Zooming In at The UnPopulist

The UnPopulist
  • 5.0 (11)
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Exploring the ideas, and interviewing the writers, featured at The UnPopulist. www.theunpopulist.net

  1. 8H AGO

    How the Right and the Left Converged Against Capitalism: A Conversation With John Cassidy

    Listen to Zooming In at The UnPopulist in your favorite podcast app: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | RSS | YouTube New Yorker staff writer and economist John Cassidy joins The UnPopulist's Berny Belvedere to discuss his latest book, Capitalism and Its Critics: A History from the Industrial Revolution to AI—a sweeping account of capitalism's resilience told through the eyes of its most formidable challengers. © The UnPopulist, 2026 Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X. Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

    54 min

  2. FEB 5

    Will the Trump Administration's MAGA-Driven Foreign Policy Be America's Downfall? A Conversation with Anne Applebaum

    The first year of Donald J. Trump’s second term as the president of the United States has been not only tumultuous for America but also the rest of the world. Just as at home, he has disregarded existing international institutions and standing alliances to chart a very different foreign policy course. Trump has threatened long-standing European with steep tariffs and military action—and traditional adversaries such as Russia with relative warmth and friendliness. Are there any broader theories guiding Trump’s actions? What are the aims of his MAGA advisors? And what does the Trump presidency portend for America’s standing as the champion of the liberal international order? If that order permanently collapses, what will replace it and how would that affect American interests? The UnPopulist’s editor-in-chief, Shikha Dalmia, discusses with Pulitzer Prize winning author Anne Applebaum, a historian. Anne, who writes for The Atlantic, has penned the most incisive —and prescient—analysis about the emerging alliance of global authoritarians, Russian disinformation campaign, the Ukrainian war and more. We hope you enjoy. *** Thanks for checking out The UnPopulist! Subscribe to support our project. Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X. © The UnPopulist, 2026 Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

    45 min

  3. JAN 26

    Does America Need a Deeper State to Save It? A Conversation with Tyler Cowen and Francis Fukuyama

    Today, we have Editor-in-Chief Shikha Dalmia in conversation with two of the foremost thinkers of our time, Frank Fukuyama, an American political theorist and public intellectual best known for The End of History and the Last Man who is now a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute, where his work focuses on political order, governance, and democratic backsliding. And Tyler Cowen, an economist, author, and public intellectual who has written books on innovation, talent and cultural change. A professor at George Mason University and director of the Mercatus Center, he writes the highly influential blog Marginal Revolution and hosts the long-running podcast Conversations with Tyler. One reason for the populist revolt in America is the notion of the “deep state”—that an unaccountable bureaucracy is secretly ruling the country. Frank and Tyler come from very different intellectual traditions. Frank, a centrist, is a student of Max Weber and Tyler is a limited government libertarian. Yet they have both argued that liberal states in complex modern societies need a functional bureaucracy— aka state capacity—to deliver public goods and solve collective action problems. But they also have a ton of disagreements, especially on just how broken American governance is—and they duke it out in a spirited discussion. We hope you enjoy. *** Thanks for checking out The UnPopulist! Subscribe to support our project. Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X. © The UnPopulist, 2026 Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

    1h 1m

  4. JAN 9

    ICE Is Only Getting Started, the Worst Is Yet to Come: A Conversation with David J. Bier

    Immigration enforcement is the dominant focus of Donald Trump’s second term. He promised to get tough, and he has. Many who voted for him because this issue was important to them believed he would mainly crack down on criminal aliens. On today’s episode, host Shikha Dalmia and guest David Bier of the Cato Institute dismantle that illusion. They discuss how in his second term, Trump has launched an all-out assault on all immigrants: Illegal and legal. Undocumented and documented. Criminals and law-abiding ones. Moreover, Trump is going about immigration enforcement in an unimaginably cruel and indiscriminate way. He is engaging in mass arrests without due process, sweeping in citizens as well as immigrants. They point out how things are only going to get worse going forward as an agency that has no respect for life and a vast contempt for the rule law has been granted expanded funding by Congress. This episode was recorded just before Christmas. As if to prove their point, this week an ICE agent killed Renee Good, a peaceful, natural born American citizen, in Minneapolis. Good was a 37-year-old mother of three and, according to her family, a devout Christian with not an unkind bone in her body. She was driving home after dropping her toddle, when she encountered an ICE raid in progress. She was shot at point blank range as she tried to get away. Mass deportation cannot happen without mass collateral damage. Good’s death was not a freak accident. It was the foreseeable outcome of a system that treats visibility as provocation and accountability as an obstacle. This episode of Zooming In is about immigration policy, yes. But it’s also about the deeper logic of unchecked state power. As immigrants are targeted and lose their rights, Americans will not be spared. Freedom is not divisible. A transcript of today’s podcast appears below. It has been edited for flow and clarity. *** Thanks for checking out The UnPopulist! Subscribe to support our project. Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X. © The UnPopulist, 2025 Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

