Acton Line

In this episode, Eric Kohn, Acton’s director of communications, sits down with David L. Bahnsen to discuss his new book, There’s No Free Lunch. In his book, Bahnsen explores how the free market has enabled hundreds of millions of people to rise from the depths of poverty and achieve a higher quality of life. In fact, there is no better economic system for human flourishing. However, a contagion has begun infecting public opinion with regard to capitalism in general and free markets specifically. Call it socialism, progressivism, or leftism, more and more people each day are turning away from the time-tested free market that has been absolutely essential to the prosperity of nations around the world. The question is, Why?

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There's No Free Lunch: 250 Economic Truths

David Bahnsen on GameStop, RobinHood and market populism

About David Bahnsen

‎Capital Record Podcast

Sirico & Bahnsen: Liberty & Morality in the Midst of Crisis 

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In this episode, Dylan Pahman, executive editor and research fellow here at the Acton Institute, sits down with Kevin Schmiesing, director of research at the Freedom & Virtue Institute and coauthor and editor of the newly released Race and Justice in America. They discuss cultural tensions stemming from race and justice issues, the civil rights and Black Lives Matter movements, and how to move forward in a peaceful, unified manner. 

Race and Justice in America tackles the most enduring and provocative issues with a rare combination of intellectual sophistication and bracing realism. Featuring the writings of John Sibley Butler, Ismael Hernandez, and Kevin Schmiesing, this collection is an original and necessary contribution to our national discourse.

Race and Justice in America: The Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, and the Way Forward 

Freedom & Virtue Institute 

About Kevin Schmiesing 

The Economy of Order: Justice Requires Love

Acton Lecture Series - Black Liberation Through the Marketplace: Hope, Heartbreak, and the Promise of America 

Justice, applied equally 

Institutionalizing the critical race revolution 

America's two warring views of race 

Is Critical Race Theory un-American? 

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Digital technology has undoubtedly brought many benefits, but it has also come with growing threats to our privacy, our families and businesses, our mental health, and our freedom. Call it digital contagion. From cancel culture to fake news, from data collection and surveillance to outright social manipulation, we are bombarded by content that insidiously influences our behavior and threatens our security and even our livelihood.

In this episode, Eric Kohn, Acton's director of communications, sits down with Michael Matheson Miller, Acton senior research fellow, to discuss Michael's new book, Digital Contagion: 10 Steps to Protect Your Family & Business from Intrusion, Cancel Culture, and Surveillance Capitalism.

Digital Contagion: 10 Steps to Protect your Family & Business from Intrusion, Cancel Culture, and Surveillance Capitalism 

Bio | Michael Matheson Miller 

Google and surveillance capitalism

The panic over Big Tech

Civil society in a time of pandemic 

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Increasingly, people are turning to intermittent fasting to bolster their health. But we aren’t the first people to abstain from eating for a purpose. This routine was a common part of our spiritual ancestors’ lives for 1,500 years.

In his new book, Eat, Fast, Feast: Heal Your Body While Feeding your Soul―A Christian Guide to Fasting, Jay Richards argues that Christians should recover the fasting lifestyle, not only to improve our bodies, but to bolster our spiritual health as well. He draws upon forgotten insights from the Christian tradition on fasting and feasting and combines them with the growing body of modern scientific literature on ketogenic diets and fasting for improved physical and mental health, arguing that re-thinking our modern diet with an eye toward these ancient insights and new discoveries will lead us to a far more healthy and wholesome lifestyle.

Today, Dylan Pahman, research fellow at Acton and executive editor of the Journal of Markets and Morality, talks with Jay Richards about his new book and how Christians can and should recover the fasting lifestyle, not only to improve our bodies, but to bolster our spiritual health as well.

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Eat, Fast, Feast: Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul―A Christian Guide to Fasting | Jay W. Richards

Jay W. Richards bio

Acton’s 31st Annual Dinner

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On October 3, 2021, Frances Haugen—the so-called Facebook whistleblower—appeared on 60 Minutes to detail her time with the social media giant, as well as the content of the thousands of internal documents that reveal, according to her, the "conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook.” Two days later, she was testifying before Congress, who had hauled Big Tech CEOs like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and others before them at least a half-dozen times in recent years.

The conventional wisdom is that Big Tech and social media platforms like Facebook are a threat: to our way of life, to our democracy, and even to our happiness and our well-being.

But is this threat real or just moral panic? 

