Yascha Mounk and Al Roth discuss what we miss when we separate economics from human emotion. Alvin E. Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2012. His latest book is Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work . In this week’s conversation,...
May 12, 2026•1 hr 2 min
Yascha Mounk and Timothy Garton Ash discuss how Britain’s shift toward populism reflects broader European trends. Timothy Garton Ash is the author of Homelands: A Personal History of Europe and writes the newsletter History of the Present . His upcoming book, Europe in 7½ Chapters , will be published in October 2026. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Timothy Garton Ash discuss the crisis of Labour and rise of Reform, why Europeans are struggling to adapt to a new political, cultural,...
May 09, 2026•1 hr 14 min
Yascha Mounk and Laurenz Guenther discuss why ordinary voters and political elites disagree on immigration, crime, and social issues. Laurenz Guenther is a political economist at the Toulouse School of Economics and a Fellow at the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University. His research and Substack focus on representation, populism, and immigration in Western democracies. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Laurenz Guenther discuss why there’s a massive representation ...
May 05, 2026•57 min
Yascha Mounk and Lant Pritchett discuss why development requires building state capability, not just charitable interventions. Lant Pritchett is a development economist from Idaho. Having now thrice retired, he is currently a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics in the School of Public Policy and the co-founder and Research Director of Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP). In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Lant Pritchett discuss why the traditional foreign aid approach ...
May 02, 2026•1 hr 12 min
Yascha Mounk and David Bromwich discuss grade inflation, political conformity, and the crisis of trust in higher education. David Bromwich has taught literature at Yale University since 1988. His books include Hazlitt: the Mind of a Critic, The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke, How Words Make Things Happen, and Politics by Other Means: Higher Education and Group Thinking . In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and David Bromwich discuss why Americans have lost faith in universities, how gra...
Apr 28, 2026•1 hr 2 min
Yascha Mounk and Luis Garicano discuss how AI will reshape labor markets, productivity, and economic growth. Luis Garicano is Professor of Public Policy at the London School of Economics. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Luis Garicano discuss the economic magnitude of AI’s transformative potential, whether artificial intelligence complements or replaces human workers, and why Silicon Valley predictions about automation consistently miss the mark. If you have not yet signed up for ou...
Apr 25, 2026•1 hr 10 min
Yascha Mounk and Jacob Mchangama discuss how democracies and dictatorships alike have turned against online speech freedom. Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University, as well as a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. His latest book, with Jeff Kosseff, is The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy's Most Essential Freedom . In this week’s conversation, Yascha ...
Apr 21, 2026•54 min
Yascha Mounk and Michael Shermer delve into the art of debunking dangerous ideas without silencing free speech. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show . His new book is Truth: What it is, How to Find it, Why it Still Matters . In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Michael Shermer discuss conspiracy theories from the plausible to the wild, how to assess whether a conspiracy theory is accurate, and discovering the ...
Apr 18, 2026•57 min
Yascha Mounk and Ivan Krastev also discuss the war in Iran—and what it means for Trump’s future. Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, and Albert Hirschman Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Ivan Krastev discuss how Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule in Hungary came to an end, why democratic institutions proved more resilient than many expected, and what lessons this holds for understanding the lim...
Apr 14, 2026•58 min
Yascha Mounk and Andrés Velasco discuss why the current energy crisis won’t repeat the 1970s—and what dangers lurk in today’s financial markets. Andrés Velasco is the Dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the co-editor, alongside Tim Besley and Irene Bucelli, of The London Consensus: Economic Principles for the 21st Century . In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Andres Velasco discuss whether the Middle East war will trigger a...
Apr 11, 2026•58 min
Yascha Mounk and Kathleen Stock discuss whether liberal arguments for medically assisted suicide fail to hold up under scrutiny. Kathleen Stock is a contributing writer at UnHerd , a frequent columnist at The Sunday Times and The Times , and a co-director of The Lesbian Project, which she runs with journalist and activist Julie Bindel. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Kathleen Stock discuss why liberal arguments for assisted dying are less coherent than they appear, whether palliati...
Apr 07, 2026•56 min
Yascha Mounk and Ruy Teixeira examine how the Democratic Party’s cultural evolution drove away working-class voters—and ask whether it may be too late to change course. Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and was co-founder and politics editor of the Substack newsletter, The Liberal Patriot. His latest book, with John B. Judis, is Where Have All the Democrats Gone? In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Ruy Teixeira discuss why The Liberal Patriot is shutt...
Apr 07, 2026•59 min
Yascha Mounk and Sebastian Mallaby discuss why tech leaders both fear and accelerate dangerous AI development, and whether open-source models pose unacceptable risks. Sebastian Mallaby is the author of several books including The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence . A former Financial Times contributing editor and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relati...
Apr 04, 2026•57 min
Yascha Mounk and David Autor discuss how policy failures made trade disruption worse—and why we're still making the same mistakes. David Autor is the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in the MIT Department of Economics, codirector of the NBER Labor Studies Program and the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and David Autor discuss whether the economic pessimism of the 2010s was justified, what less...
Mar 31, 2026•59 min
Yascha Mounk and David Goodhart explore how the domination of mobile, university-educated “anywheres” sparked the populist revolt. David Goodhart is a journalist, author and think tanker, and currently head of the demography unit at the Policy Exchange think tank. His latest book is The Care Dilemma: Freedom, Family and Fertilit y . In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and David Goodhart discuss why the triumphalist worldview of the early 2000s has collapsed, how the “anywhere” versus “some...
