EconTalk

What if you did everything right and discovered on your deathbed that you've wasted your life? Rabbi and author David Wolpe talks about Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. Weaving Rabbi Wolpe's own brushes with mortality and his years at the bedsides of the dying into Tolstoy's masterpiece, they talk about the lies we tell ourselves about death, our longing for honesty and human touch at the end, and the way that death forces us to take a clear-eyed look at life. They conclude by offering advice on how we can avoid Ivan's regrets.

For the first time in human history, we're not having enough children to keep the world's population from falling. And fertility is collapsing fastest not in rich nations but in places like Colombia, Thailand, and Guatemala, upending decades of economic wisdom. Economist Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde tells EconTalk's Russ Roberts that falling fertility has accelerated sharply over the past decade and defies easy explanation. Declining religiosity, smartphones and social media, soaring housing costs, and changing gender norms are popular, but unconfirmed, theories. Fernandez-Villaverde offers his own speculative answer, that modern life makes a third child costly and childlessness easy, but admits the puzzle is unsolved. What's clearer is why it matters: as retirees become the dominant voting bloc, spending on pensions and health care crowds out roads, schools, and defense. Shrinking economies make public debt harder to service, and fewer births mean fewer scientists, artists, and inventors.

Why do we keep doing things we know we shouldn't? And is that really a failure of will? Author Meghan O'Gieblyn spent years trying to answer that question, first in response to her struggle with alcoholism and her loss of faith, and then by means of Simone Weil, William James, and Iris Murdoch, who argue that the will is powerless over the things we want to change most. Listen as she speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about her new memoir, Will and Attention, which explores why paying attention does what effort alone can't, why we can reason ourselves into doing destructive things, and why the choices that most shape our lives are the "choices in between the choices," or the ones we barely notice making at all.

Before you give the government new powers, try the Munger Test: cross out "government" and insert the name of the politician you trust least. Then see if you still like the idea. In his 52nd EconTalk appearance, Mike Munger talks with host Russ Roberts about public choice, politics without romance, and why treating government like a loving family (or your family like a business), ends badly. Along the way, they talk about why Edmund Burke's famous defense of legislators voting their conscience cost him his seat in Parliament, how a group lunch explains politics, and why voters rationally know so little.

Are we living in the new Dark Ages? Despite vast technological advances, our societies are increasingly looking like those that preceded the advent of literacy. So argues journalist James Marriott, who sees in our abandonment of reading a threat to democracy and a reversal of many of the Enlightenment's gains. He and EconTalk's Russ Roberts trace literacy from its fragile first days in ancient Mesopotamia through to the printing press and the "Reading Revolution" of the mid-to-late 18th century, exploring how--and whether--its spread shaped major historical events. They analyze Marriott's claim that reading grounds politics in rationality, consider the role of the Republic of Letters in driving Europe's Industrial Revolution, and debate whether a book or a movie is better at conveying complexity. Marriott ends with a consolation: Just as fast food gave rise to the gym, informational junk food may give rise to reading as an intentional discipline.