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Ep 23 - Ryan T. Anderson, Ethics and Public Policy Center - What Do Think Tanks Actually Do?
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On this episode of the Sphere Podcast, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Publisher of Sphere Media, interviews Ryan T. Anderson, about his past year as President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, what a Washington think tank actually does, the world of big conservative donors... And for some reason they get sidetracked into a conversation about euthanasia.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Hello everyone and welcome to the Low Production Values Fear podcast, which as always is shot from my terrorist hideout in the north of Mali. I have a very special guest with me tonight. It's Ryan Anderson, ah who is the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and as such my former boss.
00:00:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah i I was affiliated with APPC for many, many years under the reins of very yeah ah and various dictators over there.
00:00:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah This is a complete joke because I, and joking aside, EPBC is a wonderful place and it has particularly been extremely good to me. And so I'm always happy to to talk about EPBC. You were great to me as president. Ed, before that, was great to me.
00:00:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i was purely joking. Yeah. So anyway, so you just see, we're we're already starting to laugh here. um So i I got in touch with
EPPC's Mission and Principles
00:01:10
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
you. I mean, obviously we stay in touch, but I got in touch with you because you recently published the annual report ah for 2024. And I thought that would be a good ah good ah excuse to do an interview. We did one last year, i think, after the the the one before that. And it was a print interview. Well, print, internet, words on a page.
00:01:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Pixels. ah and And I thought, well, we could do the same thing, but with the podcast.
00:01:37
Ryan Anderson
yeah
00:01:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um So I guess the first question is for anybody who doesn't know, what is EPPC? What is the Ethics in Public Policy Center? And why is it different from other Washington think tanks people may have heard about?
00:01:50
Ryan Anderson
Sure. So, um you know, we're one of the DC based think tanks. I think a couple of things that make us unique and and I should add that, you know, next year we'll celebrate our 50th anniversary um right around this time.
00:02:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh, wow. Yeah, you're right Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
00:02:05
Ryan Anderson
Yeah, we were founded on the 200th anniversary of America, ah so the year 1976.
00:02:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:02:11
Ryan Anderson
And so 2026 will be America's 250th and it'll be our 50th. I think a couple of things make us um unique. um One is that you know we're explicitly religious. you know A lot of the DC-based think tanks are more or less secular and they might've had like one or two people that happened to be a religious, but they certainly don't have any like programs in religious thought.
00:02:34
Ryan Anderson
Yeah. Whereas like for us, like you know George Weigel was our second... actually Actually, I should go back from the beginning. Our founder was Ernest Lefebvre, who was a very serious ah Protestant thinker. And like the whole point of EPPC's founding was partly to come back to Protestant liberalism, Protestant progressivism, um the watering down of the Protestant churches.
00:02:56
Ryan Anderson
And then it was also to be like a Cold War think tank that would defend the West on moral and ethical... ground
00:03:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Interesting.
00:03:02
Ryan Anderson
short George Weigel was that his successor and you know George was president up until he really started getting
00:03:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So it's another Washington institution that was infiltrated and then taken over by Catholics.
00:03:15
Ryan Anderson
We, ah um I wouldn't put it that way.
00:03:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:03:19
Ryan Anderson
we we we We still strive, and our third president was a serious Jew. So like, and we still strive to be Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish in our DNA. ah For people who don't know Weigel, I mean, he was president up until he started writing A Witness to Hope, which was, you know, the thousand page biography at John Paul the second
00:03:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yes
00:03:37
Ryan Anderson
We have a Catholic studies program. We have an evangelicals and civic life program. We don't have a Jewish studies program, but we have like serious Jews at UPC who are working on like substantive ah policy questions.
00:03:48
Ryan Anderson
ah So I think that makes us somewhat unique in that we don't just have people of faith who happen to be at the think tank, but we actually have programs in those respective areas.
00:03:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:03:58
Ryan Anderson
buckets. um We were also like explicitly socially conservative before it was cool to be socially conservative, if it even is cool to be socially conservative. I mean, I think a lot of the DC think tanks focused on economics and on foreign policy.
00:04:13
Ryan Anderson
And EPBC from the get go was focused on questions of the human person, questions of morality, questions of, um, theology. Right. And so as a result, you know, whether it's been the life debate, the marriage debate, the transgender debate, religious liberty debates, now we're seeing, you know, ah technology and smartphones, social media is kind of a next wave of this.
00:04:35
Ryan Anderson
um you know, EPBC has always been engaged, um, on things that aren't just about dollars and cents and aren't just about national security and foreign policy. Like to my mind, like um part of Trump's victory in 2024 was the she's for they, them, he's for us.
00:04:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:04:53
Ryan Anderson
And before I even got to EPPC, Ed Whalen was one of the first people on the legal side saying that, you know, all of this um legal nonsense that the word sex now means gender identity is entirely unlawful.
00:05:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right, right.
00:05:06
Ryan Anderson
Mary Hassan was doing a bunch of the transgender stuff at EPBC long before I arrived. And, you know we were really on the cutting edge of that back when people thought we were going to lose the transgender debate, just like we lost the gay marriage
The Role and Impact of Think Tanks
00:05:18
Ryan Anderson
debate. Right.
00:05:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right.
00:05:19
Ryan Anderson
And you know thankfully, that's not how history unfolded on this.
00:05:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay. ah Yeah, that's that's that's a good introduction. ah There's another question I want to ask, and it might be silly, but this podcast has a broader audience.
00:05:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah And that's you know one of my superpowers powers is I'm not afraid of asking stupid questions, which is a superpower in life. ah So I think it's a question many people have and they're afraid to ask.
00:05:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
What is a think tank? What is think
00:05:49
Ryan Anderson
Yeah.
00:05:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
think tank do exactly and um yeah I mean I what is it
00:05:57
Ryan Anderson
Sure. Yeah. so so So there are different models. um and And I would say, here's how I think about the EPPC model. And there are two images that I use for ah think tank.
00:06:09
Ryan Anderson
One is a fish tank. um So think about a fish tank. We have an aquarium. I'm in the basement. So we have an aquarium upstairs for our kids and we have like fish inside of a tank and they swim around and they do whatever fish do.
00:06:21
Ryan Anderson
So for us, like we have scholars inside of a tank and they think they're big thoughts. And, you know, for EBPC, our scholars are, um, They shouldn't be tenured professors ah for the most part because it wouldn't be the best use of their time.
00:06:38
Ryan Anderson
um The things that they are saying and doing are too important to be saddled with like a four four teaching load. And I would say the things that we say are true but are too controversial and politically incorrect for any of us to get tenure at most American-based universities.
00:06:56
Ryan Anderson
but So the reason that we are housed inside of a think tank ah rather than the university system is that you know I would say we're both too controversial and we're too valuable um to be trapped inside the modern American world.
00:07:09
Ryan Anderson
So that's the fish tank image. And I think some groups just have that image of what a fish ah what a think tank is. But I think that needs to be married with a second image, which is um you know an army tank.
