You've probably seen footage and images of the January 6 riot at the Capitol captured by today's guest, videographer Ford Fischer. A decade ago, Fischer cofounded New2Share, a radical experiment in decentralized video journalism. He and his colleagues gather long-form footage from all sorts of breaking news events, including protests organized by r…

Today's guest is Jonathan Haidt, whose new book is The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. The New York University psychologist and Heterodox Academy cofounder argues that what he calls a play-based childhood has been replaced with a phone-based one over the past 50 years, leading to sky…

Abigail Shrier is author of the best-selling new book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up. She argues that the mental health of Gen Z—people born between 1997 and 2012—is a mess because an infantilizing therapeutic culture pervades every aspect of their lives. Shrier stresses that she's not against psychological counseling and help per se, …

Joe Lonsdale is a co-founder of the data analytics firm Palantir; OpenGov, which provides cloud software services for governments; and the University of Austin, which seeks to reform higher education. He's the managing partner of 8VC, a tech and life sciences venture capital fund, and is chairman of the board of the Cicero Institute, a nonprofit wo…

Psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker is one of the leading defenders of academic freedom and liberal values of limited government, secularism, tolerance, and free enterprise. A year ago, he helped found the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, "a faculty organization to advocate for the free and civil exchange of ideas inside and ou…

Reason's Nick Gillespie talked with one of the great pioneers of podcasting, Dan Carlin, the host of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. Carlin has been putting his thoughts out there for all to hear since the aughts. His deeply researched and urgently delivered takes on everything from Julius Caesar's wars on the Celtic tribes of Gaul to 20th century I…

Few individuals have had a bigger impact on the libertarian movement than David Boaz, the longtime executive vice president of the Cato Institute. Boaz recently turned 70 and gave a keynote address at LibertyCon, the annual gathering of Students for Liberty, in Washington, D.C. Reason's Nick Gillespie caught up with Boaz to discuss the disarray in …

Pano Kanelos is the president of the University of Austin, which will be admitting its first class of 100 students this fall. The college was founded in 2021 as an antidote to left-wing monoculture in academia and is committed to free speech and the pursuit of truth. Reason's Nick Gillespie spoke with Kanelos, a Shakespeare scholar and first-genera…

Did you know that a mere 44,000 votes spread across Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin kept Joe Biden and Donald Trump from an Electoral College tie in 2020? That was even tighter than in 2016, when 80,000 votes in three states gave Trump a decisive Electoral College win. Patrick Ruffini is a Republican pollster at Echelon Insights and author of Party…

Journalist Nate Silver burst onto the national scene in 2008, when he correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states in that year's election, outstripping all other analysts. His former website FiveThirtyEight became a must-visit stop for anyone interested in political forecasting and helped mainstream the concept of "data journalism," which utilizes the …

You probably already know that the national debt is bigger than our whole economy. But relax, because things can always get worse! And they will, regardless of whether Biden or Trump gets elected in the fall. Each has a proven track record of spending like a drunken sailor and most projections show that debt will grow to between 181 percent and 340…

Just 15 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. But why is it broken and how do we fix it? Those are just two of the questions that Reason's Nick Gillespie asked Justin Amash, the former five-term congressman from Michigan who is currently exploring a Senate run. Elected as part of the Tea Party wave in 2010, Amash helped create …

In January, the Senate Judiciary Committee dragged the heads of Meta, TikTok, and X, formally known as Twitter, to Washington to charge them with exploiting children by allegedly addicting them to social media that sexually harms them, drives them to eating disorders, and even kills them. The Spanish Inquisition vibe of the proceedings reached a cr…

Reason's Nick Gillespie interviews Rachel Nuwer, author of I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World. The book is a history of the drug known as molly and ecstasy that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently evaluating as an aid in fighting PTSD. Today's sponsors: ZBiotics. ZBiotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic D…

As Ronald Reagan's first budget director, former Michigan congressman David Stockman led the charge to cut the size, scope, and spending of the federal government in the early 1980s. He made enemies among Democrats by pushing hard for cuts to welfare programs—and he ultimately made enemies among his fellow Republicans by pushing equally hard to sla…

