Sprouting from a graduate student’s thought experiment in 2001, over the last 20 years, the Free State Project has made a significant impact on the state of New Hampshire by gathering like-minded, liberty-loving folk who share a passion for freedom and independence. At this year’s New Hampshire Liberty Forum, Matt Kibbe sits down with Carla Gericke, president emeritus of the Free State Project, to discuss the history of the project, where it is today, and where it’s going in the future. In...

After the fall of the Soviet Union, a whole host of European countries were faced with a unique opportunity: the chance to free their economy and clean up a corrupt legal system. Of all the ex-Soviet states, few have been as successful as Estonia. Matt Kibbe speaks to Matthew Mitchell, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, about the peaceful and musical revolution that helped lift Estonia out of poverty and oppression as the country’s people embraced the concepts of free markets and personal...

The question of whether transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports has sparked controversy as elite female athletes have seen their accomplishment erased by bigger, stronger, and faster trans women who went through male puberty. Matt Kibbe talks with Jennifer Sey, a champion gymnast and the founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics, about the abuse she has received for having the courage to speak obvious truths about human anatomy out loud and her launch of a new line of...

In the information age, it’s ironic that the government is becoming more secretive than ever, with an increase in classified documents and a growing reluctance to engage in any sort of transparency. Today's guest is James Bovard, author of "Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty," which is about the massive amount of illegal activity the government routinely engages in and the ways in which whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are punished for attempting to reveal the...

At New Hampshire’s Liberty Forum, Matt Kibbe talks to Glenn Jacobs, Mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, about a wide variety of liberty issues, from the dishonesty of lockdowns and the unsustainability of the national debt, to the way in which the invocation of ‘democracy’ has become a code word for the raw accumulation of political power. Jacobs explains what it’s like to try to govern from a principled position, and how his efforts to do so got him demonized as a ‘grandma killer’.

As Hollywood continues to prioritize ideology over quality entertainment, filmmakers who just want to tell compelling stories are finding alternative avenues for production and distribution. Angel Studios is one such alternative, breaking out in a big way with the film “Sound of Freedom.” Matt Kibbe talks to Angel Studios co-founder and president Jordan Harmon about the company’s latest release, “Cabrini,” which is proving to be both a critical and financial success. Part of the reason for...

After the Twitter Files revealed that government agencies pressured social media companies into suppressing dissident speech during lockdowns, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was one of several plaintiffs who challenged this clear violation of the First Amendment in court. Now, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments about whether the Constitution still gives us the right to critique and dispute the official narrative, or whether we can be silenced in the name of public health unanimity. Matt Kibbe...

This week, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban TikTok if it is not sold by the Chinese-based ByteDance company. In this Episode, former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard sat down with Matt Kibbe to discuss the further implications of the bill, and how it is a form of government overreach that will be used to spy on the American people, similar to the Patriot Act. 

When actor Clifton Duncan dared to go against his industry’s orthodoxy on COVID-19, he found out the hard way that the expectations for conformity can be unforgiving. Hounded out of his profession, he took comfort in discovering the work of another celebrated nonconformist, economist Thomas Sowell. While Sowell’s peers were arguing for socialist economic policies to address the alleged injustice of institutional racism, Sowell boldly stood up for free markets and personal responsibility. Like...

The country of Georgia is a beautiful place of rich traditions and a unique wine-making culture, but like so many countries, its individual character and history were nearly wiped out by the enforced homogeneity of the Soviet Union. Matt Kibbe talks to Gia Jandieri, founder of the New Economic School, about what it was like for him to spend half his life under an oppressive communist regime. When everything was made illegal, Georgians had to resort to the black market to do everything from...

Won’t someone please think of the children? There’s a long history of politicians weaponizing supposed concern over protecting children to impose repressive legislation on the people. The latest example is the Kids Online Safety Act, a transparent attempt to smuggle widespread censorship past the people under the guise of keeping children safe. Matt Kibbe talks to Yaël Ossowski, deputy director at the Consumer Choice Center, about the importance of free speech and privacy online and the...

Libertarians have always struggled to communicate their ideas in a way that is appealing to the average person, mainly because they won’t stop quoting dead economists, to the point where it becomes a drinking game. Spike Cohen, former Libertarian Party candidate for vice president and founder of You Are the Power, wants to change that. In this conversation with Matt Kibbe, he explains that the basic principles of libertarianism can be boiled down to respect for one’s fellow human beings and...

