Thomas Sowell: podcast appearances and interviews

Thomas Sowell is an American economist, economic historian, and social theorist born on June 30, 1930, in Gastonia, North Carolina. He was raised in Harlem, New York City, and after experiencing poverty and domestic challenges, he left Stuyvesant High School and took on various jobs. Sowell served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War and subsequently graduated with honors from Harvard University in 1958. He earned a master's degree in economics from Columbia University in 1959 and completed his PhD in economics at the University of Chicago in 1968. Throughout his academic career, Sowell held professorships at Cornell University, Brandeis University, and the University of California, Los Angeles, and he has worked at think tanks including the Urban Institute. Since 1977, he has been a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy. Sowell has authored more than 45 books covering topics such as politics, economics, education, and race. As a commentator and author, he has been widely published and has appeared as a guest on television and radio, becoming a prominent voice in the American conservative movement. His influence extends to notable figures such as economist Walter E. Williams and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Sowell's views are generally characterized as conservative on social issues and libertarian on economics, though he prefers the label libertarian but disagrees with some aspects of the libertarian movement, particularly on national defense.