The American Compass Podcast

This week, the GOP suffered the worst election defeat in five decades. Policy director Chris Griswold joins Oren to make sense of what happened in the midterms and what it means for both the Right and Left.  They discuss how central the issue of political corruption has become for frustrated voters—the top motivator in exit polls—and how it intersects with and amplifies other concerns, like the Ir...

America's "college for all" approach has failed students and eroded the workforce needed for reindustrialization and other national priorities. Chris Griswold , American Compass policy director, joins the podcast to present a different vision, focused on making vocational and trade-based education a core component for high-school graduation. He and Oren discuss what students lose wh...

Without a ready workforce, the project of rebuilding American industry is dead in the water. Ashwin Lalendran and Brent Parton , cofounders of IndustriousAF , join Oren on the podcast to discuss the workforce challenge of reindustrialization. Lalendran, who is based in San Francisco but retains a midwestern mindset on how capital and manufacturing should operate, and Parton, a D.C.-based former as...

Election Day is only weeks away, and as we’ve come to expect in recent years, it has inevitably brought with it allegations from both parties that the other side is cheating. Ben Ginsberg, Hoover Institution visiting fellow and former national counsel to the Bush-Cheney presidential campaigns, joins Oren to unpack what he calls the “fraud-suppression industrial complex,” where both parties tell th...

Financial firms exist to raise capital and find ways to deploy it productively. But are they still doing that today? Or merely profiting from the appearance of doing so? Oren joined William Gruver , a former Goldman Sachs COO and professor emeritus at Bucknell University for an Open Discourse Coalition program debating the question “Is the financial industry broken?” They discuss how to evaluate t...

American reindustrialization requires hundreds of thousands of skilled tradesmen, each of whom requires a wide array of high-quality tools to get the job done. Nicholas Pinchuk, CEO of Snap-on, joins Oren on the podcast to give a ground-level view on America's ascendant manufacturing industry and the professional tools that make it possible. They discuss the damage done by industry's dec...

How did American life go off the rails? MIT professor and Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu joins Oren on the podcast to talk about the erosion in what he calls “working-class liberalism” and the consequences of its decline. He makes the case that America’s liberal democracy is most threatened not by external forces seeking to replace it but from a misunderstanding of liberalism as a prescriptive rule...

For decades, the Right has written off issues related to climate and the environment. But as the Left’s climate alarmism increasingly falls on deaf ears, a new generation of conservatives is charting a course for a more productive approach to protecting our shared natural resources. Chris Barnard , president of the American Conservation Coalition, and Taylor Myers , attorney at Boyden Gray, join O...

Often lost in the broader conversation around solar power is how the technology can support American reindustrialization. Mark Widmar , CEO of First Solar, joins Oren on the podcast to explain solar's fit both into an all-of-the-above energy strategy and as a bulwark of U.S. manufacturing renewal. They discuss why solar power is such an American industrial success story, particularly against...

The youngest generation of Americans are increasingly without the kind of formation that shapes children into adults and allows them to develop the muscles of good citizenry, as the institutions and systems that once helped their elders fall short today. This not only sets young people up for failure, but erodes social cohesion and a democratic politics. Yuval Levin joins Oren and Chris to try to...

Why have so many economists gotten it so wrong about the impact of Trump's economic policies, from trade to immigration and beyond? Stephen Miran , former chair of Trump's Council of Economic Advisors, joins Oren on the podcast to unpack the president's economic realignment. The two discuss the change in thinking Trump has delivered and why economists can neither understand its valu...

In an apples-to-apples comparison of GDP per capita, eight of Canada's ten provinces are poorer than nearly all U.S. states. But how much can GDP really tell us? Is most of Canada really poorer in any meaningful sense than Kansas? Two writers, Jeff Reimer , a Kansan and senior editor at Comment , and Brian Dijkema , the Ontario-based president of Cardus, journeyed to both locations to find ou...

