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The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie
Hosted by The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie · EN
Want to know what comes next in politics, culture, and libertarian ideas? Reason’s Nick Gillespie hosts relentlessly interesting interviews with the activists, artists, authors, entrepreneurs, newsmakers, and politicians who are defining the 21st century.
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How Much Control Do You Have Over Your Mind?
1w ago00:54:27Tap to summarizeToday's guest is Spencer Greenberg, host of the Clearer Thinking podcast and co-author of what might be the last self-help book you will ever need. In The 12 Levers: The Complete Psychological Toolkit for Improving Your Life, he and his co-author, Jeremy Stevenson, analyze hundreds of advice books and distill the most evidence-based psychological hacks they contain into a dozen techniques, or "levers," for self-improvement. Greenberg and Nick Gillespie discuss how approaches like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) harness our ability for critical thinking, why learning how to understand and focus your mind and feelings are fundamental to real autonomy, and whether there is a politics to self-improvement. 0:00—Introduction 0:56—What are the 12 levers? 4:38—Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy 8:28—Greenberg's experience with reflex responses 13:03—Confronting social anxiety 15:28—Genetic predispositions and chemistry 21:33—Understanding the causes of psychological challenges 26:10—Emotions and unified consciousness 30:55—What is cognitive restructuring? 36:25—Attention training 40:09—The inner "why" technique 45:21—Is stoicism on the rise? 48:14—Are there political implications to self-improvement? 50:49—How to detect frauds in the self-help genre The post How Much Control Do You Have Over Your Mind? appeared first on Reason.com.
Transcribe →Can the Supreme Court Still Restrain Executive Power?
2w ago00:52:46Tap to summarizeToday's guest is Clark Neily, a constitutional litigator, civil liberties advocate, and senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. He previously served as co-counsel in the landmark Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller, one of the most consequential gun rights decisions in modern history. Neily speaks with Nick Gillespie about the Supreme Court's latest term, the constitutional limits on executive power, and whether Congress has ceded too much authority to the presidency and the administrative state. Neily explains why he believes the Court has become an essential check on government overreach and discusses recent rulings involving birthright citizenship and gun rights. They also discuss the rise of plea bargaining, why federal prosecutors wield extraordinary leverage over criminal defendants, and whether America's constitutional system is strong enough to withstand growing political polarization and executive power. 0:00—The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling 4:01—Humphrey's Executor and agency independence 9:02—President Donald Trump and executive power 16:05—Gun rights and expanding gun ownership 25:33—Is the Supreme Court defending liberty? 29:38—How the justice system forces guilty pleas 36:24—Neily's least favorite Supreme Court Justice 38:51—The worst presidents in American history 44:15—Neily's origin story 49:35—Is Neily optimistic about America's future? The post Can the Supreme Court Still Restrain Executive Power? appeared first on Reason.com.
Transcribe →How Statistics Become Propaganda
3w ago00:52:36Tap to summarizeToday's guest is Aaron Brown, author of the new book Wrong Number: How to Extract Truth From a Blizzard of Quantitative Disinformation. A former chief risk manager at AQR Capital Management who teaches statistics at New York University and University of California, San Diego, Brown also contributes popular video essays to Reason. In Wrong Number, Brown investigates questions such as: Did California's minimum wage hike create more jobs? Does using marijuana massively increase the odds of having a heart attack or stroke? Is the United States experiencing a spike in the number of high temperature days? In an interview recorded at a live event in New York City, he explains how academics and the media routinely distort research to grab attention and push alarm buttons. He also talks with Nick Gillespie about his recent online argument with popular science communicator Hank Green about the ways in which climate change data are presented. Want more from Aaron Brown and Wrong Number? Join the community for bonus content, Q&As, charts, alerts, and more. subscribe.reason.com/wrong-number 0:00—Why did Brown write Wrong Number? 3:42—Examining the claim the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) saved 90 million lives 7:45—Climate alarmism and problematic data 16:16—Marijuana and cardiac risk 19:04—Data collection and deceptive framing 22:55—The Lancet and scientific gatekeepers 25:31—Why should scientists preregister their hypotheses? 32:29—Chinatown buses 41:40—Brown's origin story 45:35—Gambling and prediction marketsThe post How Statistics Become Propaganda appeared first on Reason.com.
Transcribe →Marjorie Taylor Greene: 'You're Not Being Represented!'
