Voices of Freedom - Interview with Gonzalo Schwarz and Clay Routledge

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

An Interview with Gonzalo Schwarz and Clay Routledge, Archbridge Institute Despite prevailing messages to the contrary, recent research reveals a surprising finding: nearly seven in ten Americans say they either believe they'll achieve the American Dream or already have. Yet a deeper question remains: What does it actually take for people to flourish? Our guests on this episode of Voices of Freedom have dedicated their careers to answering this question by building a bridge between the truths revealed by research and the narratives that drive people and society. Gonzalo Schwarz and Clay Routledge of the Archbridge Institute share insights from their work building a "human flourishing movement" that goes beyond traditional economic measures to understand what truly enables people to live better, fuller lives. Together, they explain why most Americans remain optimistic about their futures—despite pessimistic narratives we often hear. Topics Discussed on this Episode: How growing up in multiple countries shaped Gonzalo's understanding of institutions and opportunity Why Clay transitioned from academia to policy work and the connection between psychology and public policy Why Archbridge regards "human flourishing" as a better framework than traditional economic measures The "crisis of meaning" affecting young people and its impact on well-being and success Why young Americans are more pessimistic about the American Dream and how to encourage optimism Why most Americans remain optimistic about achieving the American Dream Breakthrough insights and policy solutions that could make a difference in people's lives

Hello and welcome to Voices of Freedom, a Bradley Foundation podcast. I'm Rick Graber, president and CEO of the Bradley Foundation. On the podcast, we'll explore issues that affect our freedoms with a focus on free enterprise, free speech, and educational freedom. So let's get started. Despite significant challenges facing Americans today, recent research reveals a really surprising finding. And that is nearly 7 and 10 Americans say they either believe

they'll achieve the American dream, or they already have. Specifically, 30% say their family is already living the dream, while another 39% say it's within reach. And this is all according to Archbridge Institute's 2025 American Dream snapshot. Yet, deeper questions remain. What's it actually take for people to flourish? And what do we mean by the term flourishing? Our guests today have dedicated their careers to answering these really tough, hard to get to your arms around questions through a combination of research and policy solutions. Gonzalo Schwartz is president and CEO of the Archbridge Institute, a think tank, focused on lifting barriers to human flourishing. Growing up in Uruguay, Israel, Ecuador, and

Bolivia, is witnessed firsthand how institutions affect people's ability or inability to thrive. In 2016, he founded Archbridge to bring together cutting-edge research with real-world policy. Clay Rutledge is Vice President of Research and Director of the Human Flourishing Lab at Archbridge. As a leading expert in existential psychology, his work explores how our need for meaning influences everything, from personal goals to our attitudes about freedom in the future. Clay left a distinguished academic career to translate psychological insights into practical approaches for helping people live more fulfilling lives. Together, they're building a human flourishing movement that goes beyond the traditional economic measures to understand what truly enables people to live better, richer, and fuller lives. Gonzalo and Clay, it is wonderful to have you. Welcome to Voices of Freedom. Thank you very much, Rick, for the invitation. Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, thank you. It's great to be here. Absolutely. Gonzalo, let's start with you. I'll throw the first question your way. You founded Archbridge in 2016 after growing up in several different countries. where I'm sure you saw varying levels of opportunity and prosperity, and maybe that's an understatement. But what did those experiences teach you about the relationship between institutions, policy, and human flourishing? Thank you very much, Rick, for that easy question to start us off. Well, what I would say is my experiences taught me, I think, at a broader level,

that people all around the world, certainly including the United States, are pursuing flourishing lives. it might mean something different to for different people, but in a broad sense, it is about living better, richer, and fuller lives. People wake up everywhere that I've lived, at least, every morning thinking how can I have a better life for myself, for my family, how can I achieve my fullest human potential or help my family or even people in my close community achieve their human potential as well. And I saw that being from Uruguay, which is not one of the poorest nations in Latin America, but it's still a developing nation. And I saw it in more challenging

