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It’s often said that if you want to get to know someone, you should look through their garbage. Now, I don’t recommend this method of getting to know someone (it’s kind of gross). But biographers often have the luck of getting to know the people they study by looking through their stuff- that stuff not being actual garbage.

For example, Bruce Caldwell spent time with Hayek’s skis and botanical photographs. You might be thinking, why do I care? Why does anyone care? Hayek didn’t even write about skiing or photography!

That’s exactly the point: the minutia of life, those characteristics that are seemingly irrelevant to the output of an academic can give insight into their uniqueness. Hayek’s context, his family, and youth and involvement in certain political parties, shines a light on what, why, and how he thought, which helps us to better understand him and his ideas.

Join me today in conversation with Bruce Caldwell, one of Hayek’s biographers, to explore the context of Hayek and what it means to be a biographer. Caldwell is a research professor of economics at Duke where he is the Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy. He is also the co-author of the book Hayek: A Life, among other works. He also believes Santa Claus exists (stay tuned to hear why!).


Want to explore more?

• Don Boudreaux on the Essential Hayek, a Great Antidote podcast.
• Bruce Caldwell on Hayek, an EconTalk podcast.
• Rosolino Candela, Using Reason to Understand the Abuse and Decline of Reason, an Econlib Liberty Classic.
• Peter Boettke, Hayek's Nobel at 50, at EconLog.
• Peter Boettke, Hayek's Epistemic Liberalism, in Liberty Matters at the Online Library of Liberty.

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