Reason Podcast

Education reformer Jay P. Greene offers a powerful and uplifting libertarian vision of the role of education that firmly rejects not only centralized control but also stultifying conformity. If you want to get a sense of not only where education policy is headed but the role it can and should play in a truly free society, listen now.

Reason magazine Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward and Reason.com Associate Editor talk to Nick Gillespie about the spectacle and substance of Donald Trump's inaugural address, the size and force of the Women's March (which pulled an estimated 500,000 people), and the start of National School Week, an annual event promoting the ability of parents and students to have greater options in K-12 education. President Trump is full-throated in his support of choice and his controversial pick for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, is a high-profile activist in the school-choice movement. Will the Trump era be the moment when letting parents and kids choose where to go to school becomes the norm? Or will the toxicity of Trump on other issues kill the momentum in favor of choice?

On Tuesday night, Reason's Matt Welch participated in an event at The SoHo Forum with New York magazine political writer and frequent libertarian-baiter Jonathan Chait, author of the published-just-this-week Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail. The proposition under discussion was: "Based on his record of accomplishments, Barack Obama has been a great president." Listen to the event!

Reason magazine Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward and Reason Editor at Large Matt Welch join Nick Gillespie to discuss Barack Obama's farewell speech (the one where he talked about the need revive "democratic institutions" after arrogating more and more power to the executive branch), Donald Trump's latest word salad (check out his London Times interview!), and whether Trump Derangement Syndrome is less, more, or the same as previous presidential iterations. And as a bonus, we each discuss one hugely positive development that has nothing to do with politics. You'll have to listen to get the full skinny, but the answers include HBO's The Young Pope, the Baseball Hall of Fame, and hand-knit "pussy hats."

As Barack Obama leaves the White House, his supporters point to low unemployment rates and low inflation as proof that his economic policies were a smashing success that saved the United States from another great depression. Gene Epstein, columnist at Barron's and the author of Econospinning: How To Read Between the Lines when the Media Manipulate the Numbers, is having none of it. In a new Reason podcast, Epstein tells Nick Gillespie that Obama was terrible on economic policy and he doesn't think Donald Trump will be much better, either. Despite deregulatory gestures in some areas (such as energy policy and finance), Trump is full-square in favor of trade protectionism and keeping immigrants out of the country. Free trade and a growing population are essential to economic health.

A lot of people are unhappy these days, writes James Poulos in his brilliant new book, The Art of Being Free: How Alexis de Tocqueville Can Save Us from Ourselves. James Poulos' The Art of Being Free isn't just a pleasant diversion from the dog-eat-dog world of 24/7 news and partisan bickering. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mind, groaning with allusions to history, political science, economics, literature, and pop culture: Socrates, Nietzche, Netflix, The Smashing Pumpkins, Seinfeld, Stendahl, and Scooby-Doo all make appearances in this essay about getting beyond superficial politics to the parts of life that really matter. And along the way, he charts a path that just might lead back to politics that will help us all be free to become whomever we think we want to be. A late-thirtysomething writer for The Week, National Interest, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere, Poulos talks with Nick Gillespie about how Americans have historically tied ourselves in knots because "we love equality, we want unity, we fear uniformity." Using Tocqueville's Democracy in America as his lantern, he wanders far and wide through today's noisy landscape and brilliantly dispels "the sense of haunted despair" that so many of us wear like our favorite hoodie.

At the Golden Globe awards, actress Meryl Streep gave an impassioned speech calling for creative types to stand up for the little guy now that Donald Trump is just week's away from becoming the 45th president of the United States. Was her speech just more Hollywood virtue-signaling or does it carry the harsh truth that the billionaire developer is going to rule with an iron fist and a harsh Twitter account? And while we're at it, isn't the presidency vastly more powerful than it was when Barack Obama took office eight years ago? What's up with *that,* coastal elites? In the newest Reason podcast, Reason magazine Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward, Editor at Large Matt Welch, and Reason.com's Nick Gillespie talk about all this and more.

Glenn Greenwald is arguably the most consistent critic of government abuses of civil liberties, regardless of which party holds power. He's also a champion of whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning, Wikileaks, and Edward Snowden, whose work he was central to making known to the broader public. He talks with Nick Gillespie about Russian "hacks," fake news, Barack Obama's out-of-control presidency, and why Donald Trump taking office just might spark a movement to restrain the executive branch.

