Review: This Young Podcaster Is Channeling Adam Smith

A locked-down high schooler started asking libertarian thinkers what people in her generation should know.

"Science is the great antidote," wrote Adam Smith, "to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition." Juliette Sellgren began recording episodes of her Smith-infused podcast, The Great Antidote, as a locked-down high school student in 2020, when neither enthusiasm nor superstition were in short supply. Early on, she gathered an impressive collection of economists and other public intellectuals, including Matt Ridley, John Stossel, Vernon Smith, Deirdre McCloskey, Lenore Skenazy, and Russ Roberts—plus quite a few Reason staffers.

Over the years, Sellgren has matured and the podcast, now sponsored by Liberty Fund, has become more polished. But in a move that is both strategically flattering and genuinely illuminating, she still asks the same disarming question to all of her guests: "What is the most important thing that people my age or in my generation should know that we don't?"