Reason Podcast

"I was a college student during the Vietnam War era, but I was putting myself through college and was way too busy with that to be one of those students... When I landed with Reason... I didn't know what 'Berkeley' was... I didn't know who Goldwater was," says Marty Zupan, who started writing for the magazine in 1972. "But when I encountered libertarian or classical liberal ideas...they just resonated with me." Zupan became editor in chief in 1984, helming it during its move from Santa Barbara, California to Los Angeles. In 1989, she left Reason and the West Coast to take a job at the Institute for Humane Studies, where she would become president in 2001 before retiring in 2016. Her Reason archive is online here. 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 in chief 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 this Reason Podcast, Zupan talks with Nick Gillespie about her experiences and growth in the libertarian movement and focuses on the unique role that the magazine of "Free Minds and Free Markets" has played over the past half-century. "One of the virtues of Reason was that it drew on the multiple strands within the libertarian, classical liberal world out there," she says. "Reason would publish a debate, say, between a non-interventionist and a, 'No, really the Soviet Union and its empire is an existential threat to the US and we need to do something about it.' We had the internal debates."

In his new book, Suicide of the West, National Review's Jonah Goldberg talks about what he calls "the Miracle"—the immense and ongoing increase in human wealth, health, freedom, and longevity ushered in by the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. At turns sounding like Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter, and economist Deirdre McCloskey, Goldberg writes, "In a free market, money corrodes caste and class and lubricates social interaction….Capitalism is the most cooperative system ever created for the peaceful improvement of peoples' lives. It has only a single fatal flaw: It doesn't feel like it." As his book's title suggests, Goldberg isn't worried the world is running out of resources. He's troubled by our unwillingness to defend, support, and improve customs, laws, and institutions that he believes are crucial to human flourishing. "Decline is a choice," he writes, not a foregone conclusion. While he lays most of the blame for our current problems on a Romantic left emanating from Rousseau, he doesn't stint on the responsibility of his own tribe of conservative fearmongers and reactionaries. In a wide-ranging conversation with Reason, Goldberg talks about his new book, his persistent opposition to Trump, how his thinking has evolved on a number of culture-war issues, and why he can't just admit once and for all that he's becoming a libertarian. Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Alexis Garcia and Austin Bragg.

For all the student speech that's being squashed on college campuses these days, higher education faces an even-more serious threat: intellectual conformity among professors, researchers, and scholars. Over the past 25 years, for instance, the "American academy went from leaning left to being almost entirely on the left. Similar trends and problems are occurring in the UK and Canada." Enter Heterodox Academy, a group of academics and scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and research sciences that has its origins in a blog started in 2015 by New York University’s Jonathan Haidt. The group currently claims over 1,800 professors and graduate students as members whose mission is "to improve the quality of research and education in universities by increasing viewpoint diversity, mutual understanding, and constructive disagreement." "Ideological frameworks, including political orientation, powerfully inform the assumptions scholars and professors make, the questions they ask, the outcomes they value, and the way they interpret their data and their world," Heterodox’s founding documents argue. "When campuses don’t include ideologically diverse voices and don’t engage seriously with dissenting ideas, students and scholars miss the opportunity for their thinking to be challenged." The group offers a wide-range of resources, ranging from a blog to a podcast to an online library of texts and videos, that are designed to help start and sustain wide-ranging, serious conversations among academics. Headquartered in New York, Heterodox Academy recently sponsored a day-long “Open Mind” conference (you can watch the whole thing on the group’s website) featuring scholars and journalists from all over the political spectrum. Reason's Nick Gillespie spoke with Heterodox Academy’s Deb Mashek about her goals for the conference and the group. A Ph.D. in social-and-health psychology who was a full professor at Harvey Mudd College in California, she became Heterodox Academy’s first full-time executive director earlier this year.

Imagine it’s sometime in the future, but not so far in the future that you’re not still putting together flat-packed furniture. You realize you need to drive some screws into the bookcase or whatever it is you're assembling. Instead of rummaging through your garage or basement for your goddamned electric screwdriver, you tap out "rent a drill" on your a smart phone app. A few minutes later, a package arrives at your door. It contains a drill, you drive the screws, you send the drill back. Total time: 10 minutes. Total cost $2.50. That’s a scenario from Tomorrow 3.0, a new book by Duke University economist and political scientist Michael C. Munger. Subtitled Transaction Costs and the Sharing Economy, it takes a long look at what he says is, after the Neolithic and Industrial Revolutions, the third great economic revolution in world history—a revolution that is already well under way. Nick Gillespie talks with Munger about the future of work in a gig economy, the possible need for a guaranteed basic income, and why laws and policies designed to preserve the labor status quo inevitably increase the pace and magnitude of disruption. Co-editor of The Independent Review, Munger also explains how he came to his libertarian beliefs and how he designed the arresting cover of his latest book.

