Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, is one of the most influential philosophers of the past fifty years. A leading exponent of utilitarianism, he has often explored how individuals can improve the lot of those in need with their own choices. In this week’s conversation, Peter Singer and Yascha Mounk discuss what utilitarianism gets right, whether the effective altruism movement is effective, and why freedom of inquiry is crucial to improving the world....
Oct 30, 2021•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ross Douthat, a columnist for The New York Times, has long advocated for a brand of reform conservatism that stands in stark contrast to Trumpism. His latest book, The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery, chronicles his long struggle with Lyme disease. In this week’s conversation, Ross Douthat and Yascha Mounk discuss why the expert consensus sometimes fails, when to listen to outsiders, and whether the failures of the establishment help to explain the rise of populism. This transcrip...
Oct 23, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Francis Fukuyama, one of the most important living political scientists, is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute. His writing spans from the origins of society in earliest prehistory to the rise of modern democracy and the identity wars of the 21st century. His new book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, a defense of the values of free societies, is scheduled for release in April 2022. In this week’s conversation, Francis Fukuyama and Yascha Mounk discuss how neolibera...
Oct 16, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Caitlin Flanagan, a staff writer at The Atlantic, is one of America's most incisive essayists. In her articles about a wide range of topics including modern motherhood, the politics of higher education, and the state of the abortion debate, she skewers consensus views with her trademark wit. In this week’s conversation, Caitlin Flanagan and Yascha Mounk discuss her coming-of-age in 1960s Berkeley, the evolution of freedom of speech, and whether America has a future. This transcript has been cond...
Oct 09, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kwame Anthony Appiah is a British-Ghanaian philosopher, the Ethicist columnist for the New York Times Magazine, and one of today's deepest thinkers about the nature of identity. His scholarly writing, journalism, and novels help us to envision a world in which our professed categories enrich rather than impoverish—or, in his terms, a world which reveres “universality plus difference.” In this week’s conversation, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Yascha Mounk discuss neutrality as a liberal ideal, the li...
Oct 02, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Elizabeth Bruenig is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a Catholic socialist who writes on topics as varied as capital punishment and mothering two children while in her twenties. Her work is uniquely marked by her ruby-red Texas upbringing, the elite professional world she now inhabits, and her deep sense of morality, which draws from both Christian theology and left-wing politics. In a wide-ranging conversation, Elizabeth Bruenig and Yascha Mounk debate the importance of dialogue across moral ...
Sep 25, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Matthew Karp is a contributing editor for Jacobin magazine and associate professor of history at Princeton University. An expert on the Civil War era and slavery, his writing poses a challenge to a right too sanguine about the darkest corners of America’s past, and a left too eager to embrace despair about the arc of history. In this week’s conversation, Matthew Karp and Yascha Mounk discuss the "1619 Project,” the politics of history from Juneteenth to the Confederacy, and why an accurate conce...
Sep 18, 2021•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rachel Fraser is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford and an expert in feminism and the philosophy of knowledge. In her work, she thinks through how our social identities might help to shape how we see the world—and how that diverges from popular notions according to which the oppressed have special political knowledge unavailable to everyone else. In this week’s conversation, Rachel Fraser and Yascha Mounk discuss how our identities shape our perception of the world,...
Sep 11, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Samuel Goldman, associate professor of political science at the George Washington University, is an intellectual historian and political commentator. In his new book, After Nationalism: Being American in an Age of Division, he criticizes traditional notions of patriotism while trying to lay out how members of modern nations can preserve some form of pride of country. In this week’s conversation, Samuel Goldman and Yascha Mounk talk about different notions of patriotism and debate whether strong ...
Sep 04, 2021•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ambassador Eric Edelman was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the George W. Bush administration and served as the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Finland. A strident critic of former President Donald Trump, he is among the foremost voices of the “Never Trump” movement. In a wide-ranging conversation, Ambassador Edelman and Yascha Mounk discuss the trajectory of the Republican party and Donald Trump’s political future, Turkey’s illiberal slide under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the fr...
