Shows
The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieThe Politics of Permanent OutrageThis week, guest host Eric Boehm is joined by Lauren Hall, a political science professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the author of The Radical Moderate's Guide to Life, a Substack newsletter that encourages readers to reject binary thinking and keep politics from consuming every part of their lives.
Hall's work focuses on the roots of tribalism and political polarization, examining where they come from, why they are so powerful, and how they distort both public debate and personal relationships. She has grown increasingly concerned about the populist impulses shaping American politics on both the...
2025-12-3058 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieAndor Creator Tony Gilroy on Bureaucracy and the Surveillance StateThis week, guest host Eric Boehm is joined by Tony Gilroy, the creator, writer, and director of Andor, the critically acclaimed Star Wars series that reimagines the origins of the Rebel Alliance. While Andor is set in a familiar sci-fi universe, it stands apart for its focus on the mechanics of authoritarian rule.
Gilroy discusses how Andor portrays the Galactic Empire not as a cartoonish evil but as a bureaucratic system that centralizes authority, normalizes surveillance, and absorbs previously independent planets, corporations, and cultures. Rather than relying on superweapons or singular villains, authoritarianism in Andor functions through...
2025-12-231h 01The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieHe's Serving 5 Years in Prison for Bitcoin Privacy SoftwareThis week, guest host Zach Weissmueller is joined by Keonne Rodriguez, the founder of Samourai Wallet, a noncustodial bitcoin privacy tool. Rodriguez is currently facing a five-year federal prison sentence for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, while Samourai's former chief technology officer, William Hill, faces four years. The conversation was recorded just 48 hours before Rodriguez was scheduled to report to prison.
Rodriguez explains why he created Samourai Wallet, tracing its origins to bitcoin's cypherpunk roots and his belief that digital cash should offer the same basic privacy as physical cash. He walks through how...
2025-12-1958 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieDid the Internet Break Our Sense of Reality?This week, guest host Zach Weissmueller is joined by Katherine Dee, a writer chronicling the subcultures of the internet at her Substack default.blog and in columns for The Spectator, Tablet, GQ, UnHerd, and various other publications. Dee also hosts a weekly call-in show that's an homage to the late-night AM radio show Coast to Coast.
Dee talks about the internet as a mystical "other place": fairyland or the astral plane, somewhere you journey and play by different rules, interact with unusual entities, and hope you emerge with your sanity intact.
In this interview, they di...
2025-12-171h 04The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieHow Foreign Governments Police U.S. SpeechToday's guest is Sarah McLaughlin, a senior scholar at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and author of Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech.
She explains how governments in places like China and the United Arab Emirates restrict academic freedom and expression not just in their own countries but also at colleges and universities in America by exploiting speech codes and threatening to end lucrative satellite campus arrangements.
McLaughlin and Gillespie also talk about whether it was a good idea for American comedians to...
2025-12-101h 04
The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieWhy Science Lost Its WayToday's guest is the science writer Matt Ridley, author of best-selling books such as The Red Queen, The Rational Optimist, and, with Alina Chan, Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. At a live event filmed in New York City, Ridley tells Nick Gillespie that political and cultural elites had already turned science, our best tool for understanding and improving the world, into a centralized, hyperpoliticized priesthood even before COVID.
He walks through the collapse of public trust in 2020 as experts flipped on masks and transmission, declared Black Lives Matter protests safe but religious services dangerous, and i...
2025-12-0349 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieWhat We Get Wrong About the American RevolutionToday's guest is Ken Burns, the filmmaker who has massively reshaped national conversations about everything from the Civil War to baseball to jazz to immigration to national parks with epic documentary series that have aired on public television.
His latest work is The American Revolution, a 12-hour series about the nation's founding that he codirected with Sarah Botstein and David P. Schmidt. As the nation prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary next year, the American Revolution foregrounds the bloodiness of the war for independence from the British and the high levels of disunity among the colonists before an...
2025-11-261h 03The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieRand Paul: Congress Is 'Afraid of the President'Today's guest is Sen. Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky. He talks about why he cosponsored legislation to release all of the Jeffrey Epstein files, how President Donald Trump's tariffs and bombing of Venezuelan boats are bad policy and unconstitutional, and why fellow Republicans like Vice President J.D. Vance are Luddites and nostalgia merchants who want to regulate free markets to death.
Paul, the subject of a 2014 New York Times Magazine article titled "Has the 'Libertarian Moment' Finally Arrived?", also talks with Gillespie about his plans for a 2028 presidential run, the enduring anti-war legacy of hi...
2025-11-2027 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieIs The Washington Post Becoming Libertarian?Earlier this year, The Washington Post's owner, Jeff Bezos, announced that the opinions section of his paper would be "writing every day in support and defense of…personal liberties and free markets." Today's guest is the person Bezos hired to execute that mission.
He's Adam O'Neal, a 33-year-old Southern California native whose resume includes stints at The Economist, The Dispatch, The Wall Street Journal, Real Clear Politics, and covering the Vatican for Rome Reports. O'Neal tells Gillespie his goal is to build a nonpartisan editorial section rooted in core American values of free expression, free enterprise, and limi...
2025-11-191h 03The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieThere's More Than One Way To Get SoberToday's guest is Katie Herzog, co-host of the popular Blocked & Reported podcast and author of the paradigm-shattering new book Drink Your Way Sober. Katie writes about her and other people's experiences with The Sinclair Method—a medication-assisted approach to alcoholism where you use one drug to counter problematic use of another. Her story—and the cutting-edge research and treatment she reports on—upends just about everything we think we know about drug use, recovery, and autonomy.
She talks with Nick Gillespie about naltrexone, the drug that helped her retrain her brain, why Alcoholics Anonymous works for some people but...
2025-11-121h 11
Blue City BluesNick Gillespie on Whether Socialism Is the Future of Blue CitiesIn New York City, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani routed scandal-tainted Andrew Cuomo, completing his at first unthinkable, then inevitable rise to become the next mayor of New York City. His David vs. Goliath triumph has vaulted Mamdani from backbench obscurity to political superstardom; progressives around the country are swooning, seeing his success as proof that the unapologetic embrace of bold redistributive policies and vastly expanded government interventions into the marketplace represent the pathway forward for a reeling Democratic Party still struggling to come to terms with its failure to vanquish Trump. Nor is Mamdani a unicorn. Increasingly i...
2025-11-081h 04The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieCampus Activism in the Wake of Charlie Kirk's Murder Nick Gillespie speaks with Dr. Wolf von Laer of Students for Liberty, and Sean Themea of Young Americans for Liberty about how campus activism may change after the murder of Charlie Kirk. They discuss how the tragedy has affected their organizations, what it means for the future of student organizing, and how libertarian ideas about free expression and individual rights fit in today's campus climates.
Producer: Paul AlexanderAudio Mixer: Ian KeyserThe post Campus Activism in the Wake of Charlie Kirk's Murder appeared first on Reason.com.
