The Liberalism.org Show

It started with a blog post. When the Trump administration invoked emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs, law professor Ilya Somin suggested in passing that someone ought to challenge it in court — and then found himself co-counsel in the case that reached the Supreme Court. In this episode, Aaron Ross Powell talks with Somin, professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law...

What kept Black thinkers faithful to American democracy through slavery, Jim Crow, and worse? On this episode of the Liberalism.org Show, political theorist Jason Canon talks with Melvin Rogers — the Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brown University and author of The Darkened Light of Faith — about the tradition running from David Walker and Frederick Dougla...

Recorded at Flourishing House, the Institute for Humane Studies' gathering at SXSW exploring what people and societies need to thrive, this episode finds host Aaron Ross Powell in conversation with Virginia Postrel — journalist, former Reason editor, and author of The Future and Its Enemies and The Fabric of Civilization . The 1990s now look like a golden age of optimism about the future — but at...

Cities are humanity's greatest invention—not in spite of their density, but because of it. In this bonus episode of the Liberalism.org Show, Jason Canon sits down with Harvard urban economist Edward Glaeser, author of Triumph of the City and Survival of the City , to make the case for urban life and to ask why America has stopped building. They discuss how the New York of the 1970s shaped Glaeser'...

Liberals have ceded the family to social conservatives for decades — and Lauren K. Hall thinks it's a mistake liberalism can't afford. In this episode, host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Hall, professor of political science and associate dean of academic affairs at the Rochester Institute of Technology, about her Liberalism.org essay "Why Liberalism Needs the Family." They discuss why classical lib...

Markets can fail — but can government actually fix them? In his Liberalism.org essay " Yours, Mine, or Ours? Liberals Need a Theory of the State ," political scientist Michael Munger argues that liberals have been losing the policy debate by defending the perfection of markets rather than challenging the imperfection of the state. Host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Munger — a Liberalism.org fellow...

Can a half-hour of sitcom reruns make you a better liberal? Shal Marriott thinks so — and in this episode of the Liberalism.org Show, host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Marriott, a PhD student in political science at McGill University, about her article "Sitcoms: A Defense." They discuss how popular television can cultivate liberal habits of character beyond mere tolerance, why appreciating plurali...

What does a thriller about a murderous house-hunter have to do with liberalism? Quite a lot, it turns out. In this episode, host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Sarah Skwire, Senior Program Officer at Liberty Fund and a Liberalism.org Fellow, about her article "Mini Tacos, Murder, and the Problem of Getting Exactly What We Want." They explore how narrative can persuade where data can't, how literatur...

In this episode, host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Matt Zwolinski, Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego and a Liberalism.org Fellow, about his article " The Enemy Is Power, Wherever You Find It ." They discuss why liberals have traditionally focused on state power while neglecting its private forms, how institutional design can disperse and counterbalance power through mechanisms...

In the very first episode of the Liberalism.org Show , Aaron Ross Powell sits down with IHS President Emily Chamlee-Wright to introduce Liberalism.org —why it exists, why it’s launching now, and what listeners and readers can expect from the online magazine and its companion podcasts.