The Reason Roundtable

Economists Kenneth Rogoff and Lawrence H. White face off over what the impact would be of a ban on cryptocurrency and phaseout of the $100 bill.

Episode 1 of Free Speech Rules, a new video series by UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh

Listen to former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels' keynote at our 50th anniversary dinner.

Today, we've got a special podcast: The speech that Mitch Daniels, the former two-term governor of Indiana and the current president of Purdue University, gave at Reason's 50th anniversary celebration, held in Los Angeles in early November.

A thinking man's politician, Daniels' achievements as governor included leasing the money-losing Indiana toll road for $4 billion, passing a universal school voucher program, and making Indiana one of the most economically free states in the country. At Purdue, he's managed to keep tuition costs down while also emphatically backing free speech and academic freedom. In his remarks, he told the audience that Reason has "with nearly unique persistence and unique fidelity to principle, upheld our liberties, constantly innovating and advocating measures to guard and extend them….With you on freedom's ramparts, America's tomorrow's will always dawn brightly."

Photo credit: Javier Rojas/Pi/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

Tao Lin's Trip details how the author's experience with LSD, DMT, psilocybin, and more blew his mind while making him more human.

Psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs are enjoying a revival—as agents of personal pleasure, mind expansion, and conventional medicine. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently designated psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, as a "breakthrough therapy" for treatment of depression. MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, has been similarly designated as a breakthrough therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Earlier this year, two major books about psychedelics came out. Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence is a relatively conventional history and memoir that drew praise from Reason's Jacob Sullum for recovering the history of "psychedelics' potential for facilitating psychotherapy, promoting the rehabilitation of addicts, and relieving end-of-life anxiety" before Timothy Leary and others promoted such drugs as the stuff of total political and cultural revolution. "Psychedelics have been politicized, medicalized, and spiritualized," asks Sullum in his review. "Will they ever be personalized?"

Which brings us to that second book, Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change, written by acclaimed novelist Tao Lin. Born in 1983 to immigrants from Taiwan and raised in Florida, Lin is a critical darling of the contemporary literary scene (Bret Easton Ellis has declared him to be "the most interesting prose stylist of his generation"). His books Taipei, Richard Yates, Shoplifting from American Apparel, and others are populated by disaffected young people who take copious amounts of drugs, especially downers such as Xanax and prescription opioids. Trip is an excruciatingly personal non-fiction account of the author's use of psychedelics as part of a "sustained, conscious effort...to not drift toward meaninglessness, depression, disempowering forms of resignation, and bleak ideologies like existentialism." "Weird is the compass setting," writes Lin at one point, quoting Terence McKenna (1946-2000), who helped popularize magic mushrooms and inspire rave culture. Trip is certainly weird, but like the most-potent drugs, also wonderful. Interview by Nick Gillespie.

Is Sen. Rand Paul right about special-prosecutor investigations being "banana republic"-style attempts to pin a crime on a president? Reason editors Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch debate.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

'Flying pea v.1' by Daddy_Scrabble is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Also: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez owns the cons while spouting policy B.S.

Also: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez owns the cons while spouting policy B.S.

Without a doubt, one of the biggest policy wins for Reason since our debut in 1968 has been the legalization of marijuana in the United States.

Currently, 10 states and the District of Columbia allow use for recreational purposes and another 33 allow its use as medicine. Donald Trump has even indicated that he'd sign legislation turning control of pot over to the states.

So when Reason celebrated its 50th anniversary in November, we put together a panel devoted to talking about how drug policy has changed over the years, the difficulties in actually implementing legalization, and how drugs the government still considers "illicit"—LSD, MDMA, psilocybin, and more—are now being talked about not simply as ways to get high but as means to increase mental health, happiness, and well-being.

The panelists included:

Adrian Moore, Ph.D., who runs the research division of Reason Foundation and consults with cities and states that are implementing marijuana legalization

Dana Rohrabacher, a longtime Republican member of Congress who consistently pushed to end the federal war on pot

Jacob Sullum, a Reason senior editor who has written about drug policy for years and is the author of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use

Reason's Nick Gillespie moderates.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

'Hard Boiled' by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Photo Credit: RICK WILKING/REUTERS/Newscom