Aug 28, 2021•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Kmele Foster is a heterodox writer who hosts The Fifth Column podcast. He recently joined with David French and Thomas Chatterton Williams, members of Persuasion's Board of Advisors, to oppose laws which seek to ban discussion of critical race theory from American schools in the New York Times. In this week’s conversation, which was recorded with a live Zoom audience as part of the Persuasion festival, Kmele Foster and Yascha Mounk discuss the fixation on race in current political discourse, why...
Aug 21, 2021•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics and co-author, with Tyler Cowen, of the blog Marginal Revolution. A strident critic of institutional failure during the pandemic, Tabarrok has applied his libertarian perspective to a wide range of topics, including public health, regulation and the law, criminal justice, and entrepreneurship. In this week’s conversation, Alex Tabarrok and Yascha Mounk discuss the failure of American institutions to respond to COVID-19, the cost of insufficient economic ...
Aug 14, 2021•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Roya Hakakian is an Iranian dissident, poet, and writer. She has long been a fierce critic of the regime. But in her latest book, A Beginner's Guide to America, she sets her sights on the United States, setting out to explain why the citizens of liberal democracies should value their political systems despite their flaws. In this week’s conversation, Roya Hakakian and Yascha Mounk discuss Iran’s democratic prospects, the state of democracy around the world, and why the benefits of freedom are of...
Aug 07, 2021•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Adrian Wooldridge, the political editor of The Economist, has written on topics as diverse as Alan Greenspan, the history of radicalism in British psychology, and the evolution of the modern Republican Party. In his latest book, The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World, he seeks to counter recent attacks on the ideal of meritocracy. In this week’s conversation, Adrian Woolridge and Yascha Mounk discuss the hidden radicalism of the meritocratic ideal, China's embrace of me...
Jul 31, 2021•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Patrick Sharkey spent years studying the causes for the national decline in crime that took place from the 1990s to the 2010s. A Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton, and the author of Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence, he warned that it would prove unsustainable to rely on aggressive policing and mass incarceration to keep the peace in America's cities. Now, he is ideally placed to answer why violent crime has surged ...
Jul 24, 2021•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sabrina Tavernise is a national correspondent for The New York Times. She covered the Iraq War for the Times, where in 2005 she was one of the first people to document ethnic cleansing, and has reported on life in post-Soviet Russia for a variety of publications. She was a first-hand witness to the storming of the US Capitol. In this week’s conversation, Sabrina Tavernise and Yascha Mounk discuss Tavernise's experience in the Capitol on January 6, the roots of violence and civil war around the w...
Jul 17, 2021•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Niall Ferguson is a Scottish-American historian whose interests span from WW1 to Henry Kissinger to the history of money. His most recent book, Doom—completed at the height of the COVID crisis—attempts to rethink the distinction between “man-made” and “natural” disasters. Ferguson examines the historical record from Vesuvius to viruses and concludes that societies are guilty of repeated misjudgments and delusions; but he avoids ascribing any immutable pattern to the unpredictable trajectory of d...
Jul 10, 2021•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Arthur Brooks is a leading authority on the science and philosophy of happiness. In his books—most recently “Love Your Enemies”—and his regular contributions to The Atlantic, he urges us to act smarter in our pursuit of the good life. Combining insights from social science with wisdom from ancient sages, his unique blend of practical advice and philosophical depth serves as the perfect antidote to what he calls our “culture of contempt”. He holds professorships in the Practice of Public Leadersh...
Jul 03, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast George Packer is one of the nation’s most eloquent writers and most perceptive observers. In his books, from The Unwinding to Our Man, he has chronicled the disintegration of America’s social fabric and the polarization of its politics. In his latest book, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, Packer argues that the country is now being torn apart by four competing narratives: Real America, Smart America, Just America, and Free America. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Geor...