2025-11-0659 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieVeterans Are Suffering Because of Government Red TapeToday's guests are Oscar-nominated filmmaker Jon Shenk and former Navy SEAL Marcus Capone. Shenk is co-director, with Bonni Cohen, of the new Netflix documentary In Waves and War, which follows three former Navy SEALs as they use psychedelic-assisted therapy to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries related to their service.
Capone is one of the three main figures in the film. He first used the ultra-powerful substances ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT in 2017 and is the co-founder with his wife Amber of VETS, a nonprofit that helps veterans access psychedelic therapies. He's also CEO of TARA Mind...
2025-11-051h 10The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieJake Tapper on Censorship, Media Failings, and Presidential PowerToday's guest is Jake Tapper, the host of The Lead on CNN and author of the new book, Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War.
He tells Nick Gillespie why it matters that Donald Trump is following Barack Obama's lead in trying terrorists in criminal courts rather than military tribunals, why he believes the Trump administration is unleashing an all-out offensive against journalists critical of the president, and what the legacy media got way wrong with Joe Biden and COVID.
They also discuss the future of journalism in an ag...
2025-10-291h 08The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieWhat Happened to the Republican Party?Today's guest is Jeff Flake, former Arizona senator and U.S. ambassador to Turkey, and now head of the brand-new Institute of Politics at Arizona State University. Flake made national headlines in 2017 when he delivered a searing Senate floor speech announcing he would not seek reelection and declaring he would not be complicit in the "degradation of our politics" under Donald Trump and MAGA.
A lifelong conservative, Flake built his career on defending free markets, free trade, limited government, and pro-immigration policies—positions that put him at odds with a Republican Party drifting toward populism and protectionism. We talk a...
2025-10-221h 01The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieCan the ACLU Serve Progressives, Libertarians, and Conservatives?Today's guest is Ben Wizner, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He says that President Donald Trump's second term has brought an all-out assault on free speech—targeting comedians, immigrants, universities, and even law firms that take the "wrong" cases.
Gillespie and Wizner put Trump's actions in the context of past presidents and discuss whether the ACLU has strayed from the days of defending the free speech rights of American Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, Unite the Right protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the National Rifle Association (NRA) in New York.
They also disc...
2025-10-151h 07The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieAre Americans Addicted to Conflict?Today's guest is Lionel Shriver, the provocative writer best known for novels like We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Mandibles, and, most recently, Mania.
We talked a few days after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, an event whose lasting significance she cautioned against overinterpreting. "We want tragedies to mean something," she said. "And maybe they don't." Shriver offered cutting critiques of Gen Z socialists, Tucker Carlson, Kamala Harris, and President Donald Trump, whom she said is devoid of "any firm principles."
In a New York Times op-ed a decade ago, she thanked Rand Paul for "nomin...
2025-10-0850 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieDefend Speech Even When Your Side Hates ItThis week's guest host on The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie is Billy Binion, who talks with Jenin Younes, a civil liberties attorney who first gained national attention when she sued the Biden administration for pressuring social media companies to censor content it didn't like. That case, Murthy v. Missouri, ultimately reached the Supreme Court.
A former New York City public defender, Younes is now national legal director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, where she is preparing to sue the Trump administration. She and Binion discuss her path to civil liberties advocacy, the threats to free speech...
2025-10-0100 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespiePsychedelics Are Not Just for Hippies and Tech BrosToday's guest is Joe Dolce, whose new book is Modern Psychedelics: The Handbook for Mindful Exploration.
Dolce argues that psychedelics aren't just the province of hippies or tech bros anymore. They are powerful and increasingly popular—and legal—tools for therapy, self-discovery, and play.
He talks with Gillespie about everything from the misunderstood role of ketamine in Friends star Matthew Perry's death to why ibogaine may be the only substance on Earth that can stop addiction cold, to how we went from "Just Say No!" campaigns to mail-order magic mushrooms in just a few short decades.
2025-09-1753 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieWhy Banning Drugs and Guns Never WorksIn this episode of The Reason Interview, Nick Gillespie is joined by Senior Editor Jacob Sullum, author of the new book Beyond Control, to discuss the evolution of gun and drug laws in America. They examine how decades of prohibitionist policies have backfired, undermining liberty and justice without delivering safety.
This was originally recorded live on September 4, 2025.
Is mass immigration good for America? Join us for a Reason Versus live debate on October 2 in Washington, D.C.
Producer: Paul AlexanderAudio Mixer: Ian KeyserThe post Why Banning Drugs and Guns Never Work...
2025-09-1656 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieCharlie Kirk and America's History With Political ViolenceIn this episode of The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie, editors at large Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch reflect on the shocking murder of Charlie Kirk and the broader implications it carries for American politics. They discuss how his killing fits into rising concerns about political violence and what it signals about the nation's increasingly volatile climate.
This was originally recorded live on September 11, 2025.
Producer: Paul AlexanderAudio Mixer: Ian KeyserThe post Charlie Kirk and America's History With Political Violence appeared first on Reason.com.
2025-09-121h 08The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieHow We Criminalized ChildhoodToday's guest is Lenore Skenazy, a journalist and activist dubbed "the world's worst mom" for letting her nine-year-old son ride the New York subway alone back in 2008. Since then, she's become a regular contributor to Reason and the co-founder, with psychologists Peter Gray and Jonathan Haidt, of Let Grow, which pushes for laws and school programs to restore independence to kids.
She talks with Nick Gillespie about why kids today are more anxious and less free than they used to be, how fear and over-parenting took over American childhood, and why the free-range parenting movement is finally on the rise.
2025-09-1053 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieWe're Moving Too Slow on AIToday's guest is Pablos Holman, a legendary hacker and cypherpunk who holds over 100 patents and has worked with Bill Gates to cure malaria and with Jeff Bezos to get Blue Origin off the ground.
Pablos also runs a venture fund called Deep Future, which is committed to "creating technology that matters." In his new book—also called Deep Future—he exhorts the reader to "boycott dystopia" and describes companies that are saving bee colonies by using mushroom spores to inoculate bees against pests; recovering ancient Roman secrets to make concrete that lasts for thousands of years; and launchi...
2025-09-0350 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieGlenn Jacobs Body-Slams Big GovernmentToday's guest is best known by his pro wrestling name: Kane.
But Glenn Jacobs isn't just a member of the WWE Hall of Fame. Since 2018, he's served as the mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, where he has beat down tax increases and mask and vaccine mandates while pushing school choice and private sector solutions to social problems such as addiction.
Jacobs tells Nick Gillespie how Ron Paul inspired him, why he believes President Donald Trump is disrupting the administrative state, and why live-and-let-live is the best life philosophy.
The Reason Interview With Nick Gillesp...
2025-08-2736 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieChip Roy on Why He Backed Trump's Spending BillToday's guest is Rep. Chip Roy (R–Texas), a fiscal hawk whose commitment to balancing the budget has led President Donald Trump to call for primary challenges against him.
