Send us a text In this special episode of The Great Antidote , Amy Willis of Liberty Fund takes the mic to interview Juliette Sellgren, the voice behind the show. Together, they reflect on the evolution of the podcast—from its early days to the hundreds of guests it has featured—and how Juliette herself has grown in the process. They talk about what it means to foster curiosity, how Juliette approaches reading (and recommends you do, too), and what makes for a great question. They also discuss t...
May 23, 2025•34 min
Send us a text What happens when people stop trusting rules—and start rewriting them? In this episode, we are joined by economist Edward Lopez about the life and legacy of James M. Buchanan , the Nobel Prize-winning founder of public choice economics. We begin by unpacking Buchanan’s biography and intellectual roots: what shaped his worldview, who influenced his thinking, and why his work remains foundational to understanding government, rules, and freedom. From there, we dive into the rich idea...
May 16, 2025•48 min
Send us a text What makes some states thrive while others trap people in place? And what does it really mean to be free to move, grow, and flourish? In this episode, I talk with economist Justin Callais about the deep connections between personal fulfillment, economic mobility, and institutional quality. We begin with the personal: why real change starts internally, and how self-mastery and agency are prerequisites for meaningful, external progress. Then, we zoom out to ask: what kinds of system...
May 09, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Send us a text Remember the Amazon HQ2 frenzy? When nearly every U.S. state competed to become Amazon’s next home, offering billions in tax breaks and incentives? I do — I grew up right next door to Crystal City, Virginia, the site Amazon ultimately chose. In this episode, I talk with economist Peter Calcagno about targeted economic incentives—the controversial policy tool that fueled the Amazon HQ2 bidding war and countless other corporate deals. We explore questions like: What are targeted inc...
May 02, 2025•54 min
Send us a text What if modern economics has overlooked what truly makes us human? In this episode, Bart Wilson joins us to explore humanomics —an approach to economics that reintroduces meaning, culture, and moral judgment into how we understand economic behavior. We talk about how economists miss the mark by assuming too much about how rational we really are—and too little about what it means to be human. Wilson shares insights from his experimental work with non-human primates, showing how com...
Apr 25, 2025•51 min
Send us a text What is it like to grow up under a dictatorship? The speakers of The Dissident Project don’t have to wonder — they’ve lived it. And they’ve escaped. In this episode, Grace Bydalek joins us this week to discuss her work with The Dissident Project , which brings survivors of authoritarian regimes into American high schools to share their powerful, firsthand stories. From Cuba and Venezuela to Russia and beyond, these voices bring the reality of life without freedom into the classroo...
Apr 18, 2025•38 min
Send us a text Ryan Streeter is the executive director of the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. Today, he tells us about his time in the intersection of think tanks, government, and academic communities. We talk about cities, the importance of mobility and growth, how to foster those characteristics, skepticism of government, and living in and creating a community that fosters social cohesion and critical thinking. Want to explore more? Alain Bertaud on Urban Planning and C...
Apr 11, 2025•54 min
Send us a text We’ve talked about objectivism before on the podcast , but that was fairly introductory. Today, for the first time ever, I host two guests on the podcast to discuss the limitations of objectivism and where it fails to depict the good life. We talk about how they got interested in Rand’s thought, how they philosophically dealt with works that were mostly fiction, and where their philosophy, individualistic perfectionism, diverges from Rand’s and fills in some important blanks. Den ...
Apr 04, 2025•52 min
Send us a text Join us today for a fun conversation about all things government, UK and US, with Lord Daniel Hannan of Kingsclere! Lord Hannan is a member of the House of Lords. Today, we talk about how the U.K.’s legislative is structured, what is up with executive power, the importance of the West and cohesion on the freedom front, and the idiocy of tariffs . Want to explore more? Yuval Levin on Burke, Paine, and the Great Debate , an EconTalk podcast. Phillip Klein on Fight Club Conservatives...
Mar 28, 2025•57 min
Send us a text Bob Ewing is the founder of the Ewing School and hosts a Substack called Talking Big Ideas (go check it out). He has also gifted me most of the great books that I’ve read. Today, we talk about how he got started and how many of the great lessons in life are learned. We talk about counter-intuitive ideas, how to find the answers to them, and how to effectively communicate them. He talks to us about kettle bells and quotes (almost) every great author under the sun. Support the show ...
