Conservative Minds

SCOTUS Samuel Alito - Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Episode  |  January 23rd, 2023  |  Season 5  |  44 mins 39 secs

Our analysis of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health.

Episode 105: John Stuart Mill - On Liberty

Episode  |  December 20th, 2022  |  Season 5  |  42 mins 39 secs

Episode 103: Jonah Goldberg - Liberal Fascism

Episode  |  July 20th, 2022  |  Season 5  |  44 mins 5 secs

Goldberg explains that fascism is an offshoot of socialism and, rather than being conservative, is just another variety of far-left thought.

102: Jonathan Haidt - Why the Last Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

Episode  |  June 29th, 2022  |  Season 5  |  44 mins 46 secs

Haidt writes about social media and the downfall of normal society.

Episode 99: John Mearsheimer - The Great Delusion

Episode  |  April 25th, 2022  |  Season 5  |  45 mins 54 secs

Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony — the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended — is doomed to fail. It would be better, he says, for America to practice restraint in the foreign policy sphere based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers.

Episode 98: Michael Strain - Forget the Economics of Grievance

Episode  |  April 11th, 2022  |  Season 5  |  42 mins 9 secs

We discussed "Forget the Economics of Grievance", a National Review article by Michael R. Strain.

Episode 97: Tim Stanley - Whatever Happened to Tradition?

Episode  |  March 29th, 2022  |  Season 5  |  42 mins 57 secs

Stanley talks about how tradition can be both beautiful and useful, how it's been undermined, and how it can be restored.

Episode 94: WSJ Editorial Board - Trust and Expertise

Episode  |  February 21st, 2022  |  Season 5  |  46 mins 22 secs

Episode 93: Kimberle Crenshaw – Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex

Episode  |  January 24th, 2022  |  Season 5  |  42 mins 6 secs

Crenshaw's law review article from 1989 is one of the foundational documents of critical race theory.

Episode 92: Thomas Paine - Common Sense

Episode  |  January 17th, 2022  |  Season 5  |  42 mins 1 sec

Paine's Common Sense made public a persuasive and impassioned case for independence early in the American Revolution, one that was widely read and influential at the time of the American founding.

Episode 91: Adrian Wooldridge - The Aristocracy of Talent

Episode  |  December 20th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  44 mins 16 secs

In The Aristocracy of Talent, Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy and looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocratic system. He also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.

Episode 90: Michael Sandel - The Tyranny of Merit

Episode  |  November 29th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  45 mins 11 secs

Philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome modern crises, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality, questioning the value of meritocracy itself.

Episode 89: Peter Turchin - Ages of Discord

Episode  |  November 15th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  46 mins 21 secs

Turchin says that long spells of equitable prosperity and internal peace are succeeded by protracted periods of inequity, increasing misery, and political instability. These crisis periods — Ages of Discord — have recurred in societies throughout history. Are we entering one now?

Episode 88: Bruno Maçães - History Has Begun

Episode  |  October 18th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  44 mins 7 secs

Americans believe in the liberal values that have guided Western politics since the Second World War, but Maçães argues that they are "true in a different way."

Episode 87: C.S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man

Episode  |  October 6th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  40 mins 48 secs

Lewis discusses "men without chests," the loss of virtue and values that comes from reliance on reason alone, moral subjectivism versus natural law.

Episode 86: Season 5 Recap

Episode  |  September 7th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  42 mins 9 secs

We look back at the last sixteen episodes and discuss the themes and ideas they shared.