This blog post is part of AEI’s Best Podcasts of 2019 series. Click here to see other AEI podcast hosts’ favorite episodes of the year.

The Bradley Lectures Podcast is a venture led by AEI Senior Fellow Karlyn Bowman to bring recent intellectual history into conversation with today’s debates. Every other Monday we revive a Bradley Lecture from 1990-2017, condensing the audio and adding commentary tying the lecturer’s argument to pressing political or cultural issues of 2019. Some episodes featured AEI’s finest minds joining me to discuss the broader themes implicated in each lecture, from the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson to the state of civil society today.

1. Is civil society eroding or evolving? (ft. Tim Carney) — April 8

If you haven’t read Tim Carney’s newest book, Alienated America, you should. But even if you don’t, Tim’s thoughts on how Americans associate with each other and the ramifications of those associations are crucial to understanding our increasingly acrimonious social and political culture. I’ll also note that Tim did not agree with the thrust of Everett Carll Ladd’s lecture — that made his commentary extra intriguing.

2. You can’t say that! Censorship in public discourse (ft. Sam Abrams) — May 20

Reporting from the front lines on college campuses is Sam Abrams, who was at the center of a truly bizarre controversy at Sarah Lawrence College, where he teaches. He and I examined a lecture from iconoclastic economist Glenn Loury on self-censorship, ideological homogenization, and what happens to those who dare to think differently — something Loury and Abrams have in common.

3. We are all Jeffersonians. We are all anti-Jeffersonians. (ft. Nicole Penn) — July 1

Don’t tell the others, but this may have been my favorite episode of the year. In honor of the 4th of July, we brought in resident Thomas Jefferson expert Nicole Penn to further enrich a fantastic lecture from historian Gordon Wood (both of whom are wicked smaht). Jefferson’s philosophy is full of contradictions, so having Wood and Nicole as guides is essential to understanding the complexity at the heart of our Declaration of Independence.

4. Back to America’s political future (ft. Karlyn Bowman) — Sept. 9

Aside from being the driving force behind this product, Karlyn Bowman has the distinctions of being AEI’s institutional historian and among America’s foremost experts on public opinion. Put those all together and you get some fun anecdotes about Sean Trende’s early years at AEI, analysis of his keen observations previewing the 2012 elections, and terrific insights into what we can — or really can’t — predict about our political future.

5. A last gasp for the First Freedom (ft. Ramesh Ponnuru) — Dec. 3

Ramesh Ponnuru is one of those guests who I could bring in to talk about any topic — and in the future I probably will — but he wrote an essay in October about partisan attacks on religious freedom that made connecting him to Michael McConnell a no-brainer. So much has changed respecting the First Amendment — in jurisprudence, legislation, and public attitudes — but Ramesh does a great job of seeing past the misconceptions and confusion many Americans have about our first freedom.

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