00:07:22
Ryan Anderson
And if you know you and i i think we're of the same generation. um you know For people who grew up watching G.I. Joe, right this is a tank going to battle. and And what I mean by that is not that like we're going to engage in um like mudslinging ah competitions on Twitter or that we're going to be engaged in like ah shenanigans that you know is like you know weaponizing, going to war.
00:07:48
Ryan Anderson
I just mean we want to be scholars who then put our scholarship into action. Right. We're not just thinking big thoughts for the sake of thinking big thoughts. The university system is knowledge for the sake of knowledge. We're knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but also action.
00:08:03
Ryan Anderson
um And you can see a variety of ways in which this has been operationalized. Like, you know, Ed Whalen is not simply writing law review articles. He found that you know being very active um in the blogosphere back when that first started 20 years ago and and on Twitter is a way to really influence what the judges are doing, what the litigators are doing. And you know there are there are a lot of people who read Ed's daily commentary at bench memos where that is having a direct impact, you know putting his scholarship into action to then change outcomes.
00:08:37
Ryan Anderson
um This is happening in a variety of other areas where you know the the Actually, just just last week during oral arguments um in in the case involving whether or not you can have a faith-based charter school, um Sotomayor asked a question saying, wait, we've never before funded faith-based schools.
00:08:55
Ryan Anderson
And then the lawyer who was doing oral arguments on behalf of the faith-based charter school cites the amicus brief that we filed in that case. right And so the thought here is how can we package our ideas together
00:09:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:09:05
Ryan Anderson
in a way that will then make a difference for the laws, for the public policy, for us, also the culture and the church, right? so we have two audiences, both the state and the church. And, you know, everything is geared not just to being the smartest person in the room, not just thinking the big thought, but then getting that thought to make a difference, right? A concrete, tangible outcome that we can say, but for this book, this paper, this blog post, this outcome might not have happened.
00:09:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay, that's that's very clear. I mean, that's you know I've i been in this space, ah as you know, for a very long time, and I've always been i've always been ah sort of fascinated by it.
00:09:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um ah Most people may not know that i i I was president of a student think tank when I was in law school in 2008, if you can believe that.
00:10:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um And that, what?
00:10:01
Ryan Anderson
I didn't know that. Even I didn't know that.
00:10:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. Well, I'm not going to put it in my, you know, it's a, it's a student, it was a student thing, but I just, I was just always fascinated by this concept. And I think one of the things that you put really well is this sort of spectrum between sort of pure scholarship and, you know, political action, trying to, to change policy ah directly.
00:10:27
Ryan Anderson
Yeah.
00:10:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um And, you know,
00:10:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
when i think this is one of the things that first attracted me to EPPC, which is it feels like a place where the entire spectrum is there.
00:10:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um And so, you know, you have some think tanks that are... um
00:10:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
you know They're just pure scholarship, right? We're going to pay people to sit in sit in a tank and think.
00:11:02
Ryan Anderson
No.
00:11:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah there There was a guy on Twitter who worked for a think tank, and his bio was sits in a tank and thinks.
00:11:02
Ryan Anderson
Yeah.
00:11:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I always thought that was, and they write paper and so on and so forth. And that' you know that's not a bad use of time.
00:11:14
Ryan Anderson
no
00:11:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's not a bad use of donor money. that's I mean, scholarship is intrinsically valuable, right? um But it's just one thing. And then you have some think tanks, which, you know, that they have the army tank part ah down.
Balancing Scholarship and Action
00:11:33
Ryan Anderson
They don't quite have the think part.
00:11:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm not sure about the think part, though.
00:11:36
Ryan Anderson
All right.
00:11:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm not going to name anybody. People can write me angry emails. um ah to um um you know if if you If you think I've unfairly targeted your institution, i will deny it.
00:11:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. but
00:11:56
Ryan Anderson
But but um there's nothing wrong with that. i mean, there there are some groups that are explicitly, we are just a grassroots activist organization.
00:11:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:12:03
Ryan Anderson
And we have, you know, this many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of citizen activists. And we can light up your phones if you do something stupid and you're a member of Congress.
00:12:10
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Right.
00:12:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:12:14
Ryan Anderson
We can get people to, you know, show up at your town hall when you're campaigning in the district and say, wait a minute, you went to DC and you haven't done anything on the issues that you promised us.
00:12:25
Ryan Anderson
And for that, you don't need the scholarship. You need the activists, right?
00:12:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:12:27
Ryan Anderson
And so I think you're right to say that some are purely scholarship. Some are purely activist. You know, we try to do a bit of both. We we don't have a grassroots army. We don't have um a c four We don't have like any of the more overtly political. It's just that for us, we want to...
00:12:45
Ryan Anderson
from the get-go when we're conceiving like what our research project is going to be is to actually think through not just we hit publish and then we hope good things happen, but like we hit publish and then we have three or four additional steps that we're taking to make sure that this thing that we've now written actually has legs.
00:13:02
Ryan Anderson
um And so for that, I mean, the the challenge that I have as president is that I have to make sure that we have both really, really high standards for like intellectual credibility, um because that's kind of the coin in the realm that we operate in.
00:13:15
Ryan Anderson
Right. So we we need our scholars to be like both doing really good work and to have a reputation for doing good work because like the reputational part also matters.
00:13:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Right. Yeah.
00:13:24
Ryan Anderson
But then part two is that it also then needs to like be operationalized in a way that it moves the needle. You know, and you know getting both of those things, um you know, it's somewhat of a unicorn.
00:13:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:13:36
Ryan Anderson
And and I would say, you know, if you look through, um you know, many of the ah people at EPPC, they're they're somewhat unicorns. I mean, to give an example, Aaron Cariotti, you know, he he's now full time with us because he was fired from his medical school job because he wouldn't take the jab.
00:13:51
Ryan Anderson
He said it was unethical to force an experimental vaccine. He was the head of bioethics at his medical school. and they were go And he was like, I can't, like this would violate my witness, not just my conscience, but like the witness of being a bioethics professor.
00:14:04
Ryan Anderson
But he's a unicorn in that he is well-read in philosophy. He is well-read in medicine. He's a practicing physician. But he can also speak to the general public in ways that ordinary people understand.
00:14:16
Ryan Anderson
And he has all of these like relationships and friends who are now occupying, you know high level positions in the Trump administration where he can be a huge ally and support to them from the outside in helping them get stuff done.
00:14:31
Ryan Anderson
Right. And that's not your ordinary medical school professor.
00:14:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:14:34
Ryan Anderson
And that's certainly not like your Twitter personality who's just like dropping bombs.
00:14:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:14:38
Ryan Anderson
Like it really is a unique marriage of like expertise and operationalizing.
00:14:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:14:44
Ryan Anderson
Yeah. yeah
00:14:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's very cool. I mean, okay, so you sort of got into ah the next question I was going to ask, which is how do you think about your own job in relation to this sort of this sort of spectrum we just we we described?
00:15:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, maybe you've already answered the question, but you know it's on my list and I'm a robot, so I'm asking it anyway.
00:15:06
Ryan Anderson
Yeah, it's it's it's a good question. So, so um I mean, one is that I think part of my job is to kind of like scope out like, what what are the next big questions that are within our mission?
