The Reason Roundtable

As Barack Obama leaves the White House, his supporters point to low unemployment rates and low inflation as proof that his economic policies were a smashing success that saved the United States from another great depression.

Gene Epstein, columnist at Barron's and the author of Econospinning: How To Read Between the Lines when the Media Manipulate the Numbers, is having none of it.

In a new Reason podcast, Epstein tells Nick Gillespie that Obama was terrible on economic policy and he doesn't think Donald Trump will be much better, either. Despite deregulatory gestures in some areas (such as energy policy and finance), Trump is full-square in favor of trade protectionism and keeping immigrants out of the country. Free trade and a growing population are essential to economic health.

A lot of people are unhappy these days, writes James Poulos in his brilliant new book, The Art of Being Free: How Alexis de Tocqueville Can Save Us from Ourselves. James Poulos' The Art of Being Free isn't just a pleasant diversion from the dog-eat-dog world of 24/7 news and partisan bickering. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mind, groaning with allusions to history, political science, economics, literature, and pop culture: Socrates, Nietzche, Netflix, The Smashing Pumpkins, Seinfeld, Stendahl, and Scooby-Doo all make appearances in this essay about getting beyond superficial politics to the parts of life that really matter. And along the way, he charts a path that just might lead back to politics that will help us all be free to become whomever we think we want to be.

A late-thirtysomething writer for The Week, National Interest, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere, Poulos talks with Nick Gillespie about how Americans have historically tied ourselves in knots because "we love equality, we want unity, we fear uniformity." Using Tocqueville's Democracy in America as his lantern, he wanders far and wide through today's noisy landscape and brilliantly dispels "the sense of haunted despair" that so many of us wear like our favorite hoodie.

At the Golden Globe awards, actress Meryl Streep gave an impassioned speech calling for creative types to stand up for the little guy now that Donald Trump is just week's away from becoming the 45th president of the United States. Was her speech just more Hollywood virtue-signaling or does it carry the harsh truth that the billionaire developer is going to rule with an iron fist and a harsh Twitter account? And while we're at it, isn't the presidency vastly more powerful than it was when Barack Obama took office eight years ago? What's up with *that,* coastal elites?

In the newest Reason podcast, Reason magazine Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward, Editor at Large Matt Welch, and Reason.com's Nick Gillespie talk about all this and more.

Glenn Greenwald is arguably the most consistent critic of government abuses of civil liberties, regardless of which party holds power. He's also a champion of whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning, Wikileaks, and Edward Snowden, whose work he was central to making known to the broader public. He talks with Nick Gillespie about Russian "hacks," fake news, Barack Obama's out-of-control presidency, and why Donald Trump taking office just might spark a movement to restrain the executive branch.

Nick Gillespie talks with Peter Suderman, features editor for Reason and one of the country's sharpest analysts of Obamacare. Is the nation's mandatory health insurance program entering a "death spiral" and will it be Republicans, of all people, who end up embracing legislation they attacked for the past eight years? Beyond rising premiums and costs in state insurance exchanges, how is Obamacare affecting the majority of Americans who still have insurance via their jobs? And is there really any clear connection between having health insurance and having better health?

Ronald Bailey's family hails from McDowell County, West Virginia, the poorest & sickest in the country. He journeyed back to learn why everyone doesn't just leave already. Interview with Nick Gillespie.

"Trump already looks like a thought experiment you'd make up to scare liberals straight about the concentration of executive power," says the Cato Institute's Gene Healy, who has a cover story in the current issue of Reason arguing that Obama's "most lasting legacy" will be to "leave to his successor a presidency even more powerful and dangerous than the one he inherited from Bush."

In our latest podcast, Healy chats with Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward about the most likely long-term impact of a president once touted as our first civil libertarian in the White House—and it won't be what "your neighbor who put a 'Hope' sticker on his Prius" had in mind.

In this episode of the Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie moderates a debate between Shikha Dalmia of Reason, Avik Roy of The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, and Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review. The trio engages in a substantive discussion about race, multiculturalism, and libertarianism in the age of Trump.

Roy believes Texas, a majority-minority state, offers a good counter-example for libertarians and conservatives anxious about immigrants and non-Europeans changing American political culture. The Lone Star State is not only doing very well economically, says Roy, there's a sense of inclusion that doesn't exist in many other states.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Mark McDaniel. Music by Simon Mathewson.

John Bolton is "an unrepentant advocate of the Iraq War" says Sen. Rand Paul, who's failed to learn that when America topples governments, invariably we end up with something "worse than what we had."

In our latest podcast interview, the Kentucky Republican talks about why Bolton—the rumored nominee for deputy secretary of state—is unfit for office, his thoughts on the nomination of Rex Tillerson for secretary of state ("he's not part of the furniture of Washington"), whether the U.S. should allow in more refugees (probably), the budget crisis, his recent reelection, and whether Trump has absorbed any aspects of "a libertarian foreign policy" (yes, though the talk of Bolton joining the administration gives Paul pause).