Nick Gillespie talks with Peter Suderman, features editor for Reason and one of the country's sharpest analysts of Obamacare. Is the nation's mandatory health insurance program entering a "death spiral" and will it be Republicans, of all people, who end up embracing legislation they attacked for the past eight years? Beyond rising premiums and costs in state insurance exchanges, how is Obamacare affecting the majority of Americans who still have insurance via their jobs? And is there really any clear connection between having health insurance and having better health?

Ronald Bailey's family hails from McDowell County, West Virginia, the poorest & sickest in the country. He journeyed back to learn why everyone doesn't just leave already. Interview with Nick Gillespie.

"Trump already looks like a thought experiment you'd make up to scare liberals straight about the concentration of executive power," says the Cato Institute's Gene Healy, who has a cover story in the current issue of Reason arguing that Obama's "most lasting legacy" will be to "leave to his successor a presidency even more powerful and dangerous than the one he inherited from Bush." In our latest podcast, Healy chats with Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward about the most likely long-term impact of a president once touted as our first civil libertarian in the White House—and it won't be what "your neighbor who put a 'Hope' sticker on his Prius" had in mind.

In this episode of the Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie moderates a debate between Shikha Dalmia of Reason, Avik Roy of The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, and Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review. The trio engages in a substantive discussion about race, multiculturalism, and libertarianism in the age of Trump.

Roy believes Texas, a majority-minority state, offers a good counter-example for libertarians and conservatives anxious about immigrants and non-Europeans changing American political culture. The Lone Star State is not only doing very well economically, says Roy, there's a sense of inclusion that doesn't exist in many other states. Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Mark McDaniel. Music by Simon Mathewson.

As political pundits who missed the Donald Trump phenomenon grapple with Hillary Clinton’s loss in the presidential election, some have lashed out at third-party voters, whom some blame for costing Clinton victories in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Putting aside the problems with this argument—the most obvious of which is that voters who picked Libertarian Gary Johnson or the Green Party’s Jill Stein weren’t guaranteed to unanimously break for Clinton had they been deprived of another choice—the “spoiler effect” is one that has always plagued third parties in American elections. Voters often feel compelled to choose the “lesser of two evils,” a phrase never more apt than in this year when Americans disliked both Clinton and Trump at record-high levels. But what if a simple change to the way we vote allowed Americans to vote their conscience and choose the lesser of two evils? And what if this change could improve the quality of the candidates and elevate the level of discourse? Our guest on today’s episode of the Reason Podcast argues just that. Richard Woodbury is the Chair of the Committee for Ranked Choice Voting. Ranked choice voting, wherein voters are allowed to rank candidates from best to worst rather than voting for only one just passed in the state of Maine by voter ballot initiative, making it the first state to adopt this electoral reform. Woodbury served as an Independent in the Maine House and Senate for five terms, during which he introduced rank choice voting legislation, though it never passed during his tenure. By trade, he’s an economist who works for the National Bureau of Economic Research. On today's episode, Reason TV's Zach Weissmueller spoke with Woodbury about the mechanics of ranked choice voting, how and why it passed in Maine, why third party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein endorsed the ballot measure, and how wider implementation of such a reform could transform American politics for the better.

Between the "Hamilton Elector" movement, which is trying to get Electoral College members to vote for anyone but Donald Trump, celebrity-plagued videos attacking the next president, and profane tweets from reputable journalists (see right), Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is kicking into high gear. To be fair, Donald Trump is the most unlikely president in American history and he has said truly vile things about whole groups of people while outlining policy preferences that are unsettling at best. And yet, calls to subvert the Electoral College—whether made by Harvard Law profs or TV presidents such as Martin Sheen—seem, well, nuts too. In the latest Reason Podcast, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Matt Welch, and I talk about and debate whether it's simply a continuation of the partisan hysteria that followed in the wake of Bill Clinton's, George W. Bush's, and Barack Obama's elections or if it is some kind of super-bug. We also talk about Rand Paul's increasingly public (and increasingly popular) call for a non-interventionist foreign policy and whether the United States deserves some responsibility for the horrific situation in Syria. Also discussed: Donald Trump's tech summit in which Trump delegates such as Peter Thiel rubbed shoulders with Trump targets such as Jeff Bezos, and what if any bright spots are on the horizon for 2017.