Conservative Minds

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.

Episode 85: George Packer - How America Fractured into Four Parts

Episode  |  August 23rd, 2021  |  Season 5  |  46 mins 5 secs

Packer writes about an America shattered into four increasingly hostile tribes.

Episode 84: Martin Gurri - The Revolt of the Public

Episode  |  August 2nd, 2021  |  Season 5  |  45 mins 20 secs

Technology has reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age — government, political parties, the media. Gurri tells us how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world.

Episode 83: Adrian Vermeule - Beyond Originalism

Episode  |  July 19th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  43 mins 6 secs

Professor Adrian Vermeule's 2020 article proposes a new legal philosophy for conservatives, one at odds with prevailing originalist theories on the right.

Episode 82: E. F. Schumacher - Small Is Beautiful

Episode  |  July 5th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  45 mins 20 secs

In "Small Is Beautiful", economist Schumacher criticizes mainstream economics and advances the idea that small, appropriate technologies are a superior alternative to the mainstream ethos of "bigger is better".

Episode 81: Henry Hazlitt — Man versus the Welfare State

Episode  |  June 21st, 2021  |  Season 5  |  45 mins 18 secs

Episode 80: Thomas Jefferson - Selected Readings

Episode  |  June 9th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  43 mins 46 secs

Jefferson's writings give an insight into the philosophy of the early republic and especially the influence of John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers on the American founding.

Episode 79: Grace Olmstead - Uprooted

Episode  |  May 12th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  45 mins 48 secs

Partly an elegy for the farming community in which she was raised, partly a reflection on the transient, frenetic life that has become the American ideal, Olmstead examines the things that make communities work, the things that built them, and the things we have lost.

Episode 78: Vaclav Havel - The Power of the Powerless

Episode  |  May 3rd, 2021  |  Season 5  |  39 mins 23 secs

Havel's essay described the nature of post-totalitarian dictatorship and the need for people to live within the truth.

Episode 77: Roger Scruton - How to Be a Conservative

Episode  |  April 26th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  42 mins 16 secs

Episode 76: Frank Meyer & Russell Kirk - What is Conservatism?

Episode  |  March 28th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  43 mins 44 secs

Episode 75: Herbert Marcuse - One-Dimensional Man

Episode  |  March 13th, 2021  |  Season 5  |  42 mins 10 secs