Nick Gillespie sits down with Roy to talk about why he ultimately voted for the president's budget-busting One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), whether the controversial redistricting plan going on in Texas is legit, the expansion of the federal government under both major parties, and where libertarians and conservatives can work together to reduce the size, scope, and spending of the state.
0:00—Intro
0:41—Why w...
2025-08-2049 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieDid MAGA Kill the Tea Party?In 2008, Rep. Ron Paul (R–Texas) ran for the Republican presidential nomination and did surprisingly well with a campaign focused on stopping the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, ending the Federal Reserve, and reducing the size and spending of the federal government. Two years later, the Tea Party movement burst onto the scene, bringing people like Paul's son Rand to the Senate and one of today's guests, Justin Amash, to the House of Representatives. In 2012, Ron Paul again ran for the GOP nod, finishing behind the eventual nominee Mitt Romney, and helping to usher in what The New York Time...
2025-08-1347 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieThe Libertarian Case for PostmodernismWhat if one of the sharpest critics of centralized power, bureaucratic surveillance, and top-down social control wasn't a libertarian economist but a French postmodernist? And what if one of the economists most vilified by the left wasn't a cold-hearted market fundamentalist but a thinker obsessed with the limits of knowledge and the dangers of planning?
Today's guest is King's College London political economist Mark Pennington, author of the new book Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge and Freedom. A self-declared postmodernist libertarian, Pennington explores the common ground between Michel Foucault and Friedrich Hayek. He talks with Nic...
2025-08-061h 13The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieCould New York Go Bankrupt Again?Today's guest is Richard E. Farley, author of Drop Dead, a history of how the richest city in America got addicted to spending, saturated in debt, and crashed the municipal bond market—and then managed to get a federal bailout in the nick of time.
In 1975, New York City almost went bankrupt. Farley argues that the same conditions are reemerging today: runaway budgets, gimmicky accounting, overpromised entitlements, and politicians more interested in ideology than arithmetic. He wrote all this before the rise of mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who promises to blow spending through the roof, enact new taxes...
2025-07-301h 00The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieStreaming Music Isn't a Free Market. It's a Regulated Monopoly.Today's guest is David Lowery, the legendary frontman of the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, digital copyright crusader, and longtime Reason reader.
He dives deep into his sprawling, deeply personal new record Fathers, Sons and Brothers and the postwar California dream, talks about how the music industry broke, and suggests ways to maybe, just maybe, fix it.
He's sued Spotify and other streaming services, teaches business at the University of Georgia, and he's dropped what might be the best one-liner about selling out since The Who.
If you care about music, creative freedom, an...
2025-07-231h 21The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieHow a Government Mind Control Experiment BackfiredToday's guest is University of Texas historian John Lisle, author of the chilling and brilliantly researched Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA.
Despite official attempts to destroy records of the CIA's LSD-fueled search for mind control in the 1950s and '60s, the truth has been dribbling out, especially in recent books and documentaries such as Steven Kinzer's Poisoner in Chief and Errol Morris' Wormwood.
Lisle's work draws on previously unknown depositions and documents to deliver the most definitive—and disturbing—account yet. He discusses the twisted logic of Cold War...
2025-07-161h 05The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieThe Surprising Origins of Modern FreedomToday's guest is University of Pennsylvania historian Sophia Rosenfeld, the author of The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life.
Her book explores why we've come to basically equate having more personal choices with having more freedom. She stresses it wasn't always this way—in the past, freedom was often defined as the ability to act in the way God wanted you to act, or to overcome base urges, to be more angel than beast.
Rosenfeld talks about how the Reformation, which enshrined a right to choose among faiths, and the rise of s...
2025-07-0941 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieFrom Big Gulps to Raw Milk: The Rise of MAHAToday's guest is Elizabeth Nolan Brown, whose recent Reason cover story looks into the politics of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement spearheaded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Just a decade or so ago, it was Democrats, liberals, and progressives who were pushing healthy eating initiatives and it was common to see Republicans and conservatives like Sarah Palin brandish Big Gulps like AR-15s and Fox News anchors like Sean Hannity declare their loyalty to Kentucky Fried Chicken.
But now the Trumpian right is embracing wellness and food purity like nob...
2025-07-0246 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieHow LSD Helped Launch a Radical Libertarian CountercultureToday's guest is Susannah Cahalan, whose new book is The Acid Queen, a biography of Rosemary Woodruff Leary—muse, fugitive, and heavily indicted co-conspirator in Timothy Leary's psychedelic revolution.
She talks with Reason's Nick Gillespie about hippie communes, outlaw drug smuggling, the war on drugs—and how the '60s counterculture, in its best moments, ran experiments in radical individualism, using personal freedoms to build voluntary communities rooted in altered consciousness and aesthetic liberation. The Acid Queen helps explain how the personal became the political, why libertarians should care about the messy legacy of the counterculture, and what co...
2025-06-2549 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieDid Bombing Iran Make America Safer?On June 22, the United States launched what President Donald Trump called "very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran" on the social media site Truth Social. "NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!" But did that mission make America—or the Middle East—safer? Is it really a one-and-done action or the start of greater involvement on the part of the U.S. military? What lessons has our military learned—or failed to learn—from the past 25 years of foreign policy failures?
In this special live episode of The Reason Interview, Nick Gillespie talked with Emma Ashford...
2025-06-2458 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieScott Barry Kaufman: Incels, Narcissists, and the Victim MindsetPsychologist and author Scott Barry Kaufman joins Reason's Nick Gillespie to discuss his new book Rise Above, which challenges the growing embrace of victimhood as identity. They explore how traits such as neuroticism and vulnerable narcissism are shaping modern culture, why social media rewards grievance over growth, and what it really takes to develop a more flexible, empowered sense of self. Kaufman reflects on his own journey from special education to Carnegie Mellon and beyond, explains why tough love and radical honesty are essential tools for transformation, and offers a humanistic vision of how individuals and societies can move...
2025-06-1851 min
LAST MEAL with Tom NashNick Gillespie's LAST MEALIs personal freedom under threat? In this episode of Last Meal, I sit down with journalist and libertarian thinker Nick Gillespie to discuss free speech, the future of media, and why he believes individualism is more important than ever. We explore the risks of groupthink, the power of open debate, and the tension between personal liberty and collective responsibility.From philosophical musings to the significance of artificial flavors, Gillespie weaves a tapestry of thoughts on existentialism, legacy, and modern society. Uncover why he views life through the lens of Christian existentialism, his take on...
2025-06-1728 minLAST MEAL with Tom NashNick Gillespie's LAST MEALIs personal freedom under threat? In this episode of Last Meal, I sit down with journalist and libertarian thinker Nick Gillespie to discuss free speech, the future of media, and why he believes individualism is more important than ever. We explore the risks of groupthink, the power of open debate, and the tension between personal liberty and collective responsibility.From philosophical musings to the significance of artificial flavors, Gillespie weaves a tapestry of thoughts on existentialism, legacy, and modern society. Uncover why he views life through the lens of Christian existentialism, his take on...