00:15:17
Ryan Anderson
And so, you know, one of the areas where we've been growing has been both technology and it's been assisted suicide. um I think if you look at what's happening right now in Canada, And if you know about it, right, it is truly horrifying.
00:15:30
Ryan Anderson
It's not like the fourth leading cause of death. It's not just for people with like terminal illnesses. I mean, there's there's a story that our other fellow in bioethics, Alexander Raikin, just wrote for Sarabha Mari, his unheard like US edition.
00:15:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's insane.
00:15:44
Ryan Anderson
And it's all about Canada. And there's this poor Canadian father who has like a 20 something year old daughter with autism. And she's been approved for medical assistance in death, right? the The euphemism for like, they are going to allow this young lady to kill herself because she has struggles with autism.
00:15:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
my god.
00:16:00
Ryan Anderson
In no way is this like a term, even even if it was a terminal onus, I'm still against it because I think it's abandoning um real solidarity with people with terminal onuses. But even here, like this is in no way terminal. So, you know, part of this, when I when i discovered, um he goes by Sasha. So when I discovered Sasha, I was like,
00:16:17
Ryan Anderson
you need to come to EPBC. He was more or less just like a freelance writer. I was like, we need to like set you up with some institutional support to grow your platform, to put you in touch with other colleagues at EPBC who are interested in this topic, because assisted suicide is the next big thing coming to the states.
00:16:32
Ryan Anderson
And you know as we record this, New York State is debating it. And I believe you know we're recording on on on a Wednesday, and I believe like the vote in the New York State Senate is today. And it it would be terrible if New York approves
00:16:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:16:45
Ryan Anderson
physician assisted suicide. so So part of it is like scoping out, you know, what are the next issues?
Addressing Modern Challenges
00:16:50
Ryan Anderson
When I first became president four years ago, you know, we found Claire Morell, who is just like, you know, a unique talent, like another another unicorn.
00:16:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yes She is. She is.
00:17:00
Ryan Anderson
She has a book coming out next month with Penguin Random House. right All of my books have been like with conservative ghetto publishers. and And I say that because they were the only ones who would publish me. but I was publishing stuff on transgender issues before it was cool.
00:17:14
Ryan Anderson
The marriage debate, religious liberty debate, abortion. great None of the big five publishers were going to touch those books. And so I'm very thankful for my... conservative publishers. But, you know, Claire has a book coming out with Penguin Random House.
00:17:26
Ryan Anderson
She also has had her model legislation signed into law in a number of states, all about like age verification for social media, ah for smart devices, for the app store, things like this.
00:17:37
Ryan Anderson
And her book highlights all of the harms that these new technologies oppose to children and and how the technology companies are bypassing parental authority. Um, For me, you know when I first brought Claire to EPPC, she had been serving in the first Trump administration at the Department of Justice. She had worked on the project on Section 230.
00:17:57
Ryan Anderson
And the big issue back then was censorship, right? Because Trump had just...
00:18:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Can you explain briefly what Section 230 is for the audience? Yeah,
00:18:04
Ryan Anderson
Yes, ah sorry, i'm i'm I'm speaking in like DC shorthand for like policy. one If I start using a bunch of acronyms also.
00:18:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah, yeah.
00:18:12
Ryan Anderson
Section 230...
00:18:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
No, it's, yeah. yeah
00:18:15
Ryan Anderson
It's for the Communications Decency Act. And it more or less said that a a a publisher or a ah platform wouldn't have publisher liability if they're simply the conduit to someone else's speech, right? So there's a difference between like, this is your own speech, in which case you might have liability or you're publishing someone else's speech, or if you're just a platform for a third party speech, right? And so this was a way of...
00:18:39
Ryan Anderson
um saying that you you would have certain Good Samaritan ah ah provisions where you could remove objectionable content while still not being liable um if some objectionable or some objectionable content that wasn't your own speech ah was on the internet.
00:18:55
Ryan Anderson
um So Claire been working on that report during ah her time at DOJ, comes to us, Amazon bans my book um right around the same time. And so like big tech c censorship was on everyone's mind.
00:19:07
Ryan Anderson
um A lot of people thought that, um you know, one of the reasons why um the 2020 election went against Trump was because of big tech censorship with the New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop.
00:19:18
Ryan Anderson
um They then kick Trump off of Twitter. They then, you know, ban my book on Amazon. And we're realizing, wait a minute, like consolidated corporate power can be as much of a threat to liberty and to equality and to justice as government power.
00:19:36
Ryan Anderson
So Claire initially was working on that. And then the more she dug into it, she said, wait, like the harms to kids are actually worse. um She's a mom herself. She has three young children.
00:19:46
Ryan Anderson
So that's where she starts pivoting and starts working on this model legislation. and it's just it's awesome. Right. And i think she's had a ah major impact, both shaping the conversation and concretely getting legislation passed.
00:19:58
Ryan Anderson
And, you know, so for for my job as president, it's identifying, all right, one of these next issues is technology, thinking at first it was going to be tech censorship. And it still is that that's important. And I'm very glad to see people like Andrew Ferguson and Mark Meter at the FTC and FCC, ah respectively, like going after um some of the violators for antitrust law.
00:20:19
Ryan Anderson
um But then also it was great when like she and I made the decision we should pivot to like the human flourishing aspect of tech because like the censorship is one part of a much larger conversation about how do these new technologies, especially with AI now, you know, any day ah the singularity were we're approaching, like how do we think about human dignity, human identity, human flourishing and in an age of large language models.
00:20:45
Ryan Anderson
Right. And so I think, you know, Claire has been at the cutting edge there. And actually, I think Claire and Aaron are going to have some interesting ah collaborations because, like you know, Aaron's very interested in in this from like the medical doctor philosophical perspective. Claire's interested in this um from like the harms to kids perspective. You put those things together and you have some pretty interesting ah research projects.
00:21:04
Ryan Anderson
So my job is like game out, what are the next issues that no one else is preparing for? Who are the talented people who can do work in this space? And then another big part of my job is like, I have to raise the money for this, right? None of this, no one's working for free. We're not, we are running a charity in the IRS sense that a 501c3 is listed as a charitable organization, but like, we're not running a charity in the sense that, you know, people are, you know volunteering their time. Like, you know, Aaron has five kids,
00:21:31
Ryan Anderson
You know he needs a salary with healthcare benefits for the family, blah, blah, blah. Claire's this thing. So there's a fundraising component, um which at first I thought was going to be really a drag. And at times it can be, but at its best, it's like,
00:21:46
Ryan Anderson
there are real And this is something unique to America that you know may be more foreign.
00:21:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
This is very true.
00:21:51
Ryan Anderson
Yeah, I mean, like just like the civil society space in the States is very different than, you know you're you're recording this from from France right now.
