In Faith and Economics, economics professors Dr. Russ McCullough and Dr. Peter Jacobsen and philosophy professor Dr. Justin Clarke discuss big issues that impact economic freedom and human flourishing from a Christian perspective. This podcast is an initiative of the Gwartney Institute at Ottawa University. For more information, contact us at gwartney.institute@gmail.com
Data Centers are going to drink all our water, use all our electricity, and then kill us all!" - so say an awfully large number of domestic coalitions. But if nobody wants these things, why are they trying to build them? What's going on? Join Russ and Justin while they discuss how to think about the costs and benefits of data centers.
The rising force on the left wing of American politics appears to be Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The charge from the right is that these are communists. But…what is socialism? What is communism? And if there’s a difference, how can we tell? Join the Gwartney Team for a timely discussion!
Aging ex-bureaucrat Anthony Fauci stood before congress last week to testify with regard to his actions during the COVID pandemic. Fauci, who received a blanket pardon during the last gasps of the Biden Administration, refused to answer questions for almost the entirety of the hearing. What does this mean? Where do we go from here? Join the Gwartney Team for a(nother!) pandemic discussion. We have…
The Sun has risen every day so far, so we feel confident it will rise tomorrow as well. We all use inductive reasoning every day, and we depend on the future resembling the past. However, unlike deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning seems to be on shaky logical footing.What is inductive reasoning, and why is this so? Join the Gwartney team for a discussion of the pleasures and perils of…
After decades of elite fearmongering concerning overpopulation, a new terror has lifted its head and is slouching toward us: underpopulation. What will the world look like when the population begins to crater? Should we be worried? Peter leads a discussion about the trend of declining birth rates, why this is bad, and some possible solutions.
The rise of Quantum Computing (QC) is increasingly deployed as a fatal threat to bitcoin. Is this accurate? And also... what exactly is QC, and what exactly is quantum about it? Join the Gwartney Institute for a discussion that begins with cryptocurrency, glances at issues in the foundational debates of 20th century physics, and bumps into a lot else along the way!
Elon Musk is now officially a trillionaire, and some people are now officially mad. Where is Elon keeping all this money, and why hasn’t he given any of it to me? Find the answer to this and other pressing questions by joining in!
What does it mean to live a good life? Is an ethical life always a desirable life, and vice versa? And what exactly is a 'virtue', anyway? Aristotle, student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great, had important and interesting answers to these questions. Join the Gwartney Institute for a discussion of Aristotle's conception of Ethics, and why we still in intellectual debt to this most…
The World Cup has drawn tourists from all over the world to the American heartland, and they’ve been posting their impressions to social media. Interestingly, it looks like many of them are _in love_ with America and American culture - the very culture we Americans are told to denigrate and apologize for!What’s going on? Join the Gwartney team to discuss!
Back by popular demand! We are revisiting one of our most thought-provoking conversations on the sunk cost fallacy and why our past investments can make it so hard to let go. The sunk cost fallacy is when one has already invested into a project, begins to examine the overall cost estimate involved and with the project, and thus commits to the project even harder because they are personally…
“Possession is 9/10ths of the law”, or so the saying goes. But in our contemporary lives and world, we often don’t have physical control or possession of the things that we think we own. And we do possess a lot of things that we don’t own, on some version of a subscription model. What’s going on here? Is this a good development? What does this mean for advocates of a private property based…