economic situations in Ecuador and Muslim, Bolivia, where I was before moving the United States. And I saw that when I was living in Israel during my childhood, where I was there during the Gulf War and we had three weeks in elementary school where we had to go to school with our backpack or lunchbox and a gas mask because there were a threat of chemical bonds at the time. And throughout all those experiences and living in the United States afterwards, I saw unequivocally that institutions and policies that promote more individual freedom, more rule of law, and more economic freedom with less barriers for entrepreneurs created better conditions for its people and more paths to human flourishing. There are certainly other cultural narratives and attitudes that make those countries more suited to enable more human flourishing,

but that I think in a broad sense, what I saw throughout my experiences. It's really interesting. Clay, you left academia after a couple of decades to join a policy think tank. Why did you make that transition and how do you see the connection between psychological research and public policy? You know, like you said, I was a professor for a long time. I loved many aspects of being a professor. It's wonderful to work with students and to, you know, be able to do research and, you know, kind of have the space to explore these types of questions that I wanted to explore as a psychologist. But one of the things I began to notice more later in my career was a lot of the more interesting discourse, I think, that was happening around these issues that we're talking about today wasn't happening in academia. And to be clear, Like, I'm not saying it's not happening anywhere at academia, but I was seeing it more in the think tank world and I was seeing it more in other areas of discourse than I was in academia. And when I started working with Archbridge, first as a fellow while I was still a professor, I really got to see some of that. And I really appreciated Gonzalo's perspective on bringing a more holistic approach to the table, which as a psychologist, you know, when you work in academia, you kind of focus on your own little field of expertise and it's hard. to have opportunities to work with economists or public policy experts because you're so narrowly

focused and you're specialized to discipline. And I just really liked that idea of like taking my expertise and working with people who had expertise in other areas to really take a more holistic approach to flourishing. And Archbridge offered me the opportunity to do that. And so, you know, it's really translating those ideas to something more actionable and more accessible to the general public is what I felt my calling was at that point. to take the leap at the time you were making it? You know, it wasn't a way because, you know, you hear about, like, tenure, right? The goal of tenure, I'd spent all this time, like, building a career there.

I was, I was a full professor. I was actually an endowed professor, so, you know, I had this distinguished, pretty cushy professorship. But, you know, I remember asking myself this question if I said, you know, when I was thinking about, should I stay in academia or should I leave? And the only reason to stay, or the biggest reason I should say, to stay was the security of tenure. And I was like, that's not a good reason. Like, you know, that's not, that's not a good, that's a fear-based reason. It was a big change. You know, you spend decades training to do one

thing. And it's a big change of zero regrets. That's a good thing here. It's been great. It's been very intellectually stimulating. It's really helped me feel meaningful to, you know, to do something that I'm passionate about, but to also try to do it in a way that I think can have real impact in people's day-to-day lives. That's great. Archbridge, as I understand it, focuses on lifting barriers to human flourishing. And we touched on this at the top. Talk to us about how you define human flourishing, which to a linear thinker like me is a fuzzy concept. And why do you think it's a better framework than more traditional measures,

simply measuring economic growth or income mobility? As we're trying to build that human flourishing movement, the idea of human flourishing is a more unified narrative, as more people are interested in more than just economic growth or mobility, even as their prerequisites for human flourishing. Certainly, they are. We need that as the backbone of a more human flourish, economic growth, income mobility, freedom, agency. And I think I would have tried to have a better answer than just, I think, Clay's previous answer, but that sort of illustrates that a lot. I think, as he mentioned, a cushy job at an endowed chair, and he was searching for more meaning in life and achieving his own human potential. And how we define it is very close to how we think about the American dream as well. It is about people striving to achieve better, richer, fuller lives. It's using one's individual agency to take actions and pursue aspirations, betterment, and growth. And it is at the end of the day chasing the good life, fulfilling our unique human potential. It's an endeavor that's been out there since

