Yascha Mounk
496 episodes listed below
Yascha Mounk interviews scholars and policymakers on democracy, populism, AI, and global economics.
The Good Fight pairs extended, careful questioning with guests working through politics, economics, war, technology, and social change. Its conversations favor historical context and institutional detail over quick verdicts.
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The Good Fight is an interview-format podcast hosted by Yascha Mounk, built around single-guest conversations that typically run 45 to 65 minutes. Guests are drawn from academia, journalism, economics, and policy circles rather than celebrities, including economists like Andrés Velasco and Sebastian Mallaby, political scientists like Francis Fukuyama and Ruy Teixeira, and writers like David Goodhart and Kathleen Stock. A recurring subject is the state of liberal democracy: why authoritarian populism gains ground, how center-left and center-right parties are fracturing, and what political strategies might restore majority coalitions. Episodes regularly take up global economic risk, including discussions of financial crises, the Washington Consensus, AI-driven market valuations, and the U.S. dollar's reserve-currency role. Artificial intelligence recurs both as an economic story and as a governance problem, with episodes covering AI safety, open-source model risk, and international regulation. The show also engages contested ethical and social questions directly, such as a debate over the expansion of assisted-death laws in Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Geopolitical events are covered close to the news cycle, as with episodes on U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran and their political fallout. Mounk generally pushes guests to move from broad claims to specifics, and several episodes are framed around a guest's newly published book. The show suits listeners already engaged with policy debate, political theory, or economics who want extended, argument-driven conversation rather than news summary. Production is a straightforward two-person interview with no narrative or panel segments evident in the sampled episodes.
Made for: Listeners with an existing interest in political theory, economic policy, or the future of liberal democracy who want long-form, argument-driven interviews rather than news recaps.
What sets it apart: Focuses specifically on the intellectual and policy case against authoritarian populism, interviewing scholars and policymakers in depth rather than pundits doing quick political commentary.
"The Good Fight," the podcast that searches for the ideas, policies and strategies that can beat authoritarian populism.Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight.If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: [email protected]: @Yascha_MounkWebsite: http://www.persuasion.community
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Yascha Mounk turns policy disputes into searching conversations about the ideas, incentives and institutions beneath them.
Yascha Mounk builds The Good Fight around substantial guest conversations and questions that keep changing scale. A discussion of work moves between economic data, trade shocks, political choices and artificial intelligence.
Yascha Mounk keeps political certainty in the chair until its tradeoffs start talking.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sober policy conversation on oil shocks, resilient globalization, and the state role in governing AI.
Yascha Mounk's conversation with Andres Velasco takes up the world economy at a jittery moment: possible oil shocks, recession fears, free trade, American power, and whether the old global order is giving way to something more fractured.
A sober, case-driven warning about how assisted death can expand beyond its most sympathetic cases.
Yascha Mounk's conversation with Kathleen Stock treats assisted death as a hard liberal problem: the claim of bodily autonomy and relief from suffering set against the danger that a narrow exception can become a broader social practice.
A pointed center-left conversation about The Liberal Patriot's closure, donor pressure, and the electoral weakness both parties keep exploiting.
The Good Fight starts with Yascha Mounk mourning the closure of The Liberal Patriot, a publication he casts as a kindred but more party-focused cousin to Persuasion: liberal, reform-minded, and willing to press Democrats from inside the tent.
A serious AI politics conversation about open source, European regulation, superintelligence, venture capital, and bubble risk.
Yascha Mounk and Sebastian Mallaby treat AI safety as a live power question, not a seminar topic. The conversation moves between Silicon Valley, Europe, China, and the firms trying to build toward superintelligence, with open source as the most concrete test case.
A grounded labor-market conversation on the China shock, economic pessimism, and whether AI policy can still work for ordinary workers.
The Good Fight turns a conversation about work into a broader argument about what the United States has learned, or failed to learn, from recent economic shocks.
A sharp status-and-democracy conversation about education, work, and why social mobility no longer feels like enough.
David Goodhart's conversation with Yascha Mounk takes up a familiar democratic strain: societies that prize college education and white-collar status can end up giving less respect to people who took another route.
A short, tense interview about truth and trust becomes most revealing once Mounk presses Schwab on institutional failure.
The Good Fight gets an unusually revealing exchange out of a very short interview with Klaus Schwab. Yascha Mounk opens with Schwab's worry that people now choose their own truth and burrow deeper into confirming it, then pushes back with a sharper possibility: distrust may not…
A skeptical crisis read on Trump's Iran strikes, unclear objectives, and the politics of claiming victory.
