Cato Event Podcast

Each year since the early 1900s, the world has recognized March 8th as International Women’s Day, an opportunity to celebrate women’s social, economic, cultural, and political achievements while calling for global gender equality.What is the state of global gender equality? How free are women around the world today? What role has government historically played in women’s oppression and liberation? How have market-driven innovations and the unprecedented economic growth of the last decades changed women’s lives? Are policies designed to promote gender equality working? What changes still need to happen?This International Women’s Day, please join the Cato Institute for an interactive, online-only Facebook Live discussion of women’s liberty around the world and tweet your questions using #CatoDigital. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature — tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking — which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On February 28, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky, an important First Amendment case that could clarify voters' speech rights nationwide. Lead plaintiff Andy Cilek (executive director of the Minnesota Voters Alliance) voted in the 2010 election in a Tea Party T-shirt that said "Don't tread on me." Because Minnesota prohibits badges, buttons, or other insignia that promote a group with "recognizable political views," at polling places an election official delayed Cilek from voting and took down his name and address for potential prosecution. Cilek sued to have the law struck down. Throughout litigation, the government has embraced the sheer breadth of Minnesota's ban on political apparel. In addition to prohibiting Tea Party apparel, the ban extends to apparel featuring the logo of the Chamber of Commerce, AFL-CIO, NRA, NAACP, and countless other organizations that might be associated with a political viewpoint. Cilek asks the Supreme Court to invalidate the law as an overbroad restriction on expression. Cato filed a brief in this case, arguing that the Court should look with skepticism at a law, like Minnesota's, that targets core political speech. Please join us for a discussion of one of the most important First Amendment cases of the year a few days before argument. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The infamous “Nunes memo” has landed. Produced by Congressional staff and declassified by the President, the document alleged surveillance warrants on Trump campaign officials from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) were obtained without providing the court with important information.Intelligence experts have generally been skeptical of the memo’s conclusions, but the fight over this document may do long-term damage to attempts to provide important oversight for the secretive FISC. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On February 26, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), a case that has the potential to overturn a 40-year-old precedent (Abood v. Detroit Board of Education) that allows public-sector unions to charge nonmembers “agency fees.” Currently, half the states have laws that enable such fees. Mark Janus—an Illinois state employee but not a union member—objects generally to being required to pay AFSCME, as well as to these funds being used to support the union’s ongoing legal fight against the governor’s policy reforms. Janus sued the union for violating his First Amendment rights by compelling these payments. In addition to their responses to that constitutional claim, AFSCME and Illinois have argued throughout the litigation that stare decisis—the prudential doctrine regarding judicial respect for settled precedent—demands that Abood be maintained. Cato filed a brief discussing the historical underpinnings of stare decisis and contending that a proper understanding of stare decisis actually demands that Abood be overturned. Please join us for a discussion of a case pitting workers’ rights against union rights and state powers—one that may accomplish the rare feat of reversing Supreme Court precedent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can advanced democracies modernize their economies and reform their welfare states? Drawing on the successful experiences of Sweden and Australia, Nils Karlson will explain the ways in which competing political parties can promote more dynamic economies and more flexible and open societies. He will discuss how distinct reform strategies, the development of new ideas, and policy entrepreneurship can overcome barriers to reform. John Samples will discuss the book's relevance to the rise of populism, overregulation, chronic budget deficits, and other features of many modern welfare states. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1994, responding to a terrible murder, Congress passed a law requiring all 50 states to set up sex offender registries. Now many states closely control where and with whom persons on the registries may live, while public maps showing offenders’ places of residence lead to social shunning and occasional harassment. They also scare parents from letting their children play outside.But does the registry make kids any safer? Lenore Skenazy, the New York newspaper columnist famous for letting her 9-year-old son ride the subway alone and founding the “anti-helicopter parenting” movement, has found that offender maps have helped shape public perceptions of a society rife with child-snatching. That led her to other questions: Who gets on the list? Could you, or someone you love, wind up on the list? How about getting off it?Lenore Skenazy has spoken around the world on the costs of irrational fears of risk to young people and is the president of the new nonprofit dedicated to overthrowing overprotection, Let Grow. Commenting on her remarks will be Vox senior reporter Dara Lind, who has written on how the registry system fits into the wider scheme of criminal justice sanctions and how it may affect recidivism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass rose to become one of the nation’s foremost intellectuals—a statesman, author, lecturer, and scholar who helped lead the fight against slavery and racial oppression. But unlike some other prominent abolitionists, Douglass embraced the U.S. Constitution, insisting that it was essentially an anti-slavery document and that its guarantees for individual rights belonged to all Americans, of all races. Further, in his most popular lecture, “Self-Made Men,” Douglass spoke of people who rise through their own efforts and devotion rather than through circumstances of privilege. As the nation pauses to remember him on his bicentennial, Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man takes a fresh look at his remarkable life and ideas and the enduring principles of equality and liberty. Weaving together history, politics, and philosophy, this new biography illuminates Douglass’s immense scholarship with his personal experiences. Please join us as we discuss how Douglass’s legacy continues to inspire today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration exists to certify the safety and efficacy of medical technologies. Yet all too often, the FDA polices not drugs and medical devices, but speech. The agency prohibits many people from sharing truthful and non-misleading information about lawful uses of FDA-approved products. When the FDA restricts what people can say about drugs and medical devices, it violates the free-speech rights of patients and guarantees they will not learn about new treatments. Does protecting patients require the government to restrict speech? Even if the answer is yes, does the First Amendment even allow such a gag rule? Please join us as we explore these questions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It has long been believed that the education system must assimilate new and different groups into American society. Public school assimilation efforts, however, have often been wrenching for students and families, seemingly based on an assumption that some groups will refuse to assimilate or will even rebel against prevailing norms. This worry has animated opposition to school choice and may be particularly acute when it comes to Muslims, especially since 9/11. But are fears that Islamic schools may be failing to Americanize—or worse, are teaching things antithetical to American values—borne out in reality? This new book, incorporating national survey data on Islamic schools, in-depth interviews with Islamic school leaders, and more, begins to answer that question. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.