The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk and Jared Diamond discuss the age-old question of structure versus agency—and when individual leaders truly change the course of events.

Jared Diamond is a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. His books include Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Third Chimpanzee, and Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Make a Difference?

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jared Diamond discuss how to measure the true impact of individual leaders, why the institutional environment determines how much difference a leader can make, and whether societies are bett...

We’re on vacation this week, so are rerunning a fun “beach read” episode exploring if your nearest and dearest could be psychopaths.

Miss us already? In an event exclusively for readers of American Purpose and Persuasion, Yascha Mounk will be interviewing Francis Fukuyama about his life and thought at 5pm on Sunday, September 6 at The Abbey Centre, London. Find out more and get tickets here. Paying subscribers of Persuasion and American Purpose can access a code for a free ticket here.

Abigail Marsh is a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Neuros...

Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama discuss his lifelong hobbies—from building furniture to robotics—and why they might save us in the age of big tech.

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is In the Realm of the Last Man. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column at Persuasion. 

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama discuss why building things with your hands is an antidote to dependence on big tech, whether AI will erode the practical skills future generations need to survive...

Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama delve into 9/11, the hubris of humanitarian intervention, and the letter he regretted signing.

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is In the Realm of the Last Man. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column at Persuasion. 

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama discuss why Fukuyama initially supported the Iraq War and what changed his mind, how the neoconservative movement’s experience of Eastern Europe shaped its disastrous assumptions about the Middle East, and what his break wit...

Yascha Mounk and Adam Bodnar examine why Poland’s celebrated victory over illiberalism is now very much in doubt.

Adam Bodnar is a Professor of Law at SWPS University in Warsaw, heading the Department for Rule of Law and Human Rights. He is also a Senator of the Republic of Poland, elected in October 2023, and a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He previously served as Minister of Justice (December 2023–July 2025) and as Ombudsman of Poland (2015–2021).

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Adam Bodnar discuss the post-populist dilemma, how Poland’s...

Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama explore why any theory of politics must begin with an account of what makes us human.

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is In the Realm of the Last Man. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column at Persuasion. 

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama discuss why human nature has been so central to Fukuyama’s political thought, what modern evolutionary biology and anthropology tell us about the myth of primordial individualism, and whether human beings ar...

Yascha Mounk and Daron Acemoglu examine how the digital age severed the link between economic growth and shared prosperity.

Daron Acemoglu is an economist at MIT and a recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics. His latest book is What Happened to Liberal Democracy?

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Daron Acemoglu discuss why liberal democracy’s post-war formula for shared prosperity broke down, how the rise of a college-educated professional class produced a cultural backlash against “social engineering,” and how to shape the future of artificial intelligence.

We’re delighted to feature...

Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama examine what people still get wrong about “the end of history.”

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is In the Realm of the Last Man. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column at Persuasion. 

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama discuss the true meaning of “the end of history,” why the struggle for recognition—rather than material interest—is the engine of historical progress, and how his thesis holds up 35 years on.

Enjoying this discussion? In...

Yascha Mounk and Katja Hoyer also discuss what the Islamist attack on Berlin’s Pride parade says about the state of Germany.

Katja Hoyer is a visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her latest book is Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Katja Hoyer discuss why the Weimar comparison is so tempting (and so often misleading), what genuine enthusiasm for democracy in 1919 Germany can teach us about how democracies fail, and whether political fragmentation or economic crisis...

Francis Fukuyama discusses the experiences and individuals that shaped him.

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is In the Realm of the Last Man. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column at Persuasion.

We have a treat for you today! To mark the publication of Francis Fukuyama’s memoir In the Realm of the Last Man, we’re launching a multi-part series about his intellectual eras. Here, Francis Fukuyama reflects on his life, from his family’s experience of Japanese-American internment, to surprising family secrets di...

Yascha Mounk and Claude Steele discuss why diversity can produce anxiety—and how it differs from prejudice. 

Claude Steele is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University. His latest book is Churn: The Absurd Abyss of Race in America.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Claude Steele discuss why diversity produces psychological tension even in the absence of explicit prejudice, whether American schools are truly as racially segregated today as they were in the 1950s, and how the fear of being stereotyped affects both minority and majority group members in integrated settings.

Francis Fukuyama, Linda Chavez, and Rachel Janfaza join Yascha Mounk to discuss what a radical liberal agenda might look like today.

In this week’s episode of The Good Fight Club, Yascha Mounk, Francis Fukuyama, Linda Chavez, and Rachel Janfaza explore whether Gen Z’s political instincts are genuinely liberal, what a renewed liberalism needs to reclaim from the republican tradition, and how to rebuild a culture of public-spiritedness in an age of anti-establishment politics. 

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University and the founder of American Purpose. His latest book is Li...

