Podcast — Lists & Rankings

Twenty-three months separate those two dates. A country supposedly enraged past all endurance somehow contained itself for almost two years — and then went to war anyway. So what actually changed in between? These are the top five reasons the United States entered World War One, ranked not by drama but by depth: from the reason everybody names first, up to the condition underneath all of them. At every single item, the case for war is given at full strength before one word

Five lessons from Bastiat, building from his most famous idea to his most profound: why the state produces nothing of its own, the satirical petition that destroyed protectionism with a joke about the sun, what happens when plunder writes itself into law, the seen and the unseen, and finally The Law — the 1850 essay that is the foundation this entire channel stands on.

We ranked the five presidents who expanded the federal government further, faster, and more permanently than anyone else.

We measure every president two ways — economic freedom and civil liberty — and a president has to move the country toward freedom on both to make the list. That single rule reshapes everything, and it is why the most famous "small government" names are not always where you expect. The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?