The Tom Woods Show

Some people -- known popularly these days as Greenbackers -- oppose the Federal Reserve for all the wrong reasons: it doesn't inflate enough (!), the bankers will wind up with all the money thanks to compound interest, there isn't enough money created to pay all the principal and interest of all the loans in the economy, etc. They want the Fed to be abolished so the U.S. government can issue the money directly. Not exactly a fundamental disagreement with the Fed! I take them on in this episode. Show notes for Ep. 873

With several options on the table on a complicated issue full of technical details, I thought it was a good time to bring on an expert who could explain them all to us -- the good, the bad, and the ugly. Show notes for Ep. 872

We know the government snoops on email and other electronic communications, and yet most of us do nothing about it: we figure we'd have to be full-time techies even to begin to figure out how to protect ourselves. DigitalSafe CEO Alain Ghiai joins me today to discuss why privacy matters, and how regular people can reclaim their email and file-sharing privacy. Show notes for Ep. 871

Harvard University's library system just released a guide to "fake news" and propaganda websites. Guess who's on there? So's LewRockwell.com, Antiwar.com, and even Wikileaks. Lew Rockwell joins me to discuss what we should make of this. Show notes for Ep. 870

The federal government has extended its authority into so many areas, and employed statutory language so vague, that ordinary people have found themselves criminals without having done anything they believed to be unlawful. Harvey Silverglate has observed this trend firsthand over the course of his long career in the law, and he joins me to discuss how bad it is, and what we can do. Show notes for Ep. 869

Hillsdale College's Brad Birzer discusses libertarian themes in some of the great works of science fiction. Show notes for Ep. 868

Historians will be discussing and debating the election of 2016 for a long time to come. Doug Wead's new book takes us through the history of the Clintons and the Trumps, all the way through the election season and its unlikely outcome. You'll enjoy this conversation. Show notes for Ep. 867

How did the low-fat, high-carb diet become entrenched within nutrition science, to the point that dissenters virtually disappeared? The answer gives us a fascinating glimpse into how nutrition science -- far from being dispassionately devoted to whatever conclusions the empirical evidence pointed to -- became politicized, and how dissenting voices were silenced. Show notes for Ep. 866

I critique an article trying to disprove the libertarian claim that taxation is theft. The social contract makes it all right, the author says.... Show notes for Ep. 865

We're told we need government because only the public sector can give us "public goods," which are either impossible to produce privately or are produced in the wrong quantities. In this lesson from my Ron Paul Curriculum course on government I put this claim under a microscope. Show notes for Ep. 864

Today I review Donald Trump's recent speech to Congress -- a speech the media loved, I'm sorry to report -- in terms of what it's going to mean for federal spending and the budget. Show notes for Ep. 863

Paul Gottfried, longtime veteran of the American Right and foe of the yawn-inducing "conservative movement," discusses the significance of what has become known as the "alt right." Show notes for Ep. 862

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, an ideologically diverse group of people joined together to fight against the drift of the United States into imperialism, particularly in the repression of the independence movement in the Philippines. It's a great story, which most Americans know little about. Show notes for Ep. 861

Today I talk to libertarian writer Antony Sammeroff of the Scottish Liberty Podcast, who recently gave a talk against the "basic income guarantee" idea to a crowd that liked the idea, and at the end was cheered. So we discuss capitalism, persuading opponents, and more. Show notes for Ep. 860

How did federal agencies become unaccountable fiefdoms? The story goes back over 100 years, and I discuss it with the author of a brand new study of this most unfortunate development. Show notes for Ep. 859

Basing myself on the Harry Browne book of the same name, I discuss how in my own life I've found freedom: from neoconservatism, from academia, and from povertarianism. Fun! Show notes for Ep. 858

We hear a lot about the opposition of the "deep state" to Trump, and that there's an effort at work to undermine him from within. What is the deep state, and is there anything to this? Show notes for Ep. 857

Kevin Gutzman returns to explain where historians have gone wrong on Jefferson, why Jefferson was no conservative, the ups and downs of his presidency, and more. Show notes Ep. 856

I favor speaking up in all kinds of situations, but a college classroom isn't a good one, in my opinion. The other kids don't care what you have to say and resent you for speaking, and the professor can make your life miserable. Marcelo Guadiana, a senior at UMass Boston and treasurer of the Young Americans for Liberty chapter there, begs to differ. Show notes for Ep. 855

The debates and policies that gave rise to American empire occurred at the very end of the nineteenth century, in conflicts that found Theodore Roosevelt and Mark Twain at odds. Author Stephen Kinzer joins me to discuss the transformation of America away from nonintervention and toward empire. Show notes for Ep. 854