The Reason Roundtable

A real American genius Joe is not.

Should Israel negotiate with Hamas and Fatah, or are they unwavering enemies in a protracted struggle?

The president of the American Enterprise Institute says we need to reboot politics and that libertarians may hold the key.

About the only time that love is mentioned in conversations about politics is when a lawmaker gets caught in a sex scandal. Suddenly, the perp starts gushing about how much he loves his spouse, his kids, his constituents, and his country. The guest on today's Reason Podcast wants to change that.

Arthur Brooks' excellent new book is called Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt. It's a call to arms for individuals to change how they approach the sorts of increasingly vicious political disagreements that he argues are tearing apart the country. Brooks talks with Nick Gillespie about his decade-long leadership of the American Enterprise Institute, arguably the nation's most-influential conservative think tank, and the places where conservatives and libertarians overlap and continue to disagree. In a wide-ranging conversation, Brooks and Gillespie discuss his decision to step down as AEI's president and join the faculty of Harvard.

Whose hysteria looks silliest in retrospect?

"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime," Robert Mueller's long-awaited homework stated, according to Atttorney General William Barr, "it also does not exonerate him." To which Donald Trump has predictably responded: "Total exoneration!"

The president may stand out from the crowd in the amount of power he wields, but he's hardly alone in talking bollocks about the Trump/Russia investigation, as we discuss on today's Editors' Roundtable edition of the Reason Podcast. Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, Matt Welch, and special guest star Elizabeth Nolan Brown each make their own nominations for the Mueller media Hall of Shame, track how the #Resistance goalposts keep shifting, and ding the president's own (non-criminal) behavior. Along the way, we hear the latest in the non-sex-trafficking case of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, do a little oh-yeah-that about the record-breaking budget deficit, and dissect the C.H.U.D.ian subtexts of Us.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

'See You Soon' by Borrtex is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

A conversation with Mike Solana, a vice president at Peter Thiel's venture capital firm

Today's Reason Podcast conversation is with Michael Solana, a vice president at the venture capital firm Founders Fund. The firm, which is worth upwards of $3 billion, founded by Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder Luke Nosek, former PayPal CFO Ken Howery, and Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook fame.

Some of the fund's investments include SpaceX, Airbnb, Lyft, and Oculus, as well as variety of lesser-known companies in the realms of aerospace, biotechnology, energy, and internet technology.

Reason's Zach Weissmueller spoke with Michael about the future, which he thinks about a lot both as an investor in emerging technologies and as host of the official Founders Fund podcast Anatomy of Next, the latest season of which explores the ways technological advancements in rocketry, materials science, augmented reality, fertility science, and artificial intelligence will get humanity to Mars and beyond.

But Solana and his colleagues also believe that Silicon Valley is mired in groupthink and susceptible to the false promises of socialism. In this conversation, we talk about what Founders Fund is doing differently, why Solana believes capitalism is necessarily the engine of growth and innovation, the promise and perils of privatizing government functions, and what he's learned from the famously contrarian Peter Thiel about what it means to be an independent thinker.

Forty years ago, one of the most momentous events in the history of politics and television took place: C-SPAN started...

Forty years ago, one of the most momentous events in the history of politics and television took place: C-SPAN started broadcasting live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the United States House of Representatives.

Long before reality TV shows like Real World, Survivor, Real Housewives, Big Brother, and Sober House, C-SPAN gave Americans direct access to one of the most powerful groups of people on the planet. For the first time in history, we could see our elected representatives debating, wheeling and dealing, freaking out, and occasionally falling asleep while debating government spending, foreign policy, and more.

Over the years, C-SPAN has expanded to include coverage of the Senate; daily public affairs shows featuring policy experts, activists, journalists, and lawmakers; long-form interviews with authors and other influential people; and coverage of events all around the country. In a world in which elite decisionmakers want to shield themselves from all forms of scrutiny and observation, C-SPAN performs the radical intervention of putting a camera on them while also engaging them in thoughtful, frank, and fair conversation.

For today's Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie talked to C-SPAN's founder Brian Lamb, who has managed to shine a bright light on the political process while simultaneously creating a model of civil discourse that is unmatched in cable news. The 77-year-old Indiana native tells me how working in the Pentagon during Vietnam inspired him to push for "openness" in government, why he's still pushing for cameras to cover oral arguments in the Supreme Court, and how C-SPAN expects to weather its next 40 years.

Photo credit: CHUCK KENNEDY KRT/Newscom