Hosted by The Niskanen Center · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 94 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties are struggling to defend the political center against illiberal extremes. America must put forward policies that can reverse our political and governmental dysfunction, advance the social welfare of all citizens, combat climate change, and confront the other forces that threaten our common interests.The podcast focuses on current politics seen in the context of our nation’s history and the personal biographies of the participants. It will highlight the policy initiatives of non-partisan think tanks and institutions, while drawing upon current academic scholarship and political literature from years past — including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s 1949 classic “The Vital Center.” We welcome your thoughts on this episode and the podcast as a whole. Please send feedback or suggestions to vitalcenter@niskanencenter.org
The Niskanen Center hosts The Vital Center, a news show with 94 episodes published.
Philip K. Howard is a New York-based lawyer and civic reformer, who across his public career has tilted against the accumulating layers of procedural law and bureaucratic rule that have made it increasingly difficult for
Leah Libresco Sargeant is a Senior Policy Analyst in Family Economic Security at the Niskanen Center as well as a writer and journalist whose work focuses on religion and family policy. She is the author of three books,
Since our species first emerged on the planet some 300,000 years ago, the overriding problem for most humans has been the struggle for food and shelter. But in 1930, the British economist John Maynard Keynes foresaw that
When most people think about the 1970s, they’re likely to conjure up images of Watergate, oil shortages, disco, and outrageous hairstyles. When academic political historians have thought about the 1970s, they have tended
From the 1930s through the early 1960s, roughly half of Americans described themselves as liberals. But in the decades that followed, liberalism has suffered near-continuous reputational decline. The critics, rivals, and
On February 27, 2022, three days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Olaf Scholz, who was then the Chancellor of Germany, gave a speech to an emergency session of the German parliament at which he described the attack
For many decades, practitioners and scholars of foreign policy used to refer to “the West,” but today, for the most part, they don’t. What happened to the idea of “the West”? Michael Kimmage, a professor of history at Ca
This podcast was recorded in late August 2025. Much has occurred since then, both in Minnesota and nationally, and listeners are asked to consider the episode’s treatment of politics and current events in the context of
Murray Kempton (1917-97) was one of the greatest American journalists of the twentieth century. His career extended across seven decades, during which he produced somewhere around 11,000 columns, essays, and pamphlets, n
Misha Chellam, a leader in the Abundance movement and co-founder of the Abundance Network, joins The Vital Center to discuss how YIMBYism, state capacity, and Progress Studies relate to abundance. Chellam analyzes the su
Sam Tanenhaus, an esteemed journalist and biographer, joins The Vital Center to discuss his biography of William F. Buckley Jr. Buckley, a towering figure in American conservatism, helped to pave the way for the politica
The intellectual-political discussion of the so-called abundance movement typically is described as a debate taking place almost entirely on the left. But in fact many of its major themes were being discussed in right-le
Donald Trump’s most resonant political slogan has always been the one he borrowed from Ronald Reagan: “Make America Great Again.” Trump rarely has been pushed to define when exactly he believes America experienced the gr
We all have an opinion about charismatic leaders — but do we really know what “charisma” means? Molly Worthen, in her new book Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump , points o
When U.S. President Donald Trump announced the imposition of his “Liberation Day” tariffs against most of America’s global trading partners in April 2025, he seemed to harken back to a centuries-old form of economic nati
The most important U.S. political trend of the 21st century, according to most observers, is the increasing tendency of college-educated voters to support the Democratic Party and for non-college-educated voters to suppo
In the first few months of the second Trump administration, the White House in effect declared war on the nation’s colleges and universities, and particularly the most selective and prestigious among them. Vice President
Jonathan Rauch would seem to be an unlikely defender of American Christianity. The eminent author, Brookings senior fellow, and Atlantic magazine contributing editor is a gay Jewish atheist — “I won the marginalized trif
Why can’t America do big things anymore? Marc Dunkelman, a fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, addresses this question in his new book, Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progre
Many Democratic voters — and not a few pundits — have found the 2024 presidential election outcome to be profoundly puzzling and disorienting: How could so many minorities and working-class Americans have voted for Donal
Philip K. Howard
Common Good
2 appearances on this show
Leah Libresco Sargeant
author
1 appearance on this show
Kevin Schultz
Chief Technology Officer · University of Illinois at Chicago
1 appearance on this show
Michael Kimmage
Professor of History · Catholic University of America
1 appearance on this show
Virginia Postrel
author of The Future and Its Enemies and The Fabric of Civilization
1 appearance on this show
Molly Worthen
professor of history · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
1 appearance on this show
Matt Zwolinski
Professor of Philosophy · University of San Diego
1 appearance on this show
Jonathan Rauch
author of The Constitution of Knowledge · Brookings Institution
2 appearances on this show
Marc Dunkelman
Brown University
1 appearance on this show
Sam Freedman
Education reformer & co-author of UK's most popular political substack · Anthony & Sam Freedman Racing
1 appearance on this show
Yair Zivan
Israeli-born communications strategist, former adviser and spokesperson to Shimon Peres and Yair Lapid
1 appearance on this show
Kevin Kosar
American Enterprise Institute
1 appearance on this show
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The Vital Center is hosted by The Niskanen Center. The show is categorised under news (politics) and has published 94 episodes.
The Vital Center has published 94 episodes.
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