The Tom Woods Show

Can entrepreneurship be taught or is it a inherent trait? Matthew McCaffrey joins Tom to discuss it in today's episode.

It's not enough that governments took away the people's gold and made them hold paper -- now they want the people to get rid of the paper! What's behind the global attack on cash? Charles Hugh Smith pulls back the curtain.

What is it, exactly, that makes Austrian economics so compelling, especially to someone who believes in freedom? This episode will help you explain it to your skeptical friends.

Lew and Tom discuss the first Republican presidential debate!

Gene Epstein discovered a crushing flaw in the argument of Thomas Piketty, whose book Capital in the 21st Century has been used as an indictment of capitalism and inequality. He shares it in this episode!

Bernie Sanders has generated tremendous enthusiasm for his presidential campaign. His ideas, though, are garden-variety leftism, based in envy, misplaced anger, and economic absurdities.

The Democratic Party of Connecticut has dropped the names of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson from its annual dinner. Does this move make sense? Were these good guys or bad guys, and would they recognize the modern Democratic Party?

We seem to understand progressives far better than they understand us. In these remarks, the keynote address at the 2015 Young Americans for Liberty national convention, I review example after sorry example of this phenomenon, while incidentally making the case for libertarianism.

Walter Block joins us to ask a question a lot of scrupulous libertarians have wondered about: may a libertarian take government money, or hold a job involving government contracts, and the like, while being morally and philosophically consistent?

Doesn't Child Protective Services exist to protect children against abuse? Former Child Protective Services investigator Carlos Morales tears down the institution's benign facade, and discusses the truth about its methods and activities, in this compelling discussion.

Mainstream economists see "monopoly power" everywhere -- even when a breakfast cereal company differentiates its product via advertising. It's crazy. In today's episode we discuss the mainstream view of monopoly, as well as so-called perfect competition and monopolistic competition. You'll be begging for some Mises and Rothbard by the time we're done.

I respond to the perennial claim of the neoconservatives that people who impose imperial adventures must be left-liberals. This is a fun one.

Today's episode consists of the remarks I recently delivered at the Mises Institute's Mises University summer program.

When the most radical of the French revolutionaries attempted the total transformation of society, the result was mass murder. I tell the grim story in today's episode. It's taken from my Western Civilization from 1493 course for the Ron Paul Curriculum.

We know early Christians avoided service in the Roman army, but was that because of its pagan religious overtones or out of a moral opposition to violence and bloodshed -- or both? And what happened to make military service acceptable for Christians centuries later? I explore these and other important questions with Professor George Kalantzis.

The late ex-Marxist Eugene Genovese famously confronted his fellow leftists over what he called The Question -- what they knew about communist atrocities and when they knew it. It's one of the most devastating articles I've ever read, and I review it in this episode.

The outstanding economist and libertarian writer Gene Epstein describes his unlikely journey to libertarianism. If you don't know Gene yet, you're in for a real treat.

Paul Krugman likes to claim that he correctly diagnosed what was happening to the economy and advocated the proper measures during the Bush years, leading up to the financial crisis. But put his words side by side with Ron Paul's, and we discover who the true expert is.

The Iran nuclear deal is being heartily denounced by the GOP presidential field, Rand Paul included. What does the deal say, and why does Rand Paul oppose it? How does he distinguish himself from the field now? Scott Horton returns to discuss these and other important questions.

Bob Murphy's new book Choice -- a digestible, easily understood overview of the arguments in Ludwig von Mises' Human Action -- is getting reviews as enthusiastic as any I have ever seen. We discuss the book, and controversial topics in Austrian economics, in today's episode!