The Free Mind Podcast

Taylor Jaworski, Associate Professor of Economics and my successor as Associate Faculty Director of the Benson Center. Taylor has been a Faculty Fellow at the Benson Center, and he has written widely on the economic history of the United States. We discuss the development of the American economy during the periods of the Founding and the Second World War, the history of America's transportation system, and the ways in which various notions of progress emerge from the study of economic history.

Season 4 will be Shilo Brooks's final season as host of the Free Mind Podcast.  Matt Burgess will assume hosting duties beginning in 2023.  Stay tuned!

Alexander Duff, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. Duff discusses the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, one of the most towering and controversial thinkers of the 20th century. We discuss Heidegger’s political and metaphysical philosophy, his affiliation with the Nazis, and his writings on technology. 

Daniel J. Mahoney, Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption University and a visiting fellow at Princeton University.  Mahoney discusses cancel culture, explores what is valuable about our civilizational inheritance, and urges resistance to efforts to silence the life of the mind and free pursuit of truth. 

Season 3 launches with Paul Ulrich, Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Intellectual Foundations Program at Carthage College. Our conversation today explores Allan Bloom’s 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind.

Robert Pasnau, Professor of Distinction in Philosophy at CU Boulder, is the founding director of the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization. Pasnau discusses how the unlikely center got started, and how its mission to foster free inquiry, heterodox ideas and diverse political perspectives has affected academic life at CU and across the nation.

Jeremy Fortier, Post-doctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the City College of New York. Fortier explores the thought and writings of 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. We discuss Nietzsche’s popular appeal, his complicated legacy, his criticism of the Western Tradition, his style of writing, and the basic problems his philosophy confronts. 

Kevin Williamson is a correspondent at National Review and author of several books, including his most recent book Big White Ghetto. The Benson Center was delighted to present Williamson’s investigation into how progressive business elites have created disciplinary corporations.

Season Two of The Free Mind podcast launches with a conversation between Shilo Brooks and Bradford Wilson, Executive Director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University and fellow at Princeton’s Butler College. Wilson explores Hamilton’s life and intellectual legacy. We discuss Hamilton’s unusual upbringing, the enduring importance of his political thought, and the fateful contributions he made to the form and structure of the American economy.

Colleen Sheehan, professor of political science and director of graduate studies at Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. She discusses what makes Jane Austen’s characters so enduring, the lessons Austen teaches about love in Emma, and what readers can learn from Austen’s complex use of language and penetrating psychological insights into human nature.