Last week was a huge week for Supreme Court related news and on today's Reason Podcast, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, Damon Root (author of 2014's highly regarded Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court), and Nick Gillespie work through the intricacies of Janus v. AFSCME and Carpenter v. United States and assess whether the rulings are wins or losses for liberty (both are wins!). Our regular host, Matt Welch, is on assignment covering the Libertarian Party National Convention in New Orleans. We discuss whether Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is retiring at the end of the month, was reliably libertarian during his decades on the bench (kind of) and whether his replacement will really be able to overturn Roe v. Wade, which is literally what Donald Trump promised when he was running for president. As a bonus, I put each of the panelists on the spot to say straight up whether they think abortion should be legal and under what circumstances. We also discuss the gruesome murder of five people at Annapolis's Capital Gazette and ponder if 2018 is starting to look a lot like 1968, the year of Reason's founding, when there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air? When it comes to sharing what we're reading, listening to, or watching, this week's recommendations are eclectic as hell and lead into a semi-tense discussion about whether aesthetics and ideology are linked. Suderman gives thumbs up to Kanye West's latest set of releases; Mangu-Ward admits she's reading Henry George's single-tax manifesto Progress and Poverty (it's for a conference, she says, when asked whether she!); Root, a teenage metalhead, cops to mourning the death of drummer Vinnie Paul by listening to Pantera's catalog; and I give a rave review to Be More Kind, the new album from libertarian post-punk Brit folkster Frank Turner, whom I properly describe as the Bizarro-world Billy Bragg (the guy has a tattoo of the Sumerian "amagi" and another commemorating the great English Leveller "Freeborn John" Lilburne!). There's still time to register for the Reason Media Awards (tickets and more info here), which will be held this year at FreedomFest, the world's largest annual gathering of libertarians. It takes place in Las Vegas from July 10-14. (Tell them Reason sent you). Subscribe, rate, and review our podcast at iTunes.

Few TV shows—especially few political shows—can compare to Firing Line, the talk show hosted by William F. Buckley, Jr. In its original incarnation, it ran for 33 years and over 1,500 episodes and featured guests ranging from Muhammad Ali to Ronald Reagan to Jack Kerouac to Milton Friedman to Mother Teresa. The show went off the air in 1999, but now it's back on PBS with Margaret Hoover in the host chair. Born in 1977, Hoover is the great-granddaughter of Herbert Hoover, a former contributor to Fox News and CNN, and the author of 2011's American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party. Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Alexis Garcia.

By announcing his retirement from the Supreme Court (effective at the end of July), Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy has poured more gas on a political season that's already in flames. Since joining the Court in the late 1980s, Kennedy has been seen as the key swing vote and, in the words of Reason Senior Editor Damon Root, "perhaps the single most influential jurist alive today," who "will surely go down in American legal history as one of the most influential justices to serve on the high court." In today's Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie talks with Root, author of the 2014 book Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court, about Kennedy's crucial role in rulings on issues such as free speech, campaign finance, gay marriage, and abortion. One of the country's keenest Supreme Court watchers, Root also talks about possible replacements for Kennedy and why he'd like to see the president nominate a jurist like Don Willett, Clint Bolick, or Diane S. Sykes.

In a highly anticipated Supreme Court ruling, Janus v. AFSCME, the nation's high court said public-sector employees can no longer be forced to pay dues to unions to cover activities in connection with compensation, workplace rules, and related issues. The plaintiff in the case, Mark Janus, is a state employee in Illinois who objected to having $50 taken out of his paycheck and given to a union, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. The ruling affects workers in the 20 states that had not yet banned the practice. The decision is being hailed by a wide variety of pro-business groups and many libertarians as a victory for economic freedom and freedom of association. But its long-term impact is not clear. About 35 percent of public-sector workers belong to unions, a figure that hasn't changed much in the last 25 years. "Unions are probably right to be worried about losing dues-paying members in the aftermath of the Janus ruling," writes Reason's Eric Boehm, who has covered the story closely. "An analysis by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, a union-backed think tank, estimates that 726,000 workers nationally would stop paying dues if they had that choice. The loss of union members and their dues could be particularly challenging in blue states, according to the IEPI report. Public-sector union membership would decrease by an estimated 189,000 members in California, 136,000 members in New York, and 49,000 members in Illinois." In the newest Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie speaks with Boehm about the ruling and its possible implications for public-sector workers, unions, and taxpayers. Back in February for the podcast, Gillespie talked with Mark Janus about why he brought the suit, what it's like to be at the center of a major Supreme Court case, and more. Listen here.