00:21:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:21:58
Ryan Anderson
There are some really, really generous people in the States who also, like I thought like they would be arrogant, they would have egos. like Some of them have that, but like the majority of our donors are like humble people who realize that they've been really successful in the business space,
00:22:14
Ryan Anderson
They don't necessarily have the skill set to be successful in the idea space or the political space or the ecclesial space, but they recognize that we have some talented people there. And they're like, this is how I partner to make a difference, right? I'm going to provide you guys with funding.
00:22:29
Ryan Anderson
I'm not going to micromanage it because, you know, I know that when I was running my business, I had to trust my mid-level managers. Like, I'm going to trust. you, your management team, your scholars. And so long as they like um the final product, right? they They don't meddle, which I love because, you know, um it's a different donor story.
00:22:48
Ryan Anderson
But like they do, it's a real partnership where they're like, I love what George Weigel is doing for the Catholic Church. I want to support that. I love what Aaron is doing for bioethics. I want to support that. I love, you know, another one of our colleagues, Rachel Morrison.
00:23:01
Ryan Anderson
I love that she will read hundreds of pages of federal regulation to then stop the bad stuff and to help the good stuff out the door. Right. And they're like, I don't have that skillset. I don't even have the patience to read all of this federal code.
00:23:16
Ryan Anderson
I love that Rachel does. And, you know we now have a four person team working with Rachel on that project. And so um another part of, you know, what does the think tank president president do is like, I, I, I go to foundations and to, um you know, ah individuals and I say, look, these are the things that I know you care about.
00:23:32
Ryan Anderson
Let me show you a little bit of about how we're making a real difference in these areas. And then I have to, you know, ask them for money. And, you know, I'm still like, it's, you know, but but, you know, it is what it is.
00:23:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. ah
00:23:44
Ryan Anderson
and um and and And I would say at its best, like there's some very generous people who want to ah help in this way. And I think that's it's unique to America and it's great.
00:23:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
No, that but that's definitely true. I mean, yeah. ah quick Quick poll, because I like to ask this people this question. As far as I know, every nonprofit president spends at least 50% of their time on fundraising. Would you say that's accurate?
00:24:06
Ryan Anderson
know so So for me, like it's thankfully, it has not been that high. um And there's like some historical reasons for that that we can discuss in a minute.
00:24:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Damn.
00:24:15
Ryan Anderson
For me, I would say it's about one-third fundraising, one-third management and like mentoring and coaching and then dealing with like you know like all sorts of back office headaches, things like that.
00:24:27
Ryan Anderson
And then one-third of my own work. like I've been you know pretty deliberate in trying to carve out time
00:24:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh, wow.
00:24:33
Ryan Anderson
So I can keep reading and writing and speaking, but it's only a third. ah
00:24:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Can I be president of EPPC?
00:24:38
Ryan Anderson
You know, when i say that again,
00:24:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Can I be president of EPPC?
00:24:44
Ryan Anderson
possibly.
00:24:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
this is This is not what the average think tank president's schedule looks like.
00:24:48
Ryan Anderson
And um and so here's the historical reason. So like, ah no, no.
00:24:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Usually they have to give up their research and and spend more more than half of their time in hotel rooms
Fundraising and Organizational Strategies
00:25:02
Ryan Anderson
Yeah. So our historic business model, we were, I think we are now the last think tank to have changed business models, which was, you know, up until I became president, we were an eat what you kill think tank, which many of the think tanks.
00:25:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
wooing donors.
00:25:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm well aware.
00:25:17
Ryan Anderson
No, I know. Cause like you, you lived under that model.
00:25:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
but
00:25:21
Ryan Anderson
And, um and so, so for people who have no idea what that means is that like each scholar, each scholar was responsible for their own fundraising.
00:25:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yes please explain that.
00:25:30
Ryan Anderson
And um that was like very difficult for people who weren't yet famous. And so if you're George Weigel, you wrote the Pope's biography, you're like a household name within certain Catholic circles.
00:25:43
Ryan Anderson
Or if you're Ed Whalen, like one of Scalia's star clerks, you've you know you are the most prominent commentator on the courts. um you have greater facility with fundraising than if you're someone who's not yet well-known, right?
00:25:58
Ryan Anderson
and And so for me, if I wanted to hire like next generation young people who, when I hired them, they were not superstars.
00:26:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes. Yes.
00:26:06
Ryan Anderson
But now four years later, I mean, you mentioned how Claire is, you know, there are people who work with
00:26:10
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, Clara's a good example. Now she's she's very prominent.
00:26:13
Ryan Anderson
wouldn't have been able to get started. Right. And so, so for me, like I had to start changing the business model where I was like, all right, for people who the old model is working, I'm not going to mess it up.
00:26:24
Ryan Anderson
If you have foundation relationships, donor relationships, keep those going. Right. And so we're going to, and you know we're going to keep working with the model that worked for the people for whom it worked.
00:26:35
Ryan Anderson
for people who were struggling under that old model for new people, we're going to try to ramp up as much as possible. And and we're still not there. I mean, like there, there are still people who are unpaid or underpaid at EPPC just because it it it does take time.
00:26:50
Ryan Anderson
um The reason it's not, you know, 50% of my time or a hundred percent of my time is just that there's only so much you can do. mean, it's like, there's only a certain universe of potential donors for the type of stuff we do.
00:26:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Right.
00:27:01
Ryan Anderson
Because if you think about for, for us, like, you have to be a serious um protestant catholic jew or fellow traveler because like the issues that we work on and the viewpoint that we take you know, like a libertarian donor who is a secularist, who is like in favor of abortion, like we're not going to be their favorite think tank.
00:27:21
Ryan Anderson
Right. And just like, that's right.
00:27:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:27:23
Ryan Anderson
But, but if you believe in like both markets and the right to life and the importance of the family and, you know, there, you get these smaller and smaller Venn diagram, concentric circles.
00:27:35
Ryan Anderson
And like, that's my target target audience. Like I want to find the foundations and the individuals, um, who really share you know our our largest largest worldview about the nature of the human person, human dignity, human flourishing, ah constitutionalism, rule of law, like all of the all of the things, which means that there are only so many people um who I can be talking to, right?
00:27:59
Ryan Anderson
There are certain people who I know, like we're never going to be high on their priority list because there are other think tanks, other organizations that are a better fit, just given you know who they are and what they care about.
00:28:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:28:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, I mean, so a point you made about donors, ah which totally comports with my experience, um is the fact that, you know, relative to what the average person's...
00:28:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah prejudice might be, they're actually surprisingly ah not self-interested. They're, there as you described, they're people who've done very well in life, especially on the right. They're usually you know entrepreneurs, business people, and and they genuinely want to do good with their money.
00:28:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And you can disagree with how they choose to to spend their money. That's my criticism of conservative people.
00:28:51
Ryan Anderson
Sure.
00:28:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Which is could be a topic for a different podcast, and I'm not going to get you in trouble by dragging you into that conversation.
00:29:00
Ryan Anderson
yeah We can have that conversation over drinks when you're next in DC. Yeah.
00:29:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. But i i've i've never I've never had a donor be like, ooh, you know, ah i'm in I'm in lumber.
00:29:14
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
How does this help you know the lumber industry? Yeah.
