The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk and Tara Isabella Burton discuss the shift in modern societies away from external truths to a new gospel of finding one’s authentic self. Tara Isabella Burton is a writer and novelist. She is the author of Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. Her latest book is Self Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Tara Isabella Burton discuss the trend towards religious non-affiliation and the rise of à la carte spirituality; the challenges such a world presents for creating community and political solidarity; and whether we can pursue self-creation while also fulfilling our deepest obligations as citizens of a liberal society. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk and Tim Urban discuss making better choices, managing human foibles, and distilling big ideas into clear words. Tim Urban is a writer and author of the blog Wait But Why. He is the author of What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies.  In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Tim Urban discuss how to develop strong productive habits; the human tendency towards “chronocentrism”; as well as how American society has become troubled and why finding real solutions will require courage. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk and Bethany Allen discuss the historical trajectory of the modern Chinese economy. Bethany Allen is the China reporter at Axios and the author of Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Bethany Allen discuss how China’s unique “party-state capitalism” can act both as a boon to and a drag on its economic growth; how China uses its economic power to enforce conformity and limit free speech around the globe; and what the future might hold for Taiwan. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk and Robert Sapolsky debate whether there is free will and if it would matter if there weren't. Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist and primatologist, is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor and professor of biology, neurology and neurosurgery at Stanford University. Sapolsky is the author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. His latest book is Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Robert Sapolsky discuss whether, as Sapolsky argues, there is no such thing as free will; and what follows for everything from criminal law to the possibility of love and friendship if we were to agree that it doesn't. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk and Anshel Pfeffer discuss how the war is transforming Israel, Palestine and the Middle East. Anshel Pfeffer is a British-Israeli journalist. He is a senior correspondent and columnist for Haaretz and the Israel correspondent for The Economist. Pfeffer is the author of Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Anshel Pfeffer discuss Israel's strategy for defeating Hamas and whether it is likely to succeed; why the global left has failed to grasp the horrors of 10/7; what implications the war has for Jewish life in Europe and America; and why, after the war, Israel urgently needs to resolve the internal tensions that have marked the country since its founding. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk and David Brooks discuss the role of character development in building strong liberal societies. David Brooks is a writer and a columnist at the New York Times. He is the author of Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement. His latest book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and David Brooks discuss how he came to coin the term “bourgeois bohemians” (or “bobos”); whether today’s elite shares any traits with the bobo elite that first succeeded the WASPs; and how we can inspire stronger and deeper social connections between individuals of all backgrounds. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution, a member of the Persuasion Board of Advisors, and the author of books including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth and The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jonathan Rauch discuss how our sense of satisfaction with life is age-related in ways that are often independent of our objective circumstances; the academic research showing that happiness across one’s lifetime often resembles a U-shaped curve; and how we can better align societal practices to facilitate this midlife transition (and better utilize the assets of old age). This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amichai Magen is the director of the Program on Democratic Resilience & Development at Reichman University's Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy. He is a Visiting Professor and Fellow in Israel Studies at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Amichai Magen discuss the Hamas incursion into Israel that is responsible for the greatest massacre of Jews since World War II; the prospects for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in the aftermath of the greatest security failure in Israel’s history; and the evolving crisis following the start of Israel’s military response against Gaza. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Angus Deaton is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton, Emeritus, and the recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is the author of The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality and, with Anne Case, of Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. His most recent book is Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality.  In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Angus Deaton discuss why he thinks the core predictor of economic and social outcomes in America is not primarily race or class, but one’s attainment of a four-year college degree; why America (and Scotland) are unique among wealthy, industrial nations for their increasing mortality rates; and how to best explain the growing sense of social dislocation that contributes to so-called “deaths of despair.” This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yascha Mounk is the founder of Persuasion. His new book, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time, was published this week. In this week’s conversation, Coleman Hughes and Yascha Mounk discuss the intellectual origins of the "identity synthesis"; how this novel ideology was able to become so influential so quickly; why its application to areas from free speech to cultural appropriation is a trap; and how to make a compelling case for the liberal ideals that are more likely to remedy injustices. