Zooming In at The UnPopulist

Listen to Zooming In at The UnPopulist in your favorite podcast app: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | RSS Aaron Ross Powell: Welcome to The UnPopulist Editor's Roundtable at Zooming In . I'm Aaron Ross Powell. It's our birthday. The UnPopulist is now in its terrible twos, and so today I'm joined by my colleagues Shikha Dalmia and Akiva Malamet to give a progress report on what we've ac...

Today on our editor's roundtable, host Aaron Ross Powell and colleague Akiva Malamet are joined by special guest Walter Olson , a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies. He is not a lawyer, but we've invited him on anyway, to discuss the recent Trump indictment in Washington, DC. Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

Today we have our editor's round table where host Aaron Ross Powell is joined by Shikha Dalmia and Akiva Malamet to discuss the Supreme Court's recent Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, which invalidated university affirmative action programs. Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

Academic freedom is under assault, but who is mounting that assault depends on who you ask. The right has long argued that universities are controlled by the left with free inquiry as the victim. The liberal right, it turns out, doesn't much care for liberal education. The result is a wave of right-populist assaults on the very academic freedom they've historically claimed to support. To explore t...

Today, we have our editors' roundtable where host Aaron Ross Powell is joined by Shikha Dalmia and Akiva Malamet, to talk about liberalism and the left. Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

Today we have our editors' roundtable. Host Aaron Ross Powell is joined by Shikha Dalmia and Akiva Malamet to discuss Tucker Carlson and the state of the American right.  Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

It's all too common to dismiss ideas without understanding them. Feminism suffers this affliction more than most, with many people quick to denounce it while advancing very little knowledge of what feminists argue or what evidence they muster to support their claims. To help address that unfortunate ignorance, host Aaron Ross Powell is joined today by Kat Murti , co-founder of Feminists for Libert...

With this episode of Zooming In , The UnPopulist introduces a new monthly feature: a roundtable in which our editors discuss select issues of the day. Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

For a certain sort of social conservative, Viktor Orbán's Hungary is the North Star. The realization of fantasies about how social liberalism can be done away with and “trad living” elevated to primacy, if only the power of a committed executive were turned to that task. On today's episode, host Aaron Ross Powell is joined by Robert Tracinski. He's the editor of Symposium , a journal of liberalism...

This is the concluding post in The UnPopulist ’s coverage of Black History Month. Politicians love to stress the need for “law and order,” and most Americans are on board with that. But the phrase rings rather differently in middle-class suburbia than it does in those communities most subject to the heavy hand—or fist—of the law. To explore what law and order looks like in African American communi...

Note to listeners: This is the first of our Zooming In podcasts, which will feature in-depth conversations with The UnPopulist ’s contributing writers on the subjects they’ve explored in their essays. Today's guest is Eve Fairbanks, author of  The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa’s Racial Reckoning . Our conversation explores the complex history of post-apartheid race relations in...

Welcome to the first episode of ReImagining Liberty at its new home with The UnPopulist . This is a show about the emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical social, political, and economic freedom. With every episode, host Aaron Ross Powell explores and defends liberalism by talking with scholars, activists, and others working to build a freer world. For this first episode at The UnPopulist ,...

Our guest today argues that a lot of America's social and economic problems, including the rise of populism and the affinity for authoritarian leaders, can be traced back to changing relationships and institutions in our neighborhoods. Dr. Seth D. Kaplan is a Professorial Lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Advisor for the Inst...

Our guest today is Greg Sargent. He’s a columnist at The Washington Post and author of the book An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics . Our discussion digs into the state of the American right, its conflicting constituencies, and its fringe and conspiratorial elements, as well as how the press has covered all of it. Reactionary Mind...

We're recorded this on the afternoon of Wednesday, Nov. 9th, the day after the elections. The results were rather unexpected, especially in light of the dominant narrative these last several weeks that a red wave was nigh. To talk about the electoral outcomes, what we should make of them, and what they mean looking ahead, I'm joined by Andy Craig, director of election policy at the Rainey Center a...

Christian Nationalism has long been a sub-movement on the American Right, but recently its profile has risen as an increasing number of conservative media personalities and politicians claim the label and call for America to be reoriented as an explicitly Christian nation. To help me explore just what Christian Nationalism entails as a movement and an ideology, as well as its history on the right,...

While both sides today have rather less respect for genuine political liberalism than they ought to, the ascension of far-right populism to the presidency, its near-total takeover of one of the two major parties, and its continuing efforts to establish control of our institutions and culture make the American right the most severe and immediate threat to our republic and our freedoms. However, jus...

Subscribe to Reactionary Minds : Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTube Reactionary Minds is a project of The UnPopulist . Hosted by Aaron Ross Powell . Produced by Landry Ayres. The following is a transcript of Reactionary Minds’ interview with Virginia Postrel, author of many books, including The Future and Its Enemies . The transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity....

Subscribe to Reactionary Minds : Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTube Reactionary Minds is a project of The UnPopulist . Hosted by Aaron Ross Powell . Produced by Landry Ayres. The following is a transcript of Reactionary Minds’ interview with writer Damon Linker , founder of Eyes on the Right , a Substack newsletter. The transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity. Aar...

Subscribe to Reactionary Minds : Apple Podcasts | Spotify The following is a transcript of Reactionary Minds’ interview with Stephanie Muravchik and Jon A. Shields, authors of the book Trump’s Democrats . The transcript has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Aaron Ross Powell: I’m Aaron Ross Powell, and this is Reactionary Minds , a project of The UnPopulist . A good way to understand...

Subscribe to Reactionary Minds : Apple Podcasts | Spotify Welcome to the inaugural episode of Reactionary Minds, a podcast from The UnPopulist that I’ll be hosting every month. This is a show about why some people reject liberalism and what the rest of us can do about it. This first episode is all about introducing the problem Reactionary Minds exists to address. In it, Shikha Dalmia, the editor o...

I am very excited to announce that on May 6, Friday, The UnPopulist will roll out a new feature, a monthly podcast hosted by Aaron Ross Powell called Reactionary Minds . The series will open with a wide-ranging conversation between Aaron and yours truly that takes stock of the world as it is right now — and how this podcast will advance the mission of The UnPopulist , defending liberal principles...