3w ago00:28:06Tap to summarizeFormer Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) joins Free Media's Robby Soave to discuss the resurgence of democratic socialism, her friendship with Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), and where the Trump administration went wrong. Greene also argues that too many politicians simply refuse to listen to their constituents and would rather die in office than give up power. And Soave introduces her to a favorite Reason term: "total boomer luxury communism." 0:00–The resurgence of democratic socialism 2:17–President Donald Trump's promise of "no new wars" 6:03–The economic impact of tariffs and deportations 8:32–Thomas Massie and libertarian views 11:53–The political establishment and two-party system 17:26–J.D. Vance and the future of the Republican party 21:41–Does Marjorie Taylor Greene miss Congress? 23:17–Generational wealth and entitlement programs 24:51–Why octogenarians refuse to leave Congress Producers: Paul Alexander & Natalie Dowzicky Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser Transcript This is an AI-generated transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy. Robby Soave: Welcome to Free Media. I'm Robby Soave, and today I am joined by former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's lovely to see you. Thank you for being here. Marjorie Taylor Greene: Yeah, thank you for having me. Well, I want to start with some news from last week. The democratic socialists are doing really well in New York City, winning some primaries there. This is coming at a time when I think the rank and file in both parties are so frustrated with the establishment, whether it's the Democratic establishment on that side or the Trump administration on the Republican side. You've been a vocal critic of Trump, and we'll get to that. But first I wanted to ask you, what do you make of this rising tide of far-left policies on the socialist side? I'm not surprised by it at all. As a matter of fact, I had been saying for several years that this was coming, that that was the direction of more younger-generation Democrat voters. And so it doesn't surprise me at all, but I also see the same thing on the right. There's a sort of like a new direction happening, and it's happened in the past year, where many people, many Republican voters who voted for Trump, voted for Republicans, considered themselves MAGA or were MAHA, or just actually voted in that election for the first time, have been so disappointed that they're fractured off as well. And it's a lot of the younger-generation people on the right who are just fed up. So I think it's on both sides that you're seeing many people are fed up with the establishment of both parties, Republicans and Democrats. And the establishment, honestly, after serving in Congress, they're very much the same. There is a center of Republicans and Democrats in Congress and in the Senate that will pretty much vote yes together on a lot of the key funding bills and will never change, no matter how they campaign. They just stick together and keep the machine moving forward. And so it doesn't surprise me that you're seeing that on the left and the right. Part of the key pitch I think that Trump made to young voters, new voters, people he reached through podcasts in the 2024 election, was the no-new-wars guarantee. Last year, this year, doesn't seem like we've been a no-new-wars administration. What do you think happened? Was that a lie? Did he change his mind? Has he been convinced by people who don't agree with that aspect of MAGA? What is going on? That's a deep question, not easily answered. So that was one of the things that I loved early on about Donald Trump. Back in 2016, when he came out on the debate stage and he was willing to talk about how Iraq was a major mistake and criticize people in Washington for supporting that war. And that was always one of the things that I personally loved about Donald Trump, is he seemed to be and constantly spoke out against no more foreign wars, not supporting foreign wars, regime change. And that's exactly what so many of us are sick and tired of. Now, what changed? We saw a radical change after he became president. I spoke out. I think I was the only Republican, probably me and Thomas Massie. I'm sure we were the only two. And last year, in June 2025, when he first bombed Iran, I spoke out against it. I'm sure Thomas Massie did, Charlie Kirk did, Tucker Carlson did, but we were a very small percentage that were willing to criticize the president. That's one of the worst things you can do in MAGA is dare criticize the president. So what do I think changed? I think President Trump has been under massive pressure since he has become president, and that's come through Israel, that's come through major donors of his, that comes from people like Mark Levin, Lindsey Graham, you name it. The whole entire pro-Israel or Zionist caucus has pushed for that, and it's always a push in Washington. See, that's another thing people need to understand: No matter who the person is that becomes president, they are going to be lobbied with massive pressure to engage in war or to support another country in war. And the reason why is it is one of the biggest businesses in America. People talk about the military-industrial complex. That is a real thing. And so these are many companies all over our country that are funded annually from Washington, and they rely on defense contracts in order to continue to build weapons, to make the latest, greatest weapons that they can't wait to sell to the Pentagon, can't wait to show lawmakers and show off and say, "Hey, here's what we need for our military." They make it very patriotic to support. And there's even a massive pressure campaign, and I've first-hand witnessed this as a member of Congress, as they come to you and they say, "Hey, if you don't vote and support the [National Defense Authorization Act], there's a couple of defense contractors, companies, very important companies in your district. And without these contracts, without this funding, there's going to be thousands of people that are your constituents, they'll lose their jobs." And so they even pressure you in that way and imply that you'll probably lose your election if people are losing their jobs because you're not voting for this funding. I remember you giving interviews to Tim Dillon and some other people, saying that you are actually listening to people. You were listening to the people in your district saying, "Hey, I'm a small-business owner. These tariffs are really hurting me. Hey, I want to do something about illegal immigration, but if we're rounding up every single person, including people who are working and not committing other crimes, it impacts my business in a negative way." Do your former colleagues listen to the people in their district on some of these pretty basic economic issues, where what the administration was doing was just destroying their bottom line? So what I was saying, and I still say it, is this is what my actual constituents are saying. Here's their real words. These are the real concerns of Americans. But most members of Congress, they live in the silo of the two-party system, whether it's Republican or Democrat, and they will not openly and publicly step outside those boundaries. So whether they listen to them or not, you are not going to see—and I'm sure it's something you can observe—you're not going to see Republicans and Democrats hardly ever step outside their party. Because if they step out and they actually start telling the truth, like, "Hey, Americans really don't support whatever it may be," they're going to get it when they go back to Washington. You'll hear it. <span style="font-weig...