Mar 21, 2025•59 min
Send us a text We talk a lot about civil society and the importance of local, communal networks which hold us up when we’re down and inspire us to be good, striving members of society. But what does that actually look like? How do civil institutions get built, and what does it take? Today, I’m excited to welcome Rachel Ferguson to the podcast. She is the director of the Free Enterprise Center at Concordia University in Chicago and an affiliate scholar at the Acton Institute . She is the presiden...
Mar 14, 2025•55 min
Send us a text Jo Jensen is the founder of MovieGoer and she’s currently the SVP of Digital and Entertainment Strategy at Touchdown Strategies, a PR firm. and is an Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellow. Since all fellows have ventures over there, she’s currently writing a book called “America Has a Girlfriend Problem.” Today, we talk about the anxiety of my generation and how to unplug, attempting to grow comfortable with discomfort. We talk about how things have changed and how we can become mo...
Mar 07, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Send us a text What is Universal Basic Income (UBI) and why is it so popular among economists and freedom lovers relative to other types of poverty policy solutions? What does it even mean to “solve a problem” or to “learn” in the social sciences? Join us today to explore the answers to these two questions and many more. Today, I am excited to welcome on Peter Van Doren to talk about the history of poverty policy and policy debates and the reality about universal basic income. We talk about some...
Feb 28, 2025•46 min
Send us a text Welcome back. Continuing our ongoing exploration of what it means to be an individual living in a liberal society, today I am happy to host Charlotte Thomas to talk to us about what it means to learn and the importance of the liberal arts. Join us to find out what it truly means to be “educated” and how to do it. A mix of personal, inspirational, and relatable, Professor Thomas brings her knowledge of teaching in the classroom into our conversation. Of course, rather than simply l...
Feb 21, 2025•52 min
Send us a text The most common statistic cited regarding marriage and relationships in the United States is that the 50% of all marriages end in divorce. Another one that is gaining traction is that more Americans than ever before will end up unmarried and alone. Nobody likes these statistics. How did we get from the 60s, hairdos and stay at home moms, to a 50% divorce rate and a high probability of dying alone? Should we care? How do we balance the benefits of modernity – women in the workplace...
Feb 14, 2025•50 min
Send us a text Thomas Jefferson was a complicated figure. Essential to the start of our country and the university I attend, he is impossible to ignore. Yet, he held slaves, and at the same time said “all men are created equal.” What’s up with that?! Yet, we need to be able to talk about him. We also need to be able to acknowledge the contributions he has made to the world, while also acknowledging the flaws in his character and behavior. His legacy is complicated, and he was a complicated perso...
Feb 07, 2025•51 min
Send us a text Trade is all the rage these days. Or, at least, raging about trade is. Today, we unpack what trade and free trade are, and how to talk about it. We also address the abundance of lawyers in trade policy. Douglas Irwin is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College and the author of several books including Clashing Over Commerce and Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade . Want to explore more? Douglas Irwin, International Trade Agreements , in the Concise Encyclo...
Jan 31, 2025•52 min
Send us a text Today, I am excited to host Anna Claire Flowers to discuss F. A. Hayek and the mesocosmos. The mesocosmos is a fancy way to describe all the social groupings on the spectrum between the extremes of individualism and society. Think families, neighborhoods, farmers markets, firms, and universities. We talk about the importance of characterizing this missing middle piece of social organization and how it can resolve issues than a single individual or government can. She characterizes...
Jan 24, 2025•50 min
Send us a text Welcome back! Happy New Year! Glad to be back! Come one, come all! Eric Leeper is the Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor in Economics at the University of Virginia. He also is a visiting scholar at the Mercatus Center at GMU. Today, we talk about inflation . He explains to us how inflation theory has evolved and how we forgot about the relationship between the fiscal and monetary sides of the economy. Want to explore more? John Cochrane on Monetary versus Fiscal Policy, A Great Antid...
