The Free Mind Podcast

Matthew Young is assistant professor of political theory in the Department of Political Science & Public Policy at Elon University. Paul Diduch if faculty director of the Engineering Leadership Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. Matt and Paul join The Free Mind Podcast's new host Joseph Porter for a discussion on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Bible, and American politics i...

Dan Jacobson is Bruce D. Benson Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado Boulder. This is my (Matt’s) last episode as host of the Free Mind Podcast, pre-recorded with Dan before I moved to the University of Wyoming this past summer. I am extremely grateful for my time as a faculty fellow of the Benson Center and I...

Justin Tosi is Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He was previously a sabbatical fellow at the Benson Center and is co-author of Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk and Why It's OK to Mind Your Own Business , both in collaboration with Brandon Warmke, who was a previous guest on this show. W...

Lee Jussim is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University, and a founding member of both the Academic Freedom Alliance and the Society for Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences. In addition to being a renowned psychology researcher, Dr. Jussim is also an outspoken critic of cancel culture and the politicization of his discipline of social psychology, and of academia writ large. F...

Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist and Assistant Professor of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. He researches how society thinks and talks about race, inequality, national security, and other contentious issues in the public sphere. His new book We Have Never Been Woke , exposes and takes on the contradictions of chattering class elites, who simultaneously decry inequality and p...

Lesley Smith is Regent at Large of the University of Colorado system, and she is also the Democratic nominee for Colorado House District 49 in the upcoming 2024 election. Before becoming a Regent, Dr. Smith worked for 30 years as a researcher and educator at CU Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. She was elected to the Boulder Valley School Board in 2005 and ser...

Jessi Streib is Associate Professor of sociology at Duke University and the co-recipient of the 2023 Early Career Award from the Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility section of the American Sociological Association. She is author of four books, including Is it Racist? Is it Sexist? Why Red and Blue White People Disagree, and How to Decide in the Gray Areas , co-authored with Betsy Leondar-Wright, whi...

Diego Reinero is a MindCORE Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He studies how people’s moral and political views change through conversations and social networks. He has also done research that challenges the idea that the predominantly liberal political views of academics affect the quality of research and range of results publ...

Martín Carcasson is a Professor of Communication Studies at Colorado State University, where he is also the Director of the CSU Center for Public Deliberation. His research focuses on helping communities work through “wicked” problems through better communication, community problem solving, and collaborative decision-making. He is well known for designing and facilitating public dialogs throughout...

Heidi Ganahl is a politician, author, and entrepreneur who has had success in multiple industries and philanthropic ventures. She served as Regent at large of the University of Colorado from 2017 to 2023, and as the Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2022. She founded Camp Bow-Wow—North America’s largest pet-care franchise—the lifestyle brand SheFactor, the Fight Back Foundation that supports s...

Benji Backer is the founder and Executive Chairman of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), which is the nation’s largest right-of-center environmental organization. He has been named to Forbes’ and GreenBiz’ 30 Under 30 lists, Fortune’s 40 Under 40, and the Grist 50. He is also the author of the book The Conservative Environmentalist , which has received praise from voices across the politic...

Sam Abrams is a Professor of Politics at Sarah Lawrence College, a non-resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and a board member of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He is the author of multiple books and numerous articles, in outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among many others. He has wr...

Brandon Warmke is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University, and the Spring 2024 Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy here at the Benson Center. He is co-author of several books including Grandstanding: The use and abuse of moral talk , Why it’s ok to mind your own business , and Conservatism, the basics , which will be published in 2024. We discuss his boo...

Cory Clark is Executive Director of the Adversarial Collaboration Project at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also Visiting Scholar in the Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences. The Adversarial Collaboration Project brings together scholars who have contrasting views on important scientific questions to work out their differences through rigorous collaborations. It is base...

Todd Zywicki is the George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law. He is also the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy here at the Benson Center. He previously served as Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law, Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section...

Sasha Breger Bush is an Associate Professor of political science at the University of Colorado Denver, who studies international political economy, and the author of Derivatives and Development: A Political Economy of Global Finance, Farming, and Poverty. Prof. Bush has recently sounded the alarm on what she calls the whole world debt crisis. We discuss her work, as well as recent public debates a...

Roger Pielke Jr. is a Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, who studies the politics of science and authors a popular Substack blog called The Honest Broker. Never one to shy away from controversy, Prof. Pielke has done high-profile research and writing on climate change and natural disasters, the origins of COVID-19, and the inclusion of transgender and intersex women in women’s sports...

Alexandra Coţofană is an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. Dr. Coţofană is a cultural anthropologist who studies a range of topics including the cultures of political elites. Our conversation focuses on one of her quite unique study topics: the role of beliefs in magic and the occult in the elite politics of Romania. 

Brad Wilcox is Professor of Sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and a non-resident Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. We discuss two-way interactions between family structure and stability, socioeconomic outcomes, and culture in the U.S. context, and the important role families must play...

Smriti Mehta is a Ph. D. student in Psychology at the University of California Berkeley, and the co-chair of UC Berkeley’s new Heterodox Academy (HxA) Campus Community, which is dedicated to promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement on their campus. I (Matt) co-chair a similar group at University of Colorado Boulder. We discuss what it’s like to start an HxA Campus...

Jennifer Smith is Associate Professor of English, Coordinator of Digital Humanities, and Associate Director of the Center for Faith and Learning at Pepperdine University. She is a noted medievalist, and also a 2022-2023 sabbatical fellow at the Benson Center. We discuss the life and legacy of the fifteenth-century English bishop Reginald Peacock, who was defrocked and exiled for heresy–i.e. cancel...

Alice Evans is a Senior Lecturer in the social science of development at King’s College London, the author of The Great Gender Divergence, forthcoming from Princeton University Press, and the host of the Rocking Our Priors podcast. We discuss Dr. Evans’ research on gender inequalities over the past millennium globally, and its relevance to today’s movements and debates about feminism in the U.S. a...

Lionel Shriver is an author and journalist, whose many books include We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003) and most recently Abominations: Selected Essays from a Career of Courting Self-Destruction (2022). Our conversation focuses on one of the fascinating contradictions of Ms. Shriver’s life that she has written about. 

Kevin Priola is a State Senator of Colorado, representing the 13th District, and previously the 25th. He recently crossed the floor, from Republican to Democrat, and faces a recall effort as a result. Our conversation focuses on the challenges and opportunities facing moderates in today’s extreme and polarized political landscape.

Joey Fratino is a graduate of CU Boulder, who served as the President of the CU Boulder College Republicans until graduating in 2022. Our conversation explores the conservative student experience on campus. We discuss recent survey studies of conservative college student experiences and how these compare to Joey’s experience at CU.