Transcribe →The Right Way To Fight a Trade War
4w ago00:43:18Tap to summarizeThis week, guest host Eric Boehm is joined by Financial Times columnist and economist Soumaya Keynes to discuss her new book, How to Win a Trade War. They examine Donald Trump's tariff policies, whether trade wars can ever be won, and why Keynes believes that simply saying no one wins a trade war is no longer enough. She explains how China's economic model challenged the old rules-based trading system and why many policymakers now see Beijing as a unique economic rival. They also discuss the collapse of the World Trade Organization's dispute-settlement system, the growing role of national security in trade policy, and the difficulties of coordinating with allies in an increasingly fragmented global economy. Finally, Keynes explains why trade wars require restraint, how economic conflicts can spiral into broader geopolitical tensions, and what a future trading system might look like. 0:00—Can trade wars be won? 5:03—Differences in the second Trump administration 8:15—The analogy of pirates for global trade 16:44—The collapse of the rules-based trading system 20:13—How China changed the global economy 24:36—Trade policy and national security 31:52—The future of the global trading system 39:38—How should the next president handle trade? 40:46—Soumaya Keynes musical performance Producer: Paul Alexander Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser The post The Right Way To Fight a Trade War appeared first on Reason.com.
Transcribe →Is AI Really Taking All the Jobs? Anthropic Co-Founder Reveals the Data.
4w ago00:58:30Tap to summarizeToday's guest is Jack Clark. He's the co-founder of Anthropic—the artificial intelligence company behind Claude—and the head of its newly launched Anthropic Institute, a forum designed to think through the philosophical, political, and practical challenges that AI poses to society. Nick Gillespie talks with Clark, a former tech journalist at Bloomberg and The Register, about his company's ongoing regulatory battles with the Trump administration; whether Anthropic should have held back Mythos, its superpowerful version, from general release; and what might happen if and when AI becomes fully capable of "recursive self-improvement," or the ability to build itself without human input. They also talk about libertarian and market-based regulatory systems for the internet and tech sector and whether those would yield better outcomes than the ones we've seen so far from the European Union and other conventional governing bodies. 0:00—The promise of artificial intelligence 3:50—Overcoming AI hallucinations and sycophancy 5:08—Military applications of AI 9:38—Anthropic's red lines on mass surveillance and fully automated weapons 14:23—Lessons from the 1990s 16:12—Oversight and regulation of AI technology 23:07—Navigating politics through policy ambiguity 33:31—How does U.S. governance affect global AI policy? 36:42—What is recursive self-improvement? 43:35—How does Clark's literature and journalism background inform his views on AI? 45:43—The liberating aspects of technology 51:15—The effects of AI on employment Producer: Paul Alexander Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser Transcript This is an AI-generated transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy. Nick Gillespie: This is The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie. My guest today is Jack Clark. He's the co-founder of Anthropic, and he's one of the most influential figures in AI policy. We are going to talk about the government clampdown on Anthropic in particular and various things going on with that. We're gonna talk about the power of AI, the perils, the pitfalls, pretty much the whole ball of wax. So, Jack Clark, thanks for talking to Reason. Jack Clark: Thanks for having me. So let's start in a broader sense. Talk about what you see as the main kind of promise of AI. Because we're right now, we are definitely in a kind of technological dark cloud moment, where people are freaking out over AI. And you guys at Anthropic are freaking out on a certain level that we'll talk about. But just broadly, in a general way, what is the biggest, like, what's the biggest selling point of AI? I'd split it into three different layers: There's stuff for the individual, stuff for what you might think of as the economy, and stuff for science. So, for the individual today, we have a universal teacher, which is something that people fantasized about building for decades and decades, and