James Wilson Institute Podcast

Nate Fischer of the venture firm New Founding joins host Garrett Snedeker for a Mini-Sode to discuss Fischer's provocative essay in The American Mind "Meritocracy Must *Not* Be Our Goal." Fischer provides some fascinating angles on why common understandings of merit in 21st-century America undermine a flourishing society. Read the piece here: https://americanmind.org/salvo/meritocracy-must-not-be-our-goal/ Nate Fischer on X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/NateAFischer New Founding: https://www.newfounding.com/

Professor Aaron Zubia joins Anchoring Truths Podcast host Garrett Snedeker to discuss his new book analyzing David Hume’s political theory with its implications on liberalism. Professor Zubia gives a glimpse into what the state of affairs was in the age of the Scottish Enlightenment, the ancient and Epicurean roots Hume has, and the modern applications and ramifications of his political theory. In a time of ever growing political turmoil, Zubia’s renewal of David Hume’s thought and proposal of a “politics of truth” is well worthy of listening. Aaron Zubia is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. He specializes in the moral and political philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment and the American founding. His first book, The Political Thought of David Hume: The Origins of Liberalism and the Modern Political Imagination (ND Press) is available now. His scholarly work has appeared in Hume Studies and Interpretation: A Journal of Po

In this special "minisode," JWI Deputy Director Garrett Snedeker and Programs Director Daniel Osborne sit down to talk a bit about the ideas and debates that came to characterize 2023. They discuss Mere Natural Law, Originalism, Historicism, and Courage.

Catherine Glenn Foster (James Wilson Fellowship Alumna '16) joins Anchoring Truths Podcast host Garrett Snedeker to discuss the state of the pro-life movement in America. They discuss recent developments in the movement, and Foster conveys the challenges that arise from outlawing abortion, encouraging pro-lifers to help and redirect young moms and families in their communities. The podcast also delves into Foster's personal experience as a post-abortive woman and how that experience provides her with conviction to build a culture of life from natural birth to natural death. Catherine Glenn Foster, M.A., J.D., is a constitutional attorney and a mother. She is the former President and CEO of Americans United for Life. She writes, speaks, and testifies around the country on all issues related to building a culture of life. You may follow Catherine Glenn Foster on Twitter/X at @cateici and at CatherineGlennFoster.com

Join the Anchoring Truths Podcast team for our first episode of 2024, featuring an extended episode. Our guest is the distinguished political scientist Prof. W.B. "Bill" Allen, who chatted with us about his new translation, fifty years in the making, of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws. JWI Founder & Co-Director Hadley Arkes paid a surprise visit to the podcast to join the discussion.

For the final episode of the year, Anchoring Truths presents a special episode featuring Professor David Bernstein of the Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Prof. Bernstein delivered remarks on the American Law of Race post the Harvard cas, Students for Fair Admissions, delivered at our James Wilson Senior Seminar on October 20th. Host Garrett Snedeker served as a research assistant on Prof. Bernstein's book Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.

Erika Bachiochi joins host Garrett Snedeker on the Anchoring Truths Podcast for a wide-ranging discussion of her thoughts on Natural Law and modern feminism as a departure from the feminism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Erika Bachiochi is a legal scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center specializing in Equal Protection jurisprudence, feminist legal theory, Catholic social teaching, and sexual ethics. A 2018 visiting scholar at Harvard Law School, she is also a Senior Fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute in Cambridge, MA, where she founded and directs the Wollstonecraft Project. Her newest book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, was published by Notre Dame University Press in 2021, and was named a finalist for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 2022 Conservative Book of the Year award. Bachiochi's Podcast with Ezra Klein: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-erika-bachiochi.html

Anchoring Truths Podcast host Garrett Snedeker welcomes Prof. Kevin Walsh of Catholic Law for a briefing on Prof. Walsh's recent conversation with Justice Amy Barrett that touched on the institutional authority of the Supreme Court. Topics covered include Justice Barrett's apparent rejection of judicial supremacy and more thoroughly the debate over judicial supremacy versus departmentalism. Kevin C. Walsh is a professor at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law, and co-director of the Law School’s Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. Professor Walsh teaches federal courts, constitutional law, torts, agency and partnership, and a seminar on law in the Catholic intellectual tradition. Professor Walsh’s scholarship focuses on doctrines that define the scope of federal judicial power, and has appeared in the Georgetown Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, New York University Law Review, and the Notre Dame Law Review, among other venues. Prior to jo

Clarke Forsythe joins Garrett Snedeker for a discussion of his new book on the history of the fall of Roe v. Wade and the rise of the pro-life movement. The book, co-authored with Alexandra DeSanctis, Pushing Roe v. Wade Over the Brink, chronicles the 50 year legal campaign against Roe v. Wade, the implications of the Dobbs decision overruling Roe, and the challenges for the cause for life in America going forward. This rich discussion reminds us of both where the pro-life movement has been and where it must go in order to save the lives of pre-born children. Clarke Forsythe is Senior Counsel at Americans United for Life (AUL) and the author of Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade Encounter Books 2013, which was cited by the Supreme Court in its majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In his 38 years at AUL, Clarke has been co-counsel for parties in three U.S. Supreme Court cases and has argued cases before

