The Reason Roundtable

Robert Groden has been issued 82 tickets by the city of Dallas and arrested twice. His offense? Running a table in Dealey Plaza on weekends offering passerbys an interpretation of the JFK assassination that conflicts with what Groden calls "the official fiction."

Groden's attorney, Brad Kizzia, uncovered emails between the Dallas City Council and an institution called the Sixth Floor Museum that references "how to deal with the vendor problem in Dealey Plaza." Kizzia's assumption is that the Sixth Floor Museum, an institution dedicated to telling the official story of the JFK asssassination, saw Groden as a nuissance and was conspiring with the city drive him out.

Edited by Mark McDaniel. Cameras by Alexis Garcia, Zach Weissmueller, and McDaniel. Graphics by Meredith Bragg.

From nipple censorship to breast milk regulation, the government is making it hard to have breasts. The FCC maintains oversight of how much and what kind of breasts can grace public airwaves. Its decisions have ripple effects, since cable broadcasters often voluntarily comply with FCC guidelines.

A more dire issue than strategic anatomical censorship is the issue of breast milk. Between one and five percent of American women aren't able to produce breast milk, and some babies can't drink formula. When the two overlap the demand for breast milk is life or death. But acquiring breast milk from donation-based milk banks can be difficult and prohibitively expensive. So some women buy their breast milk on an online "gray market" that stifles suppliers.

In this week's Mostly Weekly Andrew Heaton explains why the government should get its hands off our boobs.

Performed by Andrew Heaton

Written by Sarah Rose Siskind with writing assistance from Andrew Heaton and David Fried.

Edited by Austin Bragg and Sarah Rose Siskind.

Produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg.

Theme Song: Frozen by Surfer Blood.

The study of psychedelics is "bringing psychotherapy and medicine together," says David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London and a co-author of the first imaging study looking at the effects of LSD on the human brain. "Drug-assisted psychotherapy is going to be the great advance in the [field in the] next 20 years."

In 2009, Nutt was fired from his job as a drug adviser to the British government after he made comments about ecstasy and other illegal drugs being less dangerous than alcohol and even horseback riding.

Reason's Zach Weissmueller sat down with Nutt at the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference in Oakland to talk about the results of his groundbreaking imaging study, what he learned about drug policy while working as a science adviser for the English government, and what he sees for the future of psychedelics and mental health treatment.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller

Music by Sergey Cheremisinov.

In the twilight hours of a special election to replace Montana's lone congressman, Republican hopeful Greg Gianforte reportedly "body slammed" and punched a Guardian reporter after the journalist tried to ferret out an answer about GOP health care plans. In this video Reason TV imagines a world in which other, high profile politicians give into violent impulses when confronted by the press.

Polls opened in Montana less than twenty-four hours after Gianforte's confrontation with Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs, and his subsequent assault charge. In the event that Mr. Gianforte is elected to Congress there is a reasonable chance he will interact with more journalists in the future, and possibly even have to formulate responses to Republican legislation at some point.

Written by Andrew Heaton, Austin Bragg, and Meredith Bragg

Performed by Andrew Heaton and Austin Bragg

Produced by Meredith Bragg and Austin Bragg

"We've gone to a modern [broadcast] system that has a lot of places where stuff can happen without permission," says Thomas W. Hazlett, who's the FCC's former chief economist, a professor at Clemson University, and author of the new book The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone. "And we have seen that the smartphone revolution and some other great stuff in the wireless space has really burgeoned...That comes from deregulation."

So-called net neutrality rules are designed to solve a non-existent problem and threaten to restrict consumer choice, Hazlett tells Reason's Nick Gillespie. "The travesty is there's already a regulatory scheme [to address anti-competitive behavior]—it's called antitrust law."

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Justin Monticello. Music by RW Smith.

Democrats and progressives are concerned that the internet is about to descend into a corporate hellscape since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is moving to repeal Net Neutrality regulations, which prohibit internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking particular sites or throttling traffic from specific services. We tackle the issue in the latest episode of Mostly Weekly. The idea that Net Neutrality and Title II regulations are a vital barricade protecting the internet is an interesting position to arrive at given that a free-and-open internet managed to exist without these edicts for decades. Net Neutrality rules are still on the books, but the FCC made a procedural vote on Thursday to begin the prospect of peeling off Obama-era internet regulations like an old Band-Aid.

Written and performed by Andrew Heaton, with writing assistance from Sarah Rose Siskind and David Fried.

Edited by Austin Bragg and Sarah Rose Siskind.

Produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg.

So maybe we shouldn't decide to get rid of presidents just because we hate them and then afterwards figure out how to pretend it's the law.

Written and produced by Austin Bragg.

"We're at a really interesting moment where public-private partnerships could blossom in a pretty dramatic way," says Stephen Goldsmith, former mayor of Indianapolis and professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "If we have technologies that are highly refined…we can anticipate a problem and fix it before it occurs."

Goldsmith, author of 2014's The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance, was the recipient of the Reason Foundation's 2017 Savas Award for promoting public-private partnerships. (The nonprofit Reason Foundation is also the publisher of Reason.com.) As mayor of Indianapolis from 1992 to 1999, Goldsmith trimmed $100 million from the city budget mainly by requiring departments of the municipal government to compete with private companies.

Edited by Alexis Garcia. Hosted by Nick Gillespie.

Democrats and Republicans are pivoting on issues faster than a bipolar swing dancer on a merry-go-round. Republicans are now big government protectionists. Democrats support free trade and states' rights. It's like the two parties switched bodies! It's almost as if... they were FREAKY-FRIDAYED!

Starring Andrew Heaton

Written by Sarah Rose Siskind

With writing assistance from Andrew Heaton and David Fried

Edited by Austin Bragg and Sarah Rose Siskind

Produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg

Theme Song: Frozen by Surfer Blood

Using an ancient Soviet method, 75% of Venezuelans have lost an average of 19 pounds and so can you! Who needs human rights and a free press when you can get back to your old college weight? Watch the video and let Remy show you how it all works.

Written by Remy. Performed by Remy and Austin Bragg. Edited by Bragg.