00:29:18
Ryan Anderson
Well, actually, with one qualification, I do think there is some corporate giving where there really is like a pay to play or a quid pro quo relationship where it's the type of thing where it's like, we need to get rid of these tariffs.
00:29:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:29:31
Ryan Anderson
You know we'll donate some corporate money for you guys to do work.
00:29:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. I mean, that that exists. I'm talking about like conservative donors, like people who might donate to EBPC or to other like big conservative nonprofits.
00:29:35
Ryan Anderson
Yeah. Yes.
00:29:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
In large part, i mean like they may have their corporation, which like gives money to lobbyists or whatever,
00:29:49
Ryan Anderson
Yeah.
00:29:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
to further the interest specifically of that corporation. And that's their first amendment right. But in terms of their charitable giving as individuals, like I've been in a lot of private conversations with people like that.
00:30:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I've literally never had the experience of somebody being like, ah well, um how does this help me with the the regulation of, ah you know, this company I own or whatever?
00:30:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, you know, also there,
00:30:16
Ryan Anderson
yeah and And let me just add one thing to that. Like, I mean, I think it's partly like given the issues that you work on and focus on the issues that we do at EPPC, there is literally nothing to gain, right?
00:30:27
Ryan Anderson
If you're a donor and you're donating money,
00:30:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah we Well, yeah, certainly for a social conservative think tank.
00:30:31
Ryan Anderson
Yeah, i like there' there there can't, which which just emphasizes the point that it's like purely because like they believe in the cause, right? If yeah we just did ah big um a study on the safety risks of like chemical abortion, there is nothing that a donor has to gain personally by donating to the pro-life cause.
00:30:50
Ryan Anderson
Right. You don't get any like status.
00:30:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, for sure.
00:30:52
Ryan Anderson
Right. You don't get any fame, celebrity. And like it's certainly there's no economic interest in this. Like this is somehow going to like be a windfall for my company. It's purely because these donors like love the babies and and they care about the mothers.
00:31:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:31:05
Ryan Anderson
They want to you know donate this money. And I think you're you're you're exactly right to say, I came in somewhat like skeptical or just like nervous about the fundraising aspect. And like I've just been like over and over again struck by, like it's actually a really great group of people.
00:31:22
Ryan Anderson
um and And so I'm glad to hear that you've had the same, Yeah.
00:31:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
No, no, genuinely.
00:31:27
Ryan Anderson
yeah
00:31:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i I would qualify that by saying, you know, ah turkeys don't donate to the Thanksgiving Foundation. ah And so, you know, ah like, you know, if you so, you know, when you went when when you're.
00:31:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um ah you know If you're pitching something that's sort of like more against corporate power or more, quote-unquote, very big quotes, socialist, given that there's some kind of people who think that anything that's not like hardcore libertarian is socialist.
00:31:56
Ryan Anderson
Yeah. Yes.
00:32:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah they you know and and and But I think there's a difference between... you know refusing to give money to something that you think will hurt you versus trying to help yourself under the guise of charity.
00:32:14
Ryan Anderson
yeah
00:32:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so the the the the former is sometimes, not always, ah you know, there there there are a few class traders out there. There definitely are on the left and there's a few on the right.
00:32:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But that that's that that's the the the the the distinction. But no, i've I've never been, you know, I've,
00:32:36
Ryan Anderson
Okay.
00:32:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i um ah that That's something that people may not expect about that world. They're people who just they just... They're patriots. They love their country. They love, you know, in the case of pro-life, they're certainly they certainly love babies.
00:32:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um Okay, so...
00:32:57
Ryan Anderson
and And even like on the tech stuff, think about this, like ah there there are, we have found like we have donors who are um of the age where they have like teenage kids and they see how um terrible like some of these smart devices, um social media apps can be.
00:32:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
a
00:33:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:33:18
Ryan Anderson
And so like insofar as they have like something personally to gain by it, it's more or less just like they care about their kids' And then their neighbor kids and they're like, wow, like Claire's work has been so helpful to me as a mom or a dad.
00:33:33
Ryan Anderson
i want to amplify it. I want to supercharge what Claire is doing.
00:33:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:33:37
Ryan Anderson
So like the benefits I have received from her insights can reach more people. And so that's again, like that's not a selfish ah motivation.
00:33:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right, right.
00:33:46
Ryan Anderson
That is a very altruistic. So like it's it's actually it's been really fun to like work with these people. Like they're the really good people.
00:33:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, I can i can i can predict the the the comments that are going to be under there. ah Donor shills, billionaire shills, yeah, OK, fine.
00:34:01
Ryan Anderson
We don't have. Yeah, I wish we had some billionaire.
00:34:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
If you're a billionaire watching this and you want me to shill you, i you can you can find me and i will do it.
00:34:04
Ryan Anderson
Yeah.
00:34:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay, so circling back, okay, so something you said, and I can't resist following up, you said my job is as president is to identify what's going to be like the next big issue.
00:34:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So what's going to be the next big issue?
00:34:26
Ryan Anderson
yeah
00:34:29
Ryan Anderson
um I think AI and assisted suicide are, um, I mean, to, and to a starting set I'm not answering your question because like we've already identified those things and we're starting.
00:34:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:34:40
Ryan Anderson
So, so beyond that, I don't yet know. Um, but I, you know, the two that we've identified that we've, you know, kind of ramped up for first, it was like social media censorship. Then it was like kids in tech.
00:34:51
Ryan Anderson
And now I would say the next one is, is AI.
Ethical and Societal Implications of Assisted Suicide
00:34:54
Ryan Anderson
And then for like the bioethic key space, um, the The chemical abortion project that we're currently in the midst of, um it's now two thirds of all abortion are via chemical abortion, right?
00:35:08
Ryan Anderson
It's not surgical abortion. And so for us, it was like, we need to think through what is a new innovative way.
00:35:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:35:15
Ryan Anderson
And for us, it was you know getting access to this insurance claims database and being able to actually do a rigorous analysis of the insurance ah claims.
00:35:26
Ryan Anderson
where you know what we found was you know we we had over 865,000 insurance claims for chemical abortion and 11% of the women experienced a severe adverse event. And so you know this was partly geared towards, you know we have a moment in time right now with a Maha movement of Make America Healthy, a Trump FDA, reinstate at the very least the safety protections that were originally FDA required ah for the abortion pill.
00:35:53
Ryan Anderson
um And then you know end of life, you know I would say even within the pro-life movement, we're ready to talk about the unborn baby because the unborn baby is innocent. The unborn baby doesn't consent to be killed.
00:36:05
Ryan Anderson
But I think a lot of people at the end of life, and it's partly because of kind of like the American um ah like libertarian ethos of consenting adults should do whatever consenting adults want to do.
00:36:17
Ryan Anderson
If Pascal wants to die, and if Dr. Ryan wants to help kill him, why can't you and I have a free market faith?
00:36:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I knew it. I knew it, Ryan.
00:36:28
Ryan Anderson
But I fear that um a lot of people, even in the pro-life movement, aren't equipped for this conversation.
00:36:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I always suspected.
