Reason Podcast

Mexico's most notorious drug kingpin, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, has been awaiting trial in the United States since his dramatic capture in 2016. Federal prosecutors have filed charges of drug trafficking, murder, money laundering, and kidnapping against Guzmán, who ran the notorious Sinaloa cartel for more than 40 years. El Chapo gained notoriety for his daring prison escapes, and for his controversial 2016 interview with Hollywood star Sean Penn while hiding as a fugitive from the law. The U.S. and Mexican governments have declared Guzmán's capture a major win in the drug war. Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron thinks his story better demonstrates the folly of prohibition. Produced by Alexis Garcia.

If libertarians are bold, impulsive, quick witted, adventurous, analytical, and willing to ignore social norms, is that because we have especially active dopamine and testosterone systems in our brains? That’s the hypothesis of the biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, who has developed a pioneering framework for classifying human temperaments. She spoke at the Reason Foundation’s annual donor weekend in West Palm Beach Florida. Edited by Ian Keyser. Intro by Todd Krainin. 'Sphunx' by Sk'p is licensed under CC BY NC ND 3.0

While James Comey and the Trump/Russia investigation soak up all the anxiety in Washington, our slow-moving constitutional crisis of Congress abdicating its basic duty continues apace. Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch discuss.

"The movement and struggle to win rights for corporations," says UCLA Law School Professor Adam Winkler, "[is] one of the least well-known, yet most successful civil rights movements in American history." An important chapter in that history was in 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the government to restrict corporations from spending money on political ads right before an election. Many liberal advocacy groups were outraged over the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Last year, U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D- N. Mex.) and Martin Heinrich (D- N. Mex.) introduced a constitutional amendment that would overturn the decision. In his new book titled We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights, Winkler challenges conventional wisdom about Citizens United. He even complicates the narrative about the founding of America. Interview by Paul Detrick. Edited by Detrick. Aourourou by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Source: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/Azalai/Aourourou Artist: https://www.sessions.blue/ Toothless Slope by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Source: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/Azalai/Toothless_Slope Artist: https://www.sessions.blue/

The president said this morning that he would make a decision on responding to the "heinous attack" within the next 24-48 hours, adding that such a "barbaric attack...can't be allowed to happen." As he was making that announcement, the Reason Podcast, featuring Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and me, was wrapping up its Monday episode. In addition to wargaming Syria, assessing new National Security Adviser John Bolton, and wondering what this all does to Trump's favored policy of troop withdrawal, the editorial quartet discussed refugee policy, the president's deployment of National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, our burgeoning trade war with China, and Facebook honcho Mark Zuckerberg's coming perp walk on Capitol Hill.

Since arriving in Washington in 2011, Justin Amash has cast more consistently libertarian votes than any other member of Congress. A lawyer by training, the 37-year-old Michigan Republican is an outspoken defender of due process, civil liberties, and defendants' rights. He is also resolutely non-interventionist and friendly toward immigrants. Outspoken in his principles, he rarely misses an opportunity to excoriate his GOP colleagues when they fail to live up to the party's limited-government rhetoric. Edited by Alexis Garcia.

There is a rape culture on college campuses that creates an unsafe environment for female students." That was the resolution for the Reason-Soho Forum debate at the Subculture Theater in New York's East Village. Arguing in the affirmative was Michael Kimmel, the SUNY distinguished professor of sociology and gender studies at Stony Brook University and multiple books, including the best-selling Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (2009). Taking the negative position was Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine, a weekly columnist at Newsday, and a regular contributor to the Jewish Daily Forward and The Weekly Standard. She's also the author of two books: Growing Up in Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood (1989), and Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality (1999).

Will there be any winners—or even any survivors—after the war between President Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos' Amazon goes nuclear? Probably not. Today on the Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, and Katherine Mangu-Ward squabble over the usual odd assortment of topics, including the Connor family as a proxy for the American voters, our favorite Cabinet scandal, how we could possibly privatize Veterans Affairs, whether Russian collusion and/or financial improprieties will bring down the Trump administration, and how much we love the word emoluments. We also ask: Is the Roseanne reboot the most pro-Trump show ever? The ratings, as he president delightedly noted in his recent infrastructure speech, are through the roof. Can we expect her Cabinet appointment announcement within the week?

