The Atlas Society Presents - Objectively Speaking

Who holds the world’s most powerful human rights organizations accountable, and how did groups founded as civil society projects become political powerhouses shaping the UN and international policy toward Israel?

Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 325th episode of Objectively Speaking, where she is joined by Professor Gerald Steinberg, who has spent years investigating NGOs as the founder of NGO Monitor, a research institute that scrutinizes the funding, transparency, and agendas of non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Professor emeritus of political science at Bar-Ilan University, Steinberg examines how civil society was hijacked by political and ideological agendas, how NGOs gain accreditation and influence at the United Nations, and why reports from these organizations often go unverified.

Join Atlas Society Senior Scholar Richard Salsman, Ph.D., for the 324th episode of Objectively Speaking, in which he cuts through the confusing labels attached to capitalism, from "crony," "stakeholder," and "state capitalism."

The concept “capitalism” is bandied about these days without clear definition. As such, it’s frequently and arbitrarily hybridized, with examples including “crony capitalism,” “welfare capitalism,” “anarcho-capitalism,” laissez-faire capitalism,” “conscious capitalism,” “common-good capitalism,” “democratic capitalism,” “political capitalism,” “stakeholder capitalism,” “racial capitalism,” and even such brazen oxymorons as “state capitalism” and “totalitarian capitalism.” Rarely does anyone defend the ideal social system: constitutional capitalism. Dr. Salsman explains how the “varieties” approach generates a diverse menu of critiques of capitalism, why the system is undermined by the mass-equivocation permitted by a multiplicity of false precision, and suggests ways to combat it.

Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 323rd episode of Objectively Speaking, where she sits down with author Rob Henderson to talk about his book "Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class," where he vividly recounts growing up in foster care, enlisting in the US Air Force, attending elite universities, and pioneering the concept of “luxury beliefs”—ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while inflicting costs on the less fortunate.

Rob Henderson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal, who publishes articles on his Substack, with other writings appearing in The Free Press, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

What happens when a party insider who raised millions of dollars for Biden and Harris decides to tell the truth about what she saw behind closed doors?

Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 323rd episode of Objectively Speaking, where she sits down with Lindy Li to talk about her new book, "Unburdened: A Former Democrat Insider's Shocking Account of Political Power, Betrayal, and Party Collapse," which rips back the curtain on a rotten system that rewards failure and punishes honesty.

As a member of the Democratic Party's National Finance Committee, Li raised millions of dollars for Biden and Harris and co-hosted some of the party's most significant fundraisers. In "Unburdened," she offers a first-person account of the machine she helped build and watched collapse, detailing what she describes as a deliberate cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline, a $45 million celebrity payoff scheme, and a donor fundraising system she compares to a multilevel marketing operation. She now works as a political strategist and commentator, co-hosting the podcast "Her Take."

As Social Security and Medicare barrel toward insolvency, what can the United States learn from how other countries have restructured their retirement systems—and does Washington have the political will to act?

Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 321st episode of Objectively Speaking, where she sits down with Romina Boccia to talk about her co-authored book, Reimagining Social Security: Global Lessons for Retirement Policy Changes," which explains what is wrong with Social Security and how major retirement program reforms from Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and Sweden could work in the United States.

Romina Boccia is director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, where she focuses on federal spending, the budget process, the economic consequences of rising debt, and reforms to Social Security and Medicare. She is the principal author of the Debt Dispatch Substack, the leading fiscal policy newsletter read by members of Congress. Boccia previously served as director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at the Heritage Foundation, where she was the principal author of the Blueprint for Balance, the organization's flagship budget plan, which informed President Trump's first-term budget proposal.

What is actually wrong with data centers? What productive purpose do they serve? And is the campaign against data centers just old-fashioned NIMBYism?

Join Atlas Society Senior Fellow Robert Tracinski, a longtime commentator of how technophobia gets dressed up as public concern, sorts out legitimate complaints from the reflexive hostility to progress—and makes the case for what data centers actually make possible.

What happens when a company trades its brand for a cause—and can the same instinct for building things that work fix America's mental health crisis?

Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 320th episode of Objectively Speaking, where she sits down with returning guest Anson Frericks to talk about his new AI-enabled mental health startup, Radley Care, which he co-founded with a mission to empower adults living with serious mental illness to live amazing lives.

Returning for a second time on Objectively Speaking, Anson Frericks previously joined in 2025 to discuss his book "Last Call for Bud Light: The Fall and Future of America's Favorite Beer," where he pulled back the curtain on how stakeholder capitalism, DEI, and ESG initiatives contributed to the collapse of an iconic brand—and what that means for the future of American business. Frericks is the former president of Anheuser-Busch's sales organization, where he spent over a decade before departing the company.

Could nuclear power solve our energy future, and could Mars become humanity's next frontier for civilization-building?

Join Atlas Society Senior Scholar Richard Salsman, Ph.D., for the 318th episode of Objectivley Speaking in which he sits down with returning guest Robert Zubrin to talk about his new books "The Case for Nukes: How We Can Beat Global Warming and Create a Free, Open, and Magnificent Future," which argues that nuclear power is essential to solving the climate crisis while preserving human freedom and prosperity, and "The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet," a vision for the settlements, industries, and societies that could take root on Mars.

Robert Zubrin is an aerospace engineer, founder of the Mars Society and Pioneer Astronautics, and the architect of the Mars Direct exploration plan. He is best known as the author of the seminal book The Case for Mars, which helped shape modern thinking on human space exploration.

Learn more about The Mars Society's upcoming convention: https://convention.marssociety.org/

When lawsuits become weapons and law schools become factories for bad ideas, what happens to justice and the rule of law itself?

Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 317th episode of Objectively Speaking as she sits down with Walter Olson, Senior Fellow at Cato, as part of our mini-series on tort reform to discuss the relationship between civil litigation, accountability, and the proper role of law in a free society.

Walter Olson is a senior fellow at Cato and is known for his writing on law, public policy, and regulation. He is the author of several books about the U.S. legal system, including "The Litigation Explosion," "The Rule of Lawyers," and "Schools for Misrule." His first book, "The Litigation Explosion," was one of the most widely discussed general-audience books on law of its time, leading the Washington Post to dub him “intellectual guru of tort reform.” He followed it with "The Rule of Lawyers," on mass litigation, and most recently "Schools for Misrule," which traces how the ideas taught in elite law schools in one generation often shape national policy in the next—from class-action lawsuits to court takeovers of school funding.

Why do most of us believe the world is getting worse when the data says otherwise, and who are the people actually responsible for the extraordinary progress we've made?

Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 316th episode of Objectively Speaking as she sits down with author Alexander Hammond to discuss his book "Heroes of Progress: 65 People Who Changed the World," which profiles the scientists, inventors, and thinkers whose innovations helped save billions of lives, changed public policy for the better, and lifted millions out of poverty—even though most of their names have been forgotten.

Hammond is the founder of the Initiative for African Trade and Prosperity, a free trade fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and a senior fellow at African Liberty, with work focused on the history of economic growth and innovation, African development, and global well-being. He is the Deputy Editor for Humanprogress.org and policy analyst at the Cato Institute.