he was scheduled on February 1 to begin running Georgetown’s Center for the Constitution, has found himself in a thicket of racial controversy. Continue Reading...
February 07, 2022

Reply to The New York Times: Online worship is still worship

I love watching men’s college basketball. Three games come to mind that I’m so thankful to have seen on TV—Chris Jenkins’ buzzer beater to lift Villanova over North Carolina in 2016, Christian Laettner’s dagger to catapult Duke past Kentucky in the Elite Eight round of 1992, and the heave of Derrick Whittenberg of North Carolina State, which his teammate Lorenzo Charles grabbed and dunked to beat Houston for the 1983 National Championship. Continue Reading...
February 06, 2022

What message does NBC’s Olympics coverage send?

The media world is not a principled one, and its decisions are often not moral in nature. Standards of coverage are rarely dictated by the metric of right versus wrong but by popular versus unpopular—determined more by what’s likely to attract viewership than what certain subsets of the viewing public may deem the right thing to do. Continue Reading...