Today, Acton senior research fellow Michael Matheson Miller talks with Robby Soave, a senior editor at Reason and author of the new book Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn’t Fear Facebook and the Future. In the book, and in this interview, Soave examines the recent kneejerk calls to regulate Big Tech from both sides of the aisle. He argues that we should balance our concerns about Big Tech with the consequences of altering the ecosystem that allowed tech to get big in the first place, cautioning us to at least ask the question, “Are we sure we really want to do this?”

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Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn't Fear Facebook and the Future | Robby Soave

Whistleblower: Facebook is misleading the public on progress against hate speech, violence, misinformation | 60 Minutes

Digital Contagion: 10 Steps to Protect your Family & Business from Intrusion, Cancel Culture, and Surveillance Capitalism | Michael Matheson Miller

Scott Lincicome on Section 230 and social media | Acton Line

Hold internet companies responsible for content on their platforms, not just the government | Paul Clyde, Acton Institute

Acton’s 31st Annual Dinner

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All children deserve the love and affection that come from being in a family. Most importantly, children deserve to have their needs met in a permanent and loving home. The original ideal of the foster care system was to provide such fundamental necessities until a child is reunited with his or her biological parents, or adopted. However, the present reality shows us something entirely different. The child welfare system has declined to the point where it now caters to the needs of the adults rather than to those of the children. 

In this episode, Eric Kohn, Acton director of communications, sits with Naomi Schaefer Riley, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss her new book, No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives.

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No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives 

Bio | Naomi Schaefer Riley

Anti-religious hostility takes aim at foster care and adoption agencies 

Our Foster Care System Is Becoming A 'Pipeline' For Human Trafficking 

Social justice crusaders are putting kids in the foster care system at risk 

Banter Podcast | Naomi on American child welfare 

Why kids in foster care end up sleeping in offices 

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William Shakespeare is undoubtedly one of the greatest writers of Western civilization. As we watch or read his plays, we are still able to draw applicable lessons on politics, our fallen human nature, and how one should relate to God and neighbor.

In this episode, I sit down with Nicolas McAfee to discuss the political wisdom of Shakespeare's late plays.

Bio | Nicolas McAfee is a fourth-year doctoral student studying political philosophy at the University of Dallas. He is currently writing a dissertation on the political wisdom of William Shakespeare’s late plays under the direction of Dr. Gerard Wegemer. By unpacking the power of narrative storytelling to shape communities for good or ill, Nicolas’ work aims to foster thoughtful engagement of political literature and healthy participation in civic life. A native of Upland, Calif., he and his wife currently live in Irving, Texas.

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Playing Shakespeare: An Actor's Guide by John Barton 

Playing Shakespeare, The Two Traditions, 1984 

A Guide to Shakespeare's Political Thought 

Can Shakespeare Survive Woke?

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Forced labor camps have been embedded in Chinese politics since the birth of the People’s Republic of China. Mao Zedong created and instituted these camps to terrorize and indoctrinate anyone who didn’t “fall in line.”

Today these camps are more prevalent than ever. Not only are they hothouses for indoctrination and torture, but the products they produce are sold globally, generating more profit for the communist regime.

In this episode, Eric Kohn, Acton's director of communications, sits down with Weifeng Zhong, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, to discuss Dr. Zhong's troubling research.

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The China Challenge: The West Struggles To Respond To Beijing’s Forced-Labor Camps

Weifeng Zhong, Author at Discourse 

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On Friday, October 8, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., the Acton Institute will host its First Annual Academic Colloquium on Markets & Morality. This year’s theme is “Neo-Calvinism & Modern Economics.”

In this episode, Dan Hugger, librarian and research associate, and Sarah Negri, research project coordinator, both at the Acton Institute, sit down with Dylan Pahman, an Acton research fellow and executive editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality, to discuss why Acton is hosting an academic colloquium, what an academic colloquium is, and who should attend.

Register here for the colloquium

More details   

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COVID-19 has impacted us in ways that will continue to affect us for generations. In this episode, I explore a very particular consequence of COVID: Children born during the pandemic have scored significantly lower on IQ tests.

I sit down with Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, president and founder of the Ruth Institute, to unpack this disturbing phenomenon.

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The Ruth Institute 

Bio | Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D 

Love & Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village 

Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work 

The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and Why the Church Was Right All Along 

Covid-19: Children born during the pandemic score lower on cognitive tests, study finds 

Forbes deletes article on psychological damage of masking children - LifeSite 

School Mask Mandates Mean Trauma For Millions Of Children, Especially Those From Low-Income Families 

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