times of Aristotle who started studying the concept as well. But for us, I think it's a more unified narratives of what people can relate to. And as we're talking about upper mobility in a lot of our research as well, as we see it as a back point of it, how economists usually define it is if you out-earn your parents as adults. And we want newer generations to be better off, but whose goal is it as a kid or someone else? I want to earn more money than my parents. It is a measure that we need to have, but I think that that's not what pushes people forward in pursuit of that better life. Sorry, Clayton, we want to get in your way if you want to answer that as well. Yeah, no, just building on that, I mean, again, and I kind of mentioned this before,

is one of the things that really attracted me to Archbridge and working with Gonzalo is this appreciation of a more holistic understanding of well-being or flourishing. I mean, when people go throughout their days, some of their days, some of that time is spent worrying about money and thinking about economic issues, of course, but a lot of it has spent thinking about being a good family member, right, supporting your children, being a good spouse, being a good, you know, being a good coworker, being a good citizen, being, and having experiences of awe and beauty, personal goals and growth that, you know, don't directly touch on your financial situation. You know, some people have the goal of being a better health, you know, of training for a

marathon, of finding, you know, of learning a new language. I mean, there's all sorts of aspects of human existence that economics matters too, but it's not. not the most proximal variable. So just as, you know, and these things are interrelated. I think these different dimensions of flourishing are interrelated as one example. So by many indicators, Americans are doing better economically than previous eras and compared to other countries. But at the same time, we have these growing trends of pessimism and depression and social distrust.

And these trends are important on their own because, as I noted, these other dimensions of life are part of what contributes to well-being. But they're also important, even if you only really want to focus on economic indicators or on things we care about in terms of advocating for freedom, because, for instance, anxiety and depression undermine entrepreneurship. They undermine innovation. People are less likely to take risks. They're less likely to explore new avenues of opportunity if they're anxious and depressed. Right. And so even if you only care about focusing on the economic metrics, the psychology ultimately and the social and cultural life ultimately contribute to those metrics and the activities that support economic

growth. Of course, like I said, I think they're important on their own as well, but they are drivers of the types of economic activities and policies, I think, that we think contribute to a free and flourishing society. So flourishing, I mean, there's no one definition. This is, as defined by each individual, correct? I mean, I think yes, in part. I mean, I think we can, I think you can get some consensus around sort of what are the predictors of psychological, social, economic, well-being, perhaps.

But you're right, and that's why, you know, you're right in the extent that this is also a very individualized pursuit. Your goals might be different from my goals. And again, this is one of the reasons that I think a free society, matters is it helps people sort of find their way into their talents and how they can contribute, not just to their own improvement, but to the improvement of their communities. And those are often individual, very individual distinct goals based on our personalities, based on our life experiences, our police systems. And so yeah, your flourishing might be different than my flourishing.

But there are some basic things that we can say, for instance, most Americans say that family life is what, you know, a good family is what makes their life meaningful. So you can find consensus around themes, but the specific ways in which those goals are fulfilled and experienced are very distinct. Makes sense. Makes sense. I found this really interesting. Your research consistently finds that most Americans, and it doesn't, across all lines, whether it's racial or income or educational, believe that they've achieved the American dream or on their way to achieving it in some way. But boy, that seems to contradict what you hear, the narratives that are out there. Somewhere there's a disconnect. What's going on? That's a great question. And that's

something that we struggle with every day to try to push back against those more pessimistic narratives, more negative narratives. But it's in a way, it's what sells. And I think a lot of it is driven by media, elites, politics. Part of today's politics, yes. Yes. That people, politicians, regardless of where they're coming for and they want to sell you their way of how can I improve your chances to achieving the American dream or the media it's what sells for clicks. I want to

present a more pessimistic narrative, something that catches the eye. If things are going rosy and well, people are not going to pay so much attention to that. But what we're we try to do with our service is go directly to the public and ask them. What do you think are your chances of

have you achieved the American dream? You're on your way to achieve it because it's many times a journey and done necessarily just a destination, or it's out of reach, right? What I've written in the past about it is that it is, it is like the movie critic industry. A lot of movie critics want to tell you, this is why a movie is good or not good. And when we check all the scores, we see the movie critics having very negative scores about one certain movie, and then you check the audience score about that same movie, the reviews, and it's a much, much more positive score, much more positive score, much more positive

review because they're being entertained by a movie. They're being happy with it. And in a way, I think that that's what happens with the American Dream as well. A lot of this pessimism for movie critics, or in this case, American Dream critics, it's what sells for them. But when you ask the audience directly, they say that they're more optimistic that we hear about in these narratives. One recent example, we actually had a poll last week through the World Street Journal and with NORC, which is a National Opinion Research Center out of the University of Chicago, which is the same firm that we use to run our own survey. And I think a lot of it is also how people are asking the questions, first of all.

