The Good Fight

Wesley Yang is one of the America’s leading essayists. From “Paper Tigers,” his examination of why Asian-Americans remain underrepresented in leaderships positions, to “The Face of Seung-Hui Cho,” his meditation on the shooter who killed 33 people at Virginia Tech, he has traced America’s shifting understanding of race. But over the past years, the focus of Yang’s work has subtly shifted. He is no...

We’d like to think of our societies as places with a lot of social mobility, in which individuals can climb the ladder by working hard. But by tracking families with rare surnames across the centuries, Gregory Clark, an economist, has shown that social mobility is much rarer than we’d like to think. The descendants of 14th century Florentine aristocrats, 18th century Korean civil servants and 19th...

For the past years, we have paid a lot of attention to the fight for democratic values in countries where they are newly under threat. But what can activists do to stand up for democracy in countries where they already have to fear imprisonment, or worse? In the latest episode of The Good Fight, we feature the voices of activists from Asia and Europe. First, Yascha Mounk talks to Andrei Sannikov a...

Zion Lights has long been an environmentalist activist. When Extinction Rebellion was founded two years ago, she became one of its informal leaders, organizing highly disruptive events and representing the organization in the media. But over time, she came to doubt both its strategy and its policy commitments. Did disrupting public transport really help to persuade the public of the urgency of fig...

According to Ian Bremmer, the President of the Eurasia Group, the global pandemic is revealing the extent to which democracies have been failing over the past years. To strengthen them, he proposes that they should re-establish faith in the system by regulating social media, shifting away from American exceptionalism, and embracing an innovative approach to capitalism. In this conversation, Ian Br...

Lawrence Wright has been friends with Jamal Khashoggi for nearly two decades. In a new documentary, The Kingdom of Silence, he tells the complicated story of America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia through the lens of Khashoggi’s life—from his youthful enthusiasm for jihadis to his years serving the Saudi royal family and his eventual embrace of the Arab Spring. On the latest episode of The Good...

For much of the past four years, Matt Yglesias dismissed worries about growing illiberalism on the left as a campus fad that is sure to fade. This year, he changed his mind, becoming increasingly vocal about his concerns, and co-signing the Harper’s letter. On the latest episode of The Good Fight, Yascha Mounk and Matthew Yglesias talk about how and why he changed his mind. The podcast also discus...

Irshad Manji has a lot of experience in trying to persuade those who really don’t want to be persuaded. Early in her career, Irshad wrote two influential books that advocated for a reformed Islam. In conversations with religious conservatives around the world, she found that a combative style did not help her win adherents for her cause; instead, she started to acknowledge their views—before proud...

If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. A few weeks ago, I got an email from somebody I admire tremendously: Elizabeth Anderson, one of the most interesting contemporary political philosophers. Anderson, she wrote, has long been an avid listener to The Good Fight. But she strongly disagrees with the episode I did with Edward Irizarry, i...

Michael Sandel, one of the most influential political philosophers of our time, makes a provocative argument: Meritocracy allows successful people to feel good about themselves, and doesn’t do anything to address the plight of those who are less fortunate. It is time to abandon the ideal. In this conversation about Sandel’s new book, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?, I debat...

If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. For the past years, Frank Dobbin, a Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, has been researching diversity initiatives at big corporations and academic institutions. He has consistently come to the same, sobering conclusion: They don’t tend to work. And in many cases, they actually backfire....

Please sign up to become a member of Persuasion, the new community Yascha has founded for those who believe that a free society is worth fighting for. Just go to www.persuasion.community A few days ago, a rather strange exchange caught my attention on Twitter. At a public meeting of a local New York City school board, one member accused another of perpetrating racism by holding his girlfriend’s ne...

Yascha is starting a new platform for citizens who are committed to the defense of a free society. Please go to http://www.persuasion.community to sign up. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk speaks with Thomas Rid, Professor of Strategic Studies at John Hopkins University SAIS about the operations of secret services around the world and the misinformation campaigns that shape international competition.  Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Yascha Mounk talks to Omar Wasow, a professor of political science at Princeton University, about the case for non-violent protest, and how best to bring about greater racial equality in the United States. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk talks to Francis Fukuyama about the changes that COVID-19 will (and will not) bring about. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk talks to Ron Daniels, President of Johns Hopkins University, about the impact the coronavirus will have on higher eduction and the role universities can play in defending liberal democracy against the rise of populism. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

Yascha Mounk talks to Sarah Longwell, the Publisher of The Bulwark, about how to persuade those who have voted for populists in the past to change their minds. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk talks to David Miliband, the CEO of the International Rescue Committee, about the world after corona and what we need to do right now to help the poorest countries in the world manage the pandemic.  Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adcho...

Yascha Mounk speaks to Daniel Ziblatt, the Eaton Professor at Harvard University, about the impact of the coronavirus on populism and democracy. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk talks to Constanze Stelzenmüller, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, about the rise of populism in Germany and how it will transform the country in the next years. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk talks to Ruy Teixeira, a Senior Fellow at CAP, about his much misunderstood theory according to which demographic change will favor the Democratic Party. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk talks to E. J. Dionne, author of Code Red, about what it would take to unify the Democratic Party (and beat Donald Trump). Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk talks to Ezra Klein about the nature and causes of polarization in the United States - and whether we can fix it. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: https://www.yaschamounk.com/ Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk talks to Pratap Bhanu Mehta, one of India's foremost writers and intellectuals, about the rise of Narendra Modi, and the reasons for the crisis of liberal democracy in the country. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Podcast production by John T. Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices