Raymond Bonwell

Now I am reading Fyodor Dostoevsky THE KARAMAZOV BROTHERS (trans. Ignat Avsey; Oxford World’s Classics ed., Oxford University Press, 1994) and will share using #Karamazov, page. Enjoy!

@shemaiahng Absolute banger. Lansing’s background is also amazing. Wish I could re-read again for the first time.

Reading this spectacular book. So much to glean from it. Today I am struck by how much poetry these men knew and how it came back to them to describe the moments they faced.

This is how graph can make a persuasive case without a word of explanation.

We're thinking of astronaut Jim Lovell today as we remember him on his birthday. As one of the first three astronauts to travel into deep space on Apollo 8, we reflect on his words: "I put my thumb up to the window and completely hid the Earth. … everything I ever knew was behind my thumb."

the most philly response to government inefficiency since the declaration of independence

@jamesfcubie @GPTSeminary Amen!

@GPTSeminary cc @RaymondBonwell

"Think much of the worth of the soul, and exert all your energies to rescue sinners from ruin." —Archibald Alexander gpts.edu/apply

Wow. Sweet words. Someone has been paying attention. Thank you, Matthew.

Los villanos siempre tienen doctorado. Dr. Doom, el Dr. Octopus, el Dr. Doofenshmirtz, Hannibal Lecter o el Dr. No. Incluso el Dr. Frankenstein o el Dr. Evil. En cambio, los buenos suelen quedarse en la maestría, como el maestro Yoda, el Maestro Roshi, el Maestro Splinter, el Maestro Miyagi, Shifu o el mismísimo Luke Skywalker. Los estudios de posgrado corrompen el alma.

@OldeWorldOrder We have competition

They're calling it 'The Greatest Community Note In History'

This week's EconTalk episode with Mike Munger (the Babe Ruth/Hank Aaron/Barry Bonds of EconTalk with 51 appearances and counting) marks the 20th anniversary of the program. EconTalk has been supported from the beginning by Liberty Fund, an Indianapolis-based foundation started by an Indianapolis businessman, Pierre Goodrich, who believed in great books, conversations around the ideas in those books, and the importance of liberty. So while LF was started long before the internet, EconTalk (conversations around ideas) seemed very much in his spirit. When I started, I didn't know how hard it would be to do. Early on, I realized we had to come out every week. In the early years, we took off a week or two for the holiday break of Christmas and New Year's. But we stopped doing that long ago. We haven't missed a Monday for something like 850 weeks. LF pays me to produce the podcast and then we give it away which is wonderful. And being a Hoover Fellow also allows me to put in the time necessary to produce the podcast. So I am grateful to both organizations for the freedom to create EconTalk over the last 20 years. And now Hoover will be releasing episodes on YouTube as they come out. You can head over to the Hoover Institution page on YouTube and find EconTalk every Monday morning along with other video Hoover produces: @HooverInstitution/videos" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@HooverInstitu… All 1041 episodes are available without charge at the EconTalk.org website, and at my website, russroberts.info. Most (if not all) podcast sites like Spotify or the iPhone podcast app have all the past episodes as well. You can also find all the past episodes at EconTalk's YouTube page, @econtalkwithruss" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@econtalkwithr…, which is a little complicated now that Hoover is also distributing them but I assume you will figure it out. The older episodes don't always have video... Doing 1041 EconTalk episodes over 20 years has been an extraordinary experience. I have grown tremendously. My interests have widened. It has shaped me in ways I'm sure I don't completely appreciate. I like to think EconTalk has stoked my curiosity about the world around me. When I was younger, I wondered if I would hit some goal like the 1000th episode and stop. Now I think I will only stop when I can't do the job the way I think it should be done. So as long as I can keep reading, hearing, thinking, an speaking, and I can have a good internet connection, I hope to continue. What a privilege it has been to speak to smart, interesting people every week for 20 years and to be able to share that with my listeners. I am grateful to everyone at EconTalk who supports the program and helps me get this done. These days that's Lauren Landsburg, Rich Goyette, Les Cook, Katie Flavin, Marla Goldfinger, Sarah Skwire, Shelly Rogers, Cassandra Karnick, Blake Van Der Kamp, Pat Lynch, and Sean Shelby. And many thanks to those who started with me at Liberty Fund way back at the beginning or nearly so, Emilio Pacheco, Jim Cote, and Amy Willis. And now there is a new team at Hoover who is working on the YouTube side: Shana Farley, Jonathan Movroydis, Vy Nguyen, and Imagine Gonzales. I apologize if I have forgotten anyone. And of course, I am grateful to all of you who listen and who have stuck with the program even as we moved away from focusing on economics. I always enjoy hearing from you. Thanks for being part of the journey. See you next Monday.

