Cato Podcast

A Russian dissident living in exile finds her US bank accounts closed after being labeled an extremist by the Kremlin. Nicholas Anthony interviews Anna Chekhovich of the Anti-Corruption Foundation about her experience being debanked. Together, they unpack how sanctions, anti-money laundering rules, and financial surveillance systems enable authoritarian governments to silence critics beyond their borders.

A plan to massively expand FDIC insurance is gaining traction in Washington, despite little evidence that customers or community banks are asking for it. Cato's Nicholas Anthony, Norbert Michel, and Jill Castilla, CEO of Citizens Bank of Edmond, show how the proposal would subsidize wealthy depositors, weaken market discipline, and entrench “too noisy to fail” expectations across the banking system.

From Australia’s social media ban to U.S. and UK age-verification laws, governments are increasingly treating online access as something to be licensed. Cato's Jennifer Huddleston and David Inserra explore how these policies collide with free expression, parental autonomy, and privacy, and why empowering families works better than sweeping government bans.

Intended to save fuel and protect consumers, CAFE standards have instead penalized efficient small cars, subsidized trucks and SUVs, and created a de facto electric-vehicle mandate. Cato's Chad Davis, Brent Skorup, and Peter Van Doren trace how decades of regulatory layering have increased vehicle manufacturing costs, reduced affordability for consumers, and locked automakers into an endless cycle of policy reversals.

A new Cato survey reveals that Americans overwhelmingly support Social Security while fundamentally misunderstanding its structure, finances, and long-term viability. Romina Boccia and Emily Ekins explore how myths about personal accounts, proportional benefits, and trust-fund solvency shape public opinion — and why ignorance makes meaningful reform politically elusive.

Cato's Ian Vásquez and the Fraser Institute's Matt Mitchell walk through the 2025 edition of the Human Freedom Index, documenting a worldwide decline in economic, civil, and personal freedoms that began before the pandemic and sharply accelerated after it. They explain how populism, authoritarian emergency powers, trade restrictions, and speech controls have left nine in ten people living in less free societies, and why the recovery remains uneven and fragile.

Cato's Michael Cannon and the Center for Long-Term Care Reform's Stephen Moses examine how Medicaid’s long-term-care eligibility rules let middle- and upper-middle-class households shelter assets and shift costs onto taxpayers, driving up spending and lowering quality for the poor. Drawing on Moses’s new Cato paper Better Long-Term Care for Billions Less, they explain how perverse incentives, generous exemptions, and weak estate recovery undermine private planning and inflate a program already consuming one-third of Medicaid’s budget.

The Cato Institute's Katherine Thompson and Josh Shifrinson join Justin Logan to dissect the most contentious passages of the National Security Strategy, including its warnings about European “civilizational erasure,” its revived Monroe Doctrine instincts, and the absence of military escalation language on China. The discussion weighs whether this NSS truly reflects restraint and realism or simply refines old habits under a new rhetorical wrapping.

The Cato Institute's Jeff Singer and Michael Fox mark Repeal Day by examining how alcohol prohibition and the modern drug war share the same destructive logic: criminalizing peaceful people, fueling black markets, corrupting law enforcement incentives, and empowering violent traffickers. Drawing on real-world examples of overdose deaths, civil forfeiture, and policing excesses, they argue for a consistent, liberty-based framework that treats drug users with the same legal respect afforded to alcohol consumers.