The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

After nearly 3 million deaths worldwide (and almost 600,000 in the United States), it looks like the end of the Covid-19 pandemic may be within site as vaccines proliferate. In "The Last Pandemic," the cover story of the new issue of Reason, Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey argues that technological breakthroughs and policy progress mean humanity may never again have to endure such as disaster. He tells Nick Gillespie that while scientists and medical researchers rose to the occasion, governments and bureaucrats remain a sticking point in dealing with the next pandemic.

Singapore-born journalist and activist Melissa Chen Chen talks with Nick Gillespie about how an obsessive focus on identity politics led the media to keep insisting without evidence that the murder of massage parlor workers in Atlanta was a hate crime against Asian Americans; why Hollywood is changing its products to please censors in the Chinese government; and how the best way to counter radicalization is with speech and information rather than repression.

Has anyone lived a more interesting, influential, and inspiring life than Stewart Brand? Born in 1938 and educated at Stanford...

Peter Suderman, features editor at Reason, joins Nick Gillespie to discuss his cover story in the new issue of the magazine, which is titled "Josh Hawley's Toxic Populism," a deep dive into the anti-libertarian platform of the Missouri senator who is one of the Republican Party's rising stars. They also walk through the nearly $2 trillion of new spending—passed along strict party lines—that is about to be signed into law by President Joe Biden.

In Welfare for the Rich, veteran journalist Lisa Conyers and libertarian entrepreneur Phil Harvey show how millionaire "farmers," billionaire team owners, and filthy rich oil-and-gas-and-wind-power barons lobby Congress, rewrite zoning laws, and plunder the public fisc like it's a bodily function. They also outline for Nick Gillespie realistic and effective ways to fight back and level a playing field that benefits the people who need the least help from government.

Nick Gillespie speaks with Jason L. Riley, the author of a new documentary and forthcoming biography of 90-year-old economist Thomas Sowell, who has written widely and deeply about race, child development, education, and politics. A fellow at The Manhattan Institute and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Riley explains that Sowell's empirically driven research and his fearless engagement with even the most controversial topics are exactly what our world needs more of.

Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic talks with Nick Gillespie about out-of-control wokeness and political correctness on the right and the left, and how it's choking off meaningful public debates about race, gender, crime, Covid, and many other pressing topics. Friedersdorf believes that increasingly strident ideological orthodoxies and the FDA's relative failure in rolling out vaccines quickly and efficiently present opportunities for libertarians to reach more people with messages of individualism, common sense, and freedom.

The 33-year-old successor to Justin Amash's House seat says his party has abandoned limited government, economic freedom, and individualism.

The anthropologist and brand consultant Grant McCracken tells Nick Gillespie we need fewer blanket accusations of racism and more mutual respect and compassion. His latest book, The New Honor Code, is a rich text, drawing from McCracken's academic research into Elizabethan England, his abiding curiosity about popular culture, and his work in corporate America. Few other thinkers can distill lessons for the future from figures as diverse as 16th-century English diplomat Thomas Elyot, Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and Canadian musician and Elon Musk partner Grimes.

Over a dozen state legislatures are considering laws that would massively expand publicly funded school choice and De Angelis says that the pandemic ultimately may accomplish what decades of white papers have failed to deliver: a switch to a system in which parents rather than bureaucrats decide where their kids go to school.