The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk and Tim Urban discuss making better choices, managing human foibles, and distilling big ideas into clear words. Tim Urban is a writer and author of the blog Wait But Why. He is the author of What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies.  In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Tim Urban discuss how to develop strong productive habits; the human tendency towards “chronocen...

Yascha Mounk and Bethany Allen discuss the historical trajectory of the modern Chinese economy. Bethany Allen is the China reporter at Axios and the author of Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Bethany Allen discuss how China’s unique “party-state capitalism” can act both as a boon to and a drag on its economic growt...

Yascha Mounk and Robert Sapolsky debate whether there is free will and if it would matter if there weren't. Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist and primatologist, is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor and professor of biology, neurology and neurosurgery at Stanford University. Sapolsky is the author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. His latest book is Determined: A Scie...

Yascha Mounk and Anshel Pfeffer discuss how the war is transforming Israel, Palestine and the Middle East. Anshel Pfeffer is a British-Israeli journalist. He is a senior correspondent and columnist for Haaretz and the Israel correspondent for The Economist. Pfeffer is the author of Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Anshel Pfeffe...

Yascha Mounk and David Brooks discuss the role of character development in building strong liberal societies. David Brooks is a writer and a columnist at the New York Times. He is the author of Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement. His latest book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others...

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution, a member of the Persuasion Board of Advisors, and the author of books including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth and The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jonathan Rauch discuss how our sense of satisfaction with life is age-...

Amichai Magen is the director of the Program on Democratic Resilience & Development at Reichman University's Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy. He is a Visiting Professor and Fellow in Israel Studies at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Amichai Magen discuss the Hamas incursion into Israel...

Angus Deaton is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton, Emeritus, and the recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is the author of The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality and, with Anne Case, of Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. His most recent book is Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explo...

Yascha Mounk is the founder of Persuasion. His new book, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time, was published this week. In this week’s conversation, Coleman Hughes and Yascha Mounk discuss the intellectual origins of the "identity synthesis"; how this novel ideology was able to become so influential so quickly; why its application to areas from free speech to cultural appropri...

David Axelrod is the former chief strategist and senior advisor to President Barack Obama. He currently serves as a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Chicago. He is author of the memoir, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and David Axelrod discuss how Obama was able to build a winning coalition in 2008 that included many moderate voters; whether...

Rory Stewart is an author, a diplomat and a politician. A former Secretary of State for International Development in the United Kingdom, Stewart is now the president of the global poverty-alleviation charity GiveDirectly. He is also the author of The Places In Between and, most recently, How Not To Be a Politician: A Memoir. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Rory Stewart discuss the di...

Steven Levitsky is the David Rockefeller professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government at Harvard University, and Daniel Ziblatt is the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University. They are the authors, jointly, of How Democracies Die. Their latest book is Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point. In this week’s conversatio...

Greg Lukianoff is president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the co-author, with Jonathan Haidt, of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Lukianoff is also co-author of the forthcoming The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Soluti...

Sohrab Ahmari is a writer, commentator, and the founding editor of Compact. He is the author of Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty–and What to Do About It. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Sohrab Ahmari discuss the threat corporate power poses to individual freedom in the United States; whether liberalism has gone too far in prioritizing individual autonomy over...

John Carey is Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and is a co-founder of Bright Line Watch, a research group which monitors threats to American democracy. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and John Carey discuss whether recent publications casting doubt on the extent of democratic erosion have any merit; why many Americans believe the charges against former President Trump to be p...

Susan Neiman is an American philosopher and writer. She is the Director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany, and the author of Left is Not Woke. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Susan Neiman discuss how liberals can uphold their universal values while maintaining a politics of empathy and compassion; how the left’s tendency to discount the progress of the past inhibits progress...

Colin Woodard is an American journalist. He is the author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Colin Woodard discuss the ideals of America’s settlers and why they remain influential many years later; how the tension between individual freedom and concern for the public good has shaped America’s regional...

Peter Arcidiacono is an economist at Duke University and an expert on affirmative action. Arcidiacono served as an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) in SFFA v. Harvard. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Peter Arcidiacono discuss the role that racial preferences have played in the admissions processes of elite American universities in recent decades; the worka...

Michael Walzer is an eminent political philosopher and the author of numerous books, including Just and Unjust Wars and Spheres of Justice. He is professor emeritus at the Institute of Advanced Study, has taught at Harvard University, and is editor emeritus of the magazine Dissent. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Michael Walzer discuss why, though he is a democratic socialist, he bel...

Tim Mak is a writer, reporter, and founder of the online publication The Counteroffensive. He was formerly the Washington Investigative Correspondent for National Public Radio. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Tim Mak discuss the slow progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and how a big breakthrough might come about; how the collective experience of resisting Russian aggression has co...

Michael Lind is a writer and professor of the practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the co-founder of the think tank New America and the author of The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Managerial Elite and, most recently, Hell to Pay: How the Suppression of Wages is Destroying America.  In this week’s conversation, Yascha Moun...

Amna Khalid and Jeff Snyder are writers and professors of history at Carleton College. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk, Amna Khalid and Jeff Snyder discuss the predominance of certain progressive orthodoxies on college campuses; why opponents of left wing censoriousness should also resist illiberalism in education from the right; and how we can stand up for philosophically liberal, human...

Tomiwa Owolade is a writer and author of the forthcoming book This is Not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Tomiwa Owolade discuss how some popular forms of anti-racist thinking can obscure which groups are struggling most; how Labour MP Diane Abbott’s response to an article of Owolade’s in The Guardian led to the Labour MP’s formal censure b...

Nora Fisher Onar is an associate professor of international studies at the University of San Francisco and author of the forthcoming book Contesting Pluralism(s): Islam, Liberalism and Nationalism in Turkey. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Nora Fisher Onar discuss how President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan prevailed despite economic turmoil and a bungled response to the severe February earth...

Jason Furman is a professor of economics in the Economics Department at Harvard and at the Harvard Kennedy School. He also served as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama.  In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jason Furman discuss the causes of today’s persistent inflation in the US and whether it is likely to continue; how concerned we should be about...