Episodios

  • Jeffery Degner Says the Family Has a Future

    Jeffery Degner Says the Family Has a Future
    Oct 1 2025
    On this episode, Acton’s director of program and education, Dan Churchwell, interviews Dr. Jeffery Degner following his participation in an Acton Lecture Series panel discussion. They talk about themes such as the importance of family as an ideal for community health, the overlooked importance of fatherhood, and how economic factors such as inflation shape the incentive families face. Subscribe to our podcasts Watch this podcast here Acton University Acton On-Demand Is There a Future for the Family? A Panel Discussion | Acton Lecture Serie Dr. Jeffery Degner If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at podcast@acton.org.
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    52 m
  • Noah Gould Links Corporate Social Responsibility … and Fraud

    Noah Gould Links Corporate Social Responsibility … and Fraud
    Sep 24 2025
    In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Noah Gould, Alumni and Student Programs manager at the Acton Institute. They discuss two recent pieces Noah has written on corporate social responsibility (CSR). First off, what is it? Why do some oppose CSR initiatives? Is there a relationship between CSR and fraud? How are religious people particularly attracted to CSR? What should be the role of business in society, and does that role change depending on whether a business is privately or publicly held? Subscribe to our podcasts Watch this podcast here The ‘Religious’ Corporate Social Responsibility Trap | Noah Gould A Friedman Doctrine: The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits | Milton Friedman Corporate Politics: Fads Can’t Replace Meaning or Community | Noah Gould The Nature of the Firm | R.H. Coase If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at podcast@acton.org.
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    52 m
  • Brad Birzer Wonders if Russell Kirk’s Conservative Movement Has a Future

    Brad Birzer Wonders if Russell Kirk’s Conservative Movement Has a Future
    Sep 17 2025
    In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Bradley J. Birzer, Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies and professor of history at Hillsdale College, about Russell Kirk and the American conservative movement. What role did Kirk play in the conservative intellectual ferment of the early 1950s? How does the biographical framing of the Conservative Mind point to its humanistic nature? Who entered and left The Conservative Mind during its revisions? How did Kirk’s relationships and conflicts shape the evolution of his thought? Why did Kirk get involved with the Goldwater campaign and how did it affect his reputation? What is the political legacy of the conservative intellectual movement? Subscribe to our podcasts Watch this podcast here Acton University Russell Kirk: American Conservative | Bradley J. Birzer Ten Conservative Principles | Russell Kirk Individualism True And False | F.A. Hayek Seven Conservative Minds| Bradley J. Birzer The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot | Russell Kirk The New Science of Politics: An Introduction | Eric Voegelin Witness | Whittaker Chambers The Genius of American Politics | Daniel J. Boorstin Natural Right and History | Leo Strauss The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom | Robert Nisbet Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury Plutarch's Lives, Vol. 1 (Modern Library Classics) From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present—500 Years of Western Cultural Life | Jacques Barzun Why I Am Not a Conservative | F.A. Hayek The Imaginative Conservative Lord Acton on Revolution | Russell Kirk If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at podcast@acton.org.
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    48 m
  • Stephen Barrows Integrates Catholic Social Teaching and Economics

    Stephen Barrows Integrates Catholic Social Teaching and Economics
    Sep 10 2025
    In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Stephen Barrows, chief operating officer at the Acton Institute, about the relationship between Catholic Social Teaching and economics. In what sense is economics a science? How does Catholic Social Teaching relate to social science? How well has the Catholic Church integrated the insights of economics into its social teaching? What can economists learn from Catholic Social Teaching? How does the Acton Institute apply the best insights of economists vis-à-vis Catholic Social Teaching in service of the common good? Subscribe to our podcasts Watch this podcast here Acton On-Demand Rerum Novarum | Pope Leo XIII Pope Francis’ Plea for Migrants and Acton’s Core Principles | Stephen Barrows Labor Economics and the Development of Papal Social Encyclicals | Stephen Barrows CORE: Economic Way of Thinking | Anne Rathbone Bradley The Call of the Entrepreneur—Full Movie | Ed O’Brien | Peter Boettke | George Gilder The Humane Economist: A Wilhelm Röpke Reader | Dan Hugger, Editor A Value Judgment on Value Judgments (1941) | Wilhelm Röpke A Value Judgment on A Value Judgment on Value Judgments | Samuel Gregg Economics in One Lesson | Henry Hazlitt If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at podcast@acton.org.
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    48 m
  • Acton Rundown | September 2025

