The Atlas Society Presents - Objectively Speaking

Who holds the world’s most powerful human rights organizations accountable, and how did groups founded as civil society projects become political powerhouses shaping the UN and international policy toward Israel?

Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 325th episode of Objectively Speaking, where she is joined by Professor Gerald Steinberg, who has spent years investigating NGOs as the founder of NGO Monitor, a research institute that scrutinizes the funding, transparency, and agendas of non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Professor emeritus of political science at Bar-Ilan University, Steinberg examines how civil society was hijacked by political and ideological agendas, how NGOs gain accreditation and influence at the United Nations, and why reports from these organizations often go unverified.

Join Atlas Society Senior Scholar Richard Salsman, Ph.D., for the 324th episode of Objectively Speaking, in which he cuts through the confusing labels attached to capitalism, from "crony," "stakeholder," and "state capitalism."

The concept “capitalism” is bandied about these days without clear definition. As such, it’s frequently and arbitrarily hybridized, with examples including “crony capitalism,” “welfare capitalism,” “anarcho-capitalism,” laissez-faire capitalism,” “conscious capitalism,” “common-good capitalism,” “democratic capitalism,” “political capitalism,” “stakeholder capitalism,” “racial capitalism,” and even such brazen oxymorons as “state capitalism” and “totalitarian capitalism.” Rarely does anyone defend the ideal social system: constitutional capitalism. Dr. Salsman explains how the “varieties” approach generates a diverse menu of critiques of capitalism, why the system is undermined by the mass-equivocation permitted by a multiplicity of false precision, and suggests ways to combat it.

Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 323rd episode of Objectively Speaking, where she sits down with author Rob Henderson to talk about his book "Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class," where he vividly recounts growing up in foster care, enlisting in the US Air Force, attending elite universities, and pioneering the concept of “luxury beliefs”—ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while inflicting costs on the less fortunate.

Rob Henderson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal, who publishes articles on his Substack, with other writings appearing in The Free Press, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

What happens when a party insider who raised millions of dollars for Biden and Harris decides to tell the truth about what she saw behind closed doors?

Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 323rd episode of Objectively Speaking, where she sits down with Lindy Li to talk about her new book, "Unburdened: A Former Democrat Insider's Shocking Account of Political Power, Betrayal, and Party Collapse," which rips back the curtain on a rotten system that rewards failure and punishes honesty.

As a member of the Democratic Party's National Finance Committee, Li raised millions of dollars for Biden and Harris and co-hosted some of the party's most significant fundraisers. In "Unburdened," she offers a first-person account of the machine she helped build and watched collapse, detailing what she describes as a deliberate cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline, a $45 million celebrity payoff scheme, and a donor fundraising system she compares to a multilevel marketing operation. She now works as a political strategist and commentator, co-hosting the podcast "Her Take."

As Social Security and Medicare barrel toward insolvency, what can the United States learn from how other countries have restructured their retirement systems—and does Washington have the political will to act?

Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 321st episode of Objectively Speaking, where she sits down with Romina Boccia to talk about her co-authored book, Reimagining Social Security: Global Lessons for Retirement Policy Changes," which explains what is wrong with Social Security and how major retirement program reforms from Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and Sweden could work in the United States.

Romina Boccia is director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, where she focuses on federal spending, the budget process, the economic consequences of rising debt, and reforms to Social Security and Medicare. She is the principal author of the Debt Dispatch Substack, the leading fiscal policy newsletter read by members of Congress. Boccia previously served as director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at the Heritage Foundation, where she was the principal author of the Blueprint for Balance, the organization's flagship budget plan, which informed President Trump's first-term budget proposal.