it just exists. You can go and spend $0 a month to talk to an expert teacher. And if you spend $20 a month, you can talk to, like, a really good teacher. This is incredible. So that's for the individual. For the economy - the economy - especially in the Western world, it is defined by back-office work and bureaucracy, or what David Graeber called, "Bullshit jobs". We now have a system that can deal with, navigate the bureaucracy and back-office stuff, do it better, in some cases get rid of it, and allow people to get back to the parts of the jobs which either use their skills or have more meaning. Put a specific example on that. Yeah, I'll give you an example. We worked closely with the makers of Ozempic to help them do work on the backend for how they processed and formatted results in their clinical trials. And we took it down from something on the order of two months of work to a week of work. I don't think anyone misses that. No one there is crying at their desk because they can't do that. Yeah, I was the best back-office paper shuffler. Yeah, damn it, that was me. That's what I did. So that and examples like that are found everywhere. There's someone I work with at Anthropic who got so annoyed at processing a certain type of invoice that they just fully automated that. They're not sad about it. Everyone's happy that that's automated. And then for science, we now have systems that, if you read the literature, are co-creating science at the frontier of biology, mathematics, physics, medicine. You are seeing the world's expert scientists co-author papers with Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT. This is a new era for scientific discovery. Not Grok, right? Nobody serious uses Grok. I may have seen it somewhere, but there are other names that come to mind as well. Right. And this is also, you know, one of the examples that gets talked a lot about, which seems amazing, is that when you think of something like X-rays for tumors that might be cancerous or whatever, suddenly the entire world becomes a database, and you have computers training and looking at all of this and just coming up with better diagnostics and prognoses and things like that. Much better diagnostics, much better prognoses. Also, on an individual level, we've now, you know, replaced WebMD, which always tells you you've got cancer and are going to die, with AI systems, which often tell you something a lot more reasonable, factually accurate, and also say, "Probably call the advice nurse and tell them these things." What do you do? I'm forgetting the name of the disease that somebody made up that has gone through, like it's in every AI model now, Baxillism or something. But I mean, I guess just quickly before we move on to kind of more policy issues, how does the AI work to filter out kind of bullshit or mass delusion? Because this is always the problem. Right? So there's a couple of things here. Years ago, AI systems used to hallucinate. They used to make stuff up a lot. And it's basically because we train AI systems to be like a contestant on Jeopardy!. They want to hit the buzzer. The moment you say something, they want to answer. It took a lot of work to say to them, "It's totally reasonable to hit th...
Transcribe →What 1976 Got Right About America
Jun 1701:07:59Tap to summarizeToday's guest is Matt Welch, editor at large at Reason and co-host of The Fifth Column podcast. Welch joins Nick Gillespie for a look back at the summer of 1976 and what it can tell us about America nearly 50 years later. They discuss the surprising reality of the bicentennial, why many observers expected it to be a failure, and how local celebrations ultimately made it a success. They also examine the cultural impact of Roots, the enduring appeal of The Bad News Bears, and what both works revealed about race, identity, family, and American life in the 1970s. Along the way, they revisit the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the uniquely messy spirit of the era. Finally, Welch and Gillespie discuss what the bicentennial got right about patriotism, why America works best as a creedal nation, and whether the country's strength lies in its ability to embrace multiple stories rather than a single national narrative. 0:00—The realities of the bicentennial 11:25—America 250 19:15—The Bad News Bears 35:28—The cultural impact of Roots 53:10—The 1976 Montreal Olympics 57:53—Bruce Jenner 1:03:42—Does America need a single narrative? The post What 1976 Got Right About America appeared first on Reason.com.