"We're going to reinvent the supermarket business as we know it," says John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, about his company's recent, controversial merger with online retailer Amazon. Reason's Nick Gillespie caught up with him at LibertyCon, the annual conference of Students for Liberty, and talked with him about Whole Foods' recent, controversial merger with the online retailer Amazon, his belief that young Americans are more "conscious" about life and morality than past generations were, and his take on Donald Trump's presidency so far. "I will say that there are some things President Trump has done that I like and some things that I don't," says Mackey, the co-author of the 2013 best-seller Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business and last year's The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity. "I'm not a huge optimist about government solving our problems." (Disclosure: Both Mackey and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos are donors to Reason Foundation, the 501(c)3 nonprofit that publishes Reason.) Music: Massive by Podington Bear is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License. Edited by Mark McDaniel. Intro by Todd Krainin.

Earlier this year, the Lincoln Network, a Bay Area group that works to bolster libertarian and conservative workers in the tech sector, published a survey on diversity and cultural norms in Silicon Valley. The results are preliminary but stunning. In the wake of the controversy over the Damore memo, for instance, about half of self-described "moderates," two-thirds of "libertarians" and 71 percent of "very conservative" respondents said they were less comfortable sharing ideological viewpoints with their colleagues. Reason sat down with Lincoln Network co-founder Garrett Johnson to discuss his outfit's preliminary study, why it's bad to stifle ideological viewpoints in the tech world, and what it means that more survey respondents called themselves libertarian than any other term. Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Ian Keyser.

Since 2013, The Americans has revisited 1980s America and Cold War politics with a depth and nuance usually reserved for PBS documentaries. The first season begins in the early Reagan years, when the Cold War seemed forever on the verge of escalating into nuclear war. Nick Gillepie recently sat down with Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, to discuss the genesis and meaning of the series, their thoughts on the Cold War, how changing technology is leading to better television, and what we can expect from the series' sixth and final season, which debuts on FX on March 28. Interview by Gillespie. Produced and edited by Meredith Bragg.

While the world was going gaga at @StormyDaniels, legislators and other panicky types were curtailing your online free speech. @kmanguward, @nickgillespie, @petersuderman & @mattwelch discuss on the latest @Reason Podcast.

America, observers are fond of saying, is the only country based upon an idea. That idea—that all men and women are created equal and have inalienable rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness—is directly informed by the Enlightenment, the movement that dominated ideas and culture in the 18th century. But are we still an Enlightenment nation? Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Steven Pinker, Harvard linguist and author of Enlightenment Now, to discuss that question and more. Edited by Todd Krainin.

"On what level could torture ever be acceptable?" This weekend, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) declared that he would do everything in his power to block President Danald Trump's pick for CIA director, Gina Haspel, because of her role running a torture program at a secret detention facility during George W. Bush's administration. "There are a few things in life where it is worth standing up and saying, 'Enough is enough. This is wrong. This is, you know, this is beneath contempt,'" Paul said. On today's Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and special guest Elizabeth Nolan Brown discuss Paul's filibuster threat, which also extends to Trump's secretary of state nominee Mike Pompeo; the emerging controversy over Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, a social media analytics firm that worked for Trump's campaign; and Trump's push for "reciprocal" tariffs with rival nations and whether it threatens the existence of the World Trade Organization.

Science writer Gary Taubes has a knack for subverting the conventional wisdom. Sixteen years ago, he published a groundbreaking feature in the The New York Times Magazine, arguing that decades of government-approved nutritional advice attacking fatty foods and praising carbohydrates was flat-out wrong, ideologically motivated, and contributed to rising rates of obesity and diabetes. He was widely attacked—including in the pages of Reason. His 2007 book Good Calories/Bad Calories followed up on that story, as did Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It, which appeared in 2011. Today, his thesis is gaining traction among heath and nutrition researchers, and has been highlighted once again in The New York Times and Time magazine. Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Taubes in his kitchen in Oakland, California, to talk about his latest book on nutrition, The Case Against Sugar, which recently came out in paperback. Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Interview by Nick Gillespie. Camera by Paul Detrick, Justin Monticello, and Weissmueller. Additional graphics by Brett Raney.