Category: Interviews

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Mike talks with Onkar Ghate, a senior fellow and chief philosophy officer at the Ayn Rand Institute. Dr. Ghate is the Institute’s resident expert on Objectivism and serves as its senior trainer and editor. He has taught philosophy for over ten years at the Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center.

Dr. Ghate studied economics and philosophy at the University of Toronto and worked in the financial industry prior to joining the Ayn Rand Institute in 2000. He received his doctorate in philosophy in 1998 from the University of Calgary.

Mike & Dr. Ghate Discuss:
– Why Ayn Rand would hate Donald Trump
– Misunderstanding ‘selfishness’
– Objectivism and Judeo-Christian Values
– Why Rand wasn’t a Libertarian or a Conservative
– The 75th anniversary of Rand’s The Fountainhead
– Are there American politicians who embody Rand’s values?
– And lots more!

The Ayn Rand Institute on Twitter

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Mike talks to University of Maryland cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand about her new book, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World.

Topics Mike and Michele discuss include:

• the importance of culture in understanding politics
• why some cultures are ‘tight’ and others are ‘loose’
• the advantages and disadvantages of tightness and looseness
• tight culture support for ‘loose’ Donald Trump
• the geography of tightness and looseness in the United States
• threat perception, political ideology, and tightness
• if the United States should be tighter or looser than it is
• how tight and loose cultures can better communicate
• and lots more

Follow Michele Gelfand on Twitter

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Mike talks to Vanderbilt University political scientist Larry Bartels about his book (co-authored with Christopher Achen) Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government.

Topics Mike and Larry discuss include:

– identity politics
– tribalism
– the ‘folk theory’ of democracy and why it’s wrong
– inattentive, uninformed, and irrational voters
– if the problem of ‘bad voters’ has been getting worse recently
– if polarization is really such a big deal
– the potential problem of too much democracy
– what we can do to get more responsive government

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com/support.

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Mike talks with E. Glen Weyl, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New York City, about his recent book with Eric Posner, Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society.

Mike and Glen discuss:

• why private property is a form of inefficient monopoly and how to fix it
• the problem with ‘one person, one vote’ and a proposed alternative
• a radical alternative to our current immigration system
• how big institutional investors discourage innovation and growth
• the massive amount of unpaid labor we willingly provide to Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other Big Tech companies

– Google’s The Selfish Ledger (YouTube)
– Glen Weyl on Twitter

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com/support.

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Mike talks to novelist and essayist Joshua Cohen about his latest book, Attention: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction. In this talk, Mike and Joshua discuss:

• Donald Trump and the Fall of Atlantic City
• What people who have worked with Donald Trump have to say about him
• Ethnic whites and the Trump coalition
• Contrasting Donald Trump and Barack Obama
• The appeal of Bernie Sanders
• Distraction and Attention

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com/support.

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(There was a very short period in Mike’s life where he thought he could handle his teaching job, write a book, host The Politics Guys, and start a new podcast – Politics Plus. It soon became evident to Mike how insane trying to do all this at once was, and so he quickly shut down Politics Plus. But before he did, he’d posted four interviews – all of which he thinks are pretty good and are worth sharing with you as Politics Guys bonus episodes.)

Mike talks with Beck Dorey-Stein, who worked as a White House stenographer from 2012 – 2017. She’s written about her experiences in the recently released book, From the Corner of the Oval. They discuss:

• What White House stenographers do
• How being in the White House changed how Beck felt about politics
• If the White House is anything like the TV show The West Wing
• The insane hours and workloads of White House staffers
• What happens behind the scenes during crises
• ‘Living the dream’ in the Obama administration
• Her view of President Obama
• What it was like to come to work the day after Donald Trump was elected
• What it was like working in the Trump administration
• And lots more

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com/support.