Jan 17, 2025•55 min
Send us a text Not often do we find people who make the case for how race, liberty, and equality belong together. Even less often do we find them making arguments in the height of racially and economically troubled times. And EVEN LESS do we find audio clips of them doing so. These people are inspiring. They stand up against the currents of the time to speak their minds, for the benefit of everyone. In doing so, they garner respect and build coalitions across ideological lines, because they have...
Nov 22, 2024•46 min
Send us a text Adam Smith was a man who read the Stoics. He liked them, too, talking them up in The Theory of Moral Sentiments , particularly in the section on grief. Then he lost two of his closest relations (old timey, right?), David Hume and his mother. These world-shaking events caused him to reevaluate what he said about grief in TMS and change our interpretation of his commentary on grief. So what did he say about grief before, and how did the actual experience of grief change his mind? Ho...
Nov 15, 2024•56 min
Send us a text This year’s Nobel Prize winners in economics are Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, who wrote on the importance of inclusive institutions to economic growth . But what on earth are ‘inclusive institutions’ and how do they differ from exclusive ones? Inclusive institutions are norms, either written or unwritten, about things like property rights , democracy, and the rule of law. But what other institutions are important to economic growth, if there are others? Some ...
Nov 08, 2024•46 min
Send us a text Picture a policy conversation, perhaps in Washington, about national security. Who’s sitting around the table? It might be the President, national security advisors, military personnel, or generals, but not economists. And yet, national security is often used as a reason to intervene into the economy. At the mention of national security, it seems economists often shut their mouths and run away (or hide under a rock, or something). But why? How should economists think about and eng...
Nov 01, 2024•55 min
Send us a text How do you teach about a man who does not fit neatly into a box? Hayek is one such man, and today, we tackle the difficult task of putting him in a box. We conclude that we cannot put someone like F. A. Hayek into boxes such as “economist” or “philosopher” or “political theorist”, because he did it all. How and when do you teach the ideas of a man who did it all? I’m excited to welcome Tawni Hunt Ferrarini to the podcast today to talk to us about teaching Hayek and his most import...
Oct 25, 2024•45 min
Send us a text 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 ev...
Oct 18, 2024•55 min
Send us a text The title of this episode might confuse you: what on earth do Adam Smith and F. A. Hayek have to say about social justice? A surprising amount, given how much we talk about it! Smith makes a big point of critiquing men of pride and vanity. What happens when those ultimately negative aspects of humanity go too far, into the territory of what he calls “domineering”? What happens when small acts of domination are aggregated throughout a society? So here we are, talking about slavery,...
Oct 11, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Send us a text The month of October 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of F. A. Hayek winning the Nobel Prize . Winning such a prize is obviously a big deal, but someone wins one every year, so what’s the big deal about this guy? Well. Hayek’s contributions to the field of economics are significant because they spoke to more than simply economics. Spontaneous order, price signals as information, and the pretense of knowledge all might come to mind, but they might not. (Maybe you’re new to this! If ...
Oct 04, 2024•53 min
Send us a text Do you ever take a moment to think about the fact that Americans, the people of the land of the free, spent 13 years under Prohibition ? Did you know that Americans used to seriously “drink like a fish”? And no, I’m not talking about fraternity men in college. I’m talking about everyone, everywhere, from George Washington’s parties to lunchtimes in the manufacturing factories (until Henry Ford put a stop to it, you know, for efficiency purposes). Then Prohibition happened. What we...
Sep 27, 2024•57 min
Send us a text What does it actually mean to run a think tank, to create harmony within an office building full of idea-confident folk? Some have called the think tank a monastery, some have called it an academic social club, and some have even called it a policy incubator. What truly is it and how on earth do you lead one? Leading a think tank is a multifaceted job, because you have your own scholarship to do too. Today, I’m excited to welcome the president of AEI, Robert Doar , to the podcast ...
Sep 20, 2024•52 min
Send us a text Even though I hope you’ve been avoiding the election news like I have (as you would the plague), admittedly, it’s hard to do. It’s like someone is blasting it outside your window at 5 AM. Or like a billboard outside your front door that you can’t help but see every time you step outside. Bummer. Fortunately, AEI’s wonderful Yuval Levin joins us today to talk about the remedy to the plight of election season and America’s recent malaise (not to echo Jimmy Carter…): the American con...
Sep 13, 2024•50 min
