The Liberalism.org Show – Details, episodes & analysis

In the very first episode of the Liberalism.org Show, Aaron Ross Powell sits down with IHS President Emily Chamlee-Wright to introduce Liberalism.org—why it exists, why it’s launching now, and what listeners and readers can expect from the online magazine and its companion podcasts.

Liberals have ceded the family to social conservatives for decades — and Lauren K. Hall thinks it's a mistake liberalism can't afford. In this episode, host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Hall, professor of political science and associate dean of academic affairs at the Rochester Institute of Technology, about her Liberalism.org essay "Why Liberalism Needs the Family." They discuss why classical liberals have under-theorized this pre-political institution, how siblings, trust, and the wider "village" cultivate the citizens that markets and self-government require, the false binary between total family autonomy and state intervention, and why over-scheduled, over-supervised childhoods may be quietly producing adults more comfortable with authoritarianism.

Further Reading:

• Why Liberalism Needs the Family — Lauren K. Hall, Liberalism.org
• Family and the Politics of Moderation: Private Life, Public Goods, and the Rebirth of Social Individualism — Lauren K. Hall, Baylor University Press
• The Radical Moderate's Guide to Life — Lauren K. Hall's Substack
• Let Grow — Lenore Skenazy's nonprofit, with the tiered intervention guide Hall recommends

More from Liberalism.org:

• Yours, Mine, or Ours? Liberals Need a Theory of the State — Michael C. Munger

Markets can fail — but can government actually fix them? In his Liberalism.org essay "Yours, Mine, or Ours? Liberals Need a Theory of the State," political scientist Michael Munger argues that liberals have been losing the policy debate by defending the perfection of markets rather than challenging the imperfection of the state. Host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Munger — a Liberalism.org fellow and the Pfizer, Inc./Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. University Distinguished Professor at Duke University — about what he calls the "pretty pig problem" in policy arguments, why roads are actually a poor example of public goods, how the concept of government as a technology reframes what belongs in the state's toolkit, and whether intellectual honesty about market failures can coexist with a strong presumption in favor of liberty.

Further Reading

• "Yours, Mine, or Ours? Liberals Need a Theory of the State" — Michael C. Munger, Liberalism.org
• Technology and the End of Authority: What Is Government For? — Jason Kuznicki, Palgrave Macmillan
• "Seeing with Two I's: States, Markets, and Some Advice for Us Liberals" — Michael C. Munger, Liberalism.org

Can a half-hour of sitcom reruns make you a better liberal? Shal Marriott thinks so — and in this episode of the Liberalism.org Show, host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Marriott, a PhD student in political science at McGill University, about her article "Sitcoms: A Defense." They discuss how popular television can cultivate liberal habits of character beyond mere tolerance, why appreciating pluralism requires something closer to delight than grudging acceptance, what Adam Smith and Judith Shklar have in common with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and whether the low stakes of fictional worlds offer a space to practice the discernment that liberalism demands.
Further Reading

• "Sitcoms: A Defense" — Shal Marriott, Liberalism.org
• Liberalism as a Way of Life — Alexandre Lefebvre, Princeton University Press
• Ordinary Vices — Judith Shklar, Harvard University Press

More from Liberalism.org

• "Mini Tacos, Murder, and the Problem of Getting Exactly What We Want" — Sarah Skwire
• "What Early Liberals Knew, We'll Remember" — Jason Kuznicki

What does a thriller about a murderous house-hunter have to do with liberalism? Quite a lot, it turns out. In this episode, host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Sarah Skwire, Senior Program Officer at Liberty Fund and a Liberalism.org Fellow, about her article "Mini Tacos, Murder, and the Problem of Getting Exactly What We Want." They explore how narrative can persuade where data can't, how literature trains empathy by putting us inside other minds, and how the very abundance that liberalism celebrates can paradoxically generate its own kind of scarcity — one we engineer through our own over-optimized desires.

Further Reading

• Mini Tacos, Murder, and the Problem of Getting Exactly What You Want — Sarah Skwire, Liberalism.org
• Best Offer Wins — Marisa Kashino, Macmillan
• Sarah Skwire at AdamSmithWorks — Liberty Fund

More from Liberalism.org

• The Enemy Is Power, Wherever You Find It — Matt Zwolinski

In this episode, host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Matt Zwolinski, Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego and a Liberalism.org Fellow, about his article "The Enemy Is Power, Wherever You Find It." They discuss why liberals have traditionally focused on state power while neglecting its private forms, how institutional design can disperse and counterbalance power through mechanisms like competitive markets and federalism, and what both the left and classical liberals should learn from the current illiberal moment about the dangers of concentration.