2025-06-1728 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieKennedy: A Gen X Rebel's Journey From MTV to Fox News
Today's guest is the former MTV video jockey and current Fox News personality Kennedy, who emerged in the 1990s as a leading voice of Gen X when it came to politics and culture. Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with her about how a generation raised on neglect, nuclear nightmares, and Nirvana forged an ethos of irreverence and independence that still matters today. Kennedy explains her evolution from a teen Republican who swooned over Dan Quayle to a principled libertarian, why the culture of alternative music and media once felt so alive and vital, and what it means when former pop...
2025-06-1148 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieHelen Lewis: The Dark Side of GeniusToday's guest is Helen Lewis, a British journalist and podcaster who is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Her new book is The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea, and it explores how the definition of what it means to be a genius has changed radically over the centuries, how it became linked to all sorts of weird biological theories, and how Elon Musk has come to personify genius in our time (and whether his failure at the Department of Government Efficiency spells the end of his genius moment). Lewis and Reason's Nick Gillespie also talk about...
2025-06-041h 35The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieLawrence Wright: America's Misadventures in Wars, Cults, and PanicsToday's guest is the legendary journalist and New Yorker staffer Lawrence Wright. He is the author of Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief; The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11; and The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid.
Wright talks with Reason's Nick Gillespie about The Human Scale, his new novel set in the war-torn Middle East, and why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict keeps burning even as most of the 20th century's conflicts have cooled. They also go deep on Wright's exposés on the war on terror, satanic panics, and how ou...
2025-05-281h 03The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieC. Bradley Thompson and Jeremiah Johnson: Rise of the 'MAGA Manosphere'Did mainstream conservatives and libertarians lose a generation of young men to the post-liberal, reactionary right?
Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with C. Bradley Thompson, author of the Substack newsletter The Redneck Intellectual, and Jeremiah Johnson of the Center for New Liberalism, who wrote the article "Weak Men Create Hard Times: And Weak Men Love a Strongman."
This conversation was recorded live on Wednesday May 21.
Audio Production: Ian KeyserThe post C. Bradley Thompson and Jeremiah Johnson: Rise of the 'MAGA Manosphere' appeared first on Reason.com.
2025-05-231h 01The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieBrian Brushwood: Why We Fall for Scams
"You don't get conned because you're stupid—you get conned because you're human."
That's the message of this week's guest, Brian Brushwood. He's an Austin-based magician, podcaster, and professional skeptic. With shows like Scam Nation and The Modern Rogue, he's taught millions of us how to upgrade our B.S. detectors in a world where truth is more up for grabs than ever before.
Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with him about World's Greatest Con, Brushwood's mind-blowing podcast where he reveals grifts like Disney World's authoritarian Epcot theme park, the psychic-s
2025-05-2151 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieRichard Dawkins: Why Atheism Is WinningToday's guest is evolutionary biologist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins, whom Reason's Nick Gillespie interviewed last fall in Milwaukee as part of his "Final Bow" tour. Gillespie and Dawkins talked about why he believes science can't thrive without freedom, why gender ideology is starting to look a lot like Soviet Lysenkoism, and why some truths—like the binary nature of biological sex—shouldn't be up for political negotiation.
Dawkins discusses his new book, The Genetic Book of the Dead, what it means to live in a "colony of cooperating viruses," and why he thinks both religious dogma and po...
2025-05-141h 34The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieBillionaire Cliff Asness: Can Technology Outrun 'Stupider and Stupider' Government?"I feel fear… because they're somewhat vindictive people. I don't care who you are, having this set of people mad at you is not comfortable." That's today's guest, Cliff Asness, talking about President Donald Trump, his administration, and his supporters. Asness is the outspoken billionaire co-founder of AQR Capital Management. He is also a pioneer in quantitative finance, University of Chicago Ph.D., and self-described "part-time Republican and full-time libertarian." He talks bluntly about why Trump is spectacularly wrong on tariffs and trade, his concerns about the authoritarian tendencies of the president and his supporters, and how capitalism may ac...
2025-05-0951 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieSteven Pinker: Can Harvard Be Saved?Today's guest is Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. Pinker and Reason's Nick Gillespie discuss recent shifts at Harvard toward greater institutional neutrality and free speech, while warning that threats to academic freedom now come from both internal ideologies and external political forces—including pressure from the federal government under President Donald Trump.
Pinker defends the role of federal science funding but cautions against political micromanagement of academia, emphasizing the need for independent scholarly governance. The conversation also touches on Pinker's admiration for Richard Dawkins, the impact of declining religiosity on moral progress, and the concept of "common knowledge" as...
2025-05-0759 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieJohn Arnold: Government Can't Be Trusted To Fix Any ProblemsToday's guest is John Arnold—the former Enron wunderkind and billionaire philanthropist (and Reason Foundation supporter) who's determined to hack America's most expensive and least accountable public sector systems in areas such as criminal justice, education, and pensions. (Fun fact: He was once called "the most hated man in pensionland" by Governing magazine due to his reform efforts.)
Reason's Nick Gillespie and Arnold talk about why public pensions are so out of control and how to fix them; how Medicare squeezes billions of unnecessary dollars out of taxpayers; and how Enron scammed its investors not despite regulations but...
2025-04-3051 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieJeffrey Singer: Get Government Out of Health CareJeffrey Singer, a Cato Institute fellow and longtime surgeon, argues that government overreach in health care undermines patient autonomy, which should be the guiding principle in medical decision making. Drawing from historical examples and personal experience, he critiques licensing laws, the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) drug approval monopoly, and Certificate of Need (CON) regulations as protectionist measures that limit competition and innovation. Singer contends that private institutions—like insurers, hospitals, and certification boards—already create strong incentives for safety and quality, making many government controls unnecessary.
Reason's Nick Gillespie and Singer also explore complex topics like end...
2025-04-2352 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieLeigh Stein and Julius Taranto: Did Wokeness and Trump Kill Literary Satire?Satire is a powerful force for political and cultural change. But is it even possible in a world that outstrips our imagination on a daily—or even hourly—basis?
Today's guests are two young novelists who are redefining satire in the 21st century. Leigh Stein is the author of Self Care, which is set at a women's wellness startup where things go very wrong. Her next novel, If You're Seeing This, It's Meant for You, takes place at a social media hype house and comes out in August. Julius Taranto is the author of How I Won a Nobel...
2025-04-0252 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieBrian Doherty: The Fascinating Women and Weirdos Who Founded LibertarianismToday's guest is Reason Senior Editor Brian Doherty, who has just published Modern Libertarianism: A Brief History of Classical Liberalism in the United States. His previous books include Radicals for Capitalism, the indispensable history of the libertarian movement, and titles covering the Ron Paul revolution, gun rights, Burning Man, and underground comics.
