The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

Today's episode 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 the strikes by Hollywood writers and actors and the guest was Rob Long, whose long and storied career in the entertainment industry includes stints writing and show running for the classic sitcom Cheers, among many other things. He's also a longtime contributor to National Review, a columnist for Commentary, a co-creator of the online community and podcast platform Ricochet, and the host of the weekly radio commentary Martini Shot.

Zach Weissmueller and I talked with Long about how the studios and streaming platforms like Netflix brought most of their problems on themselves; whether fears of artificial intelligence taking over Hollywood are overblown (spoiler alert: they are); why studios and production companies refuse to create more mass-audience content like the Roseanne reboot and Top Gun: Maverick; and why Rob believes we are in what he calls an "age of blunder," where really smart people in charge make really terrible decisions on everything from COVID-19 to foreign policy to the creation and distribution of TV shows and movies.

Previous appearance:

• How Rob Long Went From Cheers to National Review to LSD

Today's sponsors:

• BetterHelp. Are you at your best? Working with a therapist can help you get closer to the best version of you—because when you feel empowered, you're more prepared to take on everything life throws at you. If you're thinking of giving therapy a try, BetterHelp is a great option. It's convenient, flexible, affordable, and entirely online. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. If you want to live a more empowered life, therapy can get you there. Visit BetterHelp.com/TRI today to get 10 percent off your first month.
• Why We Can't Have Nice Things. A six-part Reason magazine podcast series about the frustrating and foolish aspects of American trade policy that make everyday items more expensive. From last year's sudden shortages of baby formula to the Jones Act and President Lyndon Johnson's infamous "chicken war," host Eric Boehm sits down with industry experts and libertarian policy wonks to explore how these counterproductive rules got made—and explains why they can be so difficult to undo.

The post Rob Long: Welcome to the Age of Blunder in Public Health, Foreign Policy, and…Hollywood appeared first on Reason.com.

What does Kim Kardashian have in common with Leonardo Da Vinci?

Much more than you might have ever guessed, says Tara Isabella Burton, author of the new book Self-Made: Creating Our Identities From Da Vinci to the Kardashians. As in her previous work Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, Tara explores the amazing and ever-increasing freedom we have to define our identities and all the complications, problems, and possibilities that come along with greater choice.

We talk about how figures as different as Frederick Douglass, Oscar Wilde, and Clara Bow exemplify aspects of self-fashioning; whether Kim, Kris, or Caitlyn Jenner is the ultimate Kardashian when it comes to reinvention; and how traditional and avant-garde cultures mix uneasily but inevitably in a free society.

Today's sponsors:

• BetterHelp. Are you at your best? Working with a therapist can help you get closer to the best version of you—because when you feel empowered, you're more prepared to take on everything life throws at you. If you're thinking of giving therapy a try, BetterHelp is a great option. It's convenient, flexible, affordable, and entirely online. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. If you want to live a more empowered life, therapy can get you there. Visit BetterHelp.com/TRI today to get 10 percent off your first month.
• Why We Can't Have Nice Things. A six-part Reason magazine podcast series about the frustrating and foolish aspects of American trade policy that make everyday items more expensive. From last year's sudden shortages of baby formula to the Jones Act and President Lyndon Johnson's infamous "chicken war," host Eric Boehm sits down with industry experts and libertarian policy wonks to explore how these counterproductive rules got made—and explains why they can be so difficult to undo.

The post Tara Isabella Burton: Self-Made, From Da Vinci to the Kardashians appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's episode is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel.

The guest this week was actor and filmmaker Alex Winter, whose new documentary is The YouTube Effect, an in-depth look at the ways in which that video site has radically altered how we produce and consume politics, culture, and ideas. In past documentaries, Winter investigated Napster and its users; told the story of Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road dark web site; and profiled the life and legacy of rock musician and free expression activist Frank Zappa.

In The YouTube Effect, Winter traces the rise of YouTube from its launch in 2005 to its status as the second-most-visited website on the planet, behind only its corporate owner, Google. My co-host Zach Weissmueller and I talk with him about his concerns about polarization and disinformation in a lively and spirited conversation about the future of free speech and creative expression.

The post Alex Winter: Is The YouTube Effect Good or Bad on Balance? appeared first on Reason.com.

My guest today is comedian Doug Stanhope. No performer is as idiosyncratic and outspoken about their politics and their personal habits as Stanhope, who dresses exclusively in Goodwill cast-offs and has written can't-put-down books about everything from helping his terminally ill mother commit suicide to celebrating the on-the-road debauchery that ended in him getting married.

Stanhope has been entertaining audiences with his bad taste and unapologetically libertarian tirades for nearly 30 years. Back in the early 2000s, he cohosted The Man Show with Joe Rogan, including an episode where he entered a boxing ring against disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding and took a bit of a beating.

I caught up with Stanhope at FreedomFest, an annual event held this year in Memphis, where he performed a characteristically uncensored set that had the audience alternately groaning and laughing. We talked about why he's dreading the presidential election season, how he survived COVID's effect on touring, what he likes about psychedelics, and why he prefers creative independence over mainstream acceptance.

Today's sponsor:

• Why We Can't Have Nice Things. A six-part Reason magazine podcast series about the frustrating and foolish aspects of American trade policy that make everyday items more expensive. From last year's sudden shortages of baby formula to the Jones Act and President Lyndon Johnson's infamous "chicken war," host Eric Boehm sits down with industry experts and libertarian policy wonks to explore how these counterproductive rules got made—and explains why they can be so difficult to undo.

