Acton Line

In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Clara Piano, visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of Mississippi and an affiliate scholar at the Acton Institute. Clara tells the story of how Fr. Robert Sirico, along with Pope St. John Paul II and Michael Novak, inspired her to start thinking through the moral case for the free economy as an undergraduate as well as her trajectory as a scholar. How is the idea that markets are opposed to morality historically naive? Who is doing great research today exploring the relationship between markets and morals? How do you bring your research and values into the classroom? How should religious leaders understand the relationship between morals and markets? What should young people consider when discerning their professional calling and forming relationships and families?

Subscribe to our podcasts

Watch this podcast here

Clara E. Piano

Economics as an Antidote to Envy | Clara E. Piano

The Economics of the Parables | Fr. Robert Sirico

Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy | Fr. Robert Sirico

Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life | Michael Novak

Centesimus Annus (1 May 1991)

An Economic Theory of Economic Analysis: The Case of the School of Salamanca | Clara Jace

Dylan Pahman | Acton Institute

The Political Economy of Distributism | Alexander W. Salter

Hannah's Children | Catherine Ruth Pakaluk

Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

The Fertility Gap and Economic Freedom | Clara E. Piano

If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at [email protected].

In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. They discuss current crises in American higher education and what can be done to resolve them. Is there too much or too little money in higher education? How should colleges and universities think about their role in preparing students for work and careers? What is the role of the university in forming citizens? Why is it important for universities to hand down cultural heritage and perennial wisdom? How might a reinvention and renewal of general education requirements help solve the crisis in higher ed? Can AI play a constructive role in academic renewal?

Subscribe to our podcasts

Watch this podcast here

The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

The Case Against Education | Princeton University Press

Decadence and renewal in the higher learning: An episodic history of American university and college since 1953 | Russell Kirk

Core Knowledge Foundation

Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know | E.D. Hirsch Jr.

The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students | Allan Bloom

God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom' | William F. Buckley Jr.

Consortium of Christian Study Centers

The Martin Center Releases New Publication: "Blueprint for Reform: General Education"

Utah Adopts Legislation Inspired by the General Education Act | The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at [email protected].

In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Samuel Gregg, president of and Friedrich Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History at the American Institute for Economic Research. He is also an affiliate scholar at the Acton Institute. They discuss his new essay “Michael Novak the Thoroughly Catholic Capitalist,” published in the Summer 2025 issue of Religion & Liberty. How was the American Catholic milieu of the first half of the 20th century different from today’s? Why were religious, ethnic, and political identities so intertwined? How did Michael Novak go from being a writer and journalist to a public intellectual? From liberal to conservative? What were Novak’s unique contributions to Catholic social thought?

Subscribe to our podcasts

Watch this podcast here 

Michael Novak: A Thoroughly Catholic Capitalist

Samuel Gregg | AIER

The Open Church | Michael Novak

Spirit of Democratic Capitalism | Michael Novak

Unmeltable Ethnics: Politics and Culture in American Life | Michael Novak

Toward the future : Catholic Social Thought and the U.S. economy: A Lay Letter | Lay Commission on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy

Will it Liberate?: Questions About Liberation Theology | Michael Novak

Instruction on Certain Aspects of the "Theology of  Liberation” | Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Centesimus Annus (1 May 1991) | Pope John Paul II

A Conversation with Michael Novak 

If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at [email protected].

In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Dave Hebert, a senior research fellow at AIER and an affiliate scholar here at the Acton Institute. They discuss the American economy from all angles. What do the latest GDP numbers mean in the real economy? Why are the new tariffs announced by the White House troubling? How does the Bureau of Labor Statistics do its job—and are the latest jobs numbers “rigged”? Will new tariff revenue put a dent in the national debt? What are the economic consequences of erratic policies, undermining of the legitimacy of economic data, and suspicion of the science of economics by policymakers?

Subscribe to our podcasts

Watch this podcast here

David Hebert | AIER

No Jibbering | Dave Hebert | Substack

Trump Administration Updates: White House Announces Sweeping New Tariffs for Much of the World | The New York Times

Economy Updates: After a Weak Jobs Report, Trump Fires That Agency’s Commissioner | The New York Times

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

David Bahnsen on the State of the U.S. Economy

Oren Cass Has Learned Just Enough Economics to Be a Nuisance | RealClearMarkets

The Devil Went Down to Wall Street | Dan Hugger

If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at [email protected].

