Virtual Sentiments

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins talks with Osita Nwanevu, author of The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, about the history, meaning, and future of American democracy. They discuss the distinction between republicanism and democracy, the compromises and contradictions of the American founding, and why the Constitution should be treated as a political document rather than an untouchable artifact. Nwanevu also examines the undemocratic features of contemporary political institutions, including the Senate, the Electoral College, and the filibuster, as well as the relationship between political and economic democracy. The conversation considers the role of unions and civil society in developing democratic capacities and the challenges facing workers in a changing economy.Osita Nwanevu is the author of The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding (Random House, 2025). He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, a columnist at The Guardian, the Democratic Institutions fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and Senior Advisor at the Aspen Institute's Philosophy & Society Initiative. **This episode was recorded on July 13, 2026**Show Notes:Osita Nwanevu’s SubstackOsita Nwanevu, “Who Owns the Declaration of Independence?” (The New Republic, 2026)Nwanevu, “Care Workers Get a Seat at the Table” (In These Times, 2025)Nwanevu, “What Is Political Writing For?” (Columbia Journalism Review, 2021)Virtual Sentiments | Laura K. Field on the Making of the MAGA New RightVirtual Sentiments | Maria Pia Paganelli on 250 Years of Adam Smith’s Wealth of NationsVirtual Sentiments | Glory Liu on Adam Smith's AmericaLiya Palagashvili, “Empowering American Workers” (The Mercatus Center, 2026)The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5). Vol. 6.An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, edited with an Introduction, Notes, Marginal Summary and an Enlarged Index by Edwin Cannan (London: Methuen, 1904). Vol. 1.Gordon Tullock, “The Transitional Gains Trap” (Bell Journal of Economics, 1975)Stephen Ansolabehere, John M. de Figueiredo, and James M. Snyder Jr., “Why is There so Little Money in U.S. Politics?” (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2003)If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins talks with Katharine Jarmul about how transparency, open-source AI, and privacy intersect in today's debates over artificial intelligence. Together they unpack the differences between proprietary, open-weight, and truly open-source AI models. They also explore how AI companies shape user experiences through design choices that often remain invisible, why smaller task-specific models may offer important advantages over increasingly centralized frontier models, and what concepts like data sovereignty and individual autonomy mean in practice. Rather than framing AI as an inevitable force beyond public influence, Collins and Jarmul make the case that curiosity, transparency, and community participation can help people reclaim agency over the technologies shaping their lives.Katharine Jarmul is a data scientist who focuses her work and research on privacy and security in data science, deep learning and AI. She is the author of the well-received O'Reilly book, Practical Data Privacy, and has more than 10 years’ experience in machine learning and AI, where she has helped build large-scale AI systems with privacy and security built in.**This episode was recorded on June 24, 2026**Show Notes:Probably Private: A newsletter on data privacy by Katharine JarmulYoutube Channel | Probably PrivateHow AI / ML Memorization Happens: RepetitionKatharine Jarmul, Busting AI Myths and Embracing Realities in Privacy & SecurityRobert McMillan, “How Heartbleed Broke the Internet — And Why It Can Happen Again” (WIRED, 2014)Sebastian Raschka, Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch)C. E. Shannon, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” (The Bell System Technical Journal, 1948)Ken Yeung, “The New Side Hustle for Graduate Students: Training AI” (The AI Economy, 2025)Ruth Fowler, “I Work in Hollywood. Everyone Who Used to Make TV Is Now Secretly Training AI” (WIRED, 2026)Laura Kelley, “The Work of Helping A.I. Destroy Work” (NYT, 2026)Joel Mokyr, "The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth" (The Journal of Economic History, 2005)If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins talks with Laura K. Field about the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and her recent book, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right. The conversation traces how Field came to chronicle the intellectual architecture behind Trumpism between 2016 and 2024. She explains that beneath the populist energy of the MAGA movement lies a smaller but highly influential network of intellectuals who built a deliberate ideological case against postwar liberal internationalism and fusionist conservatism. Together, they explore the different intellectual camps within this "New Right" and their varying and sometimes conflicting visions of the American founding. Dr. Laura K. Field is an associate with the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, and visiting scholar in residence at American University. She is the author of Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right (Princeton University Press, 2025).