Knowledge Problem Podcast

On this episode of the Knowledge Problem Podcast, host Regan Ferrell dives into the topic of abortion. Exploring topics from education, adoption, SCOTUS, Covid-19, and the philosophical meaning of personhood. 

Approaching the topic from the Pro-Life perspective, we have Emily Berning. Together with her husband, Emily helped found and serves as President of the organization, Let Them Live. Let Them Live offers pregnant women the financial support they need in order to choose to keep a baby over getting an abortion. Since its incorporation in 2019, Let Them Live has helped nearly 100 women through pregnancy.

Approaching the topic from the Pro-Choice perspective, we have Avens O’Brien. Avens is a longtime Libertarian activist and serves as a board member for Feminists for Liberty. She chairs the Libertarian Party’s Pro-Choice Caucus and is based out of Los Angeles. An abortion-rights speaker, she wants to protect women from the shame and stigma that comes from society after an abortion.

Richard Winger, widely regarded as the leading expert in the United States on Ballot Access laws, joins the Knowledge Problem Podcast to discuss the Two-Party System, Third Parties, and Ballot Access laws. 

In this episode, we explore the history of the two-party system, way, ways to achieve electoral reform, the role media plays in impacting minor party efforts, Carney v Adams, and Governor Cuomo's 2020 Undemocratic Shenanigans. 

Shoshana Weissman and Marc Berkman explore the negative aspects of social media, social media regulations, and touch on Section 230 and whether ideological bias persists in content moderation on major platforms.

Shoshana Weissmann manages R-Street Institute’s social media and email marketing, in addition to contributing graphics and video skills. She also works on occupational licensing reform and other issues, and has written for various publications, including The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

Marc Berkman has a decade of experience in public policy and management serving as a senior advisor to members of Congress and the California State Assembly. During his time as a legislative aide, he developed numerous legislative initiatives, including Jordan’s Law.

Marc received his JD from Columbia Law School and his BA from UC Berkeley.

Dr. Julia Maskivker and Dr. Chris Freiman debate the motion "Citizens have a moral responsibility to participate in the democratic process through voting."

Dr. Julia Maskivker, arguing the affirmative, is an Associate Professor in Political Theory at Rollins College whose teaching and research focus on contemporary theories of justice, global ethics, and social and economic citizenship. Her work has appeared in multiple journals, such as The Journal of Moral Philosophy, The Journal of Global Ethics, and Contemporary Political Theory, she has also written multiple books, her most recent book, published by Oxford University Press is "The Duty to Vote".

Dr. Chris Freiman, arguing the negative, is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of William & Mary. His research interests include democratic theory, distributive justice, and immigration. His work has appeared in multiple journals, such as Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, and the Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy. He has written multiple books, with his most recent book being "Why it's Okay to Ignore Politics". 

Jonathan Blanks discusses racial issues in law enforcement, the recent protests over the murder of George Floyd, and libertarian issues with race. 

Jonathan Blanks is a Contributing Editor for the Clause40 Foundation and a Visiting Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP). He began his career at the Cato Institute, where he spent 12 years researching law enforcement practices, over criminalization, and civil liberties. His work has been published in a number of popular media outlets including the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, New York Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Reason, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Vice, and Vox.com, among many others. Blanks has testified before several deliberative and legislative bodies including the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Bradley Polumbo and Randy Slovacek discuss LGBTQ Politics. Some topics covered include Trump's transgender ban, Religious Liberty, and the 2020. 

Brad Polumbo is a libertarian-conservative journalist and the Eugene S. Thorpe Writing Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education. He was previously a Media and Journalism Fellow at the Washington Examiner and an editor at the libertarian media nonprofit Young Voices. His work has appeared in outlets such as USA Today, National Review, the Daily Beast, and the Boston Globe, and he has also appeared on Fox News and Fox Business.

Randy Slovacek is the writer/editor of The Randy Report, a daily blog covering the daily news cycle regarding politics, pop culture and entertainment news of interest to the LGBTQ community. He's also the host of The Randy Report podcast, featuring weekly news reports and interviews with LGBTQ celebrities. Prior to taking on writing as a full time endeavor, Randy was an actor on Broadway. 

Professor Jeffrey Miron and Professor Michael Hudson discuss the merits and shortcomings of capitalism. 

Jeffrey Miron is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, as well as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. His field of expertise is the economics of libertarianism; he has advocated for many libertarian policies, including legalizing all drugs and allowing failing banks to go bankrupt. He has written four books including "Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition" and "Libertarianism, from A to Z."

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a scholar at the Levy Institute, a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and professor at the School of Marxist Studies, Peking University, in China. He is also the author of J is for Junk Economics (2017), Killing the Host (2015), The Bubble and Beyond (2012), Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971), amongst many others.

Alex Bozmoski leads Energy & Enterprise Institute's policy development and educational programming. Prior to joining Energy & Enterprise Institute he channeled his entrepreneurial spirit into developing rural energy projects in East Africa, and consulting on energy and climate policy for think tanks and a major development bank. He has also worked on several federal and gubernatorial campaigns for GOP candidates.

David Roberts is an energy writer at Vox, where he covers climate change, clean energy, and politics. Prior to Vox, Roberts was an energy and climate writer at Grist. Known for his ability to interpret complex topics with candor and clarity, Roberts has explained everything from Shell’s zero emissions targets to why nuclear plants should remain open.

Roberts lives in Seattle with his wife, two boys, dog, and two cats. 

David Horowitz was one of the founders of the New Left in the 1960s and an editor of its largest magazine, Ramparts. Horowitz is founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture) and author of many books and pamphlets published over the last twenty years. 

Horowitz has devoted much of his attention over the past several years to the radicalization of the American university In 2003, he launched an academic freedom campaign to return the American university to traditional principles of open inquiry and to halt indoctrination in the classroom. To further these goals he devised an Academic Bill of Rights to protect students from abusive professors. In the same year Horowitz founded Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), with chapters on 200 college campuses. 

Walter Block is the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at Loyola University. He is also an Adjunct Scholar at the Mises Institute and the Hoover Institute. He has previously taught at the University of Central Arkansas, Holy Cross College, Baruch (C.U.N.Y.) and Rutgers Universities. He earned a B.A. in philosophy from Brooklyn College (C.U.N.Y.) in 1964 and a Ph.D. degree in economics from Columbia University in 1972.

Block has contributed over 300 articles and reviews to scholarly refereed journals such as the Journal of Libertarian Studies; the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics; the Review of Austrian Economics; the American Journal of Economics and Sociology; the Journal of Labor Economics; and Public Choice and has written over one thousand op ed articles, newspaper columns, chapters in books, etc. He also gives numerous speeches to civic and educational institutions and appears regularly on television and radio. Block has encouraged the publication of his students, many in refereed journals, and has co-authored many articles with them that started out as term papers for his courses.

In a follow up to the first episode with Professor Rosolino Candela, Dominick Mellusi and Alex Pilkington interview socialist economist, David McMullen. We talk about his economic planning model, his critique of the Knowledge Problem, as well as a few aspects about socialism. 

David McMullen is an Australian socialist economist who contends that global economic development in the 21st century will provide the necessary material basis for a classless post-capitalist society. He expects affluence rather than poverty to become the rule by the end of this period given that it would not require unusually high growth rates, and resource and environmental constraints will be overcome by advances in technology. With a high level of economic development, equality would no longer entail sharing poverty and lengthy toil, the main reason for classes and inequality in the past. These views are expounded in his book Bright Future: Abundance and Progress in the 21st Century.

His website is entitled simplymarxism.com.