Today'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 Speakeasy, a monthly, unscripted conversation in New York City with outspoken defenders of free thinking and heterodoxy in an age of intellectual conformity and groupthink. (Go here for information on Reason events.) They talked about why Gurri voted for Trump and why he's cautiously optimistic about the next four years.

0:00- Introduction

1:13- Why Gurri voted for Trump

4:46- Trump vs. Harris: Chaos vs. Control

8:40- Trump's first term 11:04- Trump's new coalition

14:33- Is authoritarianism coming to America?

19:00- Attention, Populism & Wild Hair

20:42- Colossal transformation awaits us

34:05- Creating communities of meaning in the digital age

36:22- The transformations enabled by the printing press

38:41- More chaos is coming 43:11- Lessons from Cuba

48:40- Arab Spring and the spark that overthrows a regime

50:37- Short term pessimistic, long term optimistic

Today's Sponsor:

• Video Editor: Ian Keyser

The post Martin Gurri: Political Chaos Brings Colossal Transformation appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Amanda Knox, an activist, writer, and host of the podcast Labyrinths. In 2007, while studying abroad in Italy, Knox was accused of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in what the lead prosecutor claimed was a bizarre sex game gone wrong. Despite mishandled DNA, a coerced confession, and a lack of credible evidence, Knox was convicted and spent nearly four years in an Italian prison before being exonerated in 2015. Her case was a media spectacle that sensationalized every aspect of her life.

Reason's Billy Binion talks with Knox about her views on true crime after her story became one of the biggest examples of the modern era. They also discuss the psychological impact of being imprisoned for something she didn't do; what Knox thinks the U.S. criminal justice system gets right and wrong; and how she reacts to people who still believe she's lying. What's more, she shares a fascinating tidbit about her relationship with the lead prosecutor on her case—something that will be featured more in her new book Free, which is available for preorder.

0:00—Introduction

• Video Editor: Ian Keyser

The post Amanda Knox: 'I Have Felt Utterly Exploited' by True Crime appeared first on Reason.com.

In the wake of massive victories by Donald Trump and Republicans, here's a question worth asking: What does today's GOP really stand for? Longstanding support for free trade and overseas wars seems to have been replaced with tariffs and non-interventionism.

Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis are the authors of The Myth of Left and Right. They argue that the way we talk about the political spectrum misleads and confuses us because it reduces complex special-interest coalitions to one or two issues that really aren't representative of what the parties actually stand for. As a result, they say that the next four years will be as fractious within the GOP (and the Democratic Party too) as the last four.

Today's Sponsor:

• Video Editor: Ian Keyser

The post Hyrum and Verlan Lewis: Stop Buying the 'Left v. Right' Myth appeared first on Reason.com.

Join 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 Keyser

The post Live on Election Night! The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie appeared first on Reason.com.

Musa 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 Arizona, al-Gharbi spoke with Reason's Nick Gillespie about wokeness transforming the college experience, his conversion from Catholicism to atheism to Islam, why black and Latino voters appear to be embracing former President Donald Trump in record numbers, and his highly public cancellation in 2014 after he was attacked by Fox News for criticizing U.S. foreign policy.

0:00— Introduction

Today's sponsor:

• Video Editor: Ian Keyser

The post Musa al-Gharbi: How Woke Elites Became Out of Touch appeared first on Reason.com.

Today'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 fighting in Gaza and Lebanon will affect the region for decades; and what it was like to grow up in Baghdad under Saddam Hussein, various Islamic terrorist groups, and the U.S. occupation. This conversation was taped in front of a live audience in New York.

