The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

Billionaire Charles Koch and co-author Brian Hooks discuss their new book, Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World, leaving political partisanship behind, and learning from critics.

"From the moment we're born, we're surrounded by textiles," says Virginia Postrel, author of the new book The Fabric of Civilization. "It's not just our clothes, it's our blankets, it's our curtains. It's our bandages. It's our duct tape! There are more textiles than you can ever think about surrounding us. And we don't think about them very much."

Writer and filmmaker Shelby Steele went to Ferguson to investigate the meaning of Brown's death and the reaction that it inspired. His new documentary, a collaboration with his son Eli, is called What Killed Michael Brown?

Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute who analyzes budget issues, walks Nick Gillespie through Trump's rotten fiscal record and Biden's insane wish list, explains how bipartisanship is just another word for more spending, and why even a divided government can't stop the red ink from flowing anymore.

Don't expect the 2020 election to settle anything for long, says Stanford's Morris P. Fiorina. We're in an age of "unstable majorities" because the Democrats and Republicans don't represent most Americans and constantly overreach when they gain power. The result? Power keeps bouncing back and forth between them. A Biden or Trump win won't change that dynamic.

Forty years ago, PBS (of all networks) gave the libertarian economist Milton Friedman hours in prime time for Free To Choose, an unapologetic defense of why capitalism was both morally and pragmatically superior to socialism. The visionary producer behind the series was Bob Chitester, a hardcore free marketer who ran the PBS affiliate in Erie, Pennsylvania, and wanted to bring libertarian ideas to mainstream audiences.

Ailing from a long bout with cancer, Chitester is contemplating his own mortality and how American society has changed since Free To Choose first aired 40 years ago. He's proud that the program remains popular online but, like Friedman, feels its analysis is incomplete. "Power is really something we have to factor into our thinking…The desire of humans to tell other humans what to do—when you couple that with equality, boy, you've got a recipe for constant problems in defending a classical liberal society."

Former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser, the subject of a new documentary called Mighty Ira, tells Nick Gillespie that in an age of cancel culture and wokeness, he's worried not just about the future of free expression but the future of the ACLU, too. In recent years, the venerable group has become less devoted to protecting speech regardless of its content.

Nick Gillespie speaks with Corey DeAngelis, the director of school choice for Reason Foundation, about why COVID-19 will almost certainly spur long-lasting interest in school choice, progressive contempt for student-centered reform, Joe Biden's open antagonism toward charter schools, and whether Donald Trump's warm embrace of choice is actually a mixed blessing for reformers.

Scott Barry Kaufman is a psychologist, podcaster, and the bestselling author of the new book Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization, which updates Abraham Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs and his theories of personal fulfillment for a time of global pandemic, racial unrest, and polarized politics.

Jo Jorgensen, who is on the ballot in every state, is preaching a message of self-empowerment and autonomy that she says attracts mostly independents and people who are getting politicized for the first time.