The Reason Roundtable

New York comedian Dave Smith says he "became a libertarian through the Ron Paul movement. "He challenged all of my preconceived notions about what government was [and]...inspired me to read all of these people, like Rothbard, Mises, and Friedman."

When Bernie Sanders became a national figure, what Smith hated most about the Vermont senator was that he was aesthetically like a carbon copy of Paul—"a kind of disheveled, older guy who's just a truth teller."

[The difference was that] Bernie would go around to these kids and be like, 'Hey, so you're a college kid in 2017, you're among the richest, freest, most privileged people who have ever existed, [so] billionaires should be paying your bills for you!'...It was the difference between a propagandist and a truth teller."

Smith, 34, is a regular on the New York Cit stand up circuit and hosts two popular podcasts on the GaS Digital Network, Legion of Skanks and Part of the Problem. On September 11, he'll release his first comedy special, Libertas, which will be available for download here.

Smith sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to talk about how Trump manipulates the left, why the media's reaction to the Syria bombing was "the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life," how libertarians can appeal to Millennials, and his decision to have the alt-right lightning rod and "racist shock jock" Christopher Cantwell as a recent guest on his podcast.

Zoltan Istvan isn't just one of the world's leading transhumanists. He's one of its most unapologetic when it comes to using science and technology to improving and augmenting humanity.

"If I could cut off my arm right now, to put on a stronger robotic arm because it's more functional, I would do it," he tells Nick Gillespie in the latest Reason Podcast. "My wife might not like it, but I would do it because it will help me to climb Mount Everest or help me to throw a football or whatever, or even just work and build houses....I think all of us will start merging with machines...I think even religious people will say, 'You know, becoming machines is part of our destiny.'"

Is Trump merely peeling back his predecessor's executive overreach by rescinding DACA, the Obama-era program that shields immigrant children from deportation, or is the move just disastrous policy that also happens to be morally reprehensible? The latter, says Reason's Nick Gillespie in today's podcast.

"When Republicans start to talk about [the rule of law] it's such horse shit because every law raises priority questions," Gillespie says. "I mean you could technically say pot is still illegal under federal law, so we should be getting rid of all the pot people."

Gillespie joins Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Andrew Heaton to talk about how Trump's immigration policies set America back.

Plus, why Vladimir Putin fears AI (but you shouldn't), and the connection between driverless cars and the ghost of Barry Goldwater.

As the media and politicians rush to blame the intensity of and damage from Hurricane Harvey on climate change and zoning, Ray Lehmann of R Street wants to talk about a more obvious villain: public policies that use tax dollars to subsidize development and population growth in flood-prone areas.

Harvey, he says, isn't a weather problem, it's a "people problem."

"Price gougers are heroes," says Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward. When "people who go into disaster zones, we generally praise them," but when their motivations include "mak[ing] money...suddenly they're villains."

In the latest Reason podcast, Mangu-Ward joins Nick Gillespie, Matt Welch, and Andrew Heaton to talk about market fundamentals in hurricane-addled Houston, and why Joe Arpaio's presidential pardon is worse than merely letting a deplorable lawman walk free.

Democrats are eyeballing Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) as a presidential candidate in 2020, and he might have a secret weapon against Trump.

Plus why Antifa is violent, terrible, and boring.

"In 30 years, I will be younger than today, not older," says José Luis Cordeiro, who's a founding faculty member at Singularity University, a Silicon Valley think tank devoted to futurism. "Why? Because we are going to have rejuvenation techniques, and these experiments are beginning right now."

A mechanical engineer who studied at MIT, Cordeiro has worked in fields ranging from monetary policy to petroleum engineering, and he created the first formal "future studies" course at the Austrian School of Economics in Venezuela, his birth country.

Cordeiro is a extreme optimist, who says technological progress will solve most of the world's problems. He sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie at the annual libertarian conference Freedom Fest in Las Vegas to discuss immortality, artificial intelligence, and the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.

"What we lost with Prohibition wasn't just a couple of drinks," says Reason's Peter Suderman, "we lost an art and a culinary tradition that is really this kind of great, uniquely American thing."

In our latest podcast, Suderman joins Nick Gillespie to talk about his feature story in the latest issue of our print magazine, "Government Almost Killed the Cocktail." (Subscribe for early access.) They discuss why cocktails started out as morning eye-openers, Prohibition-era drinking loopholes, methods for disguising the flavor of low-quality bathtub gin, and how the ghost of Prohibition still affects drinking culture today.

Trump is heading to a rally in Arizona tomorrow, and the whole reason for the trip might be to skewer libertarian-leaning Senator Jeff Flake (R-Arizona). "It's illustrative that [Flake] is the person that Trump is going after," says Nick Gillespie, "because he disagrees with Donald Trump about the aspects of Donald Trump that are absolutely the worst."

On today's podcast, Reason editors Gillespie, Matt Welch, and Katherine Mangu-Ward join Andrew Heaton to discuss what meaningful opposition to President Trump looks like, and if the Democrats will ever get their act together.

Steve Bannon has been jettisoned from the White House, but his ousting could loosen the restraints on the president's military adventures.

Plus what to expect in the Afghanistan War, why Switzerland should pull down its Freddie Mercury statue, and a look back at when Mangu-Ward's infatuation with Jeff Flake all began.

"We don't see business as evil," says Forbes, marking the 100th anniversary of Forbes magazine, the iconic business publication started by his grandfather. "We see it as a noble undertaking."

And thanks to capitalism, progress in the 20th century will pale in comparison to what's coming in the 21st. "In 2117," he says, "we'll be infinitely better off."

Forbes sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas to discuss the legacy and future of the magazine, his assessment of President Trump, and where the legislative agenda for Republicans is falling short.

"To say 'no free speech for fascists,' which was on many a protest sign this weekend, is [the equivalent of saying] 'no free speech for Muslims,'" says Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward. That killing someone with a car means "everybody loses their speech rights" is "the exact same argument as saying if you are a big group of people and one of you is a suicide bomber, you all lose your speech rights."

On today's podcast, Reason's Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Andrew Heaton discuss the recent violence in Charlottesville, Trump's initial response (Note: the podcast was recorded before Trump's press conference today), and the anti-free speech backlash that followed.

Last week, Google's James Damore was fired for an internal memo questioning the company's diversity policies. Justified or not?

Finally, how worried should we be about nuclear war with North Korea?