Modern Libertarianism analyzes the political and cultural legacies of figures such as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, and Barry Goldwater. Doherty talks with Reason's Nick Gillespie about Ayn Rand and the other two women who helped conceptualize libertarian thought—Rose Wilder...
2025-03-191h 03
In Response...On Liberty - #19 Nick GillespieJoey speaks with Nick Gillespie. We discuss our takes on the state of the arts, conservative art and entertainment, the Kennedy Center, the role of the audience in media, misinformation, political prejudices and polarization, our family backgrounds, understanding the New Right, reactionary Catholicism, anti-wokeness, the Trump administration and DOGE, government spending, and other topics. Nick can be found on X @nickgillespie, Substack @ Nick Gillespie, and at Reason.com
Nick hosts the Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie podcast and is an editor-at-large at Reason magazine. The star libertarian has been with Reason since 1993. He received his Ph.D. in Englis...
2025-03-121h 02The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieAlton Brown: A Culinary Legend Offers Food for ThoughtOur guest today is Alton Brown, who for years hosted Good Eats on the Food Network and brought his interest in science to the making of dinner. He's currently touring the country, and he has also just published Food for Thought, a great collection of essays about food, culture, and his life on and off the screen. In this episode, Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with Brown about how food transcends politics, why fusion cooking isn't cultural appropriation, and why there's always room for Jell-O salad on his menu.
0:43— Brown's Last Bite tour
1:55— Brown's new book: Food for Thoug...
2025-03-0558 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieJohn McWhorter: Is 'Wokeness' Finally Dead?
Today's guest is Columbia University linguist and New York Times columnist John McWhorter. In 2021, he published Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, which argued that politically correct "antiracism" was not only a new religion but a dangerous form of illiberalism that quashed free expression, individual liberty, and social progress.
McWhorter talks with Reason's Nick Gillespie about how far we've come since 2021—and whether we are entering a new era of open debate and cultural possibilities. They
2025-02-2649 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieJim O'Shaughnessy: Don't Squander This Age of Innovation
Jim O'Shaughnessy is a superstar investor and venture capitalist who leads O'Shaughnessy Ventures and hosts the popular Infinite Loops podcast. He's also the coauthor of the new collection Two Thoughts, which compiles provocative quotes from figures ranging from Sam Adams and Ludwig von Mises to Frank Zappa.
O'Shaughnessy chats with Reason's Nick Gillespie about the power of free minds and free markets to improve the world, why societies thrive or perish, and how to b
2025-02-191h 23The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieSean McMeekin: Don't Whitewash the History of CommunismThe Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, taking down with it the threat of international communism, right? Today's guest says no, writing that, "Far from dead, Communism as a governing template seems only to be getting started." Sean McMeekin is a historian at Bard College and the author of the mesmerizing book To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with him about the history of communism, how its focus on forced equality is inherently violent, and how Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and others each brought particular flourishes an...
2025-02-121h 21The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieNico Perrino: What the Trump-Musk Alliance Means for Free Speech
Today's guest is Nico Perrino, executive vice president at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), director of the 2020 documentary Mighty Ira, which profiles the longtime head of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the author of a forthcoming book on the triumph of civil libertarians.
He's also the host of the popular podcast So to Speak, which takes an "uncensored look at the world of free expression through the law, philosophy, and stories that define your right to free speech." Reason's Nick Gillespie talks wi
2025-02-051h 03The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieAlex Nowrasteh and Bryan Caplan: The Case for More ImmigrationOne of the very first things that Donald Trump did after being sworn in as president was to make good on promises to reduce both legal and illegal immigration. He even issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship, a right guaranteed by the Constitution's 14th Amendment. That order has already been blocked by a federal judge, and its fate may well end up being decided by the Supreme Court. But calls for less immigration are super popular, with 55 percent of Americans saying current levels should be decreased, the highest since 2001. Reason's Nick Gillespie disagrees with that—he believes that immi...
2025-01-2956 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieMichael Shermer: Conspiracy Thinking, Wokeness, and the Future of Free Thought"Even paranoids have real enemies," said the poet Delmore Schwartz, who was both clinically paranoid and definitely on to something, according to today's guest: Michael Shermer, the founder of Skeptic magazine, Substack superstar, and author of many best-selling books about rationalism, the evolution of morality, and pseudoscience.
He quotes Schwartz in his latest book, Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational, to drive home the point that big, world-changing secret plots happen all the time, but there are reliable ways for us to decide whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, 9/11 was an inside job, or vaccines cause auti...
2025-01-2253 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieDouglas Irwin: Why Trump's Tariff Plans Are Dangerous"Tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary," says Donald Trump, who made many promises throughout the 2024 presidential race to raise the cost of imports from China, Mexico, and Canada—America's three biggest trading partners. But are Trump's tariffs a good idea or a terrible one? And is the era of free trade coming to a close?
That's the topic of today's Reason Interview. Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin, author of Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s and Free Trade under Fire, now in its fifth edition. They talk about the nega...
2025-01-081h 00The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieJeffrey Edward Green: Why Bob Dylan's Prophecies Continue To FascinateFew figures have literally and figuratively electrified American culture the way Bob Dylan has. He released his first album in 1962, won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, and continues to perform about 100 concerts a year at the ripe age of 83. His life is chronicled in the new movie A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet.
But what's the meaning—or meanings—of Bob Dylan, who sang at Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington, became a born-again Christian in the 1970s, and wrote a book called The Philosophy of Modern Song?
Reason's Nick Gillespie talks...
2024-12-251h 04The Reason Interview With Nick GillespiePenny Lane: Why I Gave a Kidney to a Total StrangerToday's guest is Penny Lane, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker whose previous works include Listening to Kenny G and Hail Satan?, both of which formed the basis of previous Reason interviews linked in the show notes.
Her exceptional new film is Confessions of a Good Samaritan. It's currently streaming on Netflix and follows her experience as an "altruistic" kidney donor, or one who gives an organ away to an anonymous stranger. Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with Lane about how she came to make her decision; its effects on her body, mind, and finances; and the ethics of current po...
2024-12-1849 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieErrol Morris and Jacob Soboroff: Trump's Immigration Policies Are IndefensibleIn late 2017, in the name of "zero tolerance," President Donald Trump introduced a policy of separating parents and children who crossed the Southern border and requested asylum in the United States. In all, an estimated 5,500 children were taken from their parents and many were held in detention facilities, some of which had been constructed by the Obama administration. Over 1,000 children are still unaccounted for by the federal government. The policy ended in 2018 after massive public outcry. The zero tolerance policy is the subject of Separated, a new documentary by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Errol Morris. It has aired on MSN...
2024-12-1149 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieBrendan O'Neill: The West Went Insane After October 7Reason's annual Webathon is underway. Please considering donating here.
Today's guest is Brendan O'Neill, chief political writer for Spiked and the author of the bracing new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation.
