The Permanent Problem

Responding to the crisis of liberalism, Jonathan Rauch

Liberal values and institutions now face aggressive challenges from both right and left extremism, so how should defenders of the embattled liberal center respond? It's b

Everyday ambition, everyday abundance, with Virginia Postrel

Virginia Postrel has made a career out of seeing the extraordinary in the everyday -- from the growing importance of "look and feel" in the products we buy, to the power

Living near friends and family, with Phil Levin

America is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness: marriage and birth rates, the number of close friendships, time spent with friends, and community involvement more broa

Liberalism's cycles of crisis and renewal, with Adrian Wooldridge

In the heady days after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many imagined that we had arrived at the “end of history” now that liberal democratic capitalism had chased all

Modern faith with Ryan Avent

All of the blessings of modernity, Ryan Avent argues in a fascinating new book, rest on faith. It is our faith in others, our ability to trust strangers we will never mee

AI "psychology," with Jack Lindsey

Any attempt to anticipate how social change will unfold in the coming years has to confront a major unknown: how much better is artificial intelligence going to get, and

The future of innovation, with Andrew McAfee

After years of disappointing productivity growth, are we about to experience an AI-powered breakout? On this episode of The Permanent Problem podcast, Brink Lindsey welco

MAGA intellectuals with Laura Field

In this episode of The Permanent Problem podcast, Laura Field joins host Brink Lindsey to discuss their new books. The first half of the conversation focuses on Field's F

Defending liberalism (and how not to), with Damon Linker

On this episode of The Permanent Problem podcast, Brink Lindsey welcomes Damon Linker, author of the "Notes from the Middleground" Substack and a Niskanen Center senior f

Abundance and the Democrats, with Jonathan Chait

On this episode of The Permanent Problem podcast, host Brink Lindsey welcomes Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic to discuss the abundance movement and the future of the Democ

The prehistory, present, and future of abundance, with Steve Teles

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's bestselling new book Abundance has kicked off a new political movement -- and a vigorous internal debate on the future of the Democratic P

Christianity and democracy, with Jonathan Rauch

While the formal separation of church and state is a vital element of America's constitutional order, the success of our long-running experiment in self-government has al

Symbolic Capitalists and "Awokenings", with Musa al-Gharbi

The rightward shift in public opinion that carried Donald Trump back into the White House is being widely interpreted as a backlash against the "Great Awokening" of the p

Abundance and collapse, with Eli Dourado

A new movement is taking shape around the idea of restoring "abundance." Uniting thinkers from across the political spectrum -- including "supply-side progressives," "con

Decoding the birth rate decline, with Tim Carney

Birth rates are plummeting around the globe, as half the world's population now lives in countries with sub-replacement fertility rates. Total population is already falli

Giving gender equality a modern context, with Richard Reeves

Over the past half-century, societies around the world have made great strides in elevating the status of women and expanding their educational and employment opportuniti

Rethinking our vision for the future, with Virginia Postrel

What determines our visions of the future, and how those visions change over time? How is politics shaped by conflicting visions of the future? What did the old mid-centu

How to create the sci-fi world we were promised, with James Pethokoukis

"We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters." Peter Thiel's famous complaint hearkens back to the middle of the 20th century, when high economic growth seemed u

Reviving capitalist dynamism, with Tyler Cowen

Is the "great stagnation" in innovation and economic growth really over? What new technologies on the horizon are most likely to reviving broader dynamism? Does the globa