On March 16, 2006, I released the first episode of EconTalk, The Economics of Parenting. The guest was the very funny always insightful Don Cox: econtalk.org/the-economics-… It was just under 35 minutes long. At some point not long after, I realized I had to release an episode every week and settled on the length of 60 minutes. At some point after that, I realized I could go longer than an hour, though only a handful approach the two hour mark. Twenty years later, and 1040 episodes later, here is the 20th anniversary episode with the great @mungowitz who has effortlessly graced the program a record-setting 51 times. Audio here: econtalk.org/the-economics-… Video on the @HooverInst YouTube channel (a new distribution channel for us!): youtu.be/BDTHOrB6KvQ?si… Enjoy and thanks to all of you who listen.

Did you know? NASA only uses 15 digits of π for calculating interplanetary travel. At 40 digits, you could calculate the circumference of a circle the size of the visible universe with an accuracy that'd fall off by less than the diameter of a hydrogen atom. π Day 2026

@GrayConnolly @Qantas Traveling mercies, and Godspeed!

For those wondering what departing Sydney is like … Australia is a massive island & so long flights are part of the Australian experience (hence our 747 attachment). Flying for work means appreciating @qantas when they make our tyranny of distance less tyrannical

@ingelramdecoucy Or, perhaps, living in a country where Veblen Goods are not highly regarded. That’s the world I try to create, daily.

I want to live in a country where no high end retailer like Hermes or Louis Vuitton would bother to open retail outlets in the nations capital because no one in the capital makes enough money to shop there. There’s something deeply unseemly about all of this in DC

Noam Chomsky once called English spelling "a near optimal system." You might think he was being ironic. Far from it. The silent 'b' in "bomb" reappears in "bombard." The silent 'n' in "hymn" is pronounced once again in "hymnal." The silent 'g' in "sign" comes back in "signal." English spelling keeps these words looking like the family they are, even when pronunciation pulls them apart. The past tense ending "-ed" is pronounced three different ways (-t in "jumped," -d in "played," and -ed in "painted"), but spelled the same every time. One spelling, one meaning: something happened in the past. English spelling is full of inconsistencies and silent letter because it’s not simply encoding how words sound. If English spelling were aiming to represent sound alone, it would indeed be a total failure. But that's not the kind of system English has. It encodes words' meaning and history as well.

“Both THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS flow from Smith’s commitment to the Scottish Enlightenment project of improvement, at the heart of which is what David Hume called the ‘science of man’.” Or so I argue in @LawLiberty lawliberty.org/forum/a-deeply…

CNN Reports On Japanese Teenagers Who Came To Hawaii For What Could've Been Beautiful Day At Beach buff.ly/e7UZnTg

I've got a very nice bariatric hospital bed, extra long, that was used by my late father for only a few months. It's in the Boston area, free to a charity/good home if you can pick it up. May not be able to arrange pickup until June. Email in bio.

Folks at @Liberty_Fund and @adamsmithworks published "Cover Page" for 10 part podcast series on "Wealth of Nations." I'm hoping it will be useful for teaching Smith, & for curious general readers, on 250th anniversary of publication of the great work! adamsmithworks.org/speakings/mung…

A math prodigy was accepted to Harvard at age 15 for what could have been a lifetime of achievement. But after living in the wilderness in Montana and writing a prescient manifesto about industrial society, his life would drastically change due to packages he sent in the mail.