Transcribe →Why So Many People Feel Lost
Jun 1000:58:05Tap to summarizeHuman beings are "creatures of matter who long to matter," says novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein, whose new book is The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. She talks with Nick Gillespie about how all humans struggle to figure out how to lead lives that justify our existence, both in the eyes of others and ourselves, and she describes remarkable cases of people who rescued children discarded during China's one-child policy era, atheists who led leper colonies so the afflicted could die with dignity, and former neo-Nazis who seek to reform racist skinheads. A MacArthur "genius" award winner who has taught at Harvard University, New York University, and Rutgers University, among other places, Goldstein has published highly acclaimed novels such as The Mind-Body Problem and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, and nonfiction works including Plato at the Googleplex and Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity. The Mattering Instinct investigates what happens when inherited authorities—church, state, family, tribe—lose their power to dictate meaning and individuals must fend for themselves, typically employing strategies she calls transcendence, competition, social belonging, and heroic striving. She invokes Friedrich Hayek's "knowledge problem" to illuminate the dispersed and dynamic qualities of how we all create "mattering projects"—lives worth living—in a world that offers us more and more choice across virtually all areas of activity. Drawing deeply on the philosophical roots of individualism and liberalism, Goldstein offers a moral psychology of freedom, a way to think about individual dignity, pluralism, and self-authorship without devolving into either nihilism or top-down moralism. 0:00—What is the mattering instinct? 4:30—Age, class, and the crisis of meaning 8:46—How do history and technology affect mattering? 10:59—Secularism and mattering 15:00—The four archetypes 27:14—Pursuit of flourishing 32:43—Psychology of freedom 35:43—Frank Meeink 42:50—Lou Xiaoying 51:29—Existential angst The post Why So Many People Feel Lost appeared first on Reason.com.
Transcribe →Was Lincoln More Radical Than We Remember?
Jun 300:52:44Tap to summarizeAt the start of his presidency in 1861, Abraham Lincoln supported a constitutional amendment that would have kept the federal government from banning slavery in states where it already existed. In just a few short years, he helped secure passage of the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery throughout the United States and all its territories. Today's guest is Senior Editor Damon Root, whose new book Emancipation War delves into one of the most fascinating chapters of American history. Root and host Nick Gillespie also discuss the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, Root's previous book on Frederick Douglass, and how the Supreme Court is likely to rule in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case that will be decided in the next few weeks. Root writes a twice-weekly newsletter for Reason on legal issues, called Injustice System. Sign up for it here. Previous appearances: "Damon Root: Why Frederick Douglass Loved the Constitution (and You Should Too)," December 8, 2020 "Willett, Bolick, Sykes: Three Great Picks to Replace Anthony Kennedy," June 27, 2018 "The Libertarianism of Frederick Douglass," February 8, 2018 "Obamacare at the Supreme Court: Damon Root on King v. Burwell," March 3, 2015 "Battle for the Supreme Court: Judicial Activism vs. Restraint," November 5, 2014 "3 Supreme Court Decisions to Watch," January 24, 2012 0:00–Lincoln wanted to preserve slavery in 1861 8:38–The Northwest Ordinance and precedents for banning slavery 11:27–Frederick Douglas and slavery in the U.S. Constitution 14:07–Salmon Chase 18:40–Lincoln's generals who emancipated slaves 23:37–How Lincoln evolved on slavery 29:47–The Civil Rights Act of 1866 37:13–The 13th Amendment, citizenship, and national identity 39:30–Reconstruction 45:00–The Supreme Court 49:57–Birthright citizenship The post Was Lincoln More Radical Than We Remember? appeared first on Reason.com.
Transcribe →How Moral Panic Creates Black Markets
May 2701:20:48Tap to summarizeToday's guest is Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin E. Roth, the author of Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work. He talks with Nick Gillespie about why some voluntary transactions provoke moral outrage even when no one is being directly harmed. Roth explains why black markets often emerge when governments try to ban activities with persistent demand, why both markets and prohibitions require social support to function, and how unintended consequences can make moralistic policies backfire. They discuss the war on drugs, prostitution, surrogacy, same-sex marriage, price gouging, and why Iran remains the only country in the world with a legal market for kidney donors. They also explore Roth's work designing kidney exchange networks and school choice systems, how digital technology and private transactions make certain bans harder to enforce, and why harm reduction may work better than prohibition in areas ranging from drug policy to sex work. 0:00—Repugnant transactions and organ sales 9:30—Blood plasma, coercion, and class bias 16:46—School choice reform 22:59—Same-sex marriage, abortion, and contraception 29:59—The war on drugs and moral economics 38:55—Roth's theoretical origin story 43:45—Uber, AI, and technological efficiencies 51:26—Price gouging and consumer resentment 54:27—Pornography, prostitution, and privacy 1:05:21—Has America become more economically moral? 1:12:15—Biden's economic agenda and Trump's tariffs 1:17:04—Winning a Nobel Prize Producer: Paul Alