Reason Podcast

"The beauty of a free country is that you can choose to Twitter or not to Twitter," says Mary Katharine Ham in a wide-ranging discussion about personal privacy, social media, and polarization. Ham first snuck into America's living rooms as a regular on Fox News' O'Reilly Factor, where she made her name sparring with Juan Williams and occasionally O'Reilly himself over everything from drug legalization to partisan politics. A year and a half ago, she made the hop to CNN, where she now serves as the token center-right Trump semi-skeptic. She's also a writer and podcaster for The Federalist. In our conversation, Ham and I talk about social media, privacy, and civility. We grapple with the question of whether new social media platforms make America great or carry the seeds of our nation's destruction. (Answer: little bit of both.) "The saving grace of the federal government is often its incompetence," says Ham, as we consider how worried we should be about the eroding barrier between what Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg knows about us and what Attorney General Jeff Sessions knows. Tune in to hear about why Ham doesn't show her kids' faces in photos online, her love of Waffle House (and that time people tried to get her fired for tweeting about it), CVS coupons, and her recently sullied Star Wars virginity. We swear, we can quit social media anytime. But in case we can't, you can follow Ham at @mkhammer on Twitter and @mkhammertime on Instagram, and you can follow me at @kmanguward on all the platforms.

From ripping families apart as illegal-immigration deterrence to nominating a torture-enabler as CIA director, President Trump is serially calling the GOP’s populist bluff, Reason editors Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman & Matt Welch argue.

"I think that when you are in that chair, or standing there with a microphone, you are not there for yourself," says CNN anchor Jake Tapper, whose new novel, The Hellfire Club, is a dark thriller set in 1950s Washington. "You're there for the people at home and you should be asking the questions and conducting yourself in a way trying to think about what they would want you to do. 'Well, you didn't really answer that question, or isn't it true that something'—we're there to challenge that. At a time when there is just this waterfall cascading over us of bullshit, it's important for us to put up an umbrella, try to provide a safe space for viewers to know we're trying to not have any bullshit here." In a wide-ranging interview with Reason's Nick Gillespie, Tapper talks about how his roots in alternative media such as the Washington City Paper, Salon, and the pioneering satire site Suck give him an advantage over journalists trained more conventionally in mainstream media. "I was a crime and police reporter for City Paper and [my editor, the late David Carr,] was always on my case for not being sufficiently skeptical of police. He thought I was too pro-police. He never came out and said it, but I knew that he thought that," says Tapper. "That was good, that back and forth that I had with him, and while I think it's important to support police when they need help and they're doing the right thing, I also...recognize that there are times that the police need to be questioned. That's an important part of my job. Same thing with decision makers in the military, less so individual soldiers on the ground. I think being willing to challenge American institutions while also being respectful of the people who are the beat cop or the private." Edited by Ian Keyser. Intro by Austin Bragg. 'Deadly Roulette' by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC BY 3.0

In a country that fetishizes youth, writing a book subtitled Why Life Gets Better After 50 is practically an act of revolution. But that's exactly what the Jonathan Rauch has done. The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 is a mind-blowing synthesis of social science and deeply moving personal accounts that will change the way you think about every stage of your life. Whether you're in your early twenties, the thick of middle age, or your golden years, The Happiness Curve will help to explain not just what's going on in your life now, but what to expect down the road.

Should Robert Mueller subpoena President Trump? Reason editors Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch discuss that plus the Iran/nuclear deal, the slippery politics of Millennials, bizarro econ policies in Seattle, Westworld, and more.

"When I was in college," explains journalist, author, and speaker Virginia Postrel, "I developed the career aspiration to be the editor of Reason magazine." Just a few years after graduating, she had accomplished that goal (and much, much more), joining Reason's staff in 1986 and then running the magazine from July 1989 until January 2000. Founded in 1968 by Lanny Friedlander (1947-2011), Reason is celebrating its 50th anniversary by hosting a series of in-depth conversations with past editors about how the magazine has changed since its founding, what we've gotten right and wrong over the years, and what the future holds for believers in "free minds and free markets." In a wide-ranging discussion with Editor at Large Nick Gillespie, Postrel lays out how her vision of the magazine differed from her predecessors' and talks about how many of the issues that dominated her tenure—immigration reform, trade and regulatory policy, and the biotech revolution—remain front and center in public discourse.

"Government made a big mistake with the dietary guidelines," says Nina Teicholz, author of the New York Times bestseller The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet. "Given the track record that they have so far, you can really make a plausible argument that they've done more harm than good." Reason's Alexis Garcia sat down with Teicholz to discuss how decades of faulty nutrition science can be traced back to the flawed research of a Minnesota doctor named Ancel Keys.

When George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok went looking for the effect of regulation on declining rates of entrepreneurship, he had a pretty good idea of what he would find. A libertarian since his childhood in Canada, he figured that federal rules would be a major part of the explanation. To his surprise, that isn't what he and his co-author, Nathan Goldschlag, found. To his immense credit, he and Nathan Goldschlag published their paper, "Is regulation to blame for the decline in American entrepreneurship?" Tabarrok, a co-founder of the immensely popular and influential economics blog Marginal Revolution, talks with Nick Gillespie about the thrill of being intellectually confounded and the importance of following data, not ideology, when it comes to academic research. He also talks about other possible reasons for the decline in entrepreneurship, what his recent stay in India taught him about real-world economics, and whether Donald Trump's presidency has been good for the economy.

