The Curious Task

Dennis Rasmussen — Did America Fail?

Alex Aragona speaks with Dennis Rasmussen about his findings on how the American Founding Fathers truly felt about the experiment they designed and built as time went on.

References from The Curious Task Episode 95 with Dennis Rasmussen

• Dennis Rasmussen previously joined The Curious Task to speak about his book The Infidel and the Professor, and you can listen to that episode here.
• The book discussed on this episode of The Curious Task is Fears of the Setting Sun by Dennis Rasmussen, which can be purchased from Amazon here.
• The rising sun armchair can be seen digitally here.
• More information on the Federalists can be found here, and the Anti-Federalists here.
• The soundtrack to Hamilton can be listened to here.

Graeme Thompson — What Is Canadian Liberalism?

Alex Aragona speaks with Graeme Thompson about the classical liberal tradition in Canada, and what the evolution of that tradition has looked like.

References from The Curious Task Episode 94 with Graeme Thompson

• A collection of the speeches of Wilfred Laurier can be found in an edited edition by Arthur Milnes, available from Amazon here.
• Macdonald Laurier and the Election of 1891 by Christopher Pennington can be found from Penguin House here.
• Graeme Thompson’s piece “Whatever Happened to Laurier” can be found in the National Post here.
• Graeme mentions positive and negative liberty by Isaiah Berlin, which is discussed on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here.
• The works of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and J.S. Mill can be read for free through the Online Library of Liberty.

 

Jacob Levy — How Should Liberals Think of Social Injustice?

Jacob Levy gives a tour of his thoughts on the conversations surrounding social justice, and how liberals might consider the topic from the perspective of social "injustice".

References from The Curious Task Episode 93 with Jacob Levy

• You can listen to Jacob Levy’s other appearances on The Curious Task here and here.
• Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom by Jacob T. Levy can be purchased from Amazon here.
• You can purchase Free Market Fairness by John Tomasi from Amazon here.
• You can read more concepts of spontaneous and emergent order found in Hayek here.
• Judith Shklar lays out her argument about injustice in her book The Faces of Injustice (which can be purchased here).

Sandy Ikeda — What Would Jane Jacobs Do?

In honour of her birthday, Sandy Ikeda explores the ideas of Jane Jacobs and reflects on how her thinking on urban centres is still relevant today.

References from The Curious Task Episode 92 with Sandy Ikeda

• You can listen to Sandy Ikeda discuss “Why Can’t a City Be a Work of Art?” on The Curious Task here.
• A copy of Jane Jacob’s Death and Life of Great American Cities can be purchased from Amazon here. Some of her other works include The Economy of Cities (available here) and Systems of Survival (available here).
• For those who want to learn more about Austrian economics, our friends at the Frasier Institute have released an introduction to the subject here.
• You can read more about the thoughts Sandy Ikeda has on Urban Design and Social Complexity here.