Reason Podcast

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced plans today to roll back net neutrality rules put in place by the Obama administration in 2015. The FCC currently regulates Internet service providers (ISPs) under Title II regulations that essentially treat the internet as a public utility similar to the old phone monopoly. Proponents of net neutrality and the invocation of Title II regulations say that such oversight is necessary to ensure that the Internet remains "open" and ISPs don't block sites or degrade offerings by rivals. Long a critic of Title II regulations, which were invoked after the FCC lost two court battles to regulate the Internet, Pai describes them as "a panoply of heavy-handed economic regulations that were developed in the Great Depression to handle Ma Bell." Scrapping these rules, Pai told Reason's Nick Gillespie, won't harm consumers or the public interest because there was no reason for them in the first place. The rationales were mere "phantoms that were conjured up by people who wanted the FCC for political reasons to overregulate the internet," Pai told Gillespie. "We were not living in a digital dystopia in the years leading up to 2015." Edited by Mark McDaniel. Cameras by McDaniel and Meredith Bragg. Music by Revolution Void.

"School has become an abnormal setting for children," says Peter Gray, a professor of psychology at Boston College. "Instead of admitting that, we say the children are abnormal." Gray, who is the author of the 2016 Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, says that a cultural shift towards a more interventionist approach to child rearing is having dire consequences. "Over the same period of time that there has been a gradual decline in play," he told Reason's Nick Gillespie, "there are well documented, gradual, but ultimately huge increases in a variety of mental disorders in childhood—especially depression and anxiety." Gray believes that social media is one saving grace. "[Kids] can't get together in the real world...[without] adult supervisors," hes says, "but they can online." Edited by Mark McDaniel. Cameras by Todd Krainin and Jim Epstein. Music by Broke for Free.

"The European Union was created by France and Germany...which is integral to the French identity," says Reason's Editor at Large Matt Welch. "The flight towards [French presidential candidate Emmanuel] Macron is a way of saying we're not willing yet to [leave all that behind]." In today's podcast, Reason editors Welch, Nick Gillespie, and Katherine Mangu-Ward talk about the likely victory of the moderate Macron in May 7's run-off eelction and what it means for France; the looming U.S. government shutdown (even though Republicans control both houses of congress and the presidency); Howard Dean's idiotic tweet about "hate speech" and Ann Coulter; how campus freakouts prop up the careers of fake conservative intellectuals; and the real meaning of David Brooks' recent column on the crisis of Western civilization (which, minus a few details, could easily have been written 30 years, 50, or even 100 years ago).

"We've known that when there isn't American leadership in Europe things go to hell pretty quickly and we get sucked into horrible wars whether or not we originally wanted to or not," says journalist James Kirchick, author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age, could hardly be more relevant. In the wake of Brexit, renewed nativism across the continent, and Putin's Russia grumbling to the East, Kirchick's thesis may well be tested in the coming years. In a wide-ranging and at-times combative conversation with Nick Gillespie, the 33-year-old Kirchick talks about why he Enlightenment values of liberalism, free enterprise, and pluralism have come under attack in the very part of the world that created them and why it's in the United States' best interest to help maintain a politically stable and economically productive European Union. He also discusses how he came to write his bombshell 2008 New Republic story bringing to light former Rep. Ron Paul's controversial and racially charged newsletters, the changing meaning of Jewish identity in post-war America, and how the failure of the Iraq War affected his views on foreign policy.

James Altucher has rebounded from personal catastrophe so many times in his 49 years, it's hard to imagine a more qualified evangelist for personal reinvention. During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, Altucher made millions designing corporate websites, only to squander it all on gambling and a string of disastrous investments. "I was probably losing about a million [dollars] a week for an entire summer," he tells Reason's Nick Gillespie. "I just made every stupid decision in the book." With $143 left in his bank account, Altucher contemplated suicide. "I equated my self-worth with my net worth," he says, "and I just figured there's no way I'm going to dig myself out of this hole." In keeping with his philosophy of radical self-creation, Altucher's latest identity is a 21st century urban ascetic. He has pared down his possessions, discarding every item he doesn't need. He is determined that nothing get in the way of his chosen life, his best self. Today, he lives in AirBnB rentals and owns fifteen things that he carries in a small canvas bag. Edited by Todd Krainin. Hosted by Nick Gillespie.

In today's podcast, we've got the audio from an April 12 live debate in which Cato's George Selgin went up against Business Insider Senior Editor Josh Barro over whether the U.S. should do away with federal deposit insurance—a system in which the government guarantees bank balances of up to $250,000. The event was hosted by the Soho Forum, a monthly libertarian-themed Oxford-style debate series in New York City.

The best way to solve the problem of too many people on an airplane is to "offer a price to get people to voluntarily give up a seat," says Reason Senior Editor Brian Doherty. "But it only works really well if they keep raising the price until they get the volunteer." On today's podcast, Doherty joins Nick Gillespie and Katherine Mangu-Ward to talk about why busting heads and not overbooking was to blame for last week's United Airlines crisis, the libertarian case for free trade and immigration, how to convince non-libertarians that one person's gain isn't necessarily another person's loss, Arkansas' legal fight to execute eight men, filing taxes, and the virtues of recreational testosterone. Hosted by Nick Gillespie. Produced by Ian Keyser.