00:36:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. yeah
00:36:37
Ryan Anderson
Because they they've only been able to think about it as like innocent baby doesn't consent. And like consent is the master moral principle. But you consent to die. i consent to help you. We can have a free market exchange.
00:36:50
Ryan Anderson
Right. If that's the framework that you are analyzing the the issue from, you're going to get a certain answer. But if your framework is like, well, wait, what does this do to people on the peripheries, people with disabilities, people who are aging, people who are debilitated in various ways, people who already lack adequate health care, adequate health insurance, adequate familial and like civil society support, what happens to them, right? So for every one, like, you know, 30 something year old or 40 something year old Pascal and Ryan who want to do this, how many people
00:37:24
Ryan Anderson
who aren't upper middle class, otherwise healthy, otherwise like successful individuals are gonna be pressured into this because they are already um are are marginalized by our culture.
00:37:36
Ryan Anderson
What will this do to the profession of medicine
00:37:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Absolutely.
00:37:39
Ryan Anderson
right If all of a sudden, I mean, there's a reason why the Hippocratic Oath, historically, and you know it's it's been watered down, but like historically, the original Hippocratic Oath, OG, I will not give a deadly drug to any of my patients.
00:37:51
Ryan Anderson
but And there was a recognition that like ah medicine is not like a morally neutral technique.
00:37:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:37:57
Ryan Anderson
but It's a profession, which means like professionals profess vows. right and And for medicine, like what they professed was a commitment to healing and to health. And when all of a sudden you view it as like a morally neutral technique where I can like jab you with a syringe and push down the plunger and it could be filled with medicine or it could be filled with poison.
00:38:17
Ryan Anderson
And this is just like another, like the the image that Leon cast used was I'm a hired syringe, right? That's a very different vision of medicine.
00:38:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um Oh, absolutely.
00:38:26
Ryan Anderson
And it'll be a different vision of healthcare funding because assisted suicide is a lot cheaper than hospice or palliative care. And so anyway, like, I mean, one of the things that like I've tried to do in some of my own work on this issue, and you know now unfortunately, because I only have a third of my time rather than a hundred percent of my time, I've you know i've hired people who can you know work on this is that we need to enlarge in the sphere of considerations that when we think about what physician assisted suicide do to change our culture, our medicines, our families, our economics, um because it's not simply going to be you and I having a spot market exchange, right?
00:39:03
Ryan Anderson
This is, they're going to be ecological impacts um that really change a lot about society. Once killing grandma becomes routine and it's becoming routine and and that, that should be horrifying.
00:39:10
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
00:39:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, I mean, i and so much so much to say ah about this. ah There is this a great guy who I tried to interview for this podcast, but he didn't have time, but maybe we'll do it. ah the the The bill that just passed in Britain,
00:39:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And now they're trying to pass the same bill in France.
00:39:33
Ryan Anderson
Yeah.
00:39:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So his name is Yuan Yitsu. I'm hoping I pronounced that correctly. he He's a Canadian. He's a law professor, but he did, I believe, his doctorate in Oxford.
00:39:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So he was following stuff in Britain and he tracked the progress of the legislation. And basically, the opposition did something intelligence, which they tried to bring forward a lot of ah constructive amendments.
00:39:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So, like you know how many people need to sign off on this? Who can sign off on this? what How are the criteria defined in the law? And so on and so forth. And you see all of these amendments that are rejected and you you realize, and and no, no, no, the goal really is like to to just maximize the number of bodies. The goal is to maximize the number of people killed.
00:40:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And, you know, ah this has also, you know, speaking of socialism earlier, this has also radicalized me about socialized medicine because it is about money. Like the UK has the most expensive health care system in the world, the most socialized health care system outside of North Korea and Cuba.
00:40:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And they're explicitly saying, oh, this is going to save us a bunch of money. And anyway.
00:40:44
Ryan Anderson
and And there's another aspect of this, um
00:40:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes. so
00:40:47
Ryan Anderson
As the baby boomers start retiring and declining, and because of marriage and familial and childbearing um trends, many of them are um navigating their decline more or less alone.
00:40:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:40:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:41:05
Ryan Anderson
Whereas like historically, the family was how we shouldered each other's burdens.
00:41:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:41:08
Ryan Anderson
there's There's a great essay that I always quote when I speak on this, like in a full lecture context by Gil Mylander, the Lutheran theologian where the title, it was in First Things back in like the late 1990s, I want to burden my loved ones.
00:41:22
Ryan Anderson
And what he's saying there that like, look, when I grow old, a lot of people say, oh, I don't want to burden my loved ones.
00:41:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, I remember that.
00:41:28
Ryan Anderson
He's like, no, I want to burden them because that's the entire point of life. It's shouldering shouldering one another's burdens. And when they were kids, they burdened me.
00:41:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's beautiful.
00:41:38
Ryan Anderson
Like the middle of the night diaper changes, you know, when they get older and they're sick in the middle of the night and they're throwing up when I went to, i think if I remember correctly, he's like, I went to their band concerts and that was a burden because like the band, the seventh grade band was not good.
00:41:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
00:41:52
Ryan Anderson
But as a father, like it was important for me to be there. And like, this is, and he's like at the end of life, The attitude should not be, I don't want to burden my loved ones. It's like, I am going to be a burden. And my loved ones are precisely the ones who I want to burden.
00:42:07
Ryan Anderson
And I think for a lot of people, like i you know the temptation would be, oh, my mom and dad, as they age, oh, they're such a burden. Can we just get rid of them?
00:42:17
Ryan Anderson
And we need to resist that temptation. right The temptation should be, I have a great opportunity to show love to my mom and dad the same way that they loved me when I was a child. And we loved each other and when we were both at the peak of our lives. And now as they decline, like my duty, my obligation, like what virtue requires of me is the rise of the occasion, right?
00:42:38
Ryan Anderson
And I think a lot of people... both somewhat between by like social security and Medicaid, they view it as like the government's responsibility, not their responsibility.
00:42:48
Ryan Anderson
And then I think assisted suicide will further say, well, look, mom, dad, wouldn't it just be easier for you if you, you know, went in for the, the, the death pod. Right. And so there's a lot there, but, but, but, you know, it's a big issue.
00:43:06
Ryan Anderson
It's coming. i don't think both Americans are ready for it.
00:43:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's coming to the US.
00:43:09
Ryan Anderson
and Yeah.
00:43:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i I try not to be too conspiracy minded, but there's something really bizarre about the way that it's popping up in all these countries at the same time, ah that it seems to be pushed for no...
00:43:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Emergency, there's no emergency, right? um Especially France has been considered for many, many decades. In the ninety s it passed a very Catholic-inspired bill that sort of end-of-life issues that was considered a sort of mo model globally ah sort of striking a balance between banning positively euthanasia and what i I don't know what the English equivalent of that phrase is but it's it it's from Catholic theology ascha de montte pettique so ah
00:43:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah artificially keeping someone alive beyond the point where ah but you know
00:44:00
Ryan Anderson
Yep.
00:44:04
Ryan Anderson
yeah Yep. Where it's disproportionate. Yeah.
