The Free Mind Podcast

Season Five of  The   Free Mind  podcast launches with a conversation between Matt Burgess and Alex Trembath, Deputy Director of the Breakthrough Institute, which is a think-tank focused on technological solutions to environmental problems. Our conversation explores climate change, the eco-modernist movement and its similarities and differences with conventional environmen...

Matt Burgess, Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies here at CU. Matt is a Faculty Fellow at the Benson Center, a Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Economics, and an Institute Fellow at CU’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Our conversation today explores the state of political polarization and free inquiry in higher education.

Alan Kahan, Professor of British Civilization at the University of Paris—Saclay, and Visiting Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy at the Benson Center. We discuss why Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, why the book is still worth reading today, and what Tocqueville thought about race, religion, and the prospect of American decline.

Alex Priou is a Teaching Assistant Professor at CU’s Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics, and Society. Our conversation today explores the work of the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, paying particular attention to his great book The Republic. We discuss why Plato wrote dialogues instead of treatises, how Platonic dialogues should be read, and why the Republic still resonates with students over...

Deirdre McCloskey is a Distinguished Professor of Economics and History Emerita, and Professor of English and Communication Emerita, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. We discuss the effects of liberalism on human progress, the challenges and benefits liberalism derives from innovation, whether popular economic critiques of liberalism hold water, and her unique intellectual biography that s...

Season 4 will be Shilo Brooks's final season as host of the Free Mind Podcast.  Matt Burgess will assume hosting duties beginning in 2023.  Stay tuned!

Taylor Jaworski, Associate Professor of Economics and my successor as Associate Faculty Director of the Benson Center. Taylor has been a Faculty Fellow at the Benson Center, and he has written widely on the economic history of the United States. We discuss the development of the American economy during the periods of the Founding and the Second World War, the history of America's transportation sy...

Alexander Duff, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. Duff discusses the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, one of the most towering and controversial thinkers of the 20th century. We discuss Heidegger’s political and metaphysical philosophy, his affiliation with the Nazis, and his writings on technology. 

Daniel J. Mahoney, Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption University and a visiting fellow at Princeton University.  Mahoney discusses cancel culture, explores what is valuable about our civilizational inheritance, and urges resistance to efforts to silence the life of the mind and free pursuit of truth. 

Season 3 launches with Paul Ulrich, Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Intellectual Foundations Program at Carthage College. Our conversation today explores Allan Bloom’s 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind .

Robert Pasnau, Professor of Distinction in Philosophy at CU Boulder, is the founding director of the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization. Pasnau discusses how the unlikely center got started, and how its mission to foster free inquiry, heterodox ideas and diverse political perspectives has affected academic life at CU and across the nation.

Jeremy Fortier, Post-doctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the City College of New York. Fortier explores the thought and writings of 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. We discuss Nietzsche’s popular appeal, his complicated legacy, his criticism of the Western Tradition, his style of writing, and the basic problems his philosophy confronts. 

Kevin Williamson is a correspondent at National Review and author of several books, including his most recent book Big White Ghetto. The Benson Center was delighted to present Williamson’s investigation into how progressive business elites have created disciplinary corporations.

Season Two of  The   Free Mind  podcast launches with a conversation between Shilo Brooks and Bradford Wilson, Executive Director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University and fellow at Princeton’s Butler College. Wilson explores Hamilton’s life and intellectual legacy. We discuss Hamilton’s unusual upbringing, the enduring importance of his political thought, a...

Colleen Sheehan, professor of political science and director of graduate studies at Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. She discusses what makes Jane Austen’s characters so enduring, the lessons Austen teaches about love in Emma, and what readers can learn from Austen’s complex use of language and penetrating psychological insights into human nature.

Joshua Katz, Costen Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics at Princeton. Katz’s uncontroversial intellectual pursuits and his warm and fair-minded demeanor make the story of his attempted cancellation at Princeton all the more surprising. Katz reflects on his experience and discusses potential threats to the truth-seeking mission of higher education. 

Jeff Black is a professor at St. John’s College, a unique great books college with campuses in Annapolis, Maryland and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Black explores what the so-called “great books” are, how reading them can provide a liberal education, and why they’re more relevant than ever in today’s political and cultural landscape.

Wayne Ambler, associate professor emeritus at CU Boulder and former dean and director of the Rome Program at the University of Dallas’ Rome Campus, explores the city’s historical development, its influence on Western Liberalism and the American Founding, the lessons it can teach today’s students, and its place in the broader history of political philosophy.

Glenn Loury, the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of Economics at Brown, is not only an acclaimed economic theorist, he’s also among the leading critics writing on racial inequality in America from a heterodox point of view.

Lucas Morel, the John K. Boardman, Jr. Professor of Politics and head of the Politics Department at Washington and Lee University. In this episode Morel discusses Frederick Douglass: the political lessons of his autobiographies; his thoughts on freedom, religion, and the Constitution; and how his reflections on slavery and race enrich contemporary civil rights discussions. 

Patty Limerick, professor of history, founding director of the CU Boulder Center of the American West, and author of The Legacy of Conquest. We explore her challenge to, and affection for, the myth of the West, the continuing relevance of applied history, and the role humor should play in public and academic discourse.

In monthly episodes, my guests and I will explore topics in Western philosophy, politics, literature, and history; and we’ll do so with adventurous disregard for intellectual trends and the academic fashions of the moment.