Imagine living through the Great Depression. It was a bleak time in American history with unemployment as high as 25% and despair all around. Looking back, it looks like a bleak time… but that may not be entirely true. In the midst of the pain and dislocation of the Depression, there was a flourishing and little-studied blossoming of entrepreneurship and invention that brought out things that we still use and appreciate today. Join us as we learn about the brighter side of the Great Depression.

Imagine a world in which the government has unbounded power, circumscribed by no constitution. This was the reality of things for most of human history, but more recently, in much of the world we have become accustomed to a constitution that limits the power of the government. In the United States, the constitution specifically lists—or enumerates as it is traditionally referred to—powers that the federal government has. These enumerated powers are always subject to ongoing debate, expansion, and contraction.

Imagine a world without economic crashes. A world in which the economy is always up and to the right, forever. That sounds like a great world, but it is also, perhaps, a less vibrant world. A world in which innovations are adopted less readily and new ways of thinking never emerge. Join us as we learn about economic crashes with Professor Harold James of Princeton who recently published a book examining economic crashes throughout history called Seven Crashes.