    Acton Rundown | September 2025
    Sep 8 2025
    This month on the Acton Rundown Dan, Mark, and Nathan chat about upcoming Acton events and new video content. Subscribe to our podcasts Watch this podcast here Acton On-Demand Nathan Mech on Interfaith Dialogue at the Collins Center for Abrahamic Heritage DEBATE: Carl Trueman & Vincent Phillip Muñoz | Christianity and Liberalism Is There a Future for the Family? | Acton Institute Acton Experience Brasil | Acton Institute 2025 Pittsburgh Dinner | Acton Institute 2025 Portland Dinner | Acton Institute Acton's 35th Annual Dinner | Acton Institute Acton Institute Fifth Annual Academic Conference: Character, Commerce, and Human Flourishing | Acton Institute Virtues, Not Values: Reclaiming the Human Core of Business | Acton Institute Rethinking Charity: Local Agency, Commercial Society, and the Human Person | Acton Institute If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at podcast@acton.org.
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    17 m
  • Nathan Mech on Interfaith Dialogue at the Collins Center for Abrahamic Heritage

    Nathan Mech on Interfaith Dialogue at the Collins Center for Abrahamic Heritage
    Sep 3 2025
    In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Nathan Mech, Founding Director of the Collins Center for Abrahamic Heritage at the Acton Institute. They discuss the history and work of the Collins Center. What makes up the Abrahamic heritage? Why is dialogue between Christians, Jews, and Muslims important? How does interreligious dialogue enrich participants from different faith traditions? What contributions have different faiths made to the history of freedom? Subscribe to our podcasts Watch this podcast here Collins Center | Acton Institute Collins Center: Christianity and Liberalism DEBATE: Yasir Qadhi vs. Mustafa Akyol | Islam and the State DEBATE: Sebastian Morello vs. Kevin Vallier | Christianity and the State Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism | Benedikt Koehler Nathan the Wise: A Dramatic Poem in Five Acts by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing | Project Gutenberg If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at podcast@acton.org.
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    1 h
  • Clara Piano on Markets, Morals, and Vocations Professional and Personal

    Clara Piano on Markets, Morals, and Vocations Professional and Personal
    Aug 27 2025
    In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Clara Piano, visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of Mississippi and an affiliate scholar at the Acton Institute. Clara tells the story of how Fr. Robert Sirico, along with Pope St. John Paul II and Michael Novak, inspired her to start thinking through the moral case for the free economy as an undergraduate as well as her trajectory as a scholar. How is the idea that markets are opposed to morality historically naive? Who is doing great research today exploring the relationship between markets and morals? How do you bring your research and values into the classroom? How should religious leaders understand the relationship between morals and markets? What should young people consider when discerning their professional calling and forming relationships and families? Subscribe to our podcasts Watch this podcast here Clara E. Piano Economics as an Antidote to Envy | Clara E. Piano The Economics of the Parables | Fr. Robert Sirico Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy | Fr. Robert Sirico Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life | Michael Novak Centesimus Annus (1 May 1991) An Economic Theory of Economic Analysis: The Case of the School of Salamanca | Clara Jace Dylan Pahman | Acton Institute The Political Economy of Distributism | Alexander W. Salter Hannah's Children | Catherine Ruth Pakaluk Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church The Fertility Gap and Economic Freedom | Clara E. Piano If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at podcast@acton.org.
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    51 m
  • Jenna Robinson on the Crisis in Higher Ed and the Prospects for Academic Renewal

    Jenna Robinson on the Crisis in Higher Ed and the Prospects for Academic Renewal
    Aug 20 2025
    In this episode, Dan Hugger speaks with Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. They discuss current crises in American higher education and what can be done to resolve them. Is there too much or too little money in higher education? How should colleges and universities think about their role in preparing students for work and careers? What is the role of the university in forming citizens? Why is it important for universities to hand down cultural heritage and perennial wisdom? How might a reinvention and renewal of general education requirements help solve the crisis in higher ed? Can AI play a constructive role in academic renewal? Subscribe to our podcasts Watch this podcast here The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal The Case Against Education | Princeton University Press Decadence and renewal in the higher learning: An episodic history of American university and college since 1953 | Russell Kirk Core Knowledge Foundation Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know | E.D. Hirsch Jr. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students | Allan Bloom God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom' | William F. Buckley Jr. Consortium of Christian Study Centers The Martin Center Releases New Publication: "Blueprint for Reform: General Education" Utah Adopts Legislation Inspired by the General Education Act | The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal If you’d like to support this podcast, you can help by leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or suggestions for a future episode, you can email us at podcast@acton.org.
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    1 h y 2 m