Tonight, October 21, 2025 at 7 p.m. US Central Time, I’ll be having a conversation on Zoom with Stephen Paff, author of the Ethnodata blog and host of the new podcast Democracy Demythologized. See the bottom of this post for information about how to join.
Laurie’s latest Political Philosophy video. Political Philosophy is a Maurin Academy channel and podcast.
Our Political Philosophy Month Chat is BACK! This month Laurie will be discussing some of the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the origins of inequality. His Discourse on the Origins of Inequality. Learn about how his ideas fit in the trajectory of Western political thought! Register on Eventbrite or join us on Patreon!
Thursday, June 1 at 7 p.m. US Central Time, live on Zoom, join Laurie for this month’s Political Philosophy Chat on Thomas Hobbes. She will be discussing the influence of Thomas Hobbes’s social contract theory on future liberal developments. Check out her video for more information! Register by supporting us on Patreon or on our Eventbrite … Read more
Laurie will be live on zoom tonight at 7 p.m. US Central Time to discuss a bit about Aquinas and natural law and then to focus on his views on property. She’ll compare his views on private property with the neoliberal view as exemplified by Milton Friedman. To that end, part of the session she’ll be reading a section from the draft of the book she’s currently writing. The chapter is “Ideological Strong-Arming” and she spends some time discussing how Friedman helped set up the conditions for what we now call “capitalist realism.”
Starting one month from now, Dr. Laurie Johnson be going live on first Thursday evenings (7 p.m. Central Time) for “Pints With Plato” (which won’t just be about Plato–it’s just that he’s one of her favorite political philosophers). You can see a full description and sign up for any single session on Eventbrite for a donation, and soon we’ll also have some subscription choices on Patreon for those who want access to all these as well as seminars and series from Laurie and other co-founders of the Maurin Academy, like Spencer, Jakob and Bryant, all of whom have appeared on Laurie’s YouTube channel. Spencer is also co-host of our Dustbowl Diatribes podcast. We’ll also have a newsletter to tell you about upcoming events! My first “Pints with Plato” is on Thursday, January 5! More to come!