When George Washington left the White House in 1796 and retired from public life, John Avlon explains, he wrote "this memo...to future generations in which he is consciously trying to marry the past, the present of 1796, the future, and the forces that had destroyed democratic republics in the past. The big three forces are hyper-partisanship, excessive debt and foreign wars." Avlon is the editor in chief of The Daily Beast and the author of Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations, a bold reinterpretation of the most widely read political speech in 19th-century America. For generations, Washington's 6,000-word long final speech was "civic scripture" that presidents and citizens alike used to steer clear of the excesses that might undermine the country. In a wide-ranging conversation with Reason's Nick Gillespie (a Beast columnist), Avlon argues that the country's only independent president created an "eerily prescient" roadmap that might allow 21st-century America to re-center itself when it comes to overseas wars and foreign alliances that serve other nations' interests above our own, ruinous debt created by entitlement spending, and moderate the excesses of vitriol that has led to a "deadlocked democracy." He also discusses his time as chief speechwriter for Mayor Rudy Giuliani and why The Daily Beast continues to gain traffic even as many legacy media outlets see shrinking audiences. Produced by Ian Keyser.

George Mason economist Tyler Cowen and Reason magazine Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward discuss Cowen's new book, The Complacent Class in a wide-ranging conversation at the Mercatus Center in March. The wide-ranging conversation covers automation, mobility, Donald Trump, productivity, immigration, whether complacency is a "rot" overtaking the United States, and whether we should be embarrassed by the fact that we order our dates, entertainment, groceries, and toilet paper without leaving our sofas.

Do alternative financial service providers merit their reputation as rip-off artists? Why do their customers choose to remain "unbanked?" To better understand how these businesses operate and why people choose to patronize them, Lisa Servon took a break from teaching at the University of Pennsylvania to work as a teller in the South Bronx and Oakland. She discovered that traditional banks are neglecting the poor and bilking the middle class, leaving payday lenders and check cashers to fill a crucial need. Produced, edited, and hosted by Todd Krainin.

The first rule of the Congressional Fight Club, says Trey Radel, is "don't buy cocaine from a federal agent." In January 2013, Radel came to Washington as a Republican congressman representing Florida's 19th district, an area that includes Fort Meyers and Naples. He had been a TV anchor prior to his win and he ran on a libertarian-leaning Tea Party platform of shrinking the size, scope, and spending of the government. Just a year later, Radel resigned from Congress after getting busted buying drugs and pleading guilty to misdemeanor cocaine possession. Ironically, Radel has always been a staunch critic of the drug war. In his riveting new memoir about his short time in office, he documents not just his self-destruction but a political system that puts maintaining the unsustainable status quo and fattening party coffers first and philosophical ideals and good policy last. Democrazy: A True Story of Weird Politics, Money, Madness, and Finger Food is a no-holds-barred account of what it's like to come to Washington and really, really screw up. More than that, though, it reveals a system that needs radical reform if the United States is going to avert an entitlements-driven financial crisis and a drift toward even greater polarization and economic stagnation. In a wide-ranging conversation with Nick Gillespie, Radel explains the compulsions that destroyed his political career; doubles down on libertarian positions regarding the drug war, civil liberties, and foreign policy; and articulates his worries that Americans won't demand systemic change until the country has gone "full Greek." "I fear," he says, "that Donald Trump is going to slip into George W. Bush-era policy that led itself to making Republicans disaffected, which was this: Let's lower taxes, increase spending, and pray to God the economy booms. I'm afraid that's just not going to happen."

Bombing Syria was the type of "foreign policy idea Donald Trump was railing against all through the campaign," says historian Thaddeus Russell, "but clearly the [Steve] Bannon and Steven Miller faction is waning or being pushed out, and now it's a return to the good old days of Wilsonianism: killing people in order to save them." On today's podcast, Russell joins Reason editors Nick Gillespie and Katherine Mangu-Ward to talk about the Syria bombing, why "presidents become more warlike over time," how the Trump Administration's divide over foreign policy is reminiscent of a similar split in the Reagan White House, Reason magazine's cover story on "Why the Wall Won't Work" ("a fine summation" according to the New York Times' editorial board), and the subtext of U.S. Army Gen. (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal defense of federal funding for public broadcasting on the grounds that PBS makes kids better good soldiers. "[McChrystal's] argument is precisely [the argument] cold war liberals were making in the '50s, 60s, '70s, and '80s," says Russell, "which is that we need a single, unified culture that makes everyone identify as Americans before identifying as individuals." Subscribe, rate, and review the Reason Podcast at iTunes.

"It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the use of deadly chemical weapons," said President Donald Trump in explaining a U.S.-missile strike on a Syrian airbase. That might sound good and even noble in theory, explains Emma Ashford of the Cato Institute, but the plain truth is that he's wrong. What's worse, it's far from clear what either the United States or other countries in the region will do next. The essential lesson that George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump keep forgetting is that military interventions, especially in other countries' civil wars, often makes things worse, Ashford tells Nick Gillespie. Produced by Austin Bragg. Cameras by Todd Krainin and Mark McDaniel.

In our latest podcast, Nick Gillespie chats with Dolce, a former editor-in-chief at Details and Star, about his new book, Brave New Weed: Adventures into the Uncharted World of Cannabis. They chat about how legalization has opened up new frontiers in marijuana use, and why Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions won't destroy this burgeoning industry.

Reason editors Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Matt Welch discuss the news of the week, including Mike Pence's refusal to dine alone with women; why boozy dinners with male colleagues can, in fact, advance careers (and not in a gross way); how Mad Men ratified our horror at workplace social mores of the '60s and '70s; Big Bird, Nicholas Kristof (the pundit who reliably comes up with the dumbest thing to say on pretty much any topic), and our month-long, phony conversation about cutting government spending; Elon Musk's latest rocket launch; why Trump's tweet on fighting—and working with—the Freedom Caucus perfectly encapsulates the relationship between libertarians and the GOP over the last 30 years; and Venezuela as a textbook case of socialism leading to violence, starvation, and death. (Ok, but should we try it just one more time?)