Reason Podcast show

Reason Podcast

Summary: Founded in 1968, Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Hosted by Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Matt Welch, and other Reason journalists, our podcast explores "free minds and free markets." It features provocative, in-depth interviews with authors, comedians, filmmakers, musicians, economists, scientists, business leaders, and elected officials. Keep up to date on the latest happenings in our increasingly libertarian world from a point of view you won't get from legacy media and boring old left-right, liberal-conservative publications. You can also find video versions at Reason.com/reasontv.

Podcasts:

 Does Middle East Peace Require a Two-State Solution or a Palestinian Defeat? A Debate | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 01:33:30

"To resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel must first achieve defeat of the Palestinian movement." That was the topic of a debated hosted by the Soho Forum on March 18, 2019. It was an Oxford-style debate, in which the audience votes on the resolution at the beginning and end of the event, and the side that gains the most ground is victorious. For the affirmative, Elan Journo, a fellow and director of policy research at the Ayn Rand Institute, argued that the Palestinian movement is irreedemably corrupt and must be defeated as a necessary condition to achieve peace. The P.L.O. and Hamas have a long history of inciting terrorism and suicide attacks, and they aremore concerned with destroying Israel than with winning justice and prosperity for the Palestinian people, he argued. The defeat of the movement will require a coalition of governments to wage a sustained campaign of economic, diplomatic, and military efforts. Danny Sjursen, a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point, rejected Journo's characterization of the Palestinian movement. He argued that most Palestinian organizations, including Hamas, are more willing than ever to make reasonable compromises for peace, accept a two-state solution, and at least tacitly recognize Israel's right to exist. The only way to achieve a lasting solution to the middle east crisis is to treat the Palestinian leadership as potential negotiating partners. Sjursen prevailed by convincing about 14 percent of audience members to change their minds. 'Modum' by Kai Engel is licensed under CC BY 4.0

 Arthur Brooks Wants You To Love Your Enemies | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 00:50:13

About the only time that love is mentioned in conversations about politics is when a lawmaker gets caught in a sex scandal. Suddenly, the perp starts gushing about how much he loves his spouse, his kids, his constituents, and his country. The guest on today's Reason Podcast wants to change that. Arthur Brooks' excellent new book is called Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt. It's a call to arms for individuals to change how they approach the sorts of increasingly vicious political disagreements that he argues are tearing apart the country. Brooks talks with Nick Gillespie about his decade-long leadership of the American Enterprise Institute, arguably the nation's most-influential conservative think tank, and the places where conservatives and libertarians overlap and continue to disagree. In a wide-ranging conversation, Brooks and Gillespie discuss his decision to step down as AEI's president and join the faculty of Harvard.

 The Mueller Media Hall of Shame | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 01:02:14

"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime," Robert Mueller's long-awaited homework stated, according to Atttorney General William Barr, "it also does not exonerate him." To which Donald Trump has predictably responded: "Total exoneration!" The president may stand out from the crowd in the amount of power he wields, but he's hardly alone in talking bollocks about the Trump/Russia investigation, as we discuss on today's Editors' Roundtable edition of the Reason Podcast. Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, Matt Welch, and special guest star Elizabeth Nolan Brown each make their own nominations for the Mueller media Hall of Shame, track how the #Resistance goalposts keep shifting, and ding the president's own (non-criminal) behavior. Along the way, we hear the latest in the non-sex-trafficking case of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, do a little oh-yeah-that about the record-breaking budget deficit, and dissect the C.H.U.D.ian subtexts of Us. Audio production by Ian Keyser. 'See You Soon' by Borrtex is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

 How Capitalism Will Get Us to Mars and Beyond | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 01:10:51

Today's Reason Podcast conversation is with Michael Solana, a vice president at the venture capital firm Founders Fund. The firm, which is worth upwards of $3 billion, founded by Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder Luke Nosek, former PayPal CFO Ken Howery, and Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook fame. Some of the fund's investments include SpaceX, Airbnb, Lyft, and Oculus, as well as variety of lesser-known companies in the realms of aerospace, biotechnology, energy, and internet technology. Reason's Zach Weissmueller spoke with Michael about the future, which he thinks about a lot both as an investor in emerging technologies and as host of the official Founders Fund podcast Anatomy of Next, the latest season of which explores the ways technological advancements in rocketry, materials science, augmented reality, fertility science, and artificial intelligence will get humanity to Mars and beyond. But Solana and his colleagues also believe that Silicon Valley is mired in groupthink and susceptible to the false promises of socialism. In this conversation, we talk about what Founders Fund is doing differently, why Solana believes capitalism is necessarily the engine of growth and innovation, the promise and perils of privatizing government functions, and what he's learned from the famously contrarian Peter Thiel about what it means to be an independent thinker.