00:44:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:44:07
Ryan Anderson
Yep.
00:44:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um and And France was known for having some of the best palliative care in the world. And so there's literally no reason to do this except to save money or to, you know, ah appease some interest.
Reflections on Death and Dignity
00:44:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I've become really radicalized on this. I mean, i as you know, I lost my father earlier this year.
00:44:24
Ryan Anderson
Good. Yep.
00:44:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I've lost all four of my grandparents now, ah including my grandmother last year. um And, you know, one of the things that I've seen as people sort of take on this journey, ah which we now can manage in terms of the pain and the discomfort, we have that technology and we we understand that really well.
00:44:45
Ryan Anderson
Yep.
00:44:49
Ryan Anderson
yeah And it's not pain that's motivating.
00:44:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
00:44:51
Ryan Anderson
It's like autonomy.
00:44:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, yes.
00:44:53
Ryan Anderson
Yes.
00:44:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And as people get closer, they change because once people I mean, obviously it helps if you're a Christian, but you know some people become Christian or some people find God in a way, even if they're not explicitly Christian.
00:45:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
They sort of get rid of all of the BS of life. that's That's what it's about. Like you're you're you're facing... your maker, you're facing the end. And so and and and the the the illness is sort of part of that process of sort of getting stripped of all of the all of the BS, all of the irrelevant stuff of life that we're all obsessed with, money, status, blah, blah, blah.
00:45:35
Ryan Anderson
because you can't take any of that with you.
00:45:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and yeah And you can't take any of that with you. And like people change at the end. People have ah have a sort of transformation. it's a It's a journey that we all have to do ah unless, you know, we die sort of violently or whatever. But it's part of the journey of life. And it's good to have for people to to do the entire journey.
00:46:01
Ryan Anderson
Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah i've i've really i've really become convinced of this. ah the the more i watch the more i see the more i watch or see people i know die as I grow older,
00:46:14
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
really the more I've become sort of radicalized about this ah and and the more deeply I've i've i've become convinced of this and and and for reasons that are not explicitly religious. I mean, everything I've just said sort of makes more sense from a religious perspective because of course, you know, the end of the journey is also the beginning of a new one.
00:46:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But, you know,
00:46:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Like, my grand my grandmother had a beautiful death. She was 92. ah She had the time to sort of, you know, we had the time to know so we could all see her. She saw my daughter, so her great-granddaughter.
00:46:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah and And she died at home, surrounded by her loved ones. Like, you know.
00:47:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
it was it i mean It was the death she wanted. And so anyway, I don't want to get too personal or weepy, but...
00:47:06
Ryan Anderson
but let let me just highlight something you Let me just highlight something you said there. You you said that your grandmother had a beautiful death. I think that phrase and the concept that that phrase signifies is foreign to a lot of our contemporaries because we've we've we've overly medicalized and institutionalized and sterilized death that a lot of people don't have any firsthand experience with it.
00:47:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:47:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, yeah.
00:47:36
Ryan Anderson
and And the idea that death could be beautiful
00:47:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:47:39
Ryan Anderson
is just, it will sound strange to a lot of people. There's there's a great book by a medical doctor at Columbia, um Lydia Dugal, titled The Lost Art of Dying. And, you know, we've kind of shielded, we've shielded both birth and death from ordinary people.
00:47:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Yeah.
00:47:55
Ryan Anderson
um You know, birth takes place at a hospital, death takes place at a hospital.
00:47:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And and this, this.
00:47:58
Ryan Anderson
And, you know life is just in between those events. But those events historically used to be like the whole village was involved at both the very beginning and the very end.
00:48:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right, right.
00:48:07
Ryan Anderson
And and the concept of of there being beauty and tranquility and peace, um that's hard to do when there's a lot of bleep, bleep, bleeps. And like, you know, you're're'rere you're hearing the the the monitor and there bright lights and like all the rest, right?
00:48:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, yeah.
00:48:21
Ryan Anderson
And so... um Anyway, it's um it just strikes me that like that we may need there was a beautiful book that Father Newhouse wrote when he had his first cancer bout titled As I Lay Dying.
00:48:38
Ryan Anderson
And it's based on the John Donne or the title is borrowed from the John Donne poem. But like. I think not just our opposition to assisted suicide, but like, it may be that we have to like, you know, as St. Paul says, let me show you a more excellent way, like on both the natural level and the supernatural level, like help people see that there, there is something beautiful in the alternative.
00:48:59
Ryan Anderson
um and and And you, you just spoke about it really, really profoundly.
00:49:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:49:02
Ryan Anderson
and Yeah.
00:49:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, thank you. i was That was totally not premeditated.
00:49:07
Ryan Anderson
but
00:49:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i i wanted to talk about like political stuff, but that this issue gets me riled up because theyre and and and there's this entire conspiracy of silence where you know it happened in Canada. there Well, it happened in Belgium and the Netherlands first.
00:49:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
where they're just like killing people, like children, the handicapped. i mean It is the most dystopian stuff imaginable, and I don't know anybody who's for that. like I don't know i i've never since i i know people who are not religious, who are progressive, and so on and so forth.
00:49:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
like
00:49:45
Ryan Anderson
Yep.
00:49:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Do you support ah killing a preteen girl in a wheelchair without telling her parents first, which is something that happened in the Netherlands? They're like, of course not. That's horrible. That's Nazi shit.
00:49:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But there's this conspiracy of silence whereby, you know, it doesn't it doesn't stick. And so country A does it. it goes It's a catastrophe.
00:50:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Country B does it. The same thing happens. Country C does it. The same thing happens. And and so it just happened to the UK.
00:50:13
Ryan Anderson
Yep. Yep. yep
00:50:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's happening now in France. And i I certainly believe you that they will try in the US. um
00:50:22
Ryan Anderson
Yeah.
00:50:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
it's just It's just infuriating. ah Let's talk about something else.
00:50:26
Ryan Anderson
Yep.
00:50:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah and we've got We've got a few minutes left.
00:50:28
Ryan Anderson
Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
00:50:31
Ryan Anderson
Yeah.
00:50:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So tell me, so, okay, so the pretext for this interview is your annual report. Like, what's the one thing from last year, apart from assisted suicide, that you're most proud of or that you think reflects?
00:50:41
Ryan Anderson
yeah yeah
00:50:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm sorry, I'm asking you to pick ah to pick between your children.
00:50:49
Ryan Anderson
yeah um I'm not going to, that is too hard to answer. um or maybe actually, maybe maybe I'll answer it this way. um Like, I think another thing that EPBC is really well known for and that I'm proud of are like, our scholars publish books and we still publish books, even in an era where fewer and fewer people read.
00:51:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:51:13
Ryan Anderson
And you know you and I were chatting about this before we hit the record button here. Um, I am happy by the fact that our scholars are capable of doing both like the 250 page version of the argument and the 280 the whatever the character count currently is on Obviously, it's now unlimited, but you know to get the the previewed version, um being able to speak in both registers.
00:51:40
Ryan Anderson
And if you look at the annual report, there's a page of like all the books that are listed. There are going to be even more books in 2025.
