EconTalk

EconTalk is a weekly economics podcast hosted by Russ Roberts. Roberts, formerly an economics professor at George Mason University, is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. On the podcast, Roberts typically interviews a single guest—often professional economists—on topics in economics. The podcast is hosted by the Library of Economics and Liberty, an online library sponsored by Liberty Fund. On EconTalk Roberts has interviewed more than a dozen Nobel laureates including Nobel Prize in Economics recipients Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, and Joseph Stiglitz as well as Nobel Prize in Physics recipient Robert Laughlin.

The first EconTalk podcast was released in March 2006.

Roberts interviewed Milton Friedman on EconTalk just a few months before Friedman's death in November 2006. When Roberts was asked in 2015 to pick his most interesting episode, he mentioned two podcasts and included the Friedman interview he had conducted almost a decade earlier.

EconTalk was awarded second place in 2006 and 2007 in the Weblog Awards, followed by 1st place in 2008.

By 2016, Roberts had recorded over 500 podcast episodes, and each week's new installment was downloaded by approximately 80,000 listeners.

Roberts has described himself as "a pretty hardcore free marketer." In keeping with this general ideological orientation, major themes of the podcast series include Austrian economics (especially the theories of F.A. Hayek), Classical economics (in particular the ideas of Adam Smith), the way markets evolve, spontaneous order (which is often referred to as "emergence" or "emergent order"), and the division of labor. Guests often include authors of recently published books of current interest in economics. Topics of interest to guests as well as topics suggested by commenters and listeners sometimes become extended themes in subsequent podcasts. Additional themes include health economics, law and economics, public choice, as well as the economics of education and of sports.

Because the podcast series unabashedly favors a laissez-faire approach to economic regulation, some center-left news organizations view it with a certain wariness. However, the series' reputation for thoughtful analysis also creates genuine interest: a 2010 editorial in the left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian warned that EconTalk is "far too trusting of free markets," but concluded by saying, "at the end of an hour, the dismal science doesn't seem so bad after all, but a fun and useful set of tools to approach some of society's biggest questions."

Roberts has a particular interest in spontaneous order and related theories from Friedrich August von Hayek which emphasize the role and nature of knowledge. This often finds form in how societies organize themselves in not just economic but in social and political spheres as well. A running question Roberts poses to guests in this vein is how we should set out to describe this critical idea, as normal conversation rarely captures the essence of the idea.