The Good Fight Club: Trump's Firings, Reinventing Liberalism, and the Rise of AI

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.7 • 963 Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this week’s conversation, recorded live in D.C. at the “Liberalism for the 21st Century” conference, Yascha Mounk, Francis Fukuyama, Steven Pinker, and Sabina Ćudić discuss Trump’s firings and what this means for the civil service, how to build a positive case for liberalism, and the impact of the rise of AI. Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, and one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” His latest book is When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is Liberalism and Its Discontents. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column, carried forward from American Purpose, at Persuasion. Sabina Ćudić is a member of the National Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she is the president of the Naša stranka political party club. Ćudić also serves as vice president of the Foreign Relations Committee, and is a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, where she is a vice president of the European liberals. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: leonora.barclay@persuasion.community Podcast production by Mickey Freeland and John Taylor Williams. Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google X: @Yascha_Mounk & @JoinPersuasion YouTube: Yascha Mounk, Persuasion LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'll now hand you over to my best man, Eddie.
0:04.0	Wow, wow, wow, second time's a charm, eh, Billy Boy!
0:09.0	Oh God!
0:10.0	Substitution, courtesy of Paddy Power, embarrassing Eddie, makes way for Sensible Samuel.
0:15.0	Cool, that was close.
0:16.0	You might not always pick the right starter, but your sub can still deliver,
0:19.0	because with Paddy's Super Sub, your bet rolls over to the player coming on. Paddy Power. Valid on selected leagues
0:24.2	and markets only. Pre-match and in-play bets on qualifying player outcome selections only. T's and
0:27.8	exclusions apply. 18 plus scumwellware.org. Going back to this idea of not so much how,
0:36.8	what sense of urgency we feel about the present moment,
0:39.3	but also the question is whether we want to go back to what we had right before it.
0:46.3	And if not, then to what?
0:50.3	And to move away from liberalism of the 90s into a new phase.
0:59.8	And now the Good Fight with Yasha Monk.
1:08.4	Welcome to the first ever life episode of the Good Fight Club, our new format on the podcast,
1:17.6	in which a panel of our favorite podcast guests discusses the news of the last week.
1:23.6	And thankfully, there isn't really any news these days, so we always have nothing to talk about.
1:37.1	Today we are coming to you live from the sidelines of the liberalism for the 21st century conference in Washington, D.C.
1:41.7	So thank you very much for our partners at Izma for organizing that. And on the panel, I have to my left, Sabina Truditch, who is an MP in the
1:49.2	national parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina for a liberal party standing up for liberal values.
1:55.7	We have Stephen Pinker, one of the most eminent psychologists in the world, a professor at Harvard University,
2:04.4	and the author of among many books, a great new book about which we're going to have a one-on-one
	...

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