When the socialist policies of Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez transformed Venezuela from a prosperous country into a humanitarian disaster, it was big news all over the world. The New York Times ran stories about residents of the impoverished nation having to eat their own pets in order to survive and any number of similarly horrific narratives. But at some point, discussion of Venezuela’s downfall simply stopped, as readers got bored and preferred to focus on issues closer to home, like the...

It’s easy to take a revisionist view of our initial attitudes toward the COVID-19 lockdowns now that several years have passed and the initial fog of confusion has been replaced by a series of increasingly inconvenient facts for the COVID-authoritarians. But Matt Kibbe’s guest this week has had the courage not only to revisit his former views but even to publish them! Tom Woods is the host of “The Tom Woods Show” and author of “Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During...

Political polarization in the United States has never been worse. At least, that’s what we’ve been told by a media culture that feeds on sensationalism and fearmongering. But it turns out the truth is somewhat more complicated. In their new film, “Undivide Us,” Kristina Kendall and Benjamin Klutsey bring Americans together to have the kinds of difficult conversations that we’re told we can’t have any more. What they find is that, far from being too tribally entrenched to hear one another,...

All over the country people are relocating in search of better living conditions, greater economic opportunity, and more freedom. But where to go? Conventional wisdom would probably suggest states like Texas or Florida, but two economists from the American Institute for Economic Research say that conventional wisdom is for suckers! In a new study entitled "Freedom in the Fifty States", Will Ruger and Jason Sorens use science to discover which state really is the freest of them all. In this...

Concluding a series focusing on different points of view on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Matt Kibbe is joined by three members of the Israeli liberty movement for firsthand accounts of what it’s really like to live in the midst of war. Moshe Gorin and Lior Abutbul of the Kohelet Policy Forum, along with Boaz Arad of the Ayn Rand Center Israel, share their experiences surrounding October 7, Israel’s response to the attacks, and whether the policies of the local government contributed to a...

In this latest in a series of conversations highlighting different perspectives on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Matt Kibbe talks to Sheldon Richman, author of Coming to Palestine and executive editor at the Libertarian Institute. Richman argues that it's possible to feel empathy for the tragedy of the October 7th attacks on Israel, without having to support American involvement in the war or the policies of the Israeli government. While there is a tendency to equate any criticism of Israel...

When COVID lockdowns were imposed, the focus by policymakers was on protecting the citizens of developed countries from the virus. While they failed to do this, they also neglected to consider the impact of people struggling with poverty around the world. David Malpass, former president of the World Bank, talks with Matt Kibbe about how lockdowns created grievous harms for people living in developing countries. This does not just include economic hardship, but also impacted the development of...

The international monetary system is a mess, but how did it get that way? In large part, it is due to a deal that was cut in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. At the scene of the crime 80 years later, Matt Kibbe sits down with economics professor Larry White to dissect how the pre-World War I stable gold standard was transformed into one of fiat currencies that encourage overborrowing, overspending, and the rampant inflation we are seeing today.

Following the horrific attacks on October 7, the war between Israel and Hamas has sparked a heated debate about whether the Israeli government’s response has been appropriate and what role, if any, the West should play in supporting the Israeli cause. In a series of conversations with people holding diverse views on this topic, Matt Kibbe sits down with Craig Biddle, founder and director of the Objective Standard Institute. Biddle argues that Israel is a society that respects the rights of...

Following a series of highly visible (and highly embarrassing) congressional hearings with the heads of major universities, the debate over what speech should be permitted on college campuses has reignited. Matt Kibbe sits down with Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of FIRE and author of "The Canceling of the American Mind," to discuss cancel culture and the hypocrisy of college administrators who are fine with allowing vocal anti-Semitism while also maintaining a “speech is violence”...

Israel is the new Ukraine! As Congress shifts its interest from funding a war against Russia to funding a war against Hamas, there are few people in Washington willing to push back against reckless spending, even though our own national debt is spiraling out of control. Thomas Massie is one such voice, although his principled commitment to fiscal responsibility has earned him plenty of animosity, including but not limited to accusations of antisemitism. He sits down with Matt Kibbe to defend...

Are the teachings of Christianity compatible with libertarianism? Economist Deirdre McCloskey thinks so. At the Mont Pelerin Society conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, she sits down with Matt Kibbe to lay out her vision of a Christian libertarianism that values the individual over the collective, embraces markets, and demands that we treat each other with kindness, humility, and love. These lessons are more important than ever in a time when politics is dominated by division and hatred.