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Axelrod is the former chief strategist and senior advisor to President Barack Obama. He currently serves as a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Chicago. He is author of the memoir, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and David Axelrod discuss how Obama was able to build a winning coalition in 2008 that included many moderate voters; whether, despite the polarized state of American politics, a future presidential candidate could replicate that success; and what it would take for Joe Biden to defeat Donald Trump in 2024. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rory Stewart is an author, a diplomat and a politician. A former Secretary of State for International Development in the United Kingdom, Stewart is now the president of the global poverty-alleviation charity GiveDirectly. He is also the author of The Places In Between and, most recently, How Not To Be a Politician: A Memoir. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Rory Stewart discuss the difference between the skills required to win political office and those required to govern well; whether the old conservative tradition, discarded lately in America and the UK, has something left to offer; and why, despite limited progress, we must remain vigilant in the fight against global poverty. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steven Levitsky is the David Rockefeller professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government at Harvard University, and Daniel Ziblatt is the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University. They are the authors, jointly, of How Democracies Die. Their latest book is Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt discuss the extent to which American institutions distort our politics by excessively thwarting majority governance; whether or not the American electorate is polarizing, or depolarizing, by race; and whether American democracy is better served by pursuing institutional reform or by tailoring Democratic Party strategy to the system as it exists. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greg Lukianoff is president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the co-author, with Jonathan Haidt, of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Lukianoff is also co-author of the forthcoming The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Greg Lukianoff discuss the state of free speech culture on America’s campuses and in society more broadly; FIRE’s progress litigating against coercive legislation in Florida and elsewhere; and the need to foster cultural habits that uphold individual expression. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sohrab Ahmari is a writer, commentator, and the founding editor of Compact. He is the author of Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty–and What to Do About It. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Sohrab Ahmari discuss the threat corporate power poses to individual freedom in the United States; whether liberalism has gone too far in prioritizing individual autonomy over the common good; and why they disagree about whether attempting to move beyond liberalism would make things better or worse. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Carey is Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and is a co-founder of Bright Line Watch, a research group which monitors threats to American democracy. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and John Carey discuss whether recent publications casting doubt on the extent of democratic erosion have any merit; why many Americans believe the charges against former President Trump to be politically motivated; and why, no matter the outcome, indicting a former president may trigger a cycle of retaliatory prosecutions. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Susan Neiman is an American philosopher and writer. She is the Director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany, and the author of Left is Not Woke. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Susan Neiman discuss how liberals can uphold their universal values while maintaining a politics of empathy and compassion; how the left’s tendency to discount the progress of the past inhibits progress for the future; and whether Germany can serve as a model for how America, and other nations, should deal with the dark aspects of their own history. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Colin Woodard is an American journalist. He is the author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Colin Woodard discuss the ideals of America’s settlers and why they remain influential many years later; how the tension between individual freedom and concern for the public good has shaped America’s regional divides; and whether a shared national narrative can help to unify our divided groups. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Arcidiacono is an economist at Duke University and an expert on affirmative action. Arcidiacono served as an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) in SFFA v. Harvard. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Peter Arcidiacono discuss the role that racial preferences have played in the admissions processes of elite American universities in recent decades; the workarounds that universities are likely to use in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision; and why real progress for less privileged students will require fundamental changes that look beyond the admissions practices of a few elite universities. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Walzer is an eminent political philosopher and the author of numerous books, including Just and Unjust Wars and Spheres of Justice. He is professor emeritus at the Institute of Advanced Study, has taught at Harvard University, and is editor emeritus of the magazine Dissent. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Michael Walzer discuss why, though he is a democratic socialist, he believes that there are certain acceptable forms of inequality; what forms of injustice true egalitarians should focus on fighting; and the threats to liberalism from the post-liberal right and the illiberal left. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices