Symposium

Rob Tracinski talks to Alex Nowrasteh, immigration expert and director of economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute. We talk about the real facts about immigration, the phenomenon of “Schrödinger's Immigrant” (who is and isn’t at the same time), and why ethno-nationalism is a foreign import. Watch the video here . This last observation is particularly relevant given Hungarian Prime...

The Libertarian Party—the formally organized party, rather than libertarianism as an intellectual movement—has long been somewhat befuddled and ineffectual. It is very hard to get a third party off the ground in the American system, and after trying for decades, the Libertarian Party suffered the fate of many small movements. The best, most serious, most talented advocates of limited government an...

Rob Tracinski talks to Volodymyr Yermolenko, philosopher and chief editor of UkraineWorld , about the war in Ukraine, but also about the values for which Ukraine is fighting and the deep historical roots of liberalism in Ukraine. We talk about the parallels between America and Ukraine, which sees itself as “another America” or a “European America”—a “Wild East” settled by “free warriors of the ste...

The leaked draft of a forthcoming Supreme Court ruling in the abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization raises questions about the “unenumerated rights” protected in the Ninth Amendment. I discussed this recently with David French and Ilya Shapiro, talking about why the Constitution protects unenumerated rights and how we would tell what those rights are. How do we avoid having su...

Rob Tracinski talks to Caleb Watney of the Institute for Progress . We talk about how our political debate would be different if we recognized the reality of progress, the rise of the “inventing mindset,” the “veto points” that prevent growth and progress, the importance of Secret Congress, and the possibility of new political alignments. You can also watch this on video . Get full access to Sympo...

Rob Tracinski talks to Steven Pinker about his new book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters . We talk about how using reason is like flying on instruments, why reason comes more naturally than it might seem, and why we can’t blame all our problems on the cavemen. You can also watch this on video here . Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe

Rob Tracinski talks to Shay Khatiri, a policy associate at the Renew Democracy Initiative, about the need for America to be a “Liberal Leviathan,” particularly in the context of Russia’s threats against Ukraine. See Shay's article in Symposium here . You can also watch this on video here . Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe

I talk with Jaroslav Romanchuk, a Belarusian dissident now in Kyiv, about the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. You can also watch it on video here: I found Jaroslav’s perspective interesting because he blames US officials for overstating the risk of a Russian invasion in order to panic Ukraine into signing a bad diplomatic deal giving away its Eastern provinces. This seems to be the view h...

Rob Tracinski talks to Tom Nichols, professor at the US Naval War College and author of Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy , about authoritarianism, Italian villages, enlightened self-interest, and how Archie Bunker explains the world. You can also watch it on video here: Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe

Rob Tracinski talks to Shikha Dalmia, visiting fellow with the Mercatus Center’s Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange and editor of The Unpopulist , about the development of authoritarian “best practices” and the process by which they are being imported to the US. Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe

Rob Tracinski talks to Dalibor Rohac, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, about Hungary’s “new hybrid system” of authoritarianism—and American conservatives’ infatuation with it. You can also watch it on video here: Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe

Rob Tracinski talks to Erec Smith, co-founder of the Journal of Free Black Thought , about the diversity of ideas among black intellectuals and the need for a classical liberal vision on race. You can also watch it on video here: Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe

Rob Tracinski talks to Tobias Cremer, a research fellow at Oxford University, about his investigations of authoritarian populism in Europe and the United States. You can also watch it on video here: Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe

Rob Tracinski talks to Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution about his new book The Constitution of Knowledge and the principles of “epistemological Madisonianism.” You can also watch it on video here: Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe

This is the first Symposium podcast where we get a group of our contributors together to talk out a big important issue—the first of many in this format. To keep getting access to these discussions and to help make sure we can keep hosting more of them, please subscribe to Symposium. In this podcast, I host a conversation with Symposium contributors Helen Pluckrose , Cathy Young , and Robert Garmo...

Rob Tracinski talks to Samuel Hammond of the Niskanen Center about his case for a "free-market welfare state" and whether that is a contradiction in terms. See his article on the free-market welfare state here , which includes some of the graphs we refer to in the podcast. You can also watch it on video here: Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe

Rob Tracinski talks to Paul Matzko of the Cato Institute about the history of the Fairness Doctrine, the lessons to be learned for debates over free speech and the Internet today, and how we always seem to be having the same debates over and over again. You can also watch it on video here: Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe

Rob Tracinski talks to Claire Berlinski and Vivek Kelkar of The Cosmopolitan Globalist about why American needs cosmopolitan globalists, the worldwide challenge of authoritarian nationalism, and the creation of new institutions to defend “liberal democracy.” Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe

Rob Tracinski brings together George Will and Steven Pinker for a conversation about the nature and foundations of political liberalism. You can also watch it on video here: Get full access to Symposium at symposium.substack.com/subscribe