Join the Anchoring Truths Podcast Team with our friend Theo Wold, the former Solicitor General of Idaho, for a quite personal account of the origins of the administrative state and the failure of the conservative movement to combat its growth. With key insights derived from his experience working in the Trump Administration, Wold helps illuminate just how many challenges the administrative bureaucracy poses to a future Republican President, as well as the potential path forward. This is an episode you will not want to miss. Before serving as Idaho's Solicitor General, Wold served as the Acting-Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy under President Donald Trump. Before working in the Trump Administration, Wold served as Deputy Chief Counsel to United States Senator Mike Lee on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Theo Wold's analysis is best fleshed out in his recent essay "A Century of Impotency:

Join Bloomberg Investigative reporter Zeke Faux and the Anchoring Truths Podcast team for a deep dive into his first groundbreaking book Number Go Up, an engrossing account of the cryptocurrency craze, and how Sam Bankman-Fried and a titular cast of nerds, crypto visionaries and swindlers turned virtual coins into trillions of dollars. With key insights into the rise and fall of the crypto craze and those swallowed by it, we highly encourage our listeners to listen to this week’s episode. Zeke Faux is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg News in New York. He's a winner of the Gerald Loeb award for explanatory business journalism and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel award, and a finalist for a National Magazine Award. Faux lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and their three children.

Judge Douglas Ginsburg joins the Anchoring Truths Podcast for an in-depth discussion of the new documentary he shaped, We Hold These Truths, a story of the Declaration of Independence's global legacy. Judge Ginsburg traveled the world to film the documentary, which aired on PBS over Independence Day. It's now available to watch free of charge on YouTube. Judge Ginsburg has served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit since 1986. Before joining the court, he served in the Reagan Justice Department. He has taught at the University of Chicago Law School, Columbia Law School, New York Law School, and the Scalia Law School. Watch the documentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc2Ij8NhP2E More information on the documentary: https://www.pbs.org/show/we-hold-these-truths-global-quest-liberty/

The AT Podcast continues with a mini-series “The Right Rethinks Economics" featuring guest author Prof. Alexander Salter. Prof. Salter has sought to bridge a gap in the the discourse between the camp that represents the received wisdom broadly supportive of economic liberty and the camp that considers doctrinaire defenses of economic liberty to be ill-suited, at least on their own, for the challenges of the present. Prof. Salter is the Georgie G. Snyder Associate Professor of Economics in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University. His new book that we’ll be discussing is titled The Political Economy of Distributism: Property, Liberty, and the Common Good, published by Catholic University of America Press. Prof. Salter took his PhD and MA in economics from George Mason University and earned a BA from Occidental.

As part of an ongoing conversation surrounding the rethinking of economic policy on the American right, Compact Magazine editor Sohrab Ahmari joins host Garrett Snedeker and JWI Intern Victoria Baker to discuss his new book, Tyranny, Inc. Their discussion touches on the balance of power between capital and labor across varying periods of economic history, the potential for private corporations to pose a threat to individual liberty, and the appropriate role for unions in America's economic and political life.

Join Judge Amul Thapar and the Anchoring Truths Podcast team for a deep dive into Judge Thapar's new book on Justice Clarence Thomas, "The People's Justice." The book delves into some of Justice Thomas's opinions that tell the fascinating stories of the litigants behind the cases.

Prof. John Yoo of California's Berkeley Law School joins the pod for a light-hearted and spirited discussion of his new, co-authored book "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court" as well as the recent decisions of the Supreme Court in its OT 2022 term. (0:01:24) Why write the book? (0:04:17) Books you aren’t supposed to read (0:08:03) Brown v. Board and the Harvard Admissions case (0:13:25) Lochner Era and “freedom of contract” (0:24:06) Commerce Clause, future litigation on economic rights, administrative agencies (0:32:23) Contrasts between legal positivism and natural law (0:38:09) Counterfactual possibilities, what drives progressive jurisprudence vs. originalism (0:46:40) Dobbs leak (0:56:05) Closing segment, defining legacy of the Roberts court

James Rosen, author of Scalia: Rise to Greatness, and Chief White House Correspondent for Newsmax, joins host Garrett Snedeker for an insider's look at Antonin Scalia's life before he became Justice Scalia. Their discussion touches on Scalia's upbringing in New York, his early positions in the Nixon and Ford White Houses, his tenure as a law professor, and those early years as a judge on the D.C. Circuit.

Prof. Mark David Hall, JWI Affiliated Scholar and Professor at George Fox University, joins host Garrett Snedeker for a discussion of Mark's new book Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land: How Christianity Has Advanced Freedom and Equality for All Americans. The two discuss the vital place of religious liberty in American culture, both historically and at present. They delve especially deeply into the highly problematic slogan "separation of church and state" as well as contemporary flashpoints in the courts over religious liberty.

Mary Harrington, author of Feminism Against Progress, joins host Garrett Snedeker for a discussion of her fascinating new book. Harrington, a British writer, argues that “Progress” no longer benefits the majority of women, and only a feminism that is skeptical of it can truly defend their interests in the twenty-first century. She explains how modern feminism claims to advance “equality” and “freedom” but instead results in sexual dimorphism itself. This shift may benefit the elites, but it only makes it easier to commodify women’s bodies, human intimacy, and female reproductive abilities by stripping women of the exact things that make them uniquely women. Harrington, a self-described “reactionary feminist,” is a contributing weekly editor at UnHerd. She was born in the United Kingdom and graduated from Oxford University in 2002. Her work quickly drew attention from the UK’s Unherd, and she has since appeared in First Things, American Affairs, the New York Post, The Spectator, the New Statesman, The Times of

Rep. Keith Rothfus joins the AT Podcast for a discussion of the Lincolnian position, particularly on abortion, and why it needs to be restored in our political and legal discourse. We also chat about his terms in Congress and what reforms he advocates for a better functioning U.S. House.