The Good Fight

Thomas Piketty is one of the foremost economists in the world, renowned for his work on wealth concentration and inequality. The author of the bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, his latest book, A Brief History of Equality, focuses on the ways in which the world has become more equal over the course of the last centuries. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Thomas Piketty d...

David Wallace-Wells is one of the foremost journalists covering climate change. A writer at The New York Times and a columnist at The New York Times Magazine, Wallace-Wells is the author of the best-selling book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. His New York Magazine article of the same name was the most read in the magazine’s history. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and David...

One of the world’s most influential social psychologists, a professor of ethical leadership at NYU's Stern School of Business, and a member of Persuasion's Board of Advisors, Jonathan Haidt is the author of The Righteous Mind and, with Greg Lukianoff, co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind. Haidt recently wrote a much-read feature in The Atlantic entitled “After Babel.” In this week’s conv...

Yascha Mounk is a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a contributing writer at The Atlantic, and the founder of Persuasion. His new book, The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, was published this week. In this week’s conversation, Ravi Gupta and Yascha Mounk discuss why it is so hard to build diverse democraci...

Roosevelt Montás is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University, where he was Director of the Center for the Core Curriculum from 2008 to 2018. He is the author of Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation. In this week’s conversation, Roosevelt Montás and Yascha Mounk discuss how a copy of Plato he found atop a pile...

Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He has written widely about race and its effect on American society and the law. In this week’s conversation, Randall Kennedy and Yascha Mounk discuss how racism in American life has changed and the ways in which it hasn’t, why we should move towards a more fluid sense of individual identity, and why he remains optimis...

T. M. Scanlon, one of the world's preeminent moral philosophers, was Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard University until his retirement. In his seminal work, What We Owe to Each Other, Scanlon gives a liberal account of how to reason through what it takes to act justly in matters of morality as well as politics. In this week’s conversation, T. M. Sc...

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Senior Fellow of the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. In her books - most notably Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine and Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe she has chronicled the terrible human costs of past attempts by Russia to dominate countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In this week’s conversation, Anne Appleba...

Radosław Sikorski is a Polish politician and journalist who is currently a Member of the European Parliament. He served as Defense Minister of Poland from 2005 to 2007, and as Foreign Minister from 2007 to 2014.  In this week’s conversation, Radosław Sikorski and Yascha Mounk discuss whether a unified Europe could play a real geopolitical role on the world stage in the future, reasons to be skepti...

Yevgenia Albats is a Russian journalist, and editor-in-chief and CEO of the popular Russian independent magazine The New Times. The magazine has now been blocked by government censors for reporting on the war in Ukraine. Until last week, when the station was taken off the air, Albats was also host of a long-running radio show on Ekho Moskvy. The author of The State Within a State: The KGB and its...

Lea Ypi is a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics. She is the author of Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, about growing up in Albania, Europe’s last Stalinist outpost, and the political convulsions that followed its transition to liberal capitalism. In this week’s conversation, Lea Ypi and Yascha Mounk discuss childhood in the shadow of totalitarianism, the per...

George Packer is a journalist, author, playwright, and a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he recently published a piece on Ukraine's meaning for the liberal world and American interests. In his books, from The Unwinding to Our Man, he has chronicled the disintegration of America’s social fabric and the polarization of its politics. His latest book is Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renew...

Moisés Naím is a Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a member of the Persuasion board of advisors. He has served as Minister of Trade and Industry for Venezuela, Executive Director of the World Bank, and editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine. His latest book is The Revenge of Power. In this week’s conversation, Moisés Naím and Yascha Mounk discuss how au...

Jonathan Sumption, Lord Sumption is a British judge, author and historian. He is a former Justice of the United Kingdom Supreme Court and a frequent public commentator.   In this week’s conversation, Jonathan Sumption and Yascha Mounk discuss the prospects for democracy in the English-speaking world, the value of judicial oversight, and the power of strong political conventions. This transcript h...

Gerald Knaus is a social scientist and chairman of the European Stability Initiative. An expert on asylum and migration policy, he has been one of the most influential voices in reshaping Europe's refugee system since the 2015 crisis. In this week’s conversation, Gerald Knaus and Yascha Mounk discuss the history of asylum; how to develop a more humane system of migration; and how the European Unio...

Javier Cercas is one of Spain’s most distinguished novelists and a columnist at El País. His books, like Soldiers of Salamis and The Anatomy of a Moment, explore the history of modern Spain and the role of historical memory in contemporary life. In this week’s conversation, Javier Cercas and Yascha Mounk discuss Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy, the movement for Catalonian secessi...

Ramachandra Guha is an Indian historian, writer, and one of the foremost authorities on modern India. The author of India After Gandhi and Gandhi Before India, he is also a leading critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Guha is a member of the Persuasion Board of Advisors.  In this week’s conversation, Ramachandra Guha and Yascha Mounk discuss the histo...

Harvey Mansfield is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. One of the old guard of American conservative thought, he has taught at Harvard since 1962, and counts among his former students Andrew Sullivan, Francis Fukuyama, and Bill Kristol. In this week’s conversation, Harvey Mansfield and Yascha Mounk discuss the na...

Fiona Hill is the former Senior Director for Europe and Russia of the National Security Council under President Trump and a key witness in his first impeachment trial. She is Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. In her latest book, There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century, she describes her journey from the post-industrial north of England to the world...

Michael Ignatieff, a renowned author and academic, is the former Leader of Canada’s Liberal Party. While Ignatieff was serving as Rector of Central European University, the university was pushed out of Budapest by the Hungarian government. In this week’s conversation, Michael Ignatieff and Yascha Mounk discuss the rise of illiberal conservatism, the pitfalls of liberalism, and how to find consolat...

Jeannie Suk Gersen is the John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a contributing writer at The New Yorker. She writes widely about the law and its impact on society.   In this week’s conversation, Jeannie Suk Gersen and Yascha Mounk discuss the value of robust debate in law school classrooms, the perils of eroding due process in the name of progress, and the legitimacy of th...

John McWhorter is an author, a member of the Persuasion Board of Advisors, a Columbia University linguist, and a columnist for The New York Times. His latest book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, argues that we must understand wokeness, quite literally, as a religion. In this week’s conversation, John McWhorter and Yascha Mounk discuss the nature of today’s social progr...

Garry Kasparov, the former World Chess Champion, is the founder of the Renew Democracy Institute and chairperson of the Human Rights Foundation. He is a member of the Persuasion's Board of Advisors. In this week’s conversation, Garry Kasparov and Yascha Mounk discuss how he came to oppose the Soviet regime, why he quickly recognized the dangers posed by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and what to...

Michael Powell is a reporter for The New York Times, covering issues including free speech, education and identity politics. His reporting takes him from the campuses of elite universities and private schools to the halls of the ACLU. In this week’s conversation, Michael Powell and Yascha Mounk discuss whether the left has cooled on free speech, what’s lost in the national discussion about critica...

Andrew Yang is a popular commentator and former presidential candidate. In his latest book, Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy, he advocates for economic reforms like Universal Basic Income and political reforms like ranked choice voting. In this week’s conversation, Andrew Yang and Yascha Mounk discuss how today’s political campaigns are run, why Democrats struggle to connect with vote...