Bryan Caplan – Why We Lie to Ourselves

Bryan Caplan is a New York Times bestselling author, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, and one of the world's most influential libertarian economists. He's the author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, The Case Against Education, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, Open Borders, Build, Baby, Build, and several other bestselling books. His next major work, Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets, is scheduled for release in 2027.

In this episode, Bryan and I explore one of the questions at the heart of this podcast: how do we know when we're fooling ourselves? We discuss why people often believe things they don't actually act on, whether we're capable of genuine intellectual honesty, why betting can reveal our real beliefs, why comedians sometimes make better truth-tellers than politicians, what caused Bryan to abandon Catholicism and embrace economics, and how social desirability bias shapes everything from religion to politics. We also discuss immigration, education, rationality, self-deception, and what Bryan would change if he could redesign society from scratch.

Bryan Caplan
Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001JSCEV0/allbooks
Website: https://www.bcaplan.com/
X: https://x.com/bryan_caplan

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