O'Neill and Reason's Nick Gillespie talk about the response in the United Kingdom and the United States to Hamas' attacks last year, Israel's ongoing military actions, and what's likely to come next in a postwoke world. "On October 7," says O'Neill, "the progressive left went from 'believe women' to 'believe fascists.' They took Hamas at its word over the...
2024-12-041h 07The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieMartin Gurri: Political Chaos Brings Colossal TransformationToday's guest is Martin Gurri, a former CIA analyst who is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center and a columnist for The Free Press. A decade ago, in the wake of the Arab Spring and various "color" revolutions around the world, Gurri published The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, which analyzed how social media empowered ordinary people to resist control from above and anticipated the rise of Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Brexit.
Reason's Nick Gillespie spoke with Gurri shortly after the 2024 election at The Reason Spea...
2024-11-2752 min
The Trip ReportSpecial Dispatch: An Election Retrospective with Nick GillespieWelcome to a Special Dispatch of The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves. Today, I’m joined by Nick Gillespie, Editor-at-Large of Reason magazine, to discuss the results of the US election and specifically what it might mean for psychedelic policy, research, and drug development. As a veteran observer of the intersection between politics, regulation, and civil liberties, Nick offers a unique lens through which to examine the evolving dynamics of psychedelics, the regulatory state, and how the incoming Trump administration might approach the matter.Our conversation focuses on the curious coal...
2024-11-1341 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieLive on Election Night! The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieJoin Reason's Nick Gillespie live on election night at YouTube, X, and Reason.com, starting at 10 p.m. EST.
Will history be made? Will it end? Joining Gillespie are The Fifth Column's Kmele Foster, Bloomberg economics columnist Allison Schrager, and many more special guests, who will break down the weirdest—and possibly the most consequential—election season in any of our lifetimes.
Audio Production: Ian KeyserThe post Live on Election Night! The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie appeared first on Reason.com.
2024-11-0555 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieMusa al-Gharbi: How Woke Elites Became Out of TouchMusa al-Gharbi is a sociologist at Stony Brook University and the author of the new book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. Al-Gharbi argues that academics, journalists, and other elite professionals that he calls "symbolic capitalists" are disconnected from the marginalized and disadvantaged communities they claim to speak for—and that, by using the rhetoric of class solidarity drawn from the Occupy movement (which pitted the "99 percent versus the 1 percent"), progressive symbolic capitalists actually exploit those communities to maintain a relatively lush lifestyle.
Born and raised in a mixed-race military family in Ari...
2024-10-301h 12The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieFaisal Saeed Al Mutar: Peace In The Middle East Through CapitalismToday's guest is Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, the co-founder of Ideas Beyond Borders (IBB), a nonprofit that translates books and articles about limited government, freedom of thought, and market economics into Arabic and other languages, and distributes them for free in the Middle East and other parts of the world. (Full disclosure: Reason's Nick Gillespie is on the board of IBB.)
Gillespie talked with Al Mutar about IBB's new book, Untold Stories of the Middle East, which celebrates entrepreneurs in Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere whom IBB has given startup grants; how the October 7 attacks on Israel and f...
2024-10-231h 03The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieMeghan McCain: 'Trump Didn't Break My Brain. What's Your Excuse?'Today's guest is Meghan McCain, political commentator, former co-host of ABC's The View, and host of the podcast Citizen McCain.
Reason's Billy Binion talks with her about the changing GOP, bias in corporate media, the 2024 election, and what it's like to be a non-MAGA, nonpopulist member of today's Republican Party.
0:00- Introduction
0:21- Ad: St. John's College
1:36- Libertarians vs. the McCains
3:33- Being a non-MAGA, non-populist conservative
6:56- Obama lecturing black male voters
9:38- Kamala Harris' terrible press strategy
11:07- Meghan McCain does not have TDS
19:14...
2024-10-161h 16The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieWill Trump or Harris Win the Working-Class Vote?
Today's guests are Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, author of Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP, and American Enterprise Institute fellow Ruy Teixeira, coauthor most recently of Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes.
Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with them about the presidential election, how the working class has become the most important—yet most neglected—part of the electorate, and whether libertarians have anyone to root for in national politics.
0:00- Ad: St. John's College
1:17- Introduction
2:0...
2024-10-091h 26The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieBilly Binion: Civil Liberties Don't Just Belong to the Rich
Today's guest is Billy Binion, who joined Reason's staff in 2019 after stints at an opera company (!) and as a contractor for NATO (!!). He has written blockbuster stories about the abuse of power by cops and courts, and he just produced an incredible documentary about a citizen journalist in Laredo, Texas, who sued the city after they arrested her for reporting on a couple of controversial local stories. It's a case that could have major First Amendment implications for independent reporters.
Nick Gillespie talks with Binion about what drives his interests in such topics as civil asset forfeiture, SW...
2024-10-021h 13The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieJeremy Horpedahl: Are Millennials and Gen Z Actually Worse Off Than Their Parents?You've probably heard some variation of the notion that Millennials and Gen Z are going to be the first generations of Americans to have lower standards of living than their parents. It's too expensive to go to college, to buy a house, to have kids—you name it, goes this line of thinking. Today's guest has good news: Younger Americans are actually doing better than Gen X was at the same stage, and they are in the same ballpark as Baby Boomers when you adjust for inflation and population.
"Millennials and Gen Z have dramatically more wealth than...
2024-09-251h 12The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieKat Timpf: An Unapologetic Libertarian at Fox News
Today's guest is Kat Timpf, whose new book is I Used To Like You Until…:(How Binary Thinking Divides Us). In a totally insane election season, this just might be the most important book of the year. A sequel of sorts to 2023's You Can't Joke About That: Why Everything Is Funny, Nothing Is Sacred, and We're All in This Together, it seeks to show how politics overwhelms common decency and basic logic.
Timpf, who co-hosts the super-popular Gutfeld! late-night show, explains to Reason's Nick Gillespie why she tells some people she works in porn instead of at F...
2024-09-1845 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieMike Pesca: How NPR Lost Its Way
Today's guest is Mike Pesca, who publishes The Gist podcast every weekday. The Gist, which launched in 2014, is a tight 30 minutes of news, interviews, and opinions on the biggest issues of the day. Pesca is a veteran of NPR and Slate—experiences that have made him an outspoken critic of legacy media, especially its willingness to overthrow longstanding commitments to objectivity and fairness in pursuit of progressive versions of "moral clarity."
Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with him about his controversial 2021 separation from Slate after he defended a New York Times reporter's use of a racial slur, why once...
2024-09-111h 07The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieNick Cave: I See the World as 'Systemically Beautiful'Today's guest is Nick Cave, the music legend who emerged from Australia in the 1980s. Over the years, Cave has written screenplays, soundtracks, and novels, and has collaborated with a diverse range of artists, from Johnny Cash and Kylie Minogue to P.J. Harvey and Neko Case.
