Reason Podcast

As our world becomes more hyper-individualized, our taste in food is following suit. From cooking in our own kitchens to finding new creative dishes at restaurants, we're all becoming artisanal chefs and demanding gourmands. Yet politicians and activists, often in a misguided attempt to keep us safe, are passing increasingly bizarre and counterproductive laws to keep us from buying, making, and eating the food we want. In Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable, lawyer Baylen Linnekin gives readers a view of the overlooked consequences of the many absurd rules baked into America's food system. Since at least the New Deal, he writes, overreaching buttinskies on the federal and local level have tried to shut down entrepreneurs, charities, and even home gardeners who are just trying feed themselves and others. From the U.S. Department of Agriculture dictating how butchers cure meat to New York City's then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg banning food donations to homeless people to banning berry-picking in public parks, no food practice seems too small to regulate in the name of safety. A solution, says Linnekin in an interview with Reason's Nick Gillespie, is to simply emphasize good outcomes rather than rigid processes. Linnekin, who founded the nonprofit Keep Food Legal and has served as an expert witness in an ongoing federal First Amendment food-labeling lawsuit, also writes about "food freedom" at Reason.com every Saturday (check out his archive here).

"November 8th wasn't the election of a monarch," says Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky). "It was the election of the head of a third of our government." A Tea Party Republican who decided to "get on the Trump train," Massie says that under the new president he'd like to reverse the "erosion of the legislative branch's power" that started under George W. Bush. As part of that effort, he wants to see Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) replaced as house speaker. "I'm very concerned about the combination of Donald Trump and Paul Ryan and the implications for our national debt," Massie says. In our latest podcast, Nick Gillespie talked with Massie about the GOP's "implosion," why Massie thinks Trump has to fulfill his mandate to build a wall, whether he might run to replace Paul Ryan as house speaker, and if he thinks the new president is someone he can work with in promoting his pro-freedom agenda.

U.S. presidents possess almost unilateral power to drop bombs on other countries, says historian Thaddeus Russell, and that's why it's very good news that Trump is most libertarian when it comes to foreign policy. Russell, who's the author of A Renegade History of the United States and is currently writing a book on foreign policy, says Trump's enmity with the neocons at National Review and The Weekly Standard is "fantastic news for us and the world." He points out that Trump advisor (and likely future cabinet member) Newt Gingrich gave a 2013 interview with The Washington Times expressing second thoughts about his neocon past. Though Trump has pledged to go after ISIS, his general philosophy seems far preferable to Hillary's systematic and carefully thought-out Wilsonian foreign policy. "I don't see a war with Russia and I don't see greater interventionism generally outside of [a] little pocket of the Middle East," says Russell. Nick Gillespie caught up with Russell for an interview.

Libertarians are able "to grapple with [Trump's victory] more quickly because we're used to despair," says Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward. "We never wake up after election day and say, 'the brave new future delights me!'" In our latest podcast, Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Elizabeth Nolan Brown discuss Trump's big win. An obvious takeaway is that libertarians were right to be worried about the expansion of executive power under Obama. (Should they resist the impulse to gloat?) Elizabeth Nolan Brown talks about her recent piece on why Clinton lost, and how the results from last two presidential elections contradict claims that Trump voters are all secret racists. Was it actually a backlash against political correctness that got Trump elected? In the end, did Gary Johnson do well or disappoint?

"Trump has been good on these issues in a very vague, 100,000-foot level," says education reformer Lisa Graham Keegan. He's made statements in support of expanding school choice and giving more control to the states. And two of the rumored candidates for U.S. Department of Education secretary—Gerard Robinson, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former education official in Florida and Virginia, and Williamson Evers, a fellow at the Hoover Institution—would be great picks, says Keegan. On the other hand, former presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson—another rumored candidate—is a head scratcher. Keegan is a former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction and head of the education consulting firm, the Keegan Company. She'd like to see Trump appoint a secretary who can "manage [all the regulations on the books] to the benefit of freedom...and the people [on the local level] who are actually doing the work." Nick Gillespie caught up with Keegan for an interview yesterday afternoon.

"The mechanisms are there [for Donald Trump to go after political enemies]," says Ken White. "But generally the system trends more towards dysfunction and incompetence than it does towards effective manipulation, and my hope is [he'll talk] big and ha[ve] big dreams [without] really accomplish[ing] anything." White is an L.A.-based defense attorney, a former assistant U.S. Attorney (1995 to 2001), a Reason contributing editor, and the lead writer at the popular libertarian legal blog, Popehat. He talked with Nick Gillespie about what President Trump will mean for our federal criminal justice system.

"Stop wasting your breath. Start working on your own parties. Start working on your own issues," says Libertarian Party national chair Nicholas Sarwark, responding to criticism that Libertarians played a spoiler role and handed Donald Trump the election. "See if you can take my votes in the actual arena of ideas instead of trying to shame me." Sarwark sat down with Reason's Matt Welch the morning after the election to discuss the performance of the Libertarian presidential ticket this year, which drew about 3.7 million votes, or slightly less than 4 percent of the national popular vote. He also spoke about the future of the Republican Party and directly addressed Democrats complaining that third parties "spoiled" the election for Donald Trump. Interview by Matt Welch. Edited by Zach Weissmueller.

