Liberty Curious

What exactly is ESG? Where did it come from, and how did it start to take hold and reshape our world? How is it related to the infamous UN SDGs? In this episode of Liberty Curious, Paul Mueller joins Kate Wand to discuss and dissect. Paul is an economist and Senior Research Faculty at AIER who specializes in defending freedom and combatting collectivism. He has written a definitive collection of a...

How free is your state? Why has New York gone from a beacon of liberty to a state that people now flee in droves? And why are people moving to places like Florida, New Hampshire and South Dakota? Way back in the early 2000s, Jason Sorens paired up with AIER president William Ruger to find out. Jason joined Kate Wand on Liberty Curious to discuss his book, Freedom In the Fifty States, and the inter...

READ Samuel Gregg's Articles: https://lawliberty.org/when-a-classical-liberal-confronted-nazi-terror/ https://lawliberty.org/wilhelm-ropkes-civilization-of-liberty/ LISTEN to Liberty Curious: https://www.aier.org/podcasts/ SUBSCRIBE to Sam Gregg's Articles: https://www.aier.org/people/samuel-gregg/ What can happen when societies decouple from the Western liberal tradition and adopt collectivist fr...

READ Barry Brownstein's Article: https://www.aier.org/article/to-live-for-grievances-risks-liberty/ LISTEN to Liberty Curious: https://www.aier.org/podcasts/ SUBSCRIBE to Barry's Substack: https://mindsetshifts.substack.com/ Why are so many in our generation brainwashed to see the world in a terrible way? And what is it about their mindset that makes them so susceptible to this kind of manipulatio...

Since October 7th, 2023, we have seen that ideas have consequences in the real world. Phillip Magness is an economic historian who specializes in the economic dimensions of slavery and racial discrimination, the history of taxation, and measurements of economic inequality over time. He also maintains an active research interest in higher education policy and the history of economic thought. He joi...

In this episode of Liberty Curious we go deep into the historical roots of 'Making America Great Again'. Kate Wand sat down with Phillip W. Magness, Senior Research Faculty and F.A. Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History at AIER, to discuss the true implications of tariffs and protectionism and how they have shaped America's economic landscape. From the earliest years of the American foundi...

On this episode of Liberty Curious, Kate Wand sat down with Michael Munger, economist and professor of political economy at Duke University, to discuss the Classical Liberal diaspora. Diaspora refers to the scattering of liberals ‘of the old type’; the remnant, the libertarians, and the classical liberals, whose message about liberty and limited government gets lost in a sea of tribal left vs. rig...

On this episode of Liberty Curious, Kate Wand sat down with Paul Mueller, who recently joined AIER as Senior Research Faculty, to discuss the 2007-2008 Financial Crisis and its reverberation into our present day. "Everything we're seeing around us is a fallout from that crisis." - Paul Mueller Paul received his PhD in economics from George Mason University, and is the author of Ten Years Later: Wh...

Is there such a thing as objective morality? On a recent episode of Liberty Curious, Kate Wand sat down with Bruce Pardy, professor of Law and Executive Director of Rights Probe to discuss the woke virus of the mind. The comments section was full of passionate and interesting criticism and debate on one particular issue: can we all universally agree on what is right and wrong and then let that det...

On this episode of Liberty Curious, David T. Beito, professor, historian and author, joins Kate Wand to discuss his upcoming expose: The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance. Although FDR is still considered one of the most beloved presidents in American history, David’s research exposes his dark side, which differed...

On this episode of Liberty Curious, Kate Wand spoke with Allen Mendenhall, author, lawyer, Associate Dean and Professor in the Sorrell College of Business at Troy University. He teaches a free market, non-woke business course that has gained significant clout, leading anti-woke ESG advocates to seek his aid and testimony for an anti-ESG investment bill. His advocacy for economic freedom led to the...

When big corporations like Target or Bud Light go blatantly Woke, to the detriment of their shareholders and profits, you might ask yourself what exactly they are doing, and why. This is where ESG comes in. ESG is Environment, Social, and Governance, three pillars of a pervasive type of corporate social credit score that businesses are pressured or incentivized to abide by. On this episode of Libe...

In this episode of Liberty Curious, Kate Wand invited Phil Magness to discuss the origins of critical theory, which is a neo-Marxist school of thought born in the Frankfurt School in 1923. Phil is the director of research and education at AIER, and a prolific researcher on these kinds of ideas. They discuss the history of critical theory, and how it has proliferated through academia and into our c...

On this episode of Liberty Curious, Kate Wand invites Bruce Pardy to discuss the origins of the Woke virus of the mind: critical theory, social justice, postmodernism and critical race theory. Bruce explains identity politics, power relationships, victimhood, and all the pillars of Critical Theory, a school of thought that has infiltrated our culture, institutions and society. We explore how this...

In this episode of Liberty Curious, Kate Wand invites Dr. Ryan Yonk to discuss the contentious and hotly debated recent Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action, student loan debt forgiveness, and freedom of speech. They discuss the details and nuances of the historic and significant Harvard Affirmative Action Case, Biden vs. Nebraska, and 303 Creative. Kate also asks Ryan a big picture questio...

On this episode of Liberty Curious, Kate Wand sat down with Thomas Hogan, to discuss what he coined the SEC’s illegal war against crypto. Tom is senior research faculty at AIER and former chair to the senate committee on banking, housing & urban affairs. Thomas explains how "the SEC has charged crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase with facilitating the trade of unregistered securities. Yet th...

Where did Bitcoin come from? Since the mysterious conception of Bitcoin following the 2008 financial crisis, people have been trying to figure out who created it, and why. Joining Kate Wand on Liberty Curious is independent thinker & writer Emile Phaneuf, to discuss the origins of Bitcoin, and its philosophical influences including the writings of Hayek, Ayn Rand and David Friedman. Emile writ...

Karl Marx’s theories sparked the Russian Revolution in 1917. His communist ideology was foundational to the USSR, and other oppressive regimes, which led to the state murder of hundreds of millions of people. Yet despite the 20th century Marxist democide, Marx remains one of the most popular so-called intellectual figures of the last century, up to this day. “Appearing in 3,856 syllabi as of 2015,...

On this episode of Liberty Curious, Robert Wright, historian, joins Kate Wand to discuss two Great Resets. In his research he has discovered striking resemblances between the New Deal under FDR in the 1930s, and the modern day Great Reset. This begs the question: is history repeating itself? Robert Wright explores the parallels between the New Deal era and the current situation. The New Deal was a...

What role does the state have in imposing its morality on individuals? What role should it have? How much should government control our lives? On this episode of Liberty Curious, Kate Wand sat down with Jason Sorens, Senior Research Faculty at AIER, co-author of Freedom in the 50 States, and founder of the Free State Project, to discuss how much government interferes with our daily lives. Sorens c...

Dive into a riveting discussion on the future of money and banking with George Selgin, director emeritus of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute, and our host Kate Wand. In this episode of Liberty Curious, they explore the history of money, the evolution of fractional reserve banks, and the impact of emerging technologies like Bitcoin and CBDCs on personal and e...

This episode discusses Operation Chokepoint and its possible resurgence in the form of Operation Chokepoint 2.0, which targets the crypto industry. The speaker, Tom Hogan, explains how government regulators have been pressuring banks not to lend to politically unpopular industries, such as firearms, payday lenders, and crypto companies, even though there are no laws against lending to them. He als...

Can a former Wall Street banker fix our broken financial system? Or will the banking cartel succeed at destroying the competition? In this episode of Liberty Curious, Kate Wand had the honor of speaking with Ms. Caitlin Long, founder of Custodia, a financial institution anchored in Bitcoin, sound money, and safe banking. Long has been fighting an ongoing battle with the most powerful institutions...

In this podcast, we take a closer look at the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which was one of the banks that went down during the ongoing banking crisis. SVB was a politically correct and extremely diverse operation that pledged billions of dollars to progressive causes. Many have speculated that the bank was more focused on social justice than financial risk, which contributed to its demi...

For over four decades, affirmative action has been a hotly debated topic in the United States. In essence, affirmative action allows for the consideration of an applicant's race in university admissions, in an attempt to level the playing field in light of a history of systemic racial discrimination. However, this practice has faced legal challenges, with groups arguing that it is unfair and uncon...