Reason editors Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch rate the White House Correspondents' Dinner, the Korean peace talks, the photo optics of political summitry, and the revival of Zora Neale Hurston

On April 16, 2018, two free market economists debated a topic that has long divided libertarians. Fractional reserve banking refers to banks' standard practice of keeping only a portion of their depositors' money on hand and loaning out the rest. In The Mystery of Banking (1983), the anarcho-capitalist economist Murray Rothbard called fractional reserve banking "a shell game, a Ponzi scheme, a fraud in which fake warehouse receipts are issued and circulate as equivalent to the cash supposedly represented by the receipts." Other libertarian economists, such as Larry White and Steve Horowitz, have argued that the practice is perfectly defensible. At The Soho Forum, a debate series in New York City that is sponsored by the Reason Foundation, Robert Murphy debated George Selgin over the following resolution: "Fractional Reserve banking poses a threat to the stability of market economies."

On Monday, April 23, Nick Gillespie taped a live podcast with Russ Roberts at Reason's Washington, D.C., studio in front of a live audience. An economist who taught for years at George Mason University, Washington University, and elsewhere, Roberts is the John and Jean De Nault Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He is also the host of EconTalk, a popular, award-winning podcast that features hour-long conversations with academics, authors, and business leaders. Roberts is the author of three allegorical novels about capitalism, individualism, and classical liberalism. His most recent book is How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life. The wide-ranging conversation, which is followed by a rowdy audience question-and-answer segment, touches on the intellectual and ideological blind spots of professional economists, the social impact of opioid abuse and economic disruption, and the insights that literature provides beyond social science. Roberts lays out a vision of libertarianism that is uncharacteristically humble, deeply social in its focus, and guardedly optimistic about the future of America.

In an age of bots, trolls, and "fake news," we need to up our media-literacy game like never before, says Michael Socolow, a journalism professor at University of Maine and the author of Six Minutes in Berlin: Broadcast Spectacle and Rowing Gold at the Nazi Olympics. In a wide-ranging conversation with Reason's Nick Gillespie, Socolow gives three easy rules that keep "smart people from spreading dumb ideas:" Don't share news that doesn't have substantiating links, be wary of stories that perfectly confirm your pre-existing biases, and (for god's sake!) always ask yourself why you're talking in the first place. Audio production by Ian Keyser.

"You go into family court and it's the same experience as at the DMV, only there are children's lives on the line," says Naomi Schaefer Riley in today's conversation with Reason Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward. In today's podcast, we talk about parenting, policy, and what happens when the state gets entangled in the business of raising children. Riley is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute where she studies the foster system, adoption, and religious liberty. "There's a lot of evidence that pouring money into the system is not improving things," is a line you might hear in many Reason Podcasts, but in her work, Riley digs into the complex problem of what to do with kids who don't have parents and how to deal with the complications around religious freedom, voluntary association, private charity, drug prohibition, and welfare that arise.

How over is the political War on Marijuana, as distinguished from the actually existing laws that continue to prohibit the stuff? This over: Longtime drug warrior Sen. Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.), the Senate minority leader, came out last week in favor of descheduling pot as a controlled substance and removing federal penalties for weed-related activities that are legal within their given states. And he did so in the name of "freedom" and even "federalism." How do you do, fellow libertarians! The welcome Schumer evolution kicks off the latest editor's roundtable edition of the Reason Podcast, featuring Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch discussing news of the day and week. Also receiving earfuls: the latest Trump/Russia-related histrionics, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's furious tacking to the left in the wake of a progressive challenge, plus Season 2 of Westworld. Audio production by Ian Keyser. 'Mandingo Tribe' by Trevor Flowers and Iheka-Chama is licensed under CC BY NC ND 4.0

You know what's really difficult? Communicating an unpopular message to people who disagree with you. Today's Reason Podcast digs into the nitty gritty of persuading people to think differently about crime and punishment, to talk calmly about gender and genetics, and how to find common ground in a conversation where your interlocutor thinks you're evil and/or insane. Perhaps not coincidentally, this podcast is also 100 percent women. And it features four—count 'em, four!—ladies. Reason Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward was joined on the stage by Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist, a fellow at the Kinsey Institute, an adviser to Match.com, and the author of several books about gender and the way that our brains work; Lyn Ulbricht, an activist, speaker, and the mother of Ross Ulbricht, who is serving life in prison for his role in running the Silk Road website; and Heidi Bogohsian, the co-host of Law and Disorder, a great radio show and podcast about criminal justice and the executive director of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute. Tune in to hear Bogohsian on whether getting arrested repeatedly for activism is a good retirement plan, Fisher suggest some ways to become "an effective human being," and Ulbricht describe the power of presenting as "normal." The estrogen-packed panel was recorded at Reason's donor weekend in West Palm Beach, Florida.