The Reason Roundtable

Mike Tang was charged with child endangerment for leaving his 8-year-old son in a grocery store parking lot a mile from home. It was supposed to be a life lesson.

"I just wanted to reinforce that money is hard to earn and that, if he doesn't do a good job at school, he could end up sleeping...[with] the homeless," says Tang, who lives in the Southern California suburb of Corona.

The incident took place after Mike caught Isaac cutting corners on his homework. At about 7:45 p.m., he drove him to the parking lot and drove away. About 10 minutes later, Tang's father came to pick him up.

But Isaac had already been picked up: He was in police custody. A stranger had spotted the boy and called the cops, who arrested Tang, and he spent the night in county jail. A jury later convicted him of child endangerment, and the judge sentenced him to parenting classes and a 56-day work release program picking up trash and doing other menial work.

Approximately 5 minutes. Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Weissmueller and Alex Manning. Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Building a network of successful charter schools isn't easy, especially in a state as wary of school choice as California. But Dan Katzir and Gloria Romero have transformed public education in the face of tough opposition from political party leaders, union bosses, and school administrators. Katzir and Romero discussed the challenges of school choice with Lisa Snell at Reason Weekend, part of a series of lectures held annually by Reason Foundation.

Edited by Alex Manning.

"It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the use of deadly chemical weapons," said President Donald Trump in explaining a U.S.-missile strike on a Syrian airbase. That might sound good and even noble in theory, explains Emma Ashford of the Cato Institute, but the plain truth is that he's wrong. What's worse, it's far from clear what either the United States or other countries in the region will do next.

The essential lesson that George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump keep forgetting is that military interventions, especially in other countries' civil wars, often makes things worse, Ashford tells Nick Gillespie.

Produced by Austin Bragg. Cameras by Todd Krainin and Mark McDaniel.

"Really unique in the history of technology is to have a capability and then lose it," says Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of the aviation startup Boom Technology. "We're going to see renewed progress in air travel. My long-term mission at Boom is to make that happen."

When the Concorde made its commercial debut in 1976, it was an engineering marvel that represented the technological promise of the 20th century. But 27 years after its initial flight, the Concorde landed for the final time, ending the era of civilian supersonic travel.

So why did the airliner of the future become a museum artifact?

Produced by Alexis Garcia. Camera by Austin Bragg. Additional footage courtesy Boom Technology, Department of Defense, and NASA. Music by Vibe Tracks, Jason Farnham, & Audionautix. Cycles by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Eugene Volokh has a few things to say about things that aren't supposed to be said. Volokh, a professor of free speech law at U.C.L.A., has seen books banned, professors censored, and the ordinary expression of students stifled on university campuses across the nation.

Volokh believes free speech and open inquiry, once paramount values of higher education, are increasingly jeopardized by restrictive university speech codes. Instead of formally banning speech, speech codes discourage broad categories of human expression. "Hate speech. Harassment. Micro-aggressions," Volokh says. "Often they're not defined. They're just assumed to be bad, assumed they're something we need to ban."

Edited by Todd Krainin.

In an era of daily internet outrage, Dave Rubin stands out for his willingness to engage a wide spectrum of political opinions with a civil tone. His show, The Rubin Report, has hosted the likes of alt-right gadfly Milo Yiannopolous, crusading atheist Sam Harris, and ex-governor-turned-conspiracy-theorist Jesse Ventura, all in a spirit of non-partisan intellectual inquiry. In our latest podcast, Reason's Nick Gillespie chats with Rubin about leaving The Young Turks, the regressive left and Islam.

Rob Pyers didn't set out to bring transparency to establishment politics. In fact, he didn't even have any programming experience before he built the electronic systems for the California Target Book, a go-to resource for political transparency in the state. He initially came to Los Angeles with aspirations of becoming a screenwriter, but ended up stuck in his day job, bagging groceries. Then Walgreen's laid him off, and he needed something else to do.

Produced by Justin Monticello. Cameras by Monticello, Alex Manning, and Zach Weissmueller. Music by Grégoire Lourme, Hare, Kevin MacLeod, and MK2.

"The Trump administration can slow down marijuana legalization, but they can't stop it," says Reason senior editor Jacob Sullum.

Trump already endorsed medical marijuana on the campaign trail, and said that states should be free to legalize it, but his appointment of old school drug warrior Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General is cause for concern.

Produced by Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg

Edited by Austin Bragg

Barrett Brown was just released from prison last November after four years behind bars for, among other things, posting a series of videos in which he appears to threaten an FBI agent. How things escalated to that point in the first place is a complicated matter involving email hacks, drug addiction, and the murky world of private intelligence contractors.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Music by Kai Engel.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding hearings this week on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gorsuch is a federal judge with admirers across the political spectrum. But his views on several crucial constitutional issues remain unclear. Here are three questions I'd like to hear Judge Gorsuch address this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Written by Damon Root. Shot by Jim Epstein. Edited by Joshua Swain.