This month on the Acton Rundown: Dan and Mark chat about upcoming Acton events and announce two new affiliate scholars.

Subscribe to our podcasts

Watch this podcast here

Acton’s 2025 Emerging Leaders

Marcel van Hattem on the Fight for Freedom in Brazil

Why I Slept on the Streets for a Year – Religion & Liberty Online

Why Brazil?: Pursuing Freedom in the Americas: Berlanza, Lucas, Catharino, Alex, Pinheiro, John C: 9798218700645: Amazon.com: Books

2025 Pittsburgh Dinner | Acton Institute

Acton's 35th Annual Dinner | Acton Institute

The Heart of a Machine: Technological Threats to Liberty in Adam Smith and Beyond

The Meaning of Work: What Skilled Trades Can Teach About Forming Workers of Character

Silicon Valley Revival?

If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at [email protected].

On today’s episode, Noah Gould, Acton’s Alumni and Student Programs manager, speaks to three members of the Emerging Leaders Program.

The Acton Emerging Leaders Program is an 8-week leadership-development internship in Grand Rapids, Mich. The program brings together a cohort of student leaders from across the nation and around the globe for a transformative experience. During the summer, Emerging Leaders will gain professional experience, grow their network, and go deeper into the ideas of a free and virtuous society.

Subscribe to our podcasts

Watch this podcast here

Emerging Leaders Program | Acton Institute

The Use of Knowledge in Society | F.A. Hayek

Intellectuals and Socialism | F.A. Hayek

The Disadvantages of Being Educated | Albert Jay Nock

Dining with Judas: The Limits of Culinary Diplomacy | Abigail Ingram

If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at [email protected].

In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Kevin Vallier, professor of philosophy at the University of Toledo, where he is associate director at the Institute of American Constitutional Thought and Leadership and affiliate scholar at the Acton Institute. They discuss his new essay, “The Fusionist Manifesto,” published in the Summer 2025 issue of Religion & Liberty. Do critics of the fusionist tradition in American conservatism have a point? In what ways is American conservatism’s fusionist tradition undertheorized? What are the traditional arguments for the compatibility of freedom and virtue, and how might they be improved? How can new intellectual blood best be infused into the fusionist tradition?

Subscribe to our podcasts

Watch this podcast here

The Fusionist Manifesto

American Fusionism | Acton Institute

In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays | Frank S. Meyer

Free Persons and the Common Good | Michael Novak

The Liberty-Virtue Dance | Kevin Vallier, Religion & Liberty Online

Fusionism and the Problem of Order | Kevin Vallier, Religion & Liberty Online

Dignitatis humanae | Pope Paul VI

The ‘man of public spirit’: Politics as art, not science | Dan Hugger, Religion & Liberty Online

The Roman Question | The Rambler (1860)            

If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at [email protected].

In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Eric Kohn, CEO of America’s Future. They discuss just that—and what the organization Eric leads is doing to make that future a bright one. What are the ideas that animated America at its founding, and how do we best transmit them to a new generation? What are the sociological dimensions of building up the liberty movement in America? How can young people build skills and community—and have a good time doing so?
Home — America's Future

Writing Fellows — America's Future

Gell-Mann amnesia effect | Wikipedia

A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream | Yuval Levin

The Internet of Beefs

In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and CIO of The Bahnsen Group. With an ever-shifting policy environment and ever-expanding public debt, what is the state of the American economy? How have tariffs and interest rate policy affected economic growth? Why is the housing sector so crucial to the economy? What are the prospects for economic growth in the near future, and will AI revolutionize the American economy?

Subscribe to our podcasts

Watch this podcast here

Acton University

Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It  | David Bahnsen

Capital Record | National Review Capital Matters

Two dolls instead of 30? Toys become the latest symbol of Trump's trade war | AP News

The Broken Window | Frédéric Bastiat

Understanding the National Debt | U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data

Powell Reiterates Fed’s Wait-and-See Approach Before Cutting Rates | The New York Times

“The Counter-Revolution in Monetary Theory” | Milton Friedman

Abundance | Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson

If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at [email protected].

This month on the Acton Rundown: Dan and Mark recap Acton University 2025 and discuss Acton’s upcoming events and publications.

Subscribe to our podcasts

Watch this podcast here

Religion and Liberty Online

Acton University

Acton On-Demand

Marcel van Hattem on the Fight for Freedom in Brazil

Silicon Valley Revival?