 Lies About Vietnam Inspired Brian Lamb To Start C-SPAN | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 00:40:19

Forty years ago, one of the most momentous events in the history of politics and television took place: C-SPAN started broadcasting live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the United States House of Representatives. Long before reality TV shows like Real World, Survivor, Real Housewives, Big Brother, and Sober House, C-SPAN gave Americans direct access to one of the most powerful groups of people on the planet. For the first time in history, we could see our elected representatives debating, wheeling and dealing, freaking out, and occasionally falling asleep while debating government spending, foreign policy, and more. Over the years, C-SPAN has expanded to include coverage of the Senate; daily public affairs shows featuring policy experts, activists, journalists, and lawmakers; long-form interviews with authors and other influential people; and coverage of events all around the country. In a world in which elite decisionmakers want to shield themselves from all forms of scrutiny and observation, C-SPAN performs the radical intervention of putting a camera on them while also engaging them in thoughtful, frank, and fair conversation. For today's Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie talked to C-SPAN's founder Brian Lamb, who has managed to shine a bright light on the political process while simultaneously creating a model of civil discourse that is unmatched in cable news. The 77-year-old Indiana native tells me how working in the Pentagon during Vietnam inspired him to push for "openness" in government, why he's still pushing for cameras to cover oral arguments in the Supreme Court, and how C-SPAN expects to weather its next 40 years. Photo credit: CHUCK KENNEDY KRT/Newscom

 Is There a Libertarian Argument for Breaking up Big Tech? | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 00:58:36

Reason editors debate whether private concentrations of power in the tech industry, which Sen. Elizabeth Warren rails against, are worrisome enough to warrant government intervention. Audio production by Ian Keyser. 'Ragtime Dance' by Scott Joplin is licensed under Public Domain.

 A Tattooed Libertarian on the Arizona Supreme Court: Clint Bolick's Long Fight for Freedom | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 00:19:55

In 2016, Clint Bolick became an associate justice on the Arizona State Supreme Court, making him one of the most influential—and consequential—libertarians in today's legal world. That appointment is merely the most recent career highlight for the 61-year-old activist, author, and policy wonk. Bolick worked under Clarence Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the 1980s before moving to the Justice Department. While he was there he published his first book, which argued that the civil rights movement should focus on removing government barriers to economic opportunity. In 1991, Bolick and Chip Mellor founded the Institute for Justice, the country's premier libertarian public-interest law firm. In 2007, he became vice president for litigation at the Goldwater Institute, Arizona's leading free-market think tank, where he took on restrictive licensing, zoning, and business regulations—and became a nemesis to Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff" America. Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Bolick in Phoenix to talk about his legal philosophy, the politics of immigration, the most interesting case he's encountered on the bench so far, and why he sports a scorpion tattoo on what he calls his "typing finger."

 Elizabeth Warren Wants To Run Your Business for You | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 00:46:13

"I am a capitalist," says Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is also a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. "I believe in markets." She's got a funny way of showing her faith. Last week, she unveiled her plan to break up tech giants such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple. She's called for a "wealth tax" that would target households with over $50 million in assets and introduced the Accountable Capitalism Act, which would force corporations with over $1 billion in annual revenue to get a national charter and give employees the right to vote in 40 percent of a company's board of directors. She was also the driving force behind the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an Obama-era agency that was widely assailed by free-market analysts as overly intrusive and unaccountable. To get a sense of where Warren's ideas come from, Nick Gillespie talked with Todd Zywicki, a longtime critic of Warren. Zywicki teaches law at George Mason University and is the former director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. Zywicki says Warren is a direct ideological descendant of Louis Brandeis, the Progressive Era lawyer and Supreme Court justice who attacked what he called "the curse of bigness" in business and pushed for a massively regulated economy. Warren, says Zywicki, has thoroughly absorbed Brandeis's distrust of large firms, as well as his belief that "disinterested" bureaucrats can smooth out any and all issues with free markets. What she doesn't understand, he says, is that the regulatory agencies championed by Brandeis were routinely captured by the businesses they regulated or diverted by the idiosyncratic whims of commissioners, leading to the increasing ossification of the U.S. economy through much of the 20th century until deregulation took hold first during the Carter years and later under Ronald Reagan. More recently, notes Zywicki, the Dodd-Frank laws passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to limit the power of banks have actually increased concentration in the financial sector. Photo credit: Alex Edelman/picture alliance / Consolidated/Newscom

 The Socialists Are Coming! Or Are They? | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 01:06:42

The kids are trending "socialist," presidential candidates are disgorging mega-proposals like popcorn, and Republicans aren't governing like they worry about this stuff, so what's a libertarian to do except reach for the orange saffron diaper? Audio production by Ian Keyser. 'IMF' by DOt is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 30

 23-Year-Old Coleman Hughes Is Reframing the Discussion on Race | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 00:52:49