00:51:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I remember that page.
00:51:46
Ryan Anderson
and and they And they're impressive books. like they're They're books that people actually read. They're not just like books that you know are self-published or something like this. um And I think that gives us like an intellectual credibility that's not like the haughty, we just do knowledge for knowledge's sake, look how smart we are.
00:52:02
Ryan Anderson
But it's like we've done our homework. So then we can actually do the white paper. We can do the model legislation. We can do the testimony at a congressional hearing. We can serve on commissions, things like that.
00:52:13
Ryan Anderson
um what What's unique about this year's annual report is that we structured it um partly like without being explicit about this. The motivation was the Life of Julia ad. And you know I imagine some of your listeners will remember that during the Obama years, they made this stupid animated video
00:52:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Really?
00:52:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's starting to be old.
00:52:32
Ryan Anderson
Yeah, no, it's now a decade old. And I remember that it was all of the ways that like the Obama administration had helped this tsunamis Julia from cradle to grave.
00:52:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Zoomers will not remember this.
00:52:43
Ryan Anderson
And, you know, i at no point.
00:52:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah and she was always alone.
00:52:45
Ryan Anderson
Yeah. and And there was like no father. There was no husband. it was like the federal government was the intermediary.
00:52:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Your father, your mother, your children, your friends.
00:52:51
Ryan Anderson
we were like, oh, yeah.
00:52:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:52:54
Ryan Anderson
Yep.
00:52:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:52:55
Ryan Anderson
And, you know, our vision is like the exact opposite. Like, yes, we believe there's a role for the state and a role for public policy, but it's more going to be like all these civil society
EPPC's Annual Report and Impact
00:53:03
Ryan Anderson
institutions. And so we went from like cradle to grave of here's how we're defending human dignity and promoting human flourishing for the unborn, for marriage and the family.
00:53:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
that That's very smart. That's clever.
00:53:14
Ryan Anderson
for education reform and not just school choice, because everyone else does school choice. like We actually want to reform the government run schools because 85, 90% of Americans go to the government run schools um for technology, for medicine, for the constitutional order, judges and the administrative states, for political parties.
00:53:21
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah That's very important.
00:53:33
Ryan Anderson
When we get to Henry Olson's work in politics, right And so, and then end of life. And so it really was like an arc of here are all of the um ah vectors where like human dignity is really on the line.
00:53:46
Ryan Anderson
And here's the work that we're doing to defend it. and and And so it it was a nice way. This is the first year. this is, you know, the fourth annual report that, you know I've been president for that we produced.
00:53:57
Ryan Anderson
And it was the first year where we did it with this narrative arc of let's walk through the life cycle of an individual and see how from cradle to grave our work is making a difference to defend this person's dignity.
00:54:10
Ryan Anderson
And so was so so so I was also happy with that because it gave me like a new way of explaining, you know, your opening question was what makes EPPC unique? Right. We're focused on like human nature questions more so than taxes and trade or foreign policy.
00:54:27
Ryan Anderson
You know, obviously those things matter, but like we're living at a unique moment in time where like the very concept of human nature and the human person is up for debate. And they're radically different visions of what it means to be human.
00:54:39
Ryan Anderson
And that tends to be like our sweet spot. Yeah.
00:54:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, that's that's a good ah that's as good as any ah for a place to end. ah I wanted to talk you about your report about the abortion pill. I wanted to talk you about your report about IVF and and reproductive.
00:54:57
Ryan Anderson
Yeah, yeah.
00:54:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I forget the name of the thing, but I found that report fascinating, as you know.
00:55:00
Ryan Anderson
Restorative reproductive medicine. Natalie Dodson has done great work.
00:55:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
00:55:03
Ryan Anderson
Great work. Yeah.
00:55:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But we're running out of time. So we have a traditional question that we end each interview with. um So recommend a book can be any book, ah you old fiction, nonfiction, that's not in your area of expertise.
00:55:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I'm going to make it harder for you. That's not published by EPPC or by somebody written by ah working for EPPC.
00:55:27
Ryan Anderson
All
00:55:30
Ryan Anderson
all right. um So this is also, it depends what counts as my area of expertise, but, you know, a book that I'm currently reading, I've i've read most of these essays.
00:55:42
Ryan Anderson
It's by Russell Hittinger, who's the um Catholic social thought scholar. It's a collection of his essays on Catholic social thought. And the title is On the Dignity.
00:55:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and i'm I'm sorry, I'm going to overrule that.
00:55:49
Ryan Anderson
that too much in my area of expertise?
00:55:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's cheating. You've got ah you've got a a philosophy doctorate from Notre Dame. that I'm sorry.
00:55:57
Ryan Anderson
Yeah.
00:55:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm sorry you're cheating, Mr. Anderson. You're cheating.
00:56:01
Ryan Anderson
All right. All right.
00:56:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah Come up with something better.
00:56:02
Ryan Anderson
All right. But here's the problem. I would say almost everything recently that I've been reading, you're going to say is within my area of expertise.
00:56:14
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, that's the problem if you if you if you study philosophy, which is everything is in your area of expertise.
00:56:19
Ryan Anderson
Yeah. But i mean, even like, you know, like, so I've read Jonathan Haidt's book, which I thought was very good.
00:56:21
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Very French problem.
00:56:24
Ryan Anderson
it's not, you know, ah Abigail Schreier's book, Bad Therapy, Hayes' book, Anxious Generation, like um Tim Carney's book, America Unfriendly. like I think you're going to say that all of these things are like you know in my expertise enough.
00:56:39
Ryan Anderson
um So I don't know if I have a book outside of my expertise, but Russ Hittinger's book is very good. Abigail Schreier's book, Bad Therapy, Tim Carney's book, America Unfriendly, Hayes' book, Anxious Generation.
00:56:52
Ryan Anderson
imagine Paul's reviewer has already read these things.
00:56:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay, fine.
00:56:55
Ryan Anderson
Yeah.
00:56:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i I'll allow that. I'll allow that. ah that's That's five books and they're all sort of, sort of but like you know, you you you replace quality with quantity.
00:57:02
Ryan Anderson
In my area. yeah
00:57:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Quantity has a quality all on its own.
00:57:08
Ryan Anderson
ah they're all ah They're all quality books too.
00:57:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
No, they're they're they're good they're good books for the ones that I know about. And I did an interview with Tim about about his book.
00:57:17
Ryan Anderson
Good, good.
00:57:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. ah All right. Well, thank you very much for your time.
00:57:24
Ryan Anderson
Yep.
00:57:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah this was This was a lot of fun. This was very interesting. I hope it i hope the first part gave people more of an insight on what a think tank actually is and what it does and how it runs.
00:57:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And then I hope they weren't too... put off by hearing me rant about assisted suicide. and And I certainly hope it changed their mind if ah it
00:57:47
Ryan Anderson
If they were.
00:57:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
if
00:57:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
if that's what this interview does in the end. All right. Thank you.
00:57:54
Ryan Anderson
Good. Yeah, thank you.