The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk and Mark Leonard discuss how the West can defend itself without America. Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think–tank. His latest book is Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Mark Leonard discuss why Europe is behind, the global impact of China’s rise,...

Curtis Yarvin, Minna Salami, and Yascha Mounk discuss whether we can ever be free in a liberal society in a discussion moderated by Roger Hearing. In this special episode of The Good Fight, recorded at the How The Light Gets In Festival, Roger Hearing moderates a debate between Curtis Yarvin, Minna Salami, and Yascha Mounk on whether liberalism can ever be neutral, what a truly free society would...

Yascha Mounk and Sam Moyn also discuss whether some people deserve to have more votes than others. Samuel Moyn is the Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University. His books include Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, The Last Utopia, and Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. Cohost of the Digging a Hole podcast, he is a frequent contributor to The New...

Yascha Mounk and David Bau delve into the emerging science of AI interpretability and what we can learn from billions of neural signals. David Bau is Assistant Professor at Northeastern University and Director of the National Deep Inference Fabric, researching the emergent internal mechanisms of deep generative networks in both Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision. In this week’s conver...

Yascha Mounk and Rebecca Haw Allensworth examine how professional licensing has become America’s most important—and most restrictive—regulatory institution. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: leonora.barclay@persuasion.community Podcast production by Mickey Freeland and Leonora Barclay. Connect with us! Spotify | Apple X: @Y...

Yascha Mounk and Steve Stewart-Williams examine what science reveals about biological and psychological differences between men and women. Steve Stewart-Williams is a professor of Psychology at the University of Nottingham’s Malaysia campus and runs The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter. His latest book is A Billion Years of Sex Differences. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Steve St...

Yascha Mounk and Jeremiah Johnson examine the disconnect between economic data and public sentiment about young Americans’ prospects.  Jeremiah Johnson is the co-founder of the Center for New Liberalism. He hosts the New Liberal Podcast and writes at Infinite Scroll. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jeremiah Johnson discuss why young Americans think the economy is worse than it actual...

Yascha Mounk and Paige Harden discuss twin studies, heritability research, and why genetic influence varies across different traits and populations. Kathryn Paige Harden is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she leads the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and serves as Director of Clinical Training. Her latest book is Original Sin: On the Gene...

Yascha Mounk and H.W. Brands discuss the first U.S. president’s life and legacy. H. W. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of more than a dozen biographies and histories. His latest book is American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and H. W. Brands discuss why Washington’s re...

Yascha Mounk and James Traub examine how progressive teaching methods are producing citizens who can't think critically. James Traub is a journalist, author and scholar. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York Institute For The Humanities and the Society of American Historians. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and James Traub discuss why progressive pedagogy is fa...

Yascha Mounk and Marc Lipsitch also discuss how worried we should be about Hantavirus and Ebola. Marc Lipsitch is the Berberian Professor at Stanford University, with appointments in Infectious Diseases, Biology, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Marc Lipsitch discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of gain-of-function research...

Amanda Ripley, Jesse Singal, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and Yascha Mounk explore Trump’s failed cultural revolution. In this week’s episode of The Good Fight Club, Yascha Mounk, Amanda Ripley, Jesse Singal, and Thomas Chatterton Williams explore whether Trump has succeeded in remaking American culture in his image, the rise of white identity politics and its psychological drivers, and how America...

Yascha Mounk and Al Roth discuss what we miss when we separate economics from human emotion. Alvin E. Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2012. His latest book is Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ...

Yascha Mounk and Timothy Garton Ash discuss how Britain’s shift toward populism reflects broader European trends. Timothy Garton Ash is the author of Homelands: A Personal History of Europe and writes the newsletter History of the Present. His upcoming book, Europe in 7½ Chapters, will be published in October 2026. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Timothy Garton Ash discuss the crisis...

Yascha Mounk and Laurenz Guenther discuss why ordinary voters and political elites disagree on immigration, crime, and social issues. Laurenz Guenther is a political economist at the Toulouse School of Economics and a Fellow at the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University. His research and Substack focus on representation, populism, and immigration in Western democracies. In this...

Yascha Mounk and Lant Pritchett discuss why development requires building state capability, not just charitable interventions. Lant Pritchett is a development economist from Idaho. Having now thrice retired, he is currently a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics in the School of Public Policy and the co-founder and Research Director of Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP). In this we...

Yascha Mounk and David Bromwich discuss grade inflation, political conformity, and the crisis of trust in higher education. David Bromwich has taught literature at Yale University since 1988. His books include Hazlitt: the Mind of a Critic, The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke, How Words Make Things Happen, and Politics by Other Means: Higher Education and Group Thinking. In this week’s conversat...

Yascha Mounk and Luis Garicano discuss how AI will reshape labor markets, productivity, and economic growth. Luis Garicano is Professor of Public Policy at the London School of Economics. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Luis Garicano discuss the economic magnitude of AI’s transformative potential, whether artificial intelligence complements or replaces human workers, and why Silicon...

Yascha Mounk and Jacob Mchangama discuss how democracies and dictatorships alike have turned against online speech freedom. Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University, as well as a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. His latest book, with Jeff Kosseff, is The Future of Free Speech: Rever...

Yascha Mounk and Michael Shermer delve into the art of debunking dangerous ideas without silencing free speech. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show. His new book is Truth: What it is, How to Find it, Why it Still Matters. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Michael Shermer discuss conspiracy theories from the...

Yascha Mounk and Ivan Krastev also discuss the war in Iran—and what it means for Trump’s future. Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, and Albert Hirschman Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Ivan Krastev discuss how Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule in Hungary came to an end, why democratic institut...

Yascha Mounk and Andrés Velasco discuss why the current energy crisis won’t repeat the 1970s—and what dangers lurk in today’s financial markets. Andrés Velasco is the Dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the co-editor, alongside Tim Besley and Irene Bucelli, of The London Consensus: Economic Principles for the 21st Century. In this week...

Yascha Mounk and Kathleen Stock discuss whether liberal arguments for medically assisted suicide fail to hold up under scrutiny. Kathleen Stock is a contributing writer at UnHerd, a frequent columnist at The Sunday Times and The Times, and a co-director of The Lesbian Project, which she runs with journalist and activist Julie Bindel. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Kathleen Stock dis...

Yascha Mounk and Ruy Teixeira examine how the Democratic Party’s cultural evolution drove away working-class voters—and ask whether it may be too late to change course. Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and was co-founder and politics editor of the Substack newsletter, The Liberal Patriot. His latest book, with John B. Judis, is Where Have All the Democrats Gone?...

Yascha Mounk and Sebastian Mallaby discuss why tech leaders both fear and accelerate dangerous AI development, and whether open-source models pose unacceptable risks. Sebastian Mallaby is the author of several books including The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence. A former Financial Times contributing editor and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Mallab...