Because their question about it, the American dream is out of reach, which is what that survey showed, is that they're specifically asking, do you think that the American dream, as defined by if you work hard, you will get ahead, is achievable, is true or is not true, or has never been true for people? But it's not asking people directly. Do you think, what about your own chances of the American dream? And it's being very specific about what that definition of the American dream is. When it's a much broader concept, a much more holistic national narrative, I think we need to appreciate. So it's a disservice in that sense, but it's not asking directly.

So a lot of the pessimistic narratives, even around that survey last week came around with a different type of question. But it also gets to a second point that we've seen in our own survey and in other surveys that Clay has done with the Human Flouration Lab, in which when we ask people about their own views, about their own American dream, or in the case of the Clay, Clay's survey that they can talk more about, we ask people if they feel hopeful about the future. When it's about them,

people are feeling much more optimistic. So in our surveys, as you mentioned, almost 70% of people say they have either achieved or they're on their way to achieve the American dream. When in that same survey, we asked them, do you think other people are still able to achieve the American dreams? Only 51% of people say that they think other. can achieve their American degree.

When Clay ran that survey around hope, he found that 82% of people were hopeful by the future of America. But when he asked, you think other people hopeful about the future of America is only 56%. So the perception of like, my present or my future is better,

is very good. But if I need to ask, if someone asking about others, that's a more negative perception. Maybe Clay, you can talk more about that. But that's something that we're constantly trying to fight. Again, it's because there is a danger they can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

when we started asking these questions in 2020 and other people have done those questions in the past AEI had a great poll on that or Pew or Gallup they got similar results to what we did in the past but since we started asking in 2020 to today we saw more people being negative 18% people said it's how it was the American dream was out of reach in 2020 and this year it's 30%.

So people are becoming more negative but that's the problem that it risks to becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy I don't know if you wanted to place something to that according to your research. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely consistent with this broader trend of when you ask people about the state of the world, they give a more pessimistic response than when you ask them about their own lives. And I think part of that is what we're talking about, you know, the negative media because,

you know, one of the ways we learn that we gather information about, you know, the world is we consume media. And so if we're constantly seeing all this, all these indicators that everything's falling apart in the world's on fire, then you, you know, I'm not out there myself. So I'm like, well, I guess that's the state of the world. But the media can't tell me about my own life, right? Like I have more, I have access to my personal data of my day-to-day interaction. So it's harder to convince me my life's unraveling. And so I do think that's part of what's going on. And so, yeah, one of our goals at the lab and at Archbridge is to do a better job telling the

more complete story. This doesn't mean we sugarcoat things. or we ignore negative trends, but it's like there's a bigger picture and there's a lot more positive and encouraging signs happening amidst these more troubling trends as well. You know, at Bradley, we believe that we live in an exceptional country, and so much of that is based on almost an inherent optimism among the American people. And all this negativity, we think, and I think you agree, is a real threat. Yeah, yes, and that's what I was doing. Yes, definitely.

What I was trying to allude in my first answer was that besides these institutions and policies, there are certain cultural narratives among different countries or cultures that portray if they have that more aspirational optimistic narrative. That certainly matters when people need to go out and build businesses, build institutions. And that's something that the national ethos of the American dream represent, that more optimistic aspirational narrative. And that's something that's so crucial that no other country in the world has it. No other country was founded under that sort of optimistic.

optimism and hope for the future. And so I think that's certainly very, very, very important to keep. Yeah. Clay, I mean, your work shows that people's sense of meaning and purpose has a profound impact on their well-being and on their success. And you touched on this earlier. We are seeing rising rates of depression and anxiety, I think particularly among young people. What do you think is driving that crisis of meaning?