    59 min

  5. 11/28/2025

    A Persecution Complex Links the Pilgrims and Christian Nationalism: A Conversation With Tyler Huckabee

    America’s religious landscape has always been complicated, but something striking is happening inside conservative Christianity today. A movement that once spoke the language of scripture and personal faith is now increasingly shaped by grievance, politics, and an embattled sense of cultural siege. To explore how we got here—and what this shift means for both Christianity and American liberalism—senior editor at The UnPopulist Berny Belvedere sits down with Tyler Huckabee of Sojourners to trace the long arc from the pilgrims to the rise of MAGA Christianity. They examine how persecution narratives, culture-war identity, and a growing rejection of liberal norms have reshaped much of the modern evangelical imagination, and look to whether a more open, justice-oriented expression of Christian faith can still thrive. We hope you enjoy. *** Thanks for checking out The UnPopulist! Subscribe for free to support our project. Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X. © The UnPopulist, 2025 Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

    47 min

  6. 11/21/2025

    America Will Need a Reconstruction Project After Trump: A Conversation with Shikha Dalmia and Andy Craig

    A post-Trump America may feel distant right now, but the work of imagining what a liberal reconstruction could look like has already begun. After years of executive overreach, collapsing guardrails, and an unprecedented centralization of presidential power, the question facing the country isn’t only how to limit further damage—it’s how to rebuild a constitutional order that’s stronger, fairer, and resistant to the next would-be strongman. In this episode, host Aaron Ross Powell sits down with The UnPopulist’s Shikha Dalmia and Andy Craig to introduce The Reconstruction Agenda, our ambitious new project dedicated to answering that question. They explore how civic resistance, institutional memory, and America’s own constitutional traditions can fuel a genuine renewal, and which reforms—big and small—might be ready the moment the political window opens. We hope you enjoy. *** Thanks for checking out The UnPopulist! Subscribe for free to support our project. Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X. © The UnPopulist, 2025 Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

    56 min

  7. 10/05/2025

    China's Authoritarian Regime Is Censoring American Universities: A Conversation with Sarah McLaughlin

    For decades, American universities have been seen as bastions of free inquiry, attracting students and scholars from around the world. But what happens when this openness creates vulnerabilities? How do authoritarian regimes leverage financial ties and international student populations to stifle criticism and export censorship onto American campuses? And more urgently, are we now seeing these same tactics of intimidation and financial pressure being used by our own government to bring higher education to heel? To explore these questions, host Aaron Ross Powell is joined by guest Sarah McLaughlin, a senior scholar of global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and author of Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech. They discuss the levers of power that governments like that of China use to pressure universities, from threatening the flow of tuition-paying students to direct transnational oppression of students on U.S. soil. They also examine why so many academic institutions—in the face of these threats from both foreign and domestic actors—have chosen silence and capitulation over courage. We hope you enjoy. *** © The UnPopulist, 2025 Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X. Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

    34 min

  8. 09/28/2025

    From Conservative Civic Nationalism to MAGA White Nationalism: A Conversation with Jason Wilson

    The MAGA movement was once an insurgency within the Republican Party. Now, it is the party. But more than just a political takeover; this shift is the result of the consolidation of a movement defined by hostility toward its opponents and a vision of America based on a largely imagined past. Its intellectual and political leaders have a clear, authoritarian blueprint for reshaping the country. In this episode, The UnPopulist's senior editor Berny Belvedere is joined by journalist Jason Wilson, who recently covered the fifth National Conservatism conference for The Guardian. Through the lens of the conference, they map the entire MAGA ecosystem—from committed Trump loyalists to the ideologues pushing Christian Nationalism and other anti-democratic visions. A transcript of today’s podcast appears below. It has been edited for flow and clarity. *** Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X. © The UnPopulist, 2025 Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

    44 min
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Exploring the ideas, and interviewing the writers, featured at The UnPopulist. www.theunpopulist.net

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