After Donald Trump's victory last night, "democrats [may become] interested in limiting the scope of federal power, and restoring the separation of powers," says Georgetown University Law Center's Randy Barnett. "[When] they were holding power, [this] didn't seem to be a problem. Maybe they can now see the problem." Barnett joined Nick Gillespie for a discussion of what Trump's victory means for constitutional rights and the Supreme Court.

"[Health care] is not the only thing that matters, and, on balance, I think Donald Trump is going to be worse for freedom than Hillary Clinton would have been," says Michael Cannon, who's the Cato Institute's director of health policy studies. "But health care reform is one area where he might be better if he follows through on his pledge to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something better." Cannon joined Nick Gillespie for a discussion of the four things President-Elect Trump could do to dismantle Obamacare, and what congress might replace it with.

The newest Reason podcast features Nick Gillespie talking with Reason Editor at Large Matt Welch about the last days of the Gary Johnson campaign, the surprising popularity in Utah of Evan McMullin, the perfidy of Bill Weld, and how the 2016 election proves the central thesis of Gillespie and Welch's tome, The Declaration of Indepedendents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America, which argued that the same forces of personalization and proliferating choice would eventually undermine popular support for the nation's political duopoly. Gillespie and Welch make their final bets on who wins the big prize and wager whether the Libertarian ticket punches through the 5 percent barrier. It's a rollicking, raucous conversation. Listen below right now now and scroll down to subscribe at iTunes and elsewhere. Produced by Ian Keyser. And come back to Reason.com all day and all night for updates and live reports from Albuquerque, New Mexico and Gary Johnson's HQ.

The 2016 presidential race features two of the most disliked candidates in electoral history, which has given a boost not only to the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson, but to Jill Stein, a 66-year-old Harvard-trained physician from Massachusetts who's running on the Green Party ticket. "We have every reason to be terrified of Donald Trump in the White House," says Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. "But I don't think we should fool ourselves into thinking that we should sleep well at night with Hillary Clinton in the White House either. They're both dangerous and unacceptable in different ways." Interview by Zach Weissmueller. Produced and Edited by Justin Monticello and Jim Epstein. Music by RW Smith.

In books such as The Coming Generational Storm and The Clash of Generations, Boston University economist Laurence J. Kotlikoff argues that old-age entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security are ripping off the relatively poor and young and funneling money to the relatively old and well-off. What's more, he controversially asserts that our national debt isn't $20 trillion but well over $200 trillion. The United States government is, he says, already bankrupt by any realistic definition of the term. Kotlikoff is running for president as a write-in candidate (his running mate is Ed Leamer, an economist at UCLA). If candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are noticeably vague on the details of their policy proposals, Kotlikoff is the polar opposite, spelling out in readable detail what he intends to do to rein in debt and cut government spending, how he would handle foreign policy, and more. While he's no libertarian, believers in limited government, less-distortive tax policy, and major entitlement reform will find much of interest in what Kotlikoff calls "purple plans," or policies designed to appeal to centrists, Democrats, and Republicans. In this new Reason podcast, Nick Gillespie talks with Kotlikoff about his presidential campaign and the effect of massive, unchecked debt on our country's economic future.

Nick Gillespie talks with Reason magazine editor in chief Katherine Mangu-Ward and former Reason staffer David Weigel, now a political reporter for The Washington Post. In his latest piece from the campaign trail, Weigel asks, "Was 2016 a missed opportunity for Libertarians?" Weigel caught up with Gary Johnson in Utah, where the former governor of New Mexico told him, “I think the Libertarian Party will grow by leaps and bounds.... It will be a game changer if I can hit 5 percent. Ten million bucks of public financing. No issues regarding ballot access. There are going to be a slew of new Libertarians, who are going to be former elected Democrats and Republicans.” Well maybe. But as Weigel notes, 2016 has so far turned out to be a bigger year for the odious "alt-right" than for libertarians pushing for free trade and more immigration, at least when it comes to presidential politics.

Reason's Nick Gillespie and libertarian economist Walter Block had a raucous debate in New York City on November 1, 2016 over whether libertarians should vote for Donald Trump. Audience members voted their positions at the outset and conclusion of the debate, and Block, who was arguing in favor of Trump, prevailed by convincing more audience members to come over to his side.

"I think Obama has been kind of revolutionary [on criminal justice reform] in that he has said things that no other sitting President has ever said before," says Radley Balko, columnist with the Washington Post. "That said, most of the revolutionary aspects of the administration have been about saying things and not necessarily doing things." Balko writes a column, The Watch, which covers civil liberties and the criminal justice system and he sat down with Reason TV editor in chief, Nick Gillespie in Nashville to talk about progress made in criminal justice reform. Edited by Paul Detrick. Interview by Nick Gillespie.