Jun 26, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast The very idea of truth and science, Jonathan Rauch argues, is now under threat from many quarters. In his latest book, The Constitution of Knowledge, he gives a novel account of the principles of science, and explains why democracies must strive to preserve the truths that bind us together. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jonathan Rauch discuss the dangers of disinformation, the limits on robust debate, and why truth is fundamental to preserving democracies around the world. This t...
Jun 19, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast In his new book, When The Stars Begin to Fall: Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America, Ted Johnson offers an optimistic vision for America's future. The only way to overcome racism and build a more just society, Johnson argues, is to build a shared American identity and aim for real mutual solidarity. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Ted Johnson discuss what is going wrong in current debates about race, how to foster civic friendship, and why Americans should remain o...
Jun 12, 2021•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast As one of America’s most famous political strategists, James Carville worries that Democrats shoot themselves in the foot by focusing on the politics and language of the “faculty lounge.” Because they worry more about sounding virtuous than about persuading voters, he argues, they leave a wide opening for authoritarian populists like Donald Trump. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and James Carville discuss what makes for good political messaging, why so many people on the left won’t spe...
Jun 05, 2021•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Even as many affluent countries are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel of the COVID-19 pandemic, India is facing a terrifying rise of cases and deaths. According to Raghuram Rajan, the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India and the former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund, a large part of the blame for the pandemic rests with Narendra Modi; but the government’s poor performance also has its roots in a deeper failure of the country’s institutions. In this w...
May 29, 2021•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Investigative journalist Amanda Ripley believes good conflict can help solve deep political divides. But when it escalates beyond the point of no return, it becomes “high conflict”: a fight less about the issue at hand and more about owning the other side. In her new book, she chronicles how dangerous high conflict is to individuals and societies — and offers suggestions for how to dig yourself out of it. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Amanda Ripley discuss the ways in which high ...
May 22, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast At his talks, the award-winning journalist Mark Lynas often asks his audience to imagine what would happen if we had a magic wand that could solve climate change. Should we wave it? Most people say no. This, he believes, is a real problem for making progress. To deal with climate change, we need to get serious about prioritizing effective solutions over ones that fit the environmentalist narrative of human sin and the need for atonement. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Mark Lynas d...
May 15, 2021•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Is it possible to be both a faithful Muslim and a philosophical liberal? Mustafa Akyol argues that the answer is a resounding yes. In his latest book, Reopening Muslim Minds - A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance, Akyol uncovers a long liberal tradition within Islam—one that, he says, Muslims around the world need to recover. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Mustafa Akyol discuss the history of liberalism in Islam, how authoritarian populists use religion for political influen...
May 08, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast If the state fails to improve the lives of its citizens, then what is it for? James Scott, the Sterling professor of political science and anthropology at Yale University, believes that modern states tend to impose social structures that are antithetical to human flourishing. In his seminal works, like Seeing Like a State, he argues that we should give two cheers for anarchism: while states are here to stay, we should forever remain vigilant about the ways in which they do violence to individual...
May 01, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast The pandemic was supposed to prove the value of public health institutions like the CDC; instead, it exposed their inability to deal with a serious pandemic without serious errors. Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, worries that these failures have a deeper cause: as the citizens of countries like the United States come to trust each other less and less, they are increasingly incapable of meeting the big challenges that await them. In this week’s conversation, Yasc...
Apr 24, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Over the past decades, many social science studies have promised simple answers to complex problems. In his latest book, The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills, Singal describes how many of these solutions fail because the findings they are based on turn out to be wrong or misleading. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jesse Singal sit down to discuss the reproducibility crisis in social science, whether to be skeptical about implicit bias training, and how to di...
Apr 17, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Foreign aid is meant to alleviate suffering and help poor countries develop. But according to Bill Easterly, a professor of Economics at NYU, it often does the opposite. Instead of helping countries develop, it wastes resources or makes it harder for them to make economic progress. And far from advancing democracy and human rights, it often helps autocrats to stay in power. In this week's episode of The Good Fight podcast, Yascha Mounk and Bill Easterly discuss how political considerations misdi...
Apr 10, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
