The Free Mind Podcast

Jennifer Smith is Associate Professor of English, Coordinator of Digital Humanities, and Associate Director of the Center for Faith and Learning at Pepperdine University. She is a noted medievalist, and also a 2022-2023 sabbatical fellow at the Benson Center. We discuss the life and legacy of the fifteenth-century English bishop Reginald Peacock, who was defrocked and exiled for heresy–i.e. canceled–for questioning the infallibility of the church and advocating the authority of reason.

Alice Evans is a Senior Lecturer in the social science of development at King’s College London, the author of The Great Gender Divergence, forthcoming from Princeton University Press, and the host of the Rocking Our Priors podcast. We discuss Dr. Evans’ research on gender inequalities over the past millennium globally, and its relevance to today’s movements and debates about feminism in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Lionel Shriver is an author and journalist, whose many books include We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003) and most recently Abominations: Selected Essays from a Career of Courting Self-Destruction (2022). Our conversation focuses on one of the fascinating contradictions of Ms. Shriver’s life that she has written about. 

Kevin Priola is a State Senator of Colorado, representing the 13th District, and previously the 25th. He recently crossed the floor, from Republican to Democrat, and faces a recall effort as a result. Our conversation focuses on the challenges and opportunities facing moderates in today’s extreme and polarized political landscape.

Joey Fratino is a graduate of CU Boulder, who served as the President of the CU Boulder College Republicans until graduating in 2022. Our conversation explores the conservative student experience on campus. We discuss recent survey studies of conservative college student experiences and how these compare to Joey’s experience at CU. 

Season Five of The Free Mind podcast launches with a conversation between Matt Burgess and Alex Trembath, Deputy Director of the Breakthrough Institute, which is a think-tank focused on technological solutions to environmental problems. Our conversation explores climate change, the eco-modernist movement and its similarities and differences with conventional environmentalism, and the science and politics of nuclear energy. 

Matt Burgess, Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies here at CU. Matt is a Faculty Fellow at the Benson Center, a Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Economics, and an Institute Fellow at CU’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Our conversation today explores the state of political polarization and free inquiry in higher education.

Alan Kahan, Professor of British Civilization at the University of Paris—Saclay, and Visiting Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy at the Benson Center. We discuss why Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, why the book is still worth reading today, and what Tocqueville thought about race, religion, and the prospect of American decline.

Alex Priou is a Teaching Assistant Professor at CU’s Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics, and Society. Our conversation today explores the work of the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, paying particular attention to his great book The Republic. We discuss why Plato wrote dialogues instead of treatises, how Platonic dialogues should be read, and why the Republic still resonates with students over two-thousand years after it was written.

Deirdre McCloskey is a Distinguished Professor of Economics and History Emerita, and Professor of English and Communication Emerita, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. We discuss the effects of liberalism on human progress, the challenges and benefits liberalism derives from innovation, whether popular economic critiques of liberalism hold water, and her unique intellectual biography that spans over 50 years in higher education in a wide variety of academic disciplines.