Known for his brooding and meditative mystique, he coauthored the bestselling Faith, Hope, and Carnage in 2022, receiving plaudits for openly discussing his struggles with heroin addiction, his lifelong fascination with Jesus Christ, and his artistic development. Since 2018, he's published The Red Hand Files, where he answers readers' questions in a ma...
2024-08-281h 08The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieCharles Gasparino: 'Woke' Hypocrisy Is Hurting Businesses
Charles Gasparino is a senior correspondent for the Fox Business Network and a columnist for the New York Post. He's also the author of the new book Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America. Gasparino analyzes major missteps by companies such as Anheuser-Busch, Target, and Disney and explores how CEOs and top management become entranced by things like stakeholder capitalism; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; and environmental, social, and governance plans to the detriment of customer satisfaction, public relations, and the bottom line.
Four years out from the COVID-19 pandemic and th...
2024-08-141h 18The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieChase Oliver: Q&A With the Controversial Libertarian Party CandidateToday's guest is the Libertarian Party's candidate for president Chase Oliver, who wants to phase out Social Security and Medicare for younger Americans, create a 21st century version of Ellis Island, and get the government out of bedrooms and boardrooms. A longtime antiwar activist, he also wants to bring American troops home and slash the Pentagon's budget.
Despite such ultralibertarian positions, a number of high-profile Libertarian Party figures and state parties have declined to endorse him because he is not part of the national party's Mises Caucus and he believes that the nonsurgical transitioning of minors should be...
2024-08-071h 09
Uncertain ThingsThe Agony of Abundance (w/ Nick Gillespie)Nick Gillespie — editor at large at the libertarian institution that is Reason Magazine (and host of The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie) — comes on the pod for an IRL conversation about 'The Agony of Abundance,' the paradoxical state in which we’re more prosperous, yet more dissatisfied, than ever. We discuss the negative narratives peddled by the media — a misdirection that’s untethering us from reality — and debate the limitations libertarianism and liberal thinking in an ever-more tribal world. And, before we go, we dive into psychedelics and whether they’re really worth all the fuss.Uncertain Things...
2024-08-021h 55The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieRandy Barnett: Originalism, Obamacare, and the Libertarian MovementToday's guest is libertarian legal giant Randy Barnett, who has just published his memoir, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist. Currently a law professor at Georgetown, Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with Barnett about his days as a prosecutor in Chicago, how he helped create the legal philosophy of originalism, what it was like arguing medical marijuana and Obamacare cases at the Supreme Court, and what he learned from anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard. They also discuss why he thinks the libertarian movement needs an intellectual reboot and how his working-class, Jewish upbringing in Calumet City, Illinois, remains c...
2024-07-311h 21The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieCorey DeAngelis: The School Choice Wave Sweeping AmericaThis week's guest on The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie is school choice activist Corey DeAngelis, whose provocative new book is The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools. A senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and a former education policy analyst at the Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes Reason magazine), Corey has been called "the most effective school choice advocate since Milton Friedman."
His new book explains why K-12 education failed so badly before and during the COVID pandemic and how to fix it once and for all by making the...
2024-07-171h 13The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieEric Brakey: How Libertarians Can Attain Political PowerToday's guest is Eric Brakey, the new executive director of The Free State Project, a nonprofit that has been working since 2001 to get small-government diehards to move to New Hampshire and make the Granite State a stronghold for libertarian ideas. Prior to becoming head of the Free State Project, Brakey was a Republican state senator in Maine, where he authored successful legislation that expanded gun rights, legalized over-the-counter birth control, and enacted Right To Try legislation. Reason's Nick Gillespie talks to Brakey about the state of the libertarian movement, how Ron Paul and Young Americans for Liberty shaped his wor...
2024-07-1039 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieAndy Mills: Quitting The New York Times and Making The Witch Trials of J.K. RowlingThis week's guest is Andy Mills, the co-creator of Reflector, a new documentary podcast. Reflector's early episodes delve into controversial treatments for alcoholism and the free speech implications of the trial of rapper Young Thug, whose lyrics are being used by prosecutors to build a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) case. Mills is a legend in podcasting circles. He helped create The New York Times podcast The Daily, one of the most listened-to shows on the planet, and he produced the wildly popular and controversial The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling for The Free Press. Reason's N...
2024-07-031h 15The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieMike Rowe: Make America Stand for Something Again
Today's guest is Mike Rowe, the podcaster, former host of Dirty Jobs, and star of Something To Stand For, an unabashedly patriotic film in which he tells unknown stories about legendary figures in American history. Something To Stand For will be in theaters from June 27th through the 4th of July, and will be available online afterward. Reason's Nick Gillespie and Rowe talk about the decline of patriotism and trust in experts over the past 50 years, the necessity of knowing history and your neighbors, and how developing gratitude may lead to a social renaissance even in the midst of po...
2024-06-2650 minThe Reason Interview With Nick GillespieGlenn Loury: Tales of Sex, Drugs, and CapitalismMy guest today is economist and podcaster Glenn Loury, whose new memoir is titled Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. Born in 1948 and raised working-class in Chicago's predominantly African American South Side, Loury tells a story of self-invention, ambition, hard work, addiction, and redemption that channels Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, Richard Wright's Native Son, Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, and Milton Friedman's Capitalism & Freedom. The first tenured black economist at Harvard, Loury emerged in the 1980s as a ubiquitous commenter on race and class and was offered a post in the Reagan administration. Then a series of scandal...
2024-06-121h 07The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieGlenn Greenwald: Defund Israel and Free Assange
Today's guest is maverick journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose work publicizing Edward Snowden's revelations of ubiquitous and illegal surveillance of Americans helped The Guardian win a Pulitzer Prize. Greenwald now hosts the nightly news show System Update on Rumble and maintains an active presence on X (formerly Twitter). Reason's Nick Gillespie and Greenwald talked about the failing fortunes of The Intercept, the investigative website he co-founded in 2014 and had an acrimonious break with in 2020, the Israel/Gaza War, student protests on campuses, legacy media's obsession with disinformation ad Russian interference in the 2016 elect
2024-05-291h 28The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieKat Murti: How To End the Drug War for Good
Today's guest is Kat Murti, the new executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), the country's oldest and most influential student group challenging the war on drugs. Before taking the helm at SSDP, Kat was a longtime staffer at the libertarian Cato Institute, a founder of Feminists for Liberty, and an SSDP chapter head at the University of California, Berkeley, where she attended undergrad. Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with Murti about the role that young people in particular can play in ending prohibition, why marijuana has yet to be legalized at the federal level, and whether Donald Trum...