The post Doug Stanhope: 'Nothing Stands Above Everything Else. Everything Annoys Me Equally.' appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's episode is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel.

A recent poll found that 44 percent of Millennials want to criminalize misgendering people, showcasing a censorial attitude that has been building among some young people for years. Many Millennials also feel left behind economically, especially compared to baby boomers and Gen Xers.

Can Millennials and boomers ever get along? Or are they creating a generational gap every bit as vast as the one between boomers and their parents? 

Today's guests are Reason Senior Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown, who reported on the poll and writes about generational issues, and psychologist Jean Twenge, whose new book is Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents–and What They Mean for America's Future. 

We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, including the central role of technology in changing how we live and how we interact with people younger and older than us.

The post Jean Twenge and Elizabeth Nolan Brown: What Do Millennials Want? appeared first on Reason.com.

Before Matt Taibbi was sparring with Democratic members of Congress on Capitol Hill earlier this year over the Twitter Files, he was a darling of the progressive left, appearing regularly on shows like Democracy Now! and others hosted by Bill Moyers and Rachel Maddow.

Though he was always a fierce critic of the Democratic establishment, the rise of Donald Trump suddenly meant that anyone nominally left of center—including progressive journalists like Taibbi—was expected to support Hillary Clinton unconditionally. So when he attacked her as a sellout, argued that the Russiagate narrative was mostly bullshit, and equated the manipulative tactics of right and left media personalities, progressives gave him the cold shoulder. Elected Democrats started treating him like a puppet of the right.

In 2020, Taibbi started publishing his work on Substack and quickly became one of the platform's most popular writers, earning far more than he ever did at Rolling Stone, where he had been chief political reporter. He became even more of a pariah by publishing exhaustive reports that documented how the government sought to control what was said on Twitter about COVID-19 and efforts by Russia to influence U.S. elections. Congressional Democrats unconvincingly pilloried him as a fake journalist, an apologist for Vladimir Putin, and a stooge for Elon Musk.

I caught up with Taibbi at FreedomFest, an annual gathering held this year in Memphis, to talk about the new challenges to free speech, why legacy media is dying, and how identity politics are poisoning political discourse.

The post Matt Taibbi: How the Left Lost Its Mind and Legacy Media Its Audience appeared first on Reason.com.

This is the audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern.

A recent House of Representatives committee report entitled "The Proximal Origin of a Cover-Up" exposes how Anthony Fauci and other leading government officials pressured researchers and the media into dismissing the COVID lab leak theory.

Acclaimed science writer Matt Ridley, co-author with Alina Chan of Viral: The Search for Origin of Covid-19, explains how the interference played out and why it matters to the future of medicine, politics, and an open society.

The post Matt Ridley: Why Did Anthony Fauci et al. Suppress the Lab Leak Theory? appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Mike Rowe, the bestselling author, Emmy winner, and podcaster best known for his stint hosting The Discovery Channel's long-running Dirty Jobs, where he performed the sort of work we all rely on but don't want to think about too much.

From cleaning septic tanks to putting hot tar on roofs to disposing of medical waste, he's done it all—and loves to talk about the value of the hard, honest work that he thinks is devalued by a society fixated on sending everyone to college. I caught up with Rowe at FreedomFest, an annual gathering held this year in Memphis. 

We talked about how his mikeroweWORKS Foundation matches young people interested in learning trades with employers dying for applicants, why men continue to fall further behind women in school and work, and how Rowe's booze brand Knobel Spirits, named after his maternal grandfather, is fueling his nonprofit's impact.

The post Mike Rowe: The Missing 7.2 Million Male Workers appeared first on Reason.com.

This is the audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the government's response to it cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars and resulted in a major hit to global freedom. What should governments, private companies, and individuals do differently next time disaster strikes?

Alec Stapp, co-founder of the Institute for Progress, has assembled a team devoted to analyzing and applying the lessons of the pandemic. The institute has published papers arguing that Operation Warp Speed was a success that should be duplicated, for greater investment in indoor filtration, and for better biosurveillance. Stapp joined Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe for a live conversation about how to prevent the next global catastrophe.

The post Alec Stapp: Give Trump Credit for Operation Warp Speed appeared first on Reason.com.

Over the past quarter-century, Jonah Goldberg has made his name as one of the most provocative and unapologetic conservative journalists around. He was the editor of National Review Online for years before leaving over differences related to Donald Trump and he's penned bestselling books such as Liberal Fascism and Suicide of the West. He was a Fox News contributor for years, resigning in 2021 in protest of the channel's airing of Tucker Carlson's documentary Patriot Purge.

Along with former Weekly Standard editor Steve Hayes (who also resigned from Fox over the Carlson documentary), he founded The Dispatch in 2019. He also hosts the popular podcast The Remnant.

At a recent event in New York City, I talked with him about the fracturing of the political right into groups such as national conservatives, integralists, Never Trumpers, anti-Trumpers, and more. We also discussed the 2024 election and whether libertarians and conservatives can get along.

Previous appearances:

Jonah Goldberg on Why He Left National Review, Dislikes Sean Hannity and Seb Gorka, and Is Inching Toward Libertarianism, December 4, 2019

Is Jonah Goldberg Turning Into a Libertarian? It Sure Sounds Like It., July 5, 2017

Jonah Goldberg on The Tyranny of Cliches, Creating NRO, and the Firing of John Derbyshire, May 31, 2012

The post Jonah Goldberg: A NeverTrumper's Take on the 2024 Election appeared first on Reason.com.