And clearly, it must have an impact. you've already said as much on their ability to flourish in the years ahead. Yeah. Yeah. First, yeah, absolutely. Meaning is a well-documented, you know, predictor of lots of indicators of flourishing from physical health, like people who perceive their lives as meaningful, just wanted to, they're motivated to take better care of themselves.

They have a reason to live. And they have a reason to bring their best to the world. It's a predictor of mental health, of social engagement, of economic activity. of wealth. People who perceive their lives as meaningful at a younger age end up making more money in the long term. Again, they're more goal-driven. They're more motivated. They're more willing to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains. So it's just a really good contributor of an ordered life, of a self-ordered, self-regulated life. I think it's important to emphasize that humans have always faced challenges to meaning. Meaning doesn't just fall in our laps. Meaning takes

work. And I think that's something that's sort of misunderstood sometimes as people will say things like, well, you get meaning from your family and your relationships. And that's true, but it's from the work you put into this relationship. So there's good evidence that the biggest contributor to a perception of meaning in life is the sense that you matter. And the way that you feel like you matter is that you're in the game, right? That you're actually contributing. It's not like a passive thing of like, oh, people are nice to me, my family cares about me. It's, I'm actually doing something to contribute to my family or to my workplace or to my religious community or to my, you know, or to my nation. Meaning's about mattering and we've always had challenges to that. The fact that humans can even

talk about this, it can even grapple with these questions, really speaks to the distinctiveness of this in our species and we're constantly grappling with it. So I think that, you know, we are always in a time of change and challenge when it comes to meaning. I think there are some specific things that we can think about. So another way to say this is we might have existential issues that are unique to our time, but existential issues themselves are timeless, right? And we're always asking ourselves, what's our role in the world? What's our place in the grander scheme of things? But I do think we have some unique challenges. Lots of people have identified, whether you're talking about the decline of religious faith, lower rates of marriage and family,

formation, the stuff that we're talking about today, the rise of cynicism and pessimism and honestly kind of like a form of anti-humanism. We're seeing, this is, you know, in a lot of it's fringe, but it's amplified culturally, this idea that humans were a mistake or that were destroying the planet and, you know, we've done more harm than good. This stuff gets into people's, you know, it kind of works its way into people's mindsets and it's a defeatism, right? It's just saying, well, what's the point? And so I think those cultural messages are, undermining meaning for young people in particular. I think there's also like an interesting debate happening around the irony of our affluence and success as potentially creating some

unique challenges. And, you know, I'm careful to say this because it often comes off as like, it's bad that we've achieved so much success and our like freedom has been so successful. Economic freedom and economic growth has been so successful. But what I mean by that is it's not that, that's not causing the problem or technological and economic affluence isn't causing the problem, but it's potentially creating, you know, challenges, new challenges to deal with. And I think we're going to see this with, for example, the rise of artificial intelligence is when space people are talking about this a lot. Because, you know, if AI can do a lot of work that people, and this has been the case of

technological progress throughout history, right? Like you have machinery and automation doing work that people once did. And maybe that was like, well, this is what I do. This is how I will see those challenges emerge again. But I think that humans ultimately are resilient, right? And ultimately we have the capacity to find new ways we're creative, find new ways of making meaning. So that's kind of what I mean by like it's not just, oh, this is a crisis right now. This is an ongoing struggle that humans have.

And it's honestly part of the recipe of our success. too, the fact that we struggle with these issues because we don't just want to be passive organisms that kind of say, okay, well, we're done. We want to find that next challenge, that next opportunity. And I think a lot of the issues young people are having, you know, perhaps are related to not so much what they're doing, but what we're not giving them the opportunity to do. Yes. Yes. Let's talk about some of the barriers to flourishing that you've identified. And your research has covered a bunch of areas, everything from occupations. occupational licensing to marriage penalties and welfare programs to decline of social trust.