2024-05-151h 13The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieRob Long: God is Good, Drugs Are BetterToday's guest is comedy writer Rob Long, who served as a writer for and producer of the great sitcom Cheers for years, writes the weekly Martini Shot commentary, and cohosts the GLoP Culture podcast with Jonah Goldberg and John Podhoretz. He is a columnist for Commentary and a cofounder of Ricochet, the online community and podcast platform. At a live event in New York City, Reason's Nick Gillespie spoke with Long about whether Hollywood is out of ideas, what it's like being a libertarian-leaning conservative in a very progressive industry, and the role that psychedelics have played in his creative pro...
2024-05-011h 00The Reason Interview With Nick GillespieFord Fischer: Why You Should Surveil the State
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 radicals across the political spectrum. They upload it to YouTube and elsewhere, and then let viewers draw their own conclusions. His coverage has been licensed worldwide and appears regularly on networks ranging from CNN to Fox News to NBC. Fischer's YouTube and Facebook channels routinely get demonetized...
2024-04-241h 04
FAIR PerspectivesLiberty, Individualism, and Identity with Nick GillespieOur guest this week is Nick Gillespie. Nick is an editor at large at Reason, the Libertarian magazine of free minds and free markets and host of The reason Interview with Nick Gillespie. He serves on the board for Ideas Beyond Borders, and is the co author with Matt Welch of 'The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America'We discuss what Libertarianism is and is not, the relationship to anarchism, the role of the state in an ideal society, the lack of a unifying social or political narrative, libertarianism successes in...
2022-09-271h 37
Infinite LoopsNick Gillespie — The Lou Reed of LibertarianismNick Gillespie is the host of the Reason Interview and an editor at large at Reason. Nick is one of the most interesting libertarian thinkers in America, and has been described by the New York Times as being to libertarianism "what Lou Reed is to rock 'n' roll, the quintessence of its outlaw spirit". Important Links: Nick's Substack Nick's Twitter Nick's Podcast Reason Show Notes: Is libertarianism dead? Saying what you think The case for rational optimism Labels and empathy President Nixon, the Great...
2022-09-151h 29
The Payroll PodcastThe Future of Global Payroll with Danny GillespieNick Day is joined on The Payroll Podcast sofa by Danny Gillespie, President, Global Managed Payroll at Safeguard Global.Danny has more than 20 years of operational experience, from working at pre-revenue startups to Fortune 100 global enterprises. However, in his current role at Safeguard Global, Dannie oversees client implementation, global service delivery, client relationship management and partner management teams.For those not familiar, Safeguard Global Pay employees everywhere with one agile payroll solution. They help companies to Streamline payroll processing across currencies, languages, time zones and customs in over 150 countries, processing over 2 million payslips per year, h...
2022-07-1141 min
Dialogues with Richard ReevesNick Gillespie on canceling yourselfWhat does “cancel culture” really mean, and how big a problem is it? Nick Gillespie, editor at large at Reason, has given these questions more thought than most. Nick is one of the leading lights of libertarian public intellectual life, and just wrote an essay, “Self-Cancellation, Deplatforming, and Censorship” that we dig into here. Nick is worried about the shift towards censorship in politics, in our organizations, including corporations, and in our own lives. We differ on whether the problem is more personal or political, but in the end we do agree that a healthy liberal culture is one that wel...
2021-10-181h 11
The Psychology PodcastNick Gillespie || Libertarianism, Soft Parenting, and Cancel CultureToday it’s great to have Nick Gillespie on the podcast. Nick is a libertarian journalist who is currently an editor at large at Reason. A two-time finalist for digital National Magazine Awards, Gillespie’s work has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, Salon, Time.com, Marketplace, and basically any other publication that you’re ever going to read. The Daily Beast named Nick one of “The Right’s Top 25 Journalists”, calling him “clear headed, brainy…among the foremost libertarians in America.” Topi...
2021-09-2356 min
Right Now with Stephen KentE31: Nick Gillespie on what Nicki Minaj's politics and Allen Ginsberg tell us about Cancel CultureWhy are some people targeted by Cancel Culture and others are ignored? Will free speech and opinion ever be able to exist peacefully on the internet?On the latest episode of "Right Now with Stephen Kent," Stephen sits down with Gothix and Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine to discuss why some people become prime targets for Cancel Culture; the ongoing battle for free speech on social media and across the internet; what the public reception of Allen Ginsberg's famed "Howl" reveals about censorship today; and if and how we can actually triumph over Cancel Culture and attacks...
2021-09-2348 min
Right Now with Stephen KentE31: E31: Nick Gillespie on what Nicki Minaj's politics and Allen Ginsberg tell us about Cancel CultureWhy are some people targeted by Cancel Culture and others are ignored? Will free speech and opinion ever be able to exist peacefully on the internet?On the latest episode of "Right Now with Stephen Kent," Stephen sits down with Gothix and Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine to discuss why some people become prime targets for Cancel Culture; the ongoing battle for free speech on social media and across the internet; what the public reception of Allen Ginsberg's famed "Howl" reveals about censorship today; and if and how we can actually triumph over Cancel Culture and attacks on...
2021-09-2348 min
The Great AntidoteNick Gillespie on IndependentsSend us a textNick Gillespie, author, journalist, and former editor-in-chief at Reason joins us this week to discuss libertarianism, elections, voting, and his book Declaration of Independents. Support the showNever miss another AdamSmithWorks update.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
2021-05-271h 02
We Are Libertarians213: Democratic Populism -with Nick GillespieListen to the full episode here:
https://briannichols.fireside.fm/democratic-populuism
As we discussed on Friday with Jack Hunter, Donald Trump proved that there was an untapped market within the GOP that a persona like he could take advantage of - populism.
However, that populism isn’t exclusive to the GOP, as the ascendance of "democratic socialists" like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has show the Democratic Party just as malleable to the changing political winds.
Nick Gillespie from Reason returns to the program to outline the implications of said democratic populism, but also to the causes that have go...
2021-03-1746 min
The Brian Nichols Show213: Democratic Populism -with Nick Gillespie
As we discussed on Friday with Jack Hunter, Donald Trump proved that there was an untapped market within the GOP that a persona like he could take advantage of - populism.
However, that populism isn't exclusive to the GOP, as the ascendance of "democratic socialists" like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has show the Democratic Party just as malleable to the changing political winds.
Nick Gillespie from Reason returns to the program to outline the implications of said democratic populism, but also to the causes that have gotten the Democratic Party to this point...
2021-03-1746 min
New PerceptionsSpecial Guest: Nick Gillespie on Psychedelics, Culture, Politics and moreJoin Editor-in-Chief Dr. Tyler Kjorvestadof The Journal of Psychedelic Psychiatry as he discusses Psychedelics, Culture, and Politics with Special Guest Nick Gillespie.
Nick Gillespie received his Ph.D. in English Literature from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1996. He is a libertarian journalist for Reason magazine where he has worked since 1993. He has previously served as the publication’s Editor-in-Chief from 2000-2008 and then transitioned to Editor-in-Chief of Reason.com and Reason TV from 2008-2017. He currently serves as Editor-at-Large for Reason. He is the co-author with his Reason colleague Matt Welch of the book Th...
2020-05-201h 03