In today's Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie talks with Coleman Hughes, a 23-year-old junior at Columbia University who has emerged over the past year as one of the most prolific and insightful commentators on race and class in the United States. He's analyzed the relatively forgotten legacy of the gay, socialist, anti–affirmative action civil-rights activist Bayard Rustin for The New York Times, discussed the "colorblind legacy" of Martin Luther King, Jr., in The Wall Street Journal, and published a growing list of articles on everything from Kanye West's conservatism to the racial wealth gap at the heterodox website Quillette. Hughes talks about his childhood in New Jersey, the climate for free speech on today's campuses, playing trombone in a Charles Mingus tribute band that plays Mondays in New York, and more. Photo credit: Coleman Hughes.

 Peter Bagge on Underground Comics, Immigration, and Being a Libertarian Artist | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 00:57:37

In the new issue of Reason (subscribe now for as little at $14.97 a year!), legendary comics artist Peter Bagge contributes "Immigration Grunts," a four-page cartoon essay about people trying to help refugees and asylum-seekers stuck in a federal immigration facility in Tacoma, Washington. Bagge's career started in the 1970s and he is probably best-known as the creator of Hate, an underground comic that helped to define alternative culture in the 1990s. He has been drawing for Reason for almost 20 years (his Reason archive is online here and his 2013 collection of Reason work, Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me, is available at Amazon). On today's Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie talks with Bagge about his new Reason essay, how he chooses topics to draw, and what it's like to be working in a medium that was once considered unserious but is now heralded as a legitimate art form. We also talk about his forthcoming graphic novel, Credo: The Rose Wilder Lane Story, which tells the life story of one of the founding figures of the modern libertarian movement who also helped craft her mother's stories about her frontier childhood into the beloved Little House on the Prairie books.

 Strange New Respect for…Nancy Pelosi? | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 01:02:37

Reason editors find themselves caught between executive branch power grabs on the right and Democratic socialist fantasies on the left. Audio production by Ian Keyser. 'Keymonica' by Pietnastka is licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0

 Why Parents Shouldn't Flip Out Over Too Much Screen Time | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 00:38:46

"How do I prepare my children for a future I can't imagine?" Adults project their fears onto children—our own or other people's—and especially tend to view new technologies (the internet) and cultural products (video games) as mortal threats to the way things have always been and should always be. That leads to a lot of really bad policies and ridiculous urban legends (Momo Challenge, anyone?). And constantly being in a state of panic over change makes life pretty sucky for kids and grown-ups alike. Nick Gillespie's guest today is Jordan Shapiro, author of The New Childhood: Raising Kids To Thrive in a Connected World. Unlike virtually any other book about kids and digital culture published in recent years, The New Childhood doesn't begin from the presumption that smartphones, tablets, and online gaming are making kids dumber, less focused, and unhappy. Shapiro, a psychologist who teaches at Temple University, has produced a thoughtful analysis of the benefits of new media for younger people. As important, he shows how adults need to understand the uniquely interconnected world in which their children now live. This deeply researched, historically conscious, and powerfully argued book blends academic rigor with personal experience and practical advice. In it, Shapiro takes free-range parenting into the cloud.

 What Caused the 2008 Financial Crisis: Market Distortions or Market Failure? A Debate | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 01:18:06

Was the 2008 financial crisis caused by market distortions or market failure? That was the topic of a public debated hosted by the Soho Forum in New York City on February 20, 2019. It featured John Allison, former CEO of BB&T Bank and former CEO and president of the Cato Institute, and Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody's Analytics. Allison argued that market distortions led to the financial crisis, and Zandi attributed the crisis to market failure. Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein moderated. Music: "Modum" by Kai Engle is licensed under a CC-BY creative commons license.

 Is Hollywood Overthinking Representation? | File Type: audio/mp3 | Duration: 01:06:24

On last week's Editors' Roundtable episode of the Reason Podcast, guest star Stephanie Slade argued near the end that the racial-reconciliation movie Green Book feels a bit out of step with where America's cultural conversation has moved these past few years. Boy howdy, judging by the torrential response to the movie's Best Picture victory at last night's Academy Awards. So let's pick a fresh scab, courtesy of returning Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward, who wrote a provocative piece in this weekend's New York Times under the headline, "Stop Counting Women: Quotas and tallies won't bring real progress on gender parity." Mangu-Ward and the rest of the gang (Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, Matt Welch) have an extended conversation on representation, audience-growing, opinion journalism, the malleability of Spider-Man, and related controversies, including (natch) some of the greatest libertarian movies in history. Also coming under discussion are Venezuelan war-mongering, mixed metaphors, and the expansion of "Selective" Service registration to include lady-folk. Audio production by Ian Keyser. 'Songe D'Automne' by Latche Swing is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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