Yascha Mounk and John Harpham examine how early modern thinkers justified slavery long before modern theories of race took hold.

John Samuel Harpham is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics and Letters and Wick Cary Assistant Professor at the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery. 

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and John Harpham discuss why the standard racial account of slavery’s origins misses the earliest justifications for the practice, how Aristotelian and Roman conceptions of freed...

Will you be in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday July 15? I will be interviewing Francis Fukuyama about how liberalism should respond to the postliberal threat. Find out more and get your free ticket here! —Yascha

Yascha Mounk and Deirdre McCloskey discuss why ideas, not capital accumulation, made the modern world rich.

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, sometimes described as “the conscience of economics,” holds the Isaiah Berlin Chair in Liberal Thought at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Deirdre McCloskey discuss why liberalism drives economic growth, how the gr...

Yascha Mounk and Arvind Narayanan discuss why the real transformation from AI will take decades rather than months—and what that means for how we should prepare.

Arvind Narayanan is a professor of computer science at Princeton University.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Arvind Narayanan discuss why AI’s transformative impact will unfold over decades rather than months, whether human accountability can survive the rise of AI agents in the workplace, and what the economy will look like once AI has automated every task that can be precisely specified.

If you ha...

Yascha Mounk and Ivan Krastev examine what the country’s founding ideals mean on its 250th anniversary. 

Ivan Krastev is Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies and the Albert Hirschman Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the advisory and governing boards of several international organizations, including the European Investment Bank, the International Crisis Group, and GLOBSEC.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Ivan Krastev discuss what the 250th anniversary of the Unite...

Yascha Mounk and Charles Fain Lehman explore how strategic policing drove the decline in violent crime—and why Baltimore was left behind.

Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal, where he covers crime, policing, and urban policy.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Charles Fain Lehman discuss why Baltimore failed to follow the crime declines that transformed other American cities, what the evidence tells us about why strategic policing works, and how focused deterrence breaks cycles of retaliatory violence.

Watch the conv...

Matthew Yglesias, Claire Ainsley, and Yascha Mounk debate whether progressives have abandoned the working-class voters they once claimed to represent.

Will you be in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday July 15? I will be interviewing Francis Fukuyama about how liberalism should respond to the postliberal threat. Find out more and get your free ticket here! —Yascha

In this week’s episode of The Good Fight Club, Matthew Yglesias, Claire Ainsley, and Yascha Mounk examine why center-left parties are losing ground across democracies, whether structural forces or strategic failures are to blame, and what lessons from Canada, Aust...

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, and whether Europe can learn to defend itself without the United States.

If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this l...

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 look like, and whether liberalism’s heyday is over. Find out more about the Institute of Arts and Ideas—and book tickets to this year’s  How The Light Gets In...

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 York Times and many other publications.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Sam Moyn discuss whether a truly fair democracy might weigh different ci...

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 conversation, Yascha Mounk and David Bau discuss how AI models actually produce their results and reflect about problems, whether the “thinking” process that models show users reveals their authentic thought processes, and how researchers can decode...

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: @Yascha_Mounk & @JoinPersuasion

YouTube: Yascha Mounk, Persuasion

LinkedIn: Persuasion Community

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Stewart-Williams discuss why women and men are more similar than is often thought and what the real sex differences between men and women are, from casual sex to career choices.

If you have not...

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 actually is, whether social media has made us permanently pessimistic about institutions, and how elite failures are now exposed in real time.

If you have not yet signed up for o...

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 Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Paige Harden discuss why twin studies reveal the substantial influence of genetics on human be...

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 reputation has endured despite the controversial legacies of other founding fathers, how his frontier upbringing shaped his character, and what Washington’s voluntar...

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 failing American students, how classical schools are achieving better outcomes through traditional teaching methods, and whether learning facts versus critical thinking represents a false choice in education.

If...

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, how scientific incentives may be encouraging risky experimentation—and the recent outbreaks of hantavirus and ebola.

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

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 might break free from cycles of political revenge and backlash. 

Amanda Ripley is the founder of Good Conflict. Her latest book is High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out.

Jes...

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 Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Al Roth discuss the impact of moral disgust on solving economic problems, whether we sh...

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 of Labour and rise of Reform, why Europeans are struggling to adapt to a new political, cultural, and technological age, and the future of the war in Ukraine.

If you have...

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...

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 re...

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.

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.

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

Email: l...

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...

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 plausible to the wild, how to assess whether a conspiracy theory is accurate, and discovering the truth in a convoluted world.

If you ha...

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 institutions proved more resilient than many expected, and what lessons this holds for understanding the limits of competitive authoritarianism.

If you have not...

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’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Andres Velasco discuss whether the Middle East war will trigger a 1970s-style economic crisis, why AI valuations could spark the next finan...