At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will b ... Show More
Today
The Crisis of American Political Economy: On the New Conservative Policy Agenda with Chris Griswold
In this sixth episode of Season 5, I interview Mr. Chris Griswold. An alum of Wheaton College and Princeton Theological Seminary, he was formerly a senior advisor to then Senator Marco Rubio, and is currently the Policy Director for American Compass—a leading center-right public ... Show More
1h 14m
Apr 9
The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence
Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they’ve sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd’s and Sandra Bland’s, capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold. The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Vict ... Show More
57m 50s
Apr 8
Thorsten Gromes, "Sustaining Peace After Civil War: Insights from 48 Recent Cases" (Springer, 2026)
Sustaining Peace After Civil War: Insights from 48 Recent Cases (Springer, 2026) examines one of the most important questions in peace research: What leads to enduring peace after civil wars, and what leads to the resurgence of violence? For decades, intrastate conflicts have be ... Show More
41m 8s
Jun 2024
Emily Zackin and Chloe N. Thurston, "The Political Development of American Debt Relief" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
A political history of the rise and fall of American debt relief. Americans have a long history with debt. They also have a long history of mobilizing for debt relief. Throughout the nineteenth century, indebted citizens demanded government protection from their financial burdens ... Show More
58m 27s
Mar 2025
Ep105. Neoliberalism: The Ultimate Disorderer? With George Monbiot
Forget Christianity, Judaism, New Age Spirituality, and Buddhism, a new type of religion drives 21st century Western thought. It goes by the shadowy name of Neoliberalism: the commodification of everything; Markets and the private sector ascendent; The deliberate attempt to reduc ... Show More
53m 40s
Jul 2024
Ujju Aggarwal, "Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
What do universal rights to public goods like education mean when codified as individual, private choices? Is the “problem” of school choice actually not about better choices for all but, rather, about the competition and exclusion that choice engenders—guaranteeing a system of w ... Show More
37m 31s
Oct 2024
How We've Been Tricked: The Death of Economic Freedom | Grace Blakeley Exposes the Truth
Grace Blakeley is a leading economist, author, and political commentator, known for her sharp critiques of capitalism and neoliberalism. In the fourth episode in the series 'It's Not What They Told You', she joins Mo Gawdat to discuss the decline of economic freedom, how governme ... Show More
54m 38s
Dec 2024
Matthew Gardner Kelly, "Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity" (Cornell UP, 2024)
In Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity (Cornell UP, 2024), Matthew Gardner Kelly takes aim at the racial and economic disparities that characterize public education funding in the United States. With California as his focus, Kelly illustrat ... Show More
1h 17m
Feb 2025
How to survive No 11 Downing Street
With Keir Starmer recently forced to promise his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, would stay on until the next election, Westminster Insider Host Sascha O'Sullivan talks to former Chancellors and advisors who have worked in No 10 and No 11 Downing Street over the last 30 years to find ... Show More
48m 36s
Nov 2024
Labour's Economic Conundrum
William Davies joins Tom to assess the efforts of the new Labour government in tackling the UK's many economic challenges. They consider whether Rachel Reeves’s first budget, with its substantial tax rises, can do anything more than arrest the decline of the public finances, and ... Show More
55m 19s
Jan 2025
Devin Fergus, “Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class” (Oxford UP, 2018)
Politicians, economists, and the media have put forth no shortage of explanations for the mounting problem of wealth inequality – a loss of working class jobs, a rise in finance-driven speculative capitalism, and a surge of tax policy decisions that benefit the ultra-rich, among ... Show More
43m 5s