When you look at all these barriers, and there are barriers, how do you decide which barriers to focus on? And are there some that are more easily solved than others? Yeah, no, that is definitely a big question and a true question. Yes, there's some of them that are more addressable than others. How we think about social mobility and human flourishing is that it is a life cycle endeavor, different barriers throughout a person's life. So we So it takes the whole life cycle of a person that we're, what we're trying to look at. And why we're called arch bridges, because we're trying to build bridges between the different disciplines and between different areas of research that are, in a way, now I think, siloed. There's a great article by Ronald Coase before he passed away in 2012.

The Harvard Business Review, where he called to save economics from the economists because there was so much siloing of these different areas of research, a lot of connections. is that we're trying to create those bridges and how we're trying to just create a consensus around what are the main barriers to mobility. And some of these barriers could be artificial that are externally imposed, that it could be government barriers to entrepreneurship or bureaucratic barriers to entrepreneurship.

They could be bad education systems that we could solve through different policies through more educational choice. Some of them are also natural barriers that are more intrinsic to the individual. some of the things that Clay has talked about or even if it comes to family structure, for example, there's marriage penalties and welfare that we could address in a policy, but there's others. We can't legislate or mandate, let's have better families, better family life.

That's something that's very, very difficult. And there's a lot of organizations on the ground trying to help people one-on-one. And what we're trying to do is, first of all, highlight how all these areas are interrelated, which I think is missing in the literature. As I mentioned, a lot of things and research on different barriers have been silenced. and they're not connected to each other. And we try to do that through our own index on social mobility, ranking the 50 states where we focus on four big areas around entrepreneurship and economic growth,

we love law and institutions, education and skills development, and social capital. We think that based on the academic research out there on all these different areas and how we've tried ourselves to do original research connecting these areas to social mobility, but there's other great research out there as well. So we're trying to bring all those areas, all these pillars of social mobility and and flourishing together through this index. And we're trying to motivate people to address it and do an analysis in their own states. And but when it comes to addressing specific barriers, like, for example, occupational licensing

or human capital development, we try to partner with as many people as possible who are experts in this field. So, for example, we've had a great relationship with scholars like Ed Timmons, the leading expert in our occupational licensing, or we try to show the link to, social mobility, try to work with state-based groups, state policymakers, and removing barriers to licensing. We've had a great relationship with our senior fellow James Heckman, a Nobel laureate from the University of Chicago, who's focused on human capital and early childhood education and try to highlight how it's the importance in early childhood in social mobility and human flourishing

depends more in those early years and depends more on the family and not so much in more schooling, not so much in universal pre-k programs, but more about how parents and engagement. aging with our kids. So we try to always collaborate as much as we can with different experts. We have so many different areas that we just try to lean on the expertise of others who have done work in this area and connected this broader perspective of more holistic narrative and perspective on social mobility and flourishing. I don't know if you wanted to mention anything, Clay, with the work that you're doing with your fellows as well around agency and hope. Yeah, sure. I mean, my area of expertise is less policy and more psychological,

But the good news about that is regardless of the state of our politics, I think we can make progress in these areas because, you know, they don't necessarily rely on policy. Policy can be helpful, of course, but we can still work on changing our cultural mindset and our attitudes, regardless of what's happening in political circles. So, you know, people who favor more top-down approaches that involve greater coercion or less freedom, I think can also benefit from psychological science, of course. But I think psychology is especially critical for freedom advocates, for classical liberals, because we want to maximize what people can do for themselves. We want people to act on their unique abilities to take ownership of their situation and to actualize their talents, not just to improve their own lives, but to make a difference in the lives of others. But just like somebody who's perhaps got like natural athletic talent still needs to be trained or still needs to be coached, humans need their talents nurtured. and they need their moral, social, and intellectual development shaped by these cultural, psychological, social forces. And so I think this positions us working in this space to do a lot of work in the broader culture that doesn't necessarily involve politics directly. But to help people, you know, improve their own lives, be better citizens, better helping each other, and better at coming to, you know, using their freedom to come together around the aspirations that we think advanced society. That's great. Let's go back to young Americans one more time. They pretty consistently show up as the most pessimistic group in your surveys about the American dream. There's no question that young people today are dealing with unique challenges, whether it's social media, whether it's economic pressures, whether it's AI, whether it's technological disruption. I think back to my own childhood, I didn't have any of those challenges. There was a whole lot less technology in those days. But I think back to my kids,