Mar 24, 2026•1 hr 4 min
Yascha Mounk and Shashank Joshi examine whether the United States and Israel are achieving their strategic objectives in the Middle East. Shashank Joshi is Defence Editor at The Economist , where he writes on a wide range of national security, defence and intelligence issues. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Shashank Joshi discuss how the war of attrition between the United States, Israel, and Iran is unfolding, whether military successes justify the enormous economic and strategic ...
Mar 21, 2026•49 min
Yascha Mounk and Ibram X. Kendi also discuss anti-racism, equity, and education. Ibram X. Kendi is Professor of History and the founding director of the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study, an interdisciplinary research enterprise examining global racism. His latest book is Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age . In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Ibram X. Kendi discuss whether great replacement theory is the common basis for political movements from India to...
Mar 18, 2026•1 hr 2 min
Yascha Mounk and Adrian Wooldridge explore how liberalism reinvented itself through past crises—and what that means for its survival today. Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He is the author or co-author of 12 books, including Centrists of the World Unite: The Lost Genius of Liberalism . In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Adrian Wooldridge discuss how liberalism emerged as a solution to concrete historical problems, why the fundamental challenge...
Mar 14, 2026•57 min
Yascha Mounk and Klaus Schwab discuss truth, trust, and accountability—until he abruptly ended the interview. In January, I received an email from Klaus Schwab about a new book he had just published, called Restoring Truth and Trust. It was, he told me, “part of my broader series aimed at helping a global audience understand and respond to the profound changes shaping our societies, economies, and institutions.” I decided to invite Schwab onto my podcast. In his role at Davos, he had helped to s...
Mar 10, 2026•23 min
Yascha Mounk and Dean Ball examine how the fight over autonomous weapons and mass surveillance reveals the impossible choices facing American AI policy. Dean W. Ball served as Senior Policy Advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he was the primary staff drafter of America’s AI Action Plan . He writes the AI-focused newsletter Hyperdimensional . In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Dean Ball discuss the clash between Anthropic and the Department of War ...
Mar 07, 2026•1 hr 27 min
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is Liberalism and Its Discontents . He is also the author of the “ Frankly Fukuyama ” column, carried forward from American Purpose , at Persuasion . In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama discuss whether the unprecedented strikes on Iran will lead to the downfall of the mullahs, whether America can avoid getting drawn into a Middle Eastern quagmire, and whether the midterms wi...
Mar 01, 2026•42 min
Yascha Mounk and Danielle Allen discuss democratic backsliding. Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Democratic Knowledge Project, a research lab focused on civic education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Danielle Allen discuss why the liberal worldview of the 1990s and 2000s ha...
Feb 28, 2026•52 min
Janice Gross Stein is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management and Founding Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Janice Stein discuss whether rational choice theory has led us astray in understanding political behavior, why voters have lost interest in nuclear deterrence, and why cooperation, not rationality, is important in global politics. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, p...
Feb 24, 2026•1 hr 6 min
Yascha Mounk, Bethany Allen, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, and Chang Che examine how Asia is preparing for a more dangerous world. In this week’s episode of The Good Fight Club, Yascha Mounk, Bethany Allen, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, and Chang Che examine the stunning electoral victory of Japan’s new prime minister Sanae Takaichi, China’s coercion tactics and how they’re backfiring across Asia, and what the rise of “authentic outsiders” tells us about the current moment in global democracy. Bethany Allen is a jo...
Feb 21, 2026•1 hr 14 min
Jacob Savage is a writer and ticket scalper. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jacob Savage discuss whether the “Great Awokening” had lasting material effects beyond culture, how diversity initiatives changed hiring patterns in academia and Hollywood, and why these changes primarily affected one generation of white men rather than older cohorts already established in their careers. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone . ...
Feb 17, 2026•46 min
Yascha Mounk and Daniel Diermeier examine how elite institutions created the backlash that now threatens their future. Daniel Diermeier is Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, where he has served since 2020. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Daniel Diermeier discuss why American universities are simultaneously world-leading and losing public trust, whether elite higher education creates dangerous separation between the professional class and ordinary Americans, and how the shift from...
Feb 14, 2026•1 hr
C. Thi Nguyen is a philosophy professor at the University of Utah. His latest book is The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game . In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Thi Nguyen discuss why metrics both help and harm institutional decision-making, how game design principles can improve classroom learning, and whether some aspects of human life are inherently unmeasurable. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone . Emai...
Feb 10, 2026•1 hr 22 min
Yascha Mounk and Jung Chang explore what individual narratives can tell us about China’s past and present. Jung Chang is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China , Empress Dowager Cixi , and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister , as well as Mao: The Unknown Story , with her husband, Jon Halliday. Her latest book is Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China . In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jung Chang discuss how personal stories illuminate broader historical truths, t...
Feb 07, 2026•1 hr
Ruud Koopmans is Research Director at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Professor of Sociology and Migration Research at Humboldt University Berlin. He is also a member of the German Federal government’s Advisory Committee on Islamism. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Ruud Koopmans discuss the role of cultural difference in integration, how selective versus non-discretionary migration systems shape integration outcomes, and whether generous welfare states help or hinder immig...
Feb 03, 2026•1 hr 18 min
Yascha Mounk and Martin Wolf also discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on the economy—and humanity. Martin Wolf is Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times , London. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Martin Wolf discuss what Trump’s pick of Kevin Warsh could mean for the Fed, whether “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) is a sustainable pattern, and how Trump’s economic ambitions compare to those of truly revolutionary leaders. If you have not ye...
Jan 31, 2026•1 hr 8 min