0:00 - Introduction

1:26 - Untold Stories Of The Middle East

4:20 - Micro grants in the Middle East

6:20 - The hope of Kurdistan

9:00 - Beirut's post-explosion struggles & recovery

11:12 - Oil vs. the entrepreneurial spirit in the Middle East

14:20 - Building a vocabulary of freedom with Ideas Beyond Borders

18:20 - Censorship & internet access in the Middle East

19:39 - Hiring Middle Eastern translators

22:16 - A brief history of political upheaval in the Middle East

30:12 - The 'liberal minority' in Lebanon

33:29 - U.S. intervention in the Middle East

39:45 - Impact of October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel on peace processes in the region 44:00 - Funding schools for girls in Afghanistan

46:05 - The tragedy & hope of Afghanistan: The Graveyard of Empires

49:43 - 'Sanctions Boy': Growing up in 90s Baghdad

59:04 - 'We don't have the privilege to be depressed (about the Middle East)'

1:01:35 - Economic freedom & self-determination restore agency

Previous appearances:

Today's sponsor:

• Video Editor: Ian Keyser

The post Faisal Saeed Al Mutar: Peace In The Middle East Through Capitalism appeared first on Reason.com.

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

Today's sponsors:

• Video Editor: Ian Keyser

The post Meghan McCain: 'Trump Didn't Break My Brain. What's Your Excuse?' appeared first on Reason.com.

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

2:05- Can Kamala Harris win back the working class?

8:55- Party identification is tanking

11:25-- Elite progressive fixations are alienating the working class

15:50- Black & Latino voters are more moderate

17:33- Trump & populism have transformed the GOP

25:05- The Green New Deal was terrible politics

26:23- Does anyone care about overspending anymore?

30:56- The future of unionization

35:49- Populism's appeal to younger voters

39:06- Ad: ZBiotics

40:52- Are we seeing generational realignments?

46:05- Everyone got richer in the last 30 years

47:39- The 'truly disadvantaged' has no real advocates

51:28- Why is neither party working to win big?

55:13- Why has immigration become such a flashpoint?

1:02:49- Why do both parties indulge their nutty fringes?

1:08:17- What about libertarians?

1:18:48- Who will win the 2024 elections?

1:22:00- Are protectionism & heavy spending the new way for both parties?

1:24:09- Have people stopped caring about COVID?

Today's sponsors:

• Video Editor: Ian Keyser

The post Will Trump or Harris Win the Working-Class Vote? appeared first on Reason.com.

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, SWAT teams run amok, and people who get arrested after using unlicensed guns to ward off would-be killers. They discuss how, contrary to most news accounts, today's Supreme Court is less polarized than the country it serves. And they also talk about how Binion's time living in California and Texas back to back gives him a distinct perspective on blue and red America—and insight into what sort of government governs better, if not quite best.

0:00- Ad: St John's College

Today's sponsors:

The post Billy Binion: Civil Liberties Don't Just Belong to the Rich appeared first on Reason.com.

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 Gen X had at the same age, and it's growing fast!," writes Jeremy Horpedahl, a libertarian economist trained at George Mason University who teaches at the University of Central Arkansas. His work, which draws on the Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other non-controversial sources, shows that young Americans are doing well and that economic mobility is the rule rather than the exception.

Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with Horpedahl about why politicians and media sources get basic economics wrong, why it's vital to always adjust for inflation and population growth, and how growing up in the Dakotas gives him a different, more optimistic perspective on things than many in the academy. Horpedahl also analyzes the economic plans of former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. His answers are provocative, to say the least, just like his research.

0:00- Introduction

2:46- Adjusted for inflation' & 'per capita'

6:02- Are Millennials & Gen Z really doomed?

12:57- American homeownership rates

15:00- Delayed 'adulting'

18:59- Housing spending trends

22:08- Why is housing so expensive?

29:32- Ad: Lumen

31:10- Why are Millennials so eager to embrace doomerism?

35:20- How economic growth impact living standards

37:09- U.S. economic freedom, growth & living standards compared to Europe

41:40- Measures of mobility

47:50- How post-COVID inflation skewed our perceptions

53:28- Is inflation our new normal?

55:19- Should we be hoping for divided government?

58:00- Attitudes toward immigration in Arkansas

1:01:19- Benefits of living in 'flyover country'

1:05:04- George Mason economics

1:06:44- Do libertarians blame government too much?

1:10:05- Is there room for optimism for the future?

Today's sponsors:

• Video Editor: Ian Keyser

The post Jeremy Horpedahl: Are Millennials and Gen Z Actually Worse Off Than Their Parents? appeared first on Reason.com.