Artificial intelligence is often discussed as a threat to human flourishing, undermining everything from jobs to education to literacy. Is there anything that can be done to mitigate that future damage? Is it already too late? Gregory Conti , associate professor at Princeton University, joins Oren and Chris to discuss whether there's anything to be done to stop AI. The group discusses Conti&a...

Few political issues have united Americans the way that a resistance to new data centers to support the development of AI has done in recent months. But is this anger and opposition toward them misplaced, and even a threat to American reindustrialization? Josh Zoffer , a venture capitalist and Biden administration alum, joins Oren on the podcast to discuss the ongoing fight on data centers. Zoffer...

There's a political realignment taking place when it comes to labor law. Republicans from the White House down to the local level are increasingly championing worker rights against corporate interests. But will this change take root in the GOP? And should it? Roger King , senior labor and employment counsel at the CHRO Association joins Oren on the podcast to make sense of the changes over th...

Curtailing public chaos and institutional corruption are vital objectives to reclaiming a healthy American citizenship. But what can ordinary people do to rein in corrupt elites? And why have elected officials failed to push back for generations? Dr. Matt Mehan, associate dean of Hillsdale College's Graduate School of Government, joins Oren and Chris to make sense of what went wrong. They dis...

The traditional four-year college degree is dramatically falling out of favor with parents and would-be students. One clear problem is that today's educational offerings don't help students build the skills they really need, both for the jobs of the future and for a meaningful life after graduation. Dr. Jacob Imam , president of The College of St. Joseph the Worker, joins Oren and policy...

Many men without college degrees have nearly nonexistent social support, and are often one point of failure away from living in isolation, according to a new research report, Nobody to Call . Their lives are perilous: moving to a new town, losing a job, or the death of a friend could leave them fully divorced from their communities. Sam Pressler , lead author of the paper and a practitioner fellow...

Political conversations around tech tend to gravitate toward AI, chips, and advanced robotics, but these topics are far removed from what most Americans think of as the types of technology that power their daily lives. For most, tech is about cable, or streaming, and how they connect to the internet. Former U.S. senator Cory Gardner, now president and CEO of NCTA, the Internet & Television Ass...

At the 2026 New World Gala, American Compass introduced Reclaiming American Citizenship , a new "project for the people" to confront the existential task of revitalizing what it means to be an American citizen, not merely as a matter of who gets to be here, but about the responsibilities inherent in that privilege. Compass policy advisor Chris Griswold joins Oren to make sense of what do...

After decades of sacrificing economic security for the sake of the free market, American policymakers are returning to the wisdom that economic security and national security are inextricably linked. At American Compass’s 2026 New World Gala, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joined Oren to explain why this shift is vital for the national interest. They talk through how COVID didn’t create but reve...

Pope Leo XIV’s highly anticipated encyclical marks a significant milestone in the debate around artificial intelligence and what it means for the future of humanity. To analyze the document and its many implications, Oren speaks with American Compass policy director Chris Griswold , Foundation for American Innovation executive vice president Max Bodach , and Leah Sargeant, editorial director at th...

Foreign policy debates have taken center stage in the second Trump administration, from U.S.-China relations to the ongoing war in Iran.  To assess the situation, Oren speaks with A. Wess Mitchell , who co-founded The Marathon Initiative along with Elbridge Colby and served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs during the first Trump administration. Cass and Mitchell di...

The Democratic Party continues to reel from its 2024 electoral defeat and struggles to connect with the American people. But the party remains captured by special interests and sacred cows that its leaders refuse to confront. Few understand this dynamic better than Ruy Teixeira, author and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and founder of The Liberal Patriot , a now-defunct newsle...

What’s going on in Iran? Who controls the Strait of Hormuz? And why did America get involved in the first place? Bradley Devlin , politics editor at the Daily Signa l, joins Oren to try to make sense of the current state of the U.S. military operation in Iran. They discuss why President Trump deployed troops in the first place, the various ways a peace deal could shake out, and what path forward i...