two boys who are both in their 30s now, even they had far fewer challenges than exist today, given all that, and I'm not saying that technology is a bad thing by any means, but what gives you hope for this rising generation and how can we push them into a more optimistic outlook? Yeah. There's a few things that give me hope. And honestly, I'm feeling more hopeful now than I was even a year. year or two ago, I think. For one, you only find what you measure. And so when you have a lot of public polls that ask questions about what people are worried about or anxious about or, you know, you focus on negative emotions, you're going to, you know, yeah, it'd be great if a lower percentage of young people said they were anxious. But what these polls often aren't, or these surveys often aren't measuring is what they feel good about. And so, for instance, we recently conducted a national survey focused on what we call digital flourishing. So we know that young adults and

young people and adolescents are worried about many aspects of their digital lives, but we asked them about the positive side too. And not just young people, we asked everyone. And what we found is that the vast majority of Gen Z adults and Americans across generations have a lot of positive feelings about their digital engagement. They feel like they have a good sense of control over the digital lives. They feel like, you know, they're connected to people. It helps them stay connected to people. It helps them express themselves. And so there are positive trends that I don't think we're doing a good job of measuring and amplifying and doing some of that work ourselves. It's helped provide some balance and some perspective. That's not all, it's not all negative. In addition to that,

we've been doing some work on this concept called historical nostalgia, which might seem kind of strange at first, but what we're finding is there's all these trends, including consumer trends, of young people looking to the analog in-person past with great fascination. They're collecting vinyl records. Young people, the main driver of physical book sales, they're the ones populating the local places for book night for trivia clubs and book nights. They're trying to find hobbies and activities that are like real life that people used to do. There's this fascination. with the way life was before the internet. And I think if you juxtapose that with their positivity towards, like, a lot of digital

technology and innovation, what we're seeing is that young people are not trying to reject progress. They're not trying to say we don't want these new technological innovations. But what they're saying is, like, maybe we've lost something from the real world that's involved in kind of messy, organic connections. And we're curious about that. And the way that they're exploring that is through nostalgia. And, you know, technology is actually ironically allowing them to do this because how are they learning about what life was like 30 or 40 years ago?

Well, they're watching videos on YouTube, right? And then that's that's kind of prompting them to go talk to people of older generations, say, was it really like this in the 80s? Were you really doing this stuff in the 70s? And so you were seeing this intergenerational engagement, too, thanks to that. And I think there's a lot going on here, but two themes I'll highlight really. real quick, I think that are relevant for this conversation is control and connectedness. Young people are perhaps idolize in a past in a way that really like highlights their desire for freedom. They want freedom to explore the world without constant monitoring and supervision.

They want the freedom to express their opinions and make mistakes and like explore different ideas without being canceled or ridiculed online, you know, publicly shamed. But they're also looking not just for control, to take control of their lives, but also for connection. They're looking for those real life, in-person opportunities to feel a deeper sense of community that maybe they don't feel online. So I'm bullish on young people because they're not the, I don't think they're the passive, helpless victims of technology that we often think of them as. I think they're wrestling with these issues in real time and they're looking for solutions. And then you, back in one final note on that, like back in 2017, I wrote an article for the New York Times that I was looking over. It's

It's been a while since I looked over it. And the article was about how young people are wary of freedom. And you saw at the time it was all these issues you were on free speech, conservatives speakers getting canceled in universities and all that stuff is happening. And it seemed like young people who were historically we thought of as being very open-minded and wanting more freedom, we're resisting freedom. We're actually wanting the administrations at the universities to exercise more authority over what they were able to access.

