The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

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 administration to push for "de-escalation" between Israel and Hamas. Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a D.C. think tank that promotes a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. He is the former head of the National Iranian American Council and the author of several books, including A Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S.

Parsi says that although the Biden administration is "well aware" of "escalation risks" that might lead to a broader regional war, talk of de-escalation remains off-limits. HuffPost reported late last week that it has obtained State Department memos instructing employees to avoid terms like "de-escalation/ceasefire," "end to violence/bloodshed," and "restoring calm" in press materials and statements.

Is de-escalation feasible after Hamas slaughtered Israeli civilians and continues to hold more than 200 hostages? How should Israel respond to the worst terrorist attack in its history? What can U.S. policymakers do to make the prospect of a bigger war less likely?

We discussed these questions and more with Parsi. We also revisited the topic of domestic reactions to the Hamas attack, namely the comments of a Cornell professor who claimed to be "exhilirated" by it.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

"Biden refuses to talk 'ceasefire' even though it could prevent a regional war," by Trita Parsi

"Stunning State Department Memo Warns Diplomats: No Gaza 'De-Escalation' Talk," by Akbar Shahid Ahmed

"Source: Iran warns Israel through UN against ground offensive in Gaza," by Barak Ravid

"Iran says 'preemptive action' by resistance front expected in coming hours," by Reuters

"Talks fail to let aid reach Gaza; Israel evacuates Lebanon border," by Nidal Al-Mughrabi, Dan Williams and Yusri Mohamed

"Biden is expected to request $100 billion for Israel, Ukraine and other crises," by Karoun Demirjian

The post Trita Parsi: Is De-escalation Feasible in the Middle East? appeared first on Reason.com.

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 with him at the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference, held in Denver this June, where he participated in a "roast" of the psychedelic scene. Go here for "The Psychedelic Renaissance Is Here," Reason's 30-minute documentary about that event and the larger psychedelic movement.

Mauss, who also hosts a science podcast called Here We Are, shared his thoughts about the mainstreaming of psychedelic drugs, the surprising pace of legalization efforts, and the role that Joe Rogan, Aaron Rodgers, and other public figures play in normalizing psychedelics and promoting cognitive liberty.

Today's sponsor:

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The post Shane Mauss: Finding the Humor in Psychedelics appeared first on Reason.com.

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. Why would Hamas provoke what was certain to be a devastating response from the powerful Israeli military? What is likely to happen next in an Israel-Hamas war that threatens to spill far beyond the region? And what, if anything, should be America's involvement? 

To explore these questions, Reason's Liz Wolfe and I spoke with Max Abrahms, a political science professor at Northeastern University and author of Rules for Rebels: The Science of Victory in Militant History, a lengthy study of terrorism and insurgency. 

"The first thing smart militants do is recognize that civilian attacks are a recipe for political failure," writes Abrahms. "You might say that the first rule for rebels is to not use terrorism at all."

While he's called Hamas's attack a "major strategic mistake" for the Palestinian cause, he told Reason that their objective might not be to secure autonomy for Palestine at all in the near term but rather an attempt to position "itself as a leader in the larger global Sunni terrorist movement" by provoking a violent response that will galvanize jihadists from around the world to join them. 

We analyzed the likely outcomes of Israel's response to the terrorist attack, reacted to statements from GOP politicians like Lindsey Graham who has called for America to bomb Iran if U.S. hostages are killed in Gaza, discussed the principle of US military noninterventionism as articulated by Ron Paul in clips that have circulated social media in the wake of the attack, and the, frankly, insane reactions from American leftists who celebrated Hamas' violent attack as an act of "decolonization."

The post Max Abrahms: Historic Escalation in the Israel-Hamas War appeared first on Reason.com.

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 writings of figures from antiquity through Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. to show how to reawaken classical liberal virtues of mutual respect and tolerance in a world seemingly hell-bent on putting politics at the center of human meaning.

We talked about the difference between civility and manners, the need for and limits of civil disobedience, Hamas terrorism and the rules of war, and whether the decline of religion, family, and traditional forms of community spell the end of self-governance. Hudson publishes a Substack called Civic Renaissance, "a newsletter and community dedicated to ennobling our public discourse with the wisdom of the past."

This episode was taped live in New York City as a Reason Speakeasy, a monthly, unscripted conversation with outspoken defenders of free thinking and heterodoxy. Go here to listen to past Speakeasy events and go here to learn about upcoming ones (including one on October 23, featuring Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott discussing their new book, The Canceling of the American Mind). This event was cosponsored by Young Voices, "a nonprofit talent agency and PR firm for a rising generation of heterodox thinkers." Go here to learn more about them.

The post Alexandra Hudson: How Civility Can Save America—and the World appeared first on Reason.com.

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 three states. Similar laws have passed in Louisiana, Texas, Montana, and Arkansas, leading Politico to declare that "A Simple Law Is Doing the Impossible. It's Making the Online Porn Industry Retreat." But the industry is fighting back and won a preliminary injunction against Texas' law.

Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe talked about these developments with Aella, a former OnlyFans star and outspoken libertarian defender of sex workers who leverages her sizable social media following to run sex polls and surveys, the results of which she analyzes and publishes on her blog Knowingless. In this conversation, they discuss Aella's sex surveys, delve into the psychological literature examining online porn consumption, unpack the privacy implications of age verification laws, and talk about a recent debate Aella attended hosted by The Free Press and FIRE about the effects of "the sexual revolution" on American society.

The post Aella: Is Porn Too Pervasive? appeared first on Reason.com.

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 everything, analyzes their negative influence on society, and shows how to confront and defeat them in the name of liberal values of free expression and open inquiry.

Yascha was a prime mover behind the 2020 open letter on "justice and open debate" in Harper's magazine and is one of the most powerful defenders of free speech and the marketplace of ideas at work today.

This interview took place at the Reason Speakeasy, a live, unscripted monthly conversation held in New York City with outspoken defenders of free speech and heterodox thinking. Go here for information about upcoming events.

Today's sponsor:

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The post Yascha Mounk: Avoiding The Identity Trap appeared first on Reason.com.

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 foreign policy, broad agreement on topics like closing the southern border, and some candidates' increased willingness to take direct shots at Trump.

To help sift through the debate, Reason's Liz Wolfe and Zach Weissmuller are joined by Josh Barro, a journalist and political commentator who publishes the newsletter Very Serious and co-hosts the Serious Trouble podcast with attorney Ken White. Barro is a former Republican voter who turned Democrat after Trump's nomination in 2016. 

We discuss Ron DeSantis' proposal to send U.S. troops to Mexico to fight the drug cartels, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy's feud over TikTok, the candidates' scuffle over whether to continue sending military aid to Ukraine, and more. We wrap up with a broader conversation about the 2024 election and what the best-case scenario might look like for libertarians and political independents. 

The post Josh Barro: A Republican Presidential Debate Detached From Reality appeared first on Reason.com.

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 put forth by people like Earth in the Balance author and former Vice President Al Gore.

Lomborg went on to create the Copenhagen Consensus, a think tank that applies cost-benefit analysis to problems facing the global poor and works with Nobel laureates, policymakers, philanthropists, and researchers to develop pragmatic, relatively low-cost solutions to issues such as tuberculosis, malaria, lack of education, and access to food. 

His new book is called Best Things First and it presents what Lomborg says are "the 12 most efficient solutions for the world's poorest people." He argues that for about $35 billion a year—a little more than half of what the U.S. spends annually on humanitarian aid—these policies could save 4.2 million lives and generate an extra $1.1 trillion in value every year.

I caught up with Lomborg in New York City during the latest meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. We talked about Best Things First, his view of the current environmentalist movement, and why politicians and the media continue to fixate on the possibility of a future climate apocalypse rather than helping the global poor in the here and now.

The post Bjorn Lomborg: How Our Climate Fixation Hurts the World's Poor appeared first on Reason.com.

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 most of Europe, Asia, and North America's political leaders forcibly closed businesses and schools in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic became one of the most controversial policies of 2020.

The New York Times in April 2020 designated Sweden "the world's cautionary tale," and President Donald Trump proclaimed that "Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lockdown" as an early wave of COVID deaths hit Sweden harder than its Nordic neighbors.

But to Swedish officials, "it looked like it was other countries that were engaging in a dangerous experiment," writes Cato Institute Senior Fellow Johan Norberg in a policy paper entitled "Sweden during the pandemic: Pariah or paragon?"

Today, Sweden's COVID-19 death rate is not an outlier, and its excess death rate from 2020 to the present is the lowest in Europe.

In a retrospective report on the country's pandemic response, Sweden's public health officials say that they should have more aggressively protected senior citizens and tested and quarantined travelers from COVID hot spots in those early days, but they consider the focus on public health recommendations that people can "follow voluntarily" over coercive lockdowns was "fundamentally correct."

Norberg also points out that Sweden avoided the economic contraction that its neighboring countries suffered, as well as the learning loss experienced in countries that closed schools for months or even years.

The post Johan Norberg: How Sweden Defied Dire COVID Predictions appeared first on Reason.com.

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 suffer from PTSD and related conditions, including substance abuse. The psychedelic renaissance may well sound the death knell for the war on drugs, at least in its current form.

So it makes sense that today's guest is a historian who studies the man who coined the term psychedelic.

Erika Dyck is a professor at the University of Saskatchewan who studies the history of psychedelics with a special interest in the legacy of Humphry Osmond, the British-born psychiatrist who gave Aldous Huxley his first dose of mescaline, and conducted pathbreaking work using LSD to help alcoholics stop drinking. Among Osmond's best-known patients was Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Reason sat down with Dyck at the MAPS Psychedelic Science 2023 conference held in Denver this June, where a reported 13,000 people gathered to talk about all aspects of today's psychedelic renaissance. We talked about why drugs such as MDMA, psilocybin, and LSD are making a comeback; how tensions are rising between indigenous people and medical practitioners; and whether prohibitionists have finally lost the war on drugs.

The post Erika Dyck: Are We Living in a Psychedelic Renaissance? appeared first on Reason.com.