The Reason Roundtable

In the new issue of Reason (subscribe now for as little at $14.97 a year!), legendary comics artist Peter Bagge contributes "Immigration Grunts," a four-page cartoon essay about people trying to help refugees and asylum-seekers stuck in a federal immigration facility in Tacoma, Washington.

Bagge's career started in the 1970s and he is probably best-known as the creator of Hate, an underground comic that helped to define alternative culture in the 1990s. He has been drawing for Reason for almost 20 years (his Reason archive is online here and his 2013 collection of Reason work, Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me, is available at Amazon).

On today's Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie talks with Bagge about his new Reason essay, how he chooses topics to draw, and what it's like to be working in a medium that was once considered unserious but is now heralded as a legitimate art form. We also talk about his forthcoming graphic novel, Credo: The Rose Wilder Lane Story, which tells the life story of one of the founding figures of the modern libertarian movement who also helped craft her mother's stories about her frontier childhood into the beloved Little House on the Prairie books.

Reason editors find themselves caught between executive branch power grabs on the right and Democratic socialist fantasies on the left.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

'Keymonica' by Pietnastka is licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0

We live in desperate times when the brake on both Democratic socialism and Republican executive-branch abuse is a 78-year-old San Francisco Democrat.

Jordan Shapiro's The New Childhood boldly embraces technological innovation and the interconnected world it's creating.

"How do I prepare my children for a future I can't imagine?"

Adults project their fears onto children—our own or other people's—and especially tend to view new technologies (the internet) and cultural products (video games) as mortal threats to the way things have always been and should always be. That leads to a lot of really bad policies and ridiculous urban legends (Momo Challenge, anyone?). And constantly being in a state of panic over change makes life pretty sucky for kids and grown-ups alike.

Nick Gillespie's guest today is Jordan Shapiro, author of The New Childhood: Raising Kids To Thrive in a Connected World. Unlike virtually any other book about kids and digital culture published in recent years, The New Childhood doesn't begin from the presumption that smartphones, tablets, and online gaming are making kids dumber, less focused, and unhappy. Shapiro, a psychologist who teaches at Temple University, has produced a thoughtful analysis of the benefits of new media for younger people. As important, he shows how adults need to understand the uniquely interconnected world in which their children now live. This deeply researched, historically conscious, and powerfully argued book blends academic rigor with personal experience and practical advice. In it, Shapiro takes free-range parenting into the cloud.

Former BB&T Bank CEO John Allison vs. Moody's Mark Zandi

The perils—and profits—of being identity-focused in business, content, and audience

On last week's Editors' Roundtable episode of the Reason Podcast, guest star Stephanie Slade argued near the end that the racial-reconciliation movie Green Book feels a bit out of step with where America's cultural conversation has moved these past few years. Boy howdy, judging by the torrential response to the movie's Best Picture victory at last night's Academy Awards. So let's pick a fresh scab, courtesy of returning Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward, who wrote a provocative piece in this weekend's New York Times under the headline, "Stop Counting Women: Quotas and tallies won't bring real progress on gender parity."

Mangu-Ward and the rest of the gang (Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, Matt Welch) have an extended conversation on representation, audience-growing, opinion journalism, the malleability of Spider-Man, and related controversies, including (natch) some of the greatest libertarian movies in history. Also coming under discussion are Venezuelan war-mongering, mixed metaphors, and the expansion of "Selective" Service registration to include lady-folk.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

'Songe D'Automne' by Latche Swing is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Reason's movie reviewer handicaps the Academy Awards and explains why this is the best and worst time to be a consumer of popular culture.

Kurt Loder is a cultural omnivore who started out writing for rock magazines in the 1970s, ending up at Rolling Stone. He co-authored Tina Turner's best-selling memoir (the basis for the movie What's Love Got To Do With It?) before moving on MTV, where he served as news anchor. Outside of Reason, the best place to find Loder these days is SiriusXM, where he hosts True Stories, a weekly interview show featuring famous rock musicians telling tales out of school, and Twitter, where he comments on a wide variety of topics.

Today, Nick Gillespie talked to Loder about the films, directors, and actors he thinks are most deserving. (He's especially high on Lady Gaga's performance in A Star Is Born, which he also thinks should win Best Picture.) We also discussed whether it's time for big, bloated, self-congratulatory awards shows such as the Oscars to sink into the ocean like good old Mr. Norman Main, whether we're in a golden age of popular culture (yes, but...), and what music and novels are capturing Loder's attention these days.

SiriusXM, Facebook.