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Russ Roberts
@EconTalker
Podcaster, author, President, Shalem College, Jerusalem (shalem.ac.il/en/) Research Fellow EconTalk.org RussRoberts.info
Educationecontalk.orgJoined May 2009

Russ Roberts’s Tweets

Oklahoma plans to kill Richard Glossip on May 18. The state's own attorney general has said that this would be a "grave injustice," but other people in Oklahoma are determined to go ahead and kill him. Sound crazy? Keep reading; it gets crazier.
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babble. If she could talk, could she explain why she laughs when I laugh? I don't think so. So what is laughter? Why do we laugh. Roger Scruton in his book On Human Nature explores the role of laughter in our lives. I need to read it again. In many ways, laughter is at the 6/
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beginning of a meditation on these questions. Consider Anna--the young woman with seizures who undergoes surgery and who laughs in response to electrical stimulation of her brain and who then tells the surgeon that she is laughing at the picture of the fork the surgeon 4/
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that happened that was not tragic. Slapstick can make us laugh. Mere words can make us laugh. Wit can make us laugh. The unexpected can make us laugh. And something laughter shows unease, discomfort as in "nervous laughter." What is that about? This week's EconTalk is the 3/
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delights her? Amuses her? Tickles her funny bone (a tautology)? Her laughter seems disconnected from what you and I as adults find amusing, comic, or sometimes painful. Laughter is complex. It can burst out of us. It can be a form of empathy when you tell me about a misfortune 2/
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Why does my granddaughter smile at me? Is it because I amuse her? Is it because she finds me to be a comic figure? I don't think so. She smiles because I smile and mimicry seems to be deeply built into growing up. And why does she laugh? Is it because something 1/
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To life.
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Simply beyond words. Lucy Dee, who was recently murdered by a Palestinian terrorist, was also an organ donor. Today, her remaining 2 daughters heard their mother’s heart beating in the chest of the woman their mother has just saved. No matter how dark the situation, no matter… Show more
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This episode from twisted my brain (no pun intended). Fascinating, comforting, and anxiety inducing.
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Neuroscientist @patrick__house recounts a visit to a vacuum repair shop that changed how he thought about his work understanding the brain. Enjoy this clip, and catch the FULL episode here: ow.ly/OeFn50O6khs
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All the people in my family are book people, as are all my role models ( ). I wrote this as an homage to book people, and I’m so grateful that Substack saw fit to promote it last weekend—the response has been incredible. open.substack.com/pub/charliebec
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Welcome to another edition of Substack Reads. This week we’re reading @bobbyhundreds, @theguyliner, @PerzenPatel, @charlesdbecker, @livamoah, and more. read.substack.com/p/substack-rea
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If you're interested PREORDERS really help btw! As to what I'll do after, in my ideal world I write The Intrinsic Perspective for 15 more years (publishing the other 3 books along the way) and then stop writing altogether and, like, help my son start a cool business
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About 100K Americans soldiers have died in US wars since 1948. The number in Israel since 1948 is about 24K+3K from terrorism. A crude correction for population puts Israeli deaths at over 1 MILLION. Unsurprisingly, Israel takes Memorial Day more seriously than the US.
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One of the most Jewish things about this country is that Memorial Day is the day before Independence Day. So bittersweet and so powerful.
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