**This episode was recorded on May 29, 2026**Show Notes:An Introductory Overview of Furious MindsLaura K. Field, “The Intellectual Edgelords of the GOP” (The Atlantic, 2026)Laura K. Field, “The Closing of the MAGA Mind” (NYT, 2025).Thomas W. Merrill, “Wrestling With the Founding in the Culture Wars” (Law & Liberty, 2024)Lincoln, Speech at Springfield, June 26, 1857If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins speaks with Glory Liu about the 250th anniversary of both Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence. Together, they unpack the message of The Wealth of Nations as a critique of Britain's mercantile system rather than a manifesto for laissez-faire economics — illuminating Smith's careful attention to power, class, and state capture. The conversation explores what reception history reveals about the distance between an author's original intentions and what subsequent readers make of their ideas. Glory and Kristen also reflect on what it means to commemorate Smith today, how our current moment of reckoning with concentrated economic and political power is drawing readers back to Smith, and why doing so responsibly requires both historical care and honest self-awareness about what we're really asking Smith to do for us.Dr. Glory Liu is a Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. She is the author of Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher became an Icon of American Capitalism (Princeton, 2022), which was named a Top 5 Biographies of Economists by the Wall Street Journal and received the 2024 Best Monograph Award from the European Society for the History of Economic Thought.**This episode was recorded on January 22, 2026**Show Notes:Glory Liu, “How Adam Smith Inspired America’s Economic System” (WSJ, 2025)Glory Liu, Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2022)If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins speaks with Henry Farrell about AI, democracy, and political economy. Farrell argues that large language models are best understood not as emerging individual intelligences, but as “social technologies” that process and reorganize vast stores of human cultural information, much like markets, bureaucracies, and democracies process knowledge. The conversation explores deliberative democracy, civil society, Silicon Valley, AI regulation, and the risks of treating politics as an optimization problem. Farrell emphasizes the messiness of democratic life as essential to resisting authoritarianism and building a better future.Henry Farrell is the SNF Agora Professor of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is the author of various books, including Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Henry Holt and Co., 2023) and Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Fight over Freedom and Security (Princeton University Press, 2019), both coauthored with Abraham Newman, as well as The Political Economy of Trust: Institutions, Interests, and Inter-Firm Cooperation in Italy and Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2009).**This episode was recorded on January 7, 2026**Show Notes:Virtual Sentiments | State Capture and the Meaning of Democracy with Samuel BaggHenry Farrell’s Substack, Programmable MutterHenry Farrell and Abraham Newman, The Enshittification of American Power (Wired, 2025)Henry Farrell and Hahrie Han, AI and Democratic Publics (Knight First Amendment Institute, 2025)Farrell, Gopnik, Shalizi, and Evans, Large AI models are cultural and social technologies (Science, 2025)Farrell, Mercier, and Schwartzberg, Analytical Democratic Theory: A Microfoundational Approach (APSR, 2022)Farrell, Where Trump is Vulnerable and How to Act on It (New York Times, 2025)Farrell, The Same Old Fantasies Behind AI and New Technology (Lawfare, 2025)Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (The MIT Press, 1970)F.A. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society (Liberty Fund, 2013)Cosma Shalizi, The Singularity in Our Past Light-Cone (Three-Toed Sloth, 2010)Andrew Lentini, Reimagining Democracy in the Age of AI (SNF Agora, 2024)Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory (BBS, 2011)North, Wallis, and Weingast, Violence and Social Orders (Cambridge University Press, 2009)Cory Doctorow, The Bezzle: A Martin Hench Novel (Tor Books, 2025)If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus