The Reason Roundtable

Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch take your questions.

Since 2015, when Reason first sat down with Adam Conover, host of TruTV's hit show Adam Ruins Everything, a new president has taken office, a new media landscape has emerged, and some would say we're inhabiting a new reality.

What's it like to make a show that seeks to uncover hidden truths in the "post-truth era"?

"I guess what's happened is that I've a little bit let go of the idea that we can reach everybody," says Conover, who's about to go on a live tour and is gearing up for the premiere of his show's third season. "Certain people...the informational world they live in, it's so distorted that it's hard to get through."

But most people still have a "deep down desire to learn, to know the truth," he says.

In a wide-ranging interview with Reason's Zach Weissmueller (full disclosure: Weissmueller is married to the show's casting director), Conover shares his thoughts on the "response videos" to his work proliferating on YouTube, how he contends with the psychological defense mechanisms that prevent viewers from changing their opinions, the "de-platforming" of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and how big tech companies are changing our perceptions of reality.

The new season of Adam Ruins Everything premieres on November 27, 2018, and his live tour starts on November 28.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Paul Detrick, Justin Monticello, and Alexis Garcia.

"Happy Whistle" by Scott Holmes is licensed under an Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license

"Symphony No. 5" by Gustav Mahler and performed by the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony is licensend under a Creative Commons Unported Attribution License

The host of TruTV's hit show has lost some faith in the power of rational discourse. And he has some ideas for how to fix the problem.

Reason editors check their premises about immigration in the wake of Sunday's border skirmish.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

'Hide the Horror' by Asthmatic Astronaut is licensed under CC BY NC SA 3.0

Reason editors check their premises on immigration.

Reason editors check their premises on immigration.

A few weeks ago in Los Angeles, Reason celebrated its 50th anniversary. To mark that milestone, we hosted a series of discussions taking the measure of how far the world has come since 1968 in relation to a bunch of topics that we've long been interested in. We're happy to share with you a panel titled "The First Amendment in the 21st Century."

The participants included:

Nadine Strossen, a professor at New York University Law School, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the author most recently of Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship;

Stephanie Slade, the managing editor of Reason magazine, who writes frequently about religious liberty, and;

Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA's law school, a frequently citied First Amendment scholar, and the creator of the popular law blog, The Volokh Conspiracy.

Nadine Strossen, Eugene Volokh, and Stephanie Slade discuss freedom of speech, assembly, and religion at Reason's 50th anniversary.

Nadine Strossen, Eugene Volokh, and Stephanie Slade discuss freedom of speech, assembly, and religion at Reason's 50th anniversary.

Can you imagine a lawsuit called Rand v. Reason, pitting the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged against the nation's only magazine of "Free Minds and Free Markets"? Well, it almost happened in the 1970s.

In the latest Reason Podcast, one of our founding editors, Manny Klausner, tells Nick Gillespie that tale, along with many stories of the early days of Reason and the libertarian movement. Attending New York University law school in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Klausner studied with Ludwig von Mises, represented the libertarian wing of the fledgling Conservative Party, and came under the influence of firebrand economist Murray Rothbard as well. While working at Reason, Klausner (archive here) produced memorable interviews with the likes of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, economist Thomas Sowell, '70s self-help guru Robert Ringer, and future President Ronald Reagan.

Founded in 1968 by Lanny Friedlander (1947–2011), Reason is celebrating its 50th anniversary by hosting a series of in-depth conversations with past editors about how the magazine has changed since its founding, what we've gotten right and wrong over the years, and what the future holds for believers in "free minds and free markets."

Along with Poole and Tibor Machan (1939-2016), Klausner was one of the principals of Reason Enterprises, which bought the magazine from the Friedlander in 1971. He was also a co-founder of the nonprofit Reason Foundation, established in 1978, which continues to publish this website and podcast. As an attorney, Klausner participated in Bush v. Gore, the case that settled the 2000 election, and successfully defended Matt Drudge in a defamation suit brought by Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

Photo credit: Jim Epstein.