While some of us went a little nuts during the COVID-19 lockdowns, others—including many of our country's leaders and people in the media—went absolutely batshit crazy, often with disastrous results. Exactly why that happened is the subject of author Jon Ronson's latest season of Things Fell Apart, a podcast that explores the deep origins of today'…

"If the problem with campus speech codes is the selectivity with which universities penalize various forms of bigotry," wrote James Kirchick recently in The New York Times, "the solution is not to expand the university's power to punish expression. It's to abolish speech codes entirely." Kirchick was writing about widespread outrage at the deeply n…

Did you know that by 2050, a quarter of the planet's population will reside in Africa? Yet despite abundant natural resources and a young and ambitious population, the continent remains the poorest of them all. Born in Senegal and now residing in Austin, Texas, Magatte Wade is director of the Center for African Prosperity at the Atlas Network, a no…

This week's episode of The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie is hosted by Reason Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward. She sat down with former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey. During his two terms as governor, Ducey managed to pass a flat income tax with a rate of 2.5 percent, reform public sector pensions, universalize important school choice measures…

William D. Eggers is co-author, with Donald F. Kettl, of Bridgebuilders: How Government Can Transcend Boundaries To Solve Big Problems. He's now the executive director of Deloitte's Center for Government Insights, but 30 years ago, he was the director of government reform for Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason and this podcast. …

Was Milton Friedman the most important libertarian of them all? That's part of the conversation I had with today's guest, Stanford historian Jennifer Burns, who has written a masterful and definitive new biography of the Nobel Prize–winning economist. Without reservation, I recommend you check out her new book, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservativ…

Quitting is massively underrated, says Annie Duke, an author, psychologist, and former professional poker player who holds a bracelet from the 2004 World Series of Poker. Her latest book is Quit: The Power of Knowing When To Walk Away. Using examples ranging from Muhammad Ali's refusal to retire from boxing earlier in his career to the over-budget,…

Just Asking Questions is a new Reason podcast hosted by Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe. Each week they bring you long-form conversations diving deep into a single topic for an hour or more, with data, media clips, and guests who can teach, challenge, and have fun. To hear future episodes, subscribe to Just Asking Questions and watch video premiere…

Over the past decade, no legal scholar has pushed arguments for free speech as far or as influentially as today's guest: Jeff Kosseff, a former journalist who now teaches cybersecurity law at the U.S. Naval Academy. In previous books, he defended Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet and sto…

This is a bonus episode, hosted by Reason Features Editor Peter Suderman. A few weeks back, at our Washington, D.C. HQ, he moderated a discussion with former Reason Editor in Chief Virginia Postrel (Reason archive here)and American Enterprise Institute Fellow James Pethokoukis about the future—why it matters, why it's misunderstood, and how we migh…

My guest today is Sandra Newman, my favorite novelist currently at work in America—I highly recommend her recent works The Men and The Heavens. Her new book is titled Julia and it's a retelling of George Orwell's 1984 from the point of view of Winston Smith's lover who, as you probably recall, is ironically a member of the Anti-Sex League. I don't …

Born and raised in Texas, Jeb Bush moved to Florida in 1980. The son and brother of presidents, he was governor of the Sunshine State from 1999 to 2007, where he quickly became known as a champion of school choice and fiscal responsibility. In 2016, he made an unsuccessful run for the Republican presidential nomination and he now resides in Miami-D…

This is the audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern. "Senator Paul, you do not know what you what you are talking about." Those were the words that Anthony Fauci spoke in July 2021 to Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) following a series of questions from Paul about the possibility that Fauci's agency had fund…

"I'm under no illusion that humanity will completely eradicate the racial tribal instinct or racism or bigotry itself. But I feel that colorblindness is the North Star that we should use when making decisions," argues Coleman Hughes during a live taping of The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie podcast in New York City. Hughes is a writer, podcas…

This is the audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern. When Russ Roberts, an economist and host of the podcast EconTalk, received a job offer to become president of Jerusalem's Shalem University, it seemed like "a no-brainer," he wrote in his 2022 book Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Def…

My guest today is Colleen Eren, a sociologist at William Paterson University in my favorite state in the country, New Jersey. She's also the author of the fantastic new book Reform Nation: The First Step Act and the Movement To End Mass Incarceration. Signed into law by Donald Trump in 2018, the FIRST STEP Act is one of the few major reforms in the…