And so I just thought that was an interesting phenomenon, but I ended that article making the point that it isn't enough just to criticize these young people for being insufficiently independent or being hypersensitive. They didn't engineer our security-focused culture. We did that. And so I kind of closed at the point that if we want young people to thrive, we have to liberate them and let them be free

to navigate the social world, to make mistakes, to fail, to experience pain, to learn to self-regulate their fears and anxieties. So if we want future generations to have faith in freedom, I think we need to have a little bit more faith than them. Very well said. Well, let's close on an upbeat. We've been upbeat through this whole conversation. Let's stay there. Last question. I mean, you've both dedicated your careers to understanding and promoting human flourishing. As you look ahead, what are you both most excited about in terms of breakthrough insights or policy solutions that can really make a difference in people's

lives. Yeah, I think for me, what we're trying to do with our work is to lead a consensus around whether the main barriers to social mobility. Right now, the conversation is very politicized, is very dominated by conversations on income inequality that is not the same thing as upper mobility. It's all about how we fix the welfare system, tweak it here or there, or taxes or distribution. and that's not what it means to remove barriers to upper mobility. So I think I'm excited that the work that we're trying to do is shifting the conversation

to focus on this more holistic and I would say less siloed conversation on social mobility, linking a lot of these research areas of our work and connected to the work of many, many others and their freedom movement that are worked in adjacent fields on this. I'm excited about the promise that the work that we're doing is showing and helping state-based groups or other national groups to working on social mobility and now and into the future. But what I'm also really excited about, and I'll try to say, I try to pronounce it,

but I think it's a very challenging word, but excited about the semi-quintent centennial of the United States. I'm excited about it because next year's 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I'm excited and hopeful that the American Dream can serve as a unifying narrative for next year's celebrations and that it can lead the next 250. years of American exceptionalism that is based on freedom, agency, and American entrepreneurship.

When I moved to this country, I've been in love with the concept of the American Dream as one of the most important national ethos that has ever existed and something very precious that no other country has around the world. And I'm hopeful that next year's celebrations can help people have that more optimistic viewpoint about the American Dream, regardless of politics, the media, or other more pessimistic cultural vibes that we might have going. So I'm just very hopeful about that. and agree more. Clay? Yeah, just building on that. What I'm hopeful for is I think we're starting to see

a bottoming out of the, you know, the sort of attraction to cynicism and pessimism, especially among young people. We have a new fellow at the Human Flushing Lab, Paul Antleitner, who's a religion and cultural fellow. He's a pastor in Minneapolis, also

kind of a, you know, what he refers to as a cultural theologian, and he studies a lot of the popular cultural content, whether it's the movies, people are going to the music they're listening to other kind of themes that are happening, trends that are happening. And what he's noting, which is consistent with some of the other findings we have, is that young people are looking for a vibe shift. They want more optimistic, hopeful, wholesome, aspirational culture. And there's a number of different indicators of that.

And, you know, I just think that that's, that gives me some, you know, that gives me some hope that like, you know, that this kind of pessimistic sort of anti-human, cynical, you know, sometimes people call it postmodern and academia, this, that those sorts of vibes are diminishing and people are exhausted with that. And, you know, they're ready to feel good about their country, I think, and they're ready to feel like they have, you know, something to offer and they want to live a meaningful life and contribute to a society that's healthier. So that's, that's encouraging. But I think, you know, we have a lot of work to do to realize, that. And I, you know, and I think that's what we're trying to do at Archbridge.

Fantastic. It really is more fun to be optimistic, isn't it? It is. Definitely. Gonzalo and Clay, thanks so much for joining us today. And thanks very much for the incredible work that you and your organization are doing at Archbridge to improve all of our lives. We appreciate it very much. Thank you very much, Rick. It was a pleasure. Yeah, thank you, Rick. It was great to chat with you. And as always, thanks to all of you for joining us. on this episode of Voices of Freedom. Join us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts for our next conversation

on issues impacting our freedom and America's foundational principles. And make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. I'm Rick Graber, and this is a Bradley Foundation podcast. You're going to be able to be.