The Human Progress Podcast

Our managing editor Chelsea Follett speaks with economist Michael Strain about the myth of American decline and the dangers of populism. They discuss the rise of populism on the left and right, the evidence that American living standards have improved, why inequality does not explain today’s political discontent, and how policies built on a false diagnosis of national failure could undermine the prosperity and opportunity they promise to restore.

The Gilded Age has become one of the most common analogies for our own time, invoked as shorthand for economic inequality and political corruption. But that comparison misses much of what made the period extraordinary. After the Civil War, the United States experienced an incredible period of economic growth that completely transformed American life and landscapes.
In this episode of The Human Progress Podcast, economic historian Brian Domitrovic joins our managing editor Chelsea Follett to discuss why the conventional story of the Gilded Age is incomplete, how industrialization made ordinary Americans better off, and what we can learn from the triumphs of the Gilded Age.

The industrial food system is often treated as a symbol of everything people distrust about modernity: too processed, too corporate, too artificial, and too detached from land and labor.
That critique obscures one of the greatest achievements in human history: modern food production has made food cheaper, safer, more abundant, and more varied than ever before.
In this episode of The Human Progress Podcast, Adam Omary speaks with political scientist Jan Dutkiewicz about his new book Feed the People: Why Industrial Food Is Good and How We Can Make It Even Better. They discuss the great achievements of the industrial food system, the panic over processed foods, nostalgia for preindustrial agriculture, and how to make food healthier and more sustainable without giving up the system that feeds us.

Roger Pielke Jr. joins Marian Tupy to discuss the latest climate research and how to think clearly about climate change.

Samuel Gregg joins Chelsea Follett to discuss the rise of a more interventionist economic consensus and the case for markets in modern America.

Check out his book, The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World.