Yascha Mounk brings Francis Fukuyama into a fast-moving conversation about U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, with the focus less on military spectacle than on the problem of purpose.
Sharp political debate with policy detail and real disagreement.
Matt Gurney and Jen Gerson debate Canadian politics, from Alberta separatism to Ottawa's bureaucracy.
Robert Evans, Katie Stoll, and Cody Johnston build fake conspiracies and mock right-wing media.
Steve Hayes and Dispatch panelists argue through the week's Iran, DOJ, and Supreme Court news.
Jonah Goldberg's solo political rants and author interviews on conservatism, courts, and current events.
John Donvan moderates two-sided debates on AI, bioethics, feminism, and film's future.
Andrés Velasco tells Yascha Mounk that the war in the Middle East, tariff policy, and AI valuations create more uncertainty for the world economy than a simple oil-price story.
The Liberal Patriot is closing.
Assisted death is the hard case here.
Artificial intelligence turns into a governance problem.
Work is the real subject here.
Politics used to be easier to bargain over when the fight was mostly about money.
This episode features an interview with Shashank Joshi, defense editor at The Economist, who provides analysis and predictions on the ongoing Middle East war, including its impact on global politics and the economy.
This episode features an interview with Ibram X.
This episode discusses Adrian Wooldridge's analysis of the current crisis in liberalism, exploring its historical resilience, modern challenges from neoliberalism and identitarian politics, and potential strategies for renewal.
Yascha Mounk interviews WEF founder Klaus Schwab about his new book on restoring trust and democracy.
A discussion on AI governance and the conflict between AI labs and government over technology use.
Trump's objective is still fuzzy.
Yascha Mounk discusses the crisis of philosophical liberalism with political theorist Danielle Allen, exploring how liberals can reinvent their tradition to address modern challenges.
Yascha Mounk interviews Janice Stein about the limitations of rational choice theory in understanding politics and the current rise of authoritarian populism.
Yascha Mounk hosts a roundtable discussion on political trends in Asia, focusing on authoritarianism and democratic resilience.
Yascha Mounk interviews Jacob about his viral articles on the decline of white men in elite cultural institutions due to DEI initiatives.
This episode features an interview with Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier discussing why American universities face declining public trust, political controversies, and perceptions of creating an out-of-touch elite class.
A philosophical discussion on the dual nature of metrics in modern life, exploring their benefits and costs.
Yascha Mounk interviews Yung Chang about Chinese history, culture, and the impact of communism on kindness.
An interview with migration scholar Ruud Koopmans discussing how migration has changed the US and Western Europe, integration predictors, and asylum system reform.
Yascha Mounk interviews Martin Wolf about the contradictions in Trump's economic policies and the state of the U.S.
This episode features an interview with surgeon and author Atul Gawande, exploring his work on medical checklists, the cultural shift in operating rooms, and the broader nature of medicine and mortality.
Language may not be the human fortress after all.
Yascha Mounk interviews Damon Linker to review the first year of Trump's second term, discussing economic, foreign, and domestic policy, media transformation, and the clash between the administration and institutional norms.
This episode discusses Donald Trump's attempts to expand his control over American institutions and democracy through autocratic tactics, featuring insights from Ian Bassin.
Yascha Mounk interviews Rebecca Neuberger Goldstein about her book 'The Mattering Instinct,' exploring the human need to matter and its impact on society.
Yascha Mounk discusses the ongoing protests in Iran with journalist Scott Anderson, exploring the country's democratic potential.
Yascha Mounk discusses Trump's base turning against him and provides podcast subscription instructions.
Yascha Mounk interviews Ivan Kashtov to review the political state of the world in 2025, covering Trump's administration, Europe's response, China's rise, and AI's impact.
Yascha Mounk and David French discuss the state of American institutions under the Trump administration and the threat of authoritarian populism.
A live recording from the Global Free Speech Summit 2025 featuring a panel discussion on free speech, facts, and viewpoint diversity.
Historian Quentin Skinner discusses his new book on liberty as independence from domination, contrasting it with modern notions of freedom as non-interference.
Yascha Mounk interviews historian Justin Marazzi about the history of slavery in the Islamic world, a topic often neglected compared to the Atlantic slave trade.
A computer scientist discusses the unhealthy trend of accepting black-box machine learning models without understanding them, and the broader debate about AI's capabilities and impacts.
Yascha Mounk interviews Katie Herzog about her experience with alcohol addiction and her unconventional medication-assisted path to sobriety.