Acton Line
Dedicated to the promotion of a free and virtuous society, Acton Line brings together writers, economists, religious leaders, and more to bridge the gap between good intentions and sound economics.
Episodes
April 24, 2024 • 43 mins
When celebrated American novelist and short story writer Flannery O’Connor died at the age of 39 in 1964, she left behind an unfinished third novel titled, “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” Scholarly experts uncovered and studied the material, deeming it unpublishable. It stayed that way for 40 years. Until now.
For the past 10-plus years, award-winning author Jessica Hooten Wilson has explored the 378 pages of typed and handwritten mater...
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April 17, 2024 • 63 mins
There is no question today that new technology is changing the way we think about and experience work. Speculation abounds about how the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies will affect the workplace. Worries about machines replacing humans on the job are common. Others, however, are optimistic about the way AI is changing how we work—they see AI as an important tool to promote better efficie...
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April 10, 2024 • 57 mins
Gertrude Himmelfarb was one of the foremost historians of Victorian life. She produced page-turning biographies of some of the age’s most intriguing and influential figures, including Lord Acton, Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot. She also produced social histories of the period and brought a Victorian sensibility to American politics as a leading conservative public intellectual.
In this episode, Acton librarian a...
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April 3, 2024 • 62 mins
Many Christian congregations now offer hybrid worship services: you can worship in person or online. While these options have become increasingly popular, our understanding of them has not kept pace. Furthermore, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence will only complicate matters further. The contemporary church needs a way to make sense of the dizzying influx of emerging technologies, practices, and possibilities.
In t...
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March 27, 2024 • 45 mins
In this episode, Noah Gould, Acton’s alumni and student programs manager, speaks to Jane Clark Scharl about her verse play, Sonnez Les Matines, which asks, What if John Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola, and Francois Rabelais had their convictions put to the test while navigating their involvement in a brutal crime?
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Sonnez Les Matines | Wiseblood Books
Calvin, Loyola, Rabelais: A Murder Mystery | Religion & Libe...
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March 20, 2024 • 63 mins
Our culture tells parents there’s one best way to raise kids: enroll them in a dozen activities, protect them from trauma, and get them into the most expensive college possible. If you can’t do all that, don’t even bother. How’s that strategy going? Record rates of anxiety, depression, medication, debts, loneliness, and more.
In his new book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, best...
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March 13, 2024 • 41 mins
In this episode, we bring you a conversation from our recent Business Matters virtual conference between Acton’s director of marketing and communications, Eric Kohn, and David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of the Bahnsen Group.
They discuss Bahnsen’s new book, Full Time: Work and the Meaning of Life, in which he makes the case that our understanding of work and its role in our lives is deeply flaw...
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March 6, 2024 • 48 mins
In 1980, Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman released a 10-part documentary series on PBS called “Free to Choose,” with each hour-long episode giving his perspective on important public policy debates and social issues. The series was a hit and possessed a staying power far beyond the 1980s. Through this and much of his other work, Friedman became one of the leading public intellectuals of his time, and his ideas have inf...
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February 28, 2024 • 57 mins
Managing a business is a challenge no matter the context. Talent comes and goes, supplies change, and you can’t always achieve everything you want. Every day, new constraints create roadblocks to the next goal. There may not be one solution to these problems, but co-founder and managing partner of Michigan Software Labs Mark Johnson says strong company culture is the foundation of any successful company.
In this episode, Acton dir...
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February 21, 2024 • 52 mins
Anyone of a certain age will remember the massive hit that was “We Are The World,” the Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and Quincy Jones produced charity single by USA for Africa. The considerable profits from the that hit song went to the USA for Africa Foundation, which used them for the relief of famine and disease in Africa and specifically to 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia.
Even though Africa is an enormous and diverse continent ...
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February 14, 2024 • 56 mins
On today’s episode, Acton librarian and research associate Dan Hugger sits down with Acton research fellow and Journal of Markets & Morality executive editor Dylan Pahman to talk about education. They begin with the 18th-century vision of education advanced by America’s Founders. Why did they believe education was necessary for a free society, and what kind of education did they have in mind?
The discussion then turns to attempts b...
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February 7, 2024 • 63 mins
We are living in the age of deconstruction. We are constantly bombarded online, in schools, and sometimes even in our homes by attitudes and arguments aimed at deconstructing our faith. Through this, do we know what it means to question well?
Faith is not the sort of thing that endures so long as our eyes are closed. The opposite is the case: Faith helps us see, and that means not shrinking from the ambiguities and the difficulties...
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January 31, 2024 • 57 mins
In this episode, we bring you a recent Acton Lecture Series event with Kevin Vallier.
The 20th century featured an unusual phenomenon: global secularizing movements. In the 19th century, these movements were confined mostly to Western Europe, but in the 20th century they exploded, suppressing the influence of religion around the world. In some milder cases, as in Turkey and India, the political expression of only the great religion...
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January 24, 2024 • 50 mins
On today’s episode, Acton librarian and research associate Dan Hugger speaks with lawyer and chair of Common Good Philip K. Howard about his new book: Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society. Why do so many people feel powerless today? How can people experience “everyday freedom” at work, in school, and in all of life? What forces in American life today stifle our sense of freedom and responsibility, and...
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January 17, 2024 • 74 mins
After decades of trade and investment with advanced democracies, China is far richer and stronger than it otherwise would have been. Simply put, the West’s strategy of engagement with China has failed. Democracies have underestimated the resilience, resourcefulness, and ruthlessness of the Chinese Communist Party. Growth and development have not caused China’s rulers to relax their grip on political power, nor have they accepted th...
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January 10, 2024 • 66 mins
In this episode of Acton Line, Dylan Pahman, Acton research fellow and executive editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality, interviews Dr. Clara Piano, assistant professor of economics at Austin Peay State University, about her recent paper “Familial Liberty: Property and Family in Late Scholastic Thought,” presented at Acton’s Third Annual Academic Colloquium. Their wide-ranging discussion addresses such questions as: What is th...
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January 3, 2024 • 59 mins
On today’s episode, Acton, director of marketing and communications, Eric Kohn, speaks with AEI economic policy expert James Pethokoukis about his new book: The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised. With a popular culture fixated on catastrophe, are we at risk of pushing a pro-progress future into the realm of the impossible? Pethokoukis argues there’s still hope if we choose to do more than just d...
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December 27, 2023 • 55 mins
In the late 1960’s as the hippie movement was shredding norms of hygiene and cleanliness in order to live more ‘authentically’, diseases emerged not seen in so long they didn’t have a latin name. The hippies, and others, were relearning why we engaged in certain hygienic practices all over again.
In an essay titled “The Great Unlearning” from the January 2024 issue of National Review, senior writer Noah Rothman observes similar pa...
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December 20, 2023 • 55 mins
On today’s episode, Acton director of marketing and communications Eric Kohn speaks with Mike Cosper, director of podcasting for Christianity Today, about his recent trip to Israel. How has the region changed since the October 7 terrorist attacks? What do Christians in the region think? What hopes do those caught in the middle of the conflict have?
The stories Mike heard, the people he talked to, and the impression left on him by t...
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December 13, 2023 • 59 mins
On today’s episode, Acton director of marketing and communications Eric Kohn speaks with Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), about his new book, The Canceling of the American Mind. Cancel culture appears to be pervasive, and this book is the first to examine the effect it has had—and is having—on the United States. How are both left and right using the power to “cancel” s...
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