This is the audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern. "At its core, money is a ledger," writes investment analyst Lyn Alden in her new book Broken Money: Why Our Financial System is Failing Us and How We Can Make it Better. And if money is a ledger, she says, the most important question to consider …

Today's guest is Swedish historian Johan Norberg, author of The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World, which caught the eye of Elon Musk. "This book is an excellent explanation of why capitalism is not just successful, but morally right," Musk tweeted. Norberg wrote the book to combat a growing belief on the right and…

This is the audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern. Javier Milei, the self-described libertarian candidate for Argentina's presidency, surprised the world with a first-place finish in the primaries this August. But in the presidential election this past weekend, he finished second behind Argentina…

"We've taught young people that any of their missteps or any of their heterodox opinions are grounds to tear them down. That's no way to grow up." That was journalist Rikki Schlott speaking before a sold-out crowd on Monday night at a live taping of The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie podcast in New York City. Schlott, 23, teamed up with Greg …

This is the audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern time. "Despite clear interests on almost all sides against a regional war [in the Middle East], all sides are acting in a manner that makes such a war increasingly likely," writes Trita Parsi in an October 15 article calling for the Biden administ…

My guest is Shane Mauss, a comedian who tours the country discussing his psychedelic experiences in fantastic, immersive shows like DMT: A Love Story and A Better Trip. If you're in the New York City area, he'll be appearing at the Psychedelic Assembly in midtown October 27-31 as a part of a Halloween-themed show called Spookadelic. I caught up wit…

This is the audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern time. Hamas stunned the world last weekend by launching a brutal terrorist attack on Israeli civilians and posting their crimes on social media. Israel's government responded with a sustained bombing campaign and a total blockade of the Gaza Strip…

Beyond obvious political polarization and the rancor that generates, Alexandra Hudson says that contemporary America—and the world—is "otherizing" people in a way that makes us all worse off by threatening our ability to peacefully coexist. In her new book The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles To Heal Society and Ourselves, Hudson draws on the …

This is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel. On June 30, Pornhub—America's most-trafficked adult website—announced that it was blocking access in Mississippi, Virginia, and Utah. Why? Well, Pornhub was reacting to the passage of age-verification laws in those thre…

My guest today is Johns Hopkins professor Yascha Mounk, the founder of the online magazine Persuasion and the author of the important new book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time. The Identity Trap explains how identity politics and social justice discourse have come to dominate contemporary discussions of just about everythin…

This is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel. The second GOP primary debate of the season took place this Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, absent frontrunner Donald Trump. The debate revealed real divides among the candidates on issues like fore…

In 2001, Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg burst onto the international scene with his bestselling and controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist. The onetime member of Greenpeace said that climate change is real and that human activity is clearly contributing to it, but he said the best science didn't support the apocalyptic visions …

This is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel. This week, Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe sat for an in-depth discussion with Johan Norberg about the lessons to draw from Sweden's pandemic policies The Swedish government's decision to forgo lockdowns as mos…

Over the past few episodes, I've been talking with people involved with what we at Reason are calling a psychedelic renaissance, or a rebirth of interest in substances long associated with the CIA and hippies and counterculture. Today's interest in these substances is mostly motivated by a desire to help veterans and victims of sexual violence who …

This is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel. It's back-to-school season, and for some parts of the country, that means dealing with COVID restrictions again. Americans are no longer experiencing indefinite school closures or ubiquitous masking, but intermittent sc…

In June, I traveled to Denver with Zach Weismueller to cover the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference, organized by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a group that has been working to gain Food and Drug Administration approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD since the late 1980s. We produced a 30-minute documentary a…

This is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel. Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe sat down for a live discussion about the political and social ramifications of the indictments of Donald Trump with George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin. "Trump's att…

In June, I traveled to Denver with Zach Weissmueller to cover the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference, which was organized by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a group that has been working to gain approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD and related ailments since the late 1980s. We produced a 30-minute documentar…

This is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel. The topic this week was a lawsuit challenging California Community Colleges' new diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility—or DEIA—teaching standards, which allegedly "mandate viewpoint conformity" and "compel pro…