Can satire teach us more about liberty than straight argument ever could? Join historian Carl Richard of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for a 4-part VRG on classic works of humor as expressions of freedom, starting Oct 19. buff.ly/EXZGFVI

Reading guides, lesson plans, bellringers, and full topic toolkits on trade, prices, and the invisible hand — everything you need to bring Adam Smith into class next week. buff.ly/ra97yD3

A failed civil service exam. One of the deadliest wars in history. A 19th-century British reform that still shapes how bureaucracies hire today. @EconTalker and @daisychristo trace the thread connecting them, and ask what it means for how we test people. buff.ly/vrTJXjp

Join us Oct 19 as Peter Mentzel leads part three of our 12-part virtual reading group marking the 250th anniversary of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Sign up for this session or the whole series. buff.ly/lPSp6ZH

Everybody's heard of the Luddites. Few know the man who crushed them—or what that history actually says about AI critics today. Read more by @amingardi below:buff.ly/W6Nwkz1

The most-cited economist alive just wrote a book about liberal democracy—and left economics out of it. @joldmcginn explains what's missing. buff.ly/IyYpl6a @DAcemogluMIT

Are we living in the new Dark Ages? Journalist @J_amesMarriott joins @EconTalker to explore whether the decline of reading threatens rational thought, democratic culture, and the gains of the Enlightenment—and whether reading can make a comeback. Watch a new episode of EconTalk from the @HooverInst, @Liberty_Fund, and @Econlib:

Can satire teach us more about liberty than a treatise ever could? Join Carl J. Richard of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for a 4-week Virtual Reading Group on humor as liberty's sharpest, funniest weapon. buff.ly/13bjbbO

Why has $5 trillion in foreign aid done so little? Nobel laureate Angus Deaton's answer: it's not the money, it's the incentives. econlib.org/library/enc/bios…

Rome did not fall in a day, so why do we search for one cause? Join historian Peter Mentzel for part two of our year-long series on Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Sept 21. buff.ly/0dsd8k1

The paradox of @DAcemogluMIT new book: its most serious analytic failures are economic. @joldmcginn reviews the Nobel laureate's case for "working-class liberalism." buff.ly/iNyxVZf

A "shortage" should fix itself — price goes up, supply follows. So why has the US had a housing shortage for 30 years? @mungowitz says it's a prisoner's dilemma hiding inside the public hearing process. buff.ly/kdu5FCU

What do you do when the incentives reward the wrong thing? Psychologist Adam Mastroianni (@a_m_mastroianni) joins Russ Roberts (@EconTalker) to explore why blindly following bad incentives can become "loser behavior"—and why figuring out right from wrong for yourself may be one of the hardest things we do. Watch a new episode of EconTalk from the @HooverInst, @Liberty_Fund, and @Econlib: hoover.org/plus/research/inc…

Join historian Carl Richard for a VRG on liberty and classic humor. Four Mondays: Oct 19, 26, Nov 2 & 9, 2026, 2-3pm EDT. Pre-register only if you can attend all sessions. buff.ly/vtoeIG7

Families, cities, firms, states — none of them set out to create inequality, but each can quietly amplify it. Maurizio Bovi on how fair advantages spill across domains and turn tolerable gaps into entrenched ones. buff.ly/Tus9Ejf

Why do some conspiracies hold and others collapse? Jon Murphy (@jmurphy8289) applies a simple probability model — and explains why decentralized U.S. elections make large-scale fraud exponentially harder to hide. buff.ly/4VQaKZ6