The Good Fight

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 week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Laurenz Guenther discuss why there’s a massive representation gap between political elites and voters on cultural issues, how this explains the rise of populist parties like the AfD in Germany, and whether new parties can successfully occupy the economically left but socially conservative political space.

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Podcast production by Mickey Freeland and Leonora Barclay.

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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 week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Lant Pritchett discuss why the traditional foreign aid approach to development is fundamentally misguided, how countries actually achieve prosperity through organic national transformation, and whether the classic path to development remains viable in the 21st century. 

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Podcast production by Jack Shields and Leonora Barclay.

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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 conversation, Yascha Mounk and David Bromwich discuss why Americans have lost faith in universities, how grade inflation and political conformity undermine academic credibility, and whether the opacity of elite admissions processes can be reformed.

Note: David Bromwich asked us to be clear that the views he expresses are his own and not those of any institution or group within an institution.

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Podcast production by Mickey Freeland and Leonora Barclay.

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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 Valley predictions about automation consistently miss the mark.

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Podcast production by Jack Shields and Leonora Barclay.

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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: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy's Most Essential Freedom.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jacob Mchangama discuss why we’re experiencing a global free speech recession despite technological advances, how hate speech laws are being weaponized against their original intent, and whether democracies can resist the authoritarian playbook for controlling online discourse.

If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone.

Email: [email protected]

Podcast production by Mickey Freeland and Leonora Barclay.

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YouTube: Yascha Mounk, Persuasion

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