(There was a very short period in Mike’s life where he thought he could handle his teaching job, write a book, host The Politics Guys, and start a new podcast – Politics Plus. It soon became evident to Mike how insane trying to do all this at once was, and so he quickly shut down Politics Plus. But before he did, he’d posted four interviews – all of which he thinks are pretty good and are worth sharing with you as Politics Guys bonus episodes.)

Mike talks to Tali Sharot, director of the Affective Brain Lab and an Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the department of Experimental Psychology at University College London. Dr. Sharot’s research integrates neuroscience, behavioral economics, and psychology to study how emotion influences people’s beliefs, decisions and social interactions. She’s the author of The Optimism Bias and, most recently, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others.

Mike and Dr. Sharot discuss:

• how some information is like sex and plum pie
• why Donald Trump was so much more influential than his Republican presidential rivals
• how our attempts to persuade others can actually boomerang on us, leaving them less persuaded than they were to start with
• how to go from getting someone to agree with you to getting them to act
• when crowds are wise and when they’re not
• and lots more

Follow the Affective Brain Lab on Twitter

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com/support.

(There was a very short period in Mike’s life where he thought he could handle his teaching job, write a book, host The Politics Guys, and start a new podcast – Politics Plus. It soon became evident to Mike how insane trying to do all this at once was, and so he quickly shut down Politics Plus. But before he did, he’d posted four interviews – all of which he thinks are pretty good and are worth sharing with you as Politics Guys bonus episodes.)

Mike talks to Mona Charen, one of the most prominent conservative voices in the United States. She writes a syndicated column that appears in more than 200 newspapers, she’s a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and is the author of the books Useful Idiots, Do-Gooders,and the recently released Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense.

Topics they cover include:

• differences between pioneering feminists and the ‘second-wave’ feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s
• feminism and the Marxist concept of ‘false consciousness’
• what science tells us about biological differences between the sexes
• whether women can ‘have it all’
• how sexual empowerment was a wrong turn for the feminist movement
• the rise of ‘no-fault’ divorces and the damage they’ve done
• whether ‘my body, my choice’ and ‘safe, legal, and rare’ is a reasonable approach to abortion
• the ‘Campus Rape Industrial Complex’
• the transgender movement

Follow Mona Charen on Twitter

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com/support.

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Mike talks to political scientist John Sides about his Democracy Fund Voter Study Group report, ‘Muslims in America: Public Perceptions in the Trump Era‘.

Dr. Sides is an associate professor of political science at The George Washington University, co-author of the books Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America (coming out in September of 2018) and The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election, as well as a founder and the editor-in-chief of the political science blog, The Monkey Cage.

Topics Mike and Dr. Sides discuss include:

• How favorably Americans rate Muslims.
• Differences in how Republicans and Democrats rate Muslims.
• How education affects Muslim bias.
• Public support for a Muslim ban.
• Americans’ views of Muslims compared to Muslim Americans’ own views about themselves.
• Mainstream media’s role in perpetuating anti-Muslim bias.

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com/support.

There was a very short period in Mike’s life where he thought he could handle his teaching job, write a book, host The Politics Guys, and start a new podcast – Politics Plus. It soon became evident to Mike how insane trying to do all this at once was, and so he quickly shut down Politics Plus. But before he did, he’d posted four interviews – all of which he thinks are pretty good and are worth sharing with you as Politics Guys bonus episodes.

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In this interview, Mike talks with journalist, author, and policy analyst David Frum. Mr. Frum is currently a senior editor at the Atlantic. From 2014 through 2017, he chaired the board of trustees of the leading UK center-right think tank, Policy Exchange. He’s served as a speechwriter and special assistant to President George W. Bush and as senior adviser to the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaigns. He’s also the author of nine books, most recently Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic.

In the conversation, Mike and Mr. Frum cover, among other things:

• how Bill Clinton monetized the post-presidency
• America as a toddler in heavy traffic
• Donald Trump and punching babies
• the ‘neither ethical or smart’ Trump administration
• Congressional leaders enabling Trumpocracy
• whether the American political system can handle the Trump presidency

Follow David Frum on Twitter