Russ Roberts

My new book, WILD PROBLEMS comes out August 9--how to face the big life decisions that define us, decisions where so-called rationality either misleads or is irrelevant. Pre-order now: amazon.com/gp/product/059…

@JTLonsdale @HenshiG In our time when people struggle to find the strength to stand up for the Jewish people, it is particularly important to honor those who have done so in the past. Especially those who put their lives on line.

@HenshiG @EconTalker 🫡

On November 30, 1944, Ángel Sanz Briz, the Spanish consul-general in Budapest, quietly left Hungary on orders from Madrid. He left a note telling Giorgio Perlasca he could escape to Switzerland via the Spanish embassy in Vienna. Perlasca didn’t leave. He stood alone in the empty embassy, surrounded by safe houses full of Jews protected by the Spanish flag. Without a consul, he knew the protection would collapse and the people inside would be deported. So he made a bold decision. On embassy letterhead, he declared that Sanz Briz was on temporary leave and that he — Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian businessman and former fascist — had been appointed chargé d’affaires. He signed it, walked into the Hungarian government offices, and handed it over. They believed him. Perlasca had once believed in fascism. Born in Italy in 1910, he had fought for Mussolini in East Africa and for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. But in 1938, when Mussolini introduced racial laws against Italian Jews, something broke in him. He became fiercely anti-Nazi. In 1944, trapped in Budapest after Italy’s surrender, he had sought protection at the Spanish embassy. Sanz Briz gave him a Spanish passport and the name Jorge. Perlasca immediately began helping issue protection papers and maintain safe houses. After the ambassador’s departure, Perlasca ran the embassy alone for 45 days — from December 1, 1944, to January 16, 1945. Using a long-cancelled 1924 Spanish law, he issued forged protection documents to thousands of Jews, regardless of their origin. He kept eight safe houses flying the Spanish flag, bought food on the black market with his own money when funds ran out, and repeatedly risked his life at deportation sites. Working alongside Raoul Wallenberg, he bluffed and argued to pull Jews off trains — even facing down Adolf Eichmann on one occasion. When the Arrow Cross and SS planned to burn the Budapest Ghetto with its 60,000 Jews inside, Perlasca confronted the Hungarian interior minister. He threatened diplomatic and financial retaliation from Spain and offered to help the minister’s family escape the Soviets. The plan was cancelled. The ghetto’s inhabitants survived. After the war, Perlasca returned to Italy, married, and raised a family. For 42 years he told no one what he had done — not even his wife and children. In 1987, the people he had saved finally found him through a newspaper advertisement. His family learned the truth the same way. He saved 5,218 people — more than Oskar Schindler. In 1989, Yad Vashem named him Righteous Among the Nations. When asked why, he simply said: “I couldn’t stand seeing people branded like animals. I couldn’t stand seeing children being killed. I did what I had to do.”

Better to be lovely than popular. But popular is the glittering path. So hard not to be seduced by it.

On a new EconTalk, @TylerCowen makes the case that AI won't break education or work—it'll redefine both, and the smartest students will learn to use it, not fear it. Watch the full conversation with Russ Roberts (@EconTalker) from the @HooverInst, @Liberty_Fund, and @Econlib:

An update a month into the war: open.substack.com/pub/listeningt…

Obedience to the unenforceable.

You have to love the headline: how long have you been beating your wife?

The world is truly upside down! The Washington Post has published a brilliant article, written by, get this, a professor! To give you some flavor, here are a few choice lines by @jmurtazashvili: 1) "We are living through the first alt-war: a conflict in which the war fought online and the war fought in reality have diverged so completely that they might as well be happening on different planets. It’s not that people lack information, it’s more that they are constructing an entirely different alternate reality — one that confirms what they already believe." 2) "What worries me more than the fake videos are the people who cannot fathom that this war is going well for the United States, for Israel and maybe even for the long-suffering people of Iran. The strategic picture is more favorable than the online narrative suggests." 3) "Two weeks into the war, I watch otherwise reasonable analysts sprint to catastrophe. Former officials, thinktank scholars, credentialed professionals who are supposed to know how to read a conflict. Within days they had written the obituary: quagmire, overreach, disaster." 4) "The liberal internationalist left and the isolationist right — two camps that have agreed on almost nothing for decades — have suddenly found themselves in lockstep, racing to declare the war a failure before it had barely begun. This is the new blob: not the old foreign-policy establishment that the term originally described but a new amalgamation that has arrived at the same conclusion from opposite directions. Together they are the most powerful engine of the alt-war." The truth. In the mainstream media. By a professor. And written well. Four things I thought I'd never see again in my lifetime.

One of the best podcasts running. Week after week, year after year (going on 21!), @EconTalker and his guests offer fascinating ideas to explain the world—or at least shed a little light on underappreciated corners of it. Well worth your time.

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

Fantastic listen. How can a hero be a legend even though they fail? Why have you heard of Anne Frank’s diaries but not Hannah Senesh’s?

@robt_little @jerrythornton As much as I loved Larry Bird, Russell is above him.

@EconTalker @jerrythornton Econtalker and Jerry, two worlds colliding for me

Yaz doesn't belong. One great season. Outstanding LF. But a 162 game avg. of .285-22-90 doesn't make him Top 10 just because he played 23 years. Hannah, McHale, Bourque, Clemens or Rice are all more worthy.

His understanding of Israel and the Jews is rivaled by his understanding of how the economy works. Wouldn’t have imagined it possible.

Our primary job as Jews is not to fight Jew-hate. It's to live as Jews. Jew-hate is not a Jewish problem. It's a societal illness. To try to defend ourselves is to legitimize a lie. Don't resist Jew-hate. Outshine it.💫 -- @ZachRossX

@HeerJeet Zionism is incompatible with free speech? Weird take. Israel is the only country in the ME with a free press. What do you mean?

Zionism is increasingly incompatible with free speech (because it has no defence against reasonable criticism) so we're seeing a new push for censorship in Israel and allied countries.

...and I always appreciate the chance to go deep with @EconTalker. Thanks for having me on to discuss "Out of the Sky."

I always love talking to @MattiFriedman. Beautiful book.

@HappyCamperLAX I like Zvi Mowshowitz’s. You can find him here and on Substack I think.

Side note, just listened to your podcast re intuition yesterday. I loved it. Thank you. Side note, you mentioned you subscribe to a couple AI newsletters to keep up to date on the technology. Would you kindly be willing to share a couple recommendations? This gen x woman doesn’t know where to start! 🌺

My short essay on what we can learn from Tom Stoppard's Arcadia about the nature of progress and the worldview of science vs. the humanities. Loved writing this.