Bright Minds: from the John Adams Institute

About Bright Minds: from the John Adams Institute

John Adams, the first American ambassador to the Netherlands, once said “Let us tenderly and kindly cherish...the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.” The John Adams Institute has brought the best and the brightest of American thinking to Amsterdam for three decades. We have amassed a unique archive of great thinkers, speakers and writers, from Spike Lee to Francis Fukuyama to Al Gore. Now we’re sharing this treasure trove of thought and word with you. We believe John Adams would have wanted it that way. And so, from Amsterdam, this is: Bright Minds: the podcast from the John Adams Institute!

Publisher

John Adams Institute

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

22 Nov 2021

Latest episode

27 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

61 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   27 Aug 2026

   Out of Many: One Idea? A Conversation with Edward Luce

   Edward Luce has spent decades chronicling America's slow transition from the undisputed architect of the postwar order into something less certain of its own role. He is the Financial Times' U.S. National Editor, a former speechwriter in the Clinton Treasury Department, and the author of The Retreat of Western Liberalism and Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Cold War Prophet. The latter is a biography of the Cold War strategist who understood earlier than most that the American...

2. 

   27 Aug 2026

   Out of Many: One Voice? A Conversation with Ada Limón

   Former U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón makes an argument that gets lost in most anniversary programming: that art does something political language simply can't — that attention, joy, and grief aren't distractions from the American experiment but its actual substance. In a moment she describes as defined by the theft of imagination, she makes the case that a single poem, a single act of noticing, is itself a civic act. What does that look like when someone has to build it into an actual room? An...

3. 

   27 Aug 2026

   Out of Many: One Republic? A Conversation with Nancy Pelosi

   Nancy Pelosi spent nearly two decades as the most powerful woman in American political history — the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, twice over, steering the country through the financial crisis, the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and the certification of an election under siege on January 6th. In this conversation, she reflects on that career as a case study in the institution itself: what it takes to hold a fractious caucus together, what she learned seeing Americ...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

2,311,946

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.6 / 5

10 ratings

Spotify

4.9 / 5

10 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 62 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

54

Social presence

0

YouTube

93

Engagement

85

Contact Bright Minds: from the John Adams Institute

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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