Did you ever notice that elite athletes seem to be getting...older? You're not imagining things. In 2016, Peyton Manning won a Super Bowl for the Indianapolis Colts at the ripe old age of 39. A year later, Tom Brady did the same thing at the same age for the New England Patriots (boo). This year, tennis great Roger Federer became the oldest man to be ranked number one (he's 36). His female counterpart, Serena Williams, has won more Grand Slam tennis titles than anyone and was ranked number one in 2017 when she was 35. She also faced off against her 36-year-old sister Venus in that year's Australian Open final. The new book Play On: The New Science of Elite Performance at Any Age, explores and analyzes why today's professional athletes aren't just sticking around longer but are often getting better as they get older. And it's not simply pros, says Jeff Bercovici, the San Francisco bureau chief of Inc. and a former staffer at Forbes. The rest of us are upping our games as we move into middle age and beyond, he writes, increasing our "healthspan" or years at or near the top of our physical condition even as we live longer. Rich in detail and humor (Bercovici memorably documents his ordeals at some of the nation's top conditioning clinics), Play On is ultimately a book about self-improvement and taking control not just of your life but your body and mind, too. In a wide-ranging discussion with Nick Gillespie, Bercovici talks about everything from blood-doping, by which athletes seek to increase their endurance, to Silicon Valley's current penchant for "blood boys" (don't ask).

Will the Red Hen episode lead to a Red Wedding America? @Reason editors @kmanguward, @petersuderman, @nickgillespie and @mattwelch duke it out over disassociation etiquette, family separation, and Fozzie Bear's existential angst

Should the U.S. Constitution be interpreted and applied according to the original meaning of its text? On June 11, 2018, two leading constitutional legal scholars, Georgetown's Randy Barnett and Cornell's Michael Dorf, debated "originalism," which seeks to protect against arbitrary and personal interpretations by jurists, while making the law stable, predictable, and consistent in its application. The debate was hosted by Reason and the Soho Forum, which runs Oxford-style debates, in which the audience votes on the resolution at the beginning and end of the event, and the side that gains more ground is victorious. The resolution was: "The U.S. Constitution should be interpreted and applied according to the original meaning communicated to the public by the words of the text." Dorf won the debate by changing the minds of 20 percent of the attendees.

"In those original weeks of Ferguson," says Reason Editor at Large Matt Welch while talking about the 2014 police shooting that started nation-wide protests and conversations about police violence, "we started seeing the country use terms and looking at issues that [Reason had] been using and looking at for years. So things like the militarization of police, a great Radley Balko phrase, suddenly was on the tips of everyone's tongue.... [In the] last couple of years, [we're seeing it with] civil asset forfeiture, just what an awful thing that is, or the way local cities just shake down their poorest residents in the criminal justice system as a way to fund their operations." He also points to pot legalization, marriage equality, warnings about mounting national debt, and alarm over the ways campuses handle sexual abuse as cases where Reason has been way ahead of the curve. 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 in chief 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 this Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie talks with Matt Welch, who was editor of the print magazine from 2008 through 2016, about how he became a libertarian and learned about Reason, what it was like working at The Los Angeles Times opinion page, and whether he still believes in "The Libertarian Moment," a concept that he and I came up with in 2008.

"Deregulate everything," reads a typical tweet from Cliff Maloney, the avuncular national president of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), a student group started by former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) on the heels of his insurgent runs for president in 2008 and 2012. With chapters on 900 campuses, YAL is fast-growing and increasingly visible. Its mission is to identify and train political activists who can start conversations about limited government and individual freedom in new and interesting ways. (YAL's giant "free-speech beach balls," on which people can write anything they want, have caused a commotion on more than a few campuses.) Unlike many other libertarian groups, YAL also endorses candidates for office. Reason's Nick Gillespie caught up with Maloney at FEEcon, the annual gathering in Atlanta sponsored by the Foundation for Economic Education, to talk about the midterm elections, whether Donald Trump is good or bad for libertarians, and what to expect at YAL's national convention in July.

In previous lives, Matt Kibbe has been a congressional staffer, the head of FreedomWorks, and a New York Times best-selling author. These days, he's the president and "chief community organizer" at Free the People, a libertarian nonprofit that defends "free speech online, the right to bear arms, and privacy from government cyber-snooping." At FEEcon, the annual gathering in Atlanta sponsored by the Foundation for Economic Education, Kibbe talked with Reason's Nick Gillespie about his belief that culture is more important than politics, how to reach the "liberty curious" via social media, and Off the Grid, his group's forthcoming documentary series about Rep. Thomas Massie's "quest for a self-sustainable life on his farm in eastern Kentucky.

In our weekly round table, Reason editors Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch argue about the Trump administration's family-separation policies, the Republican Party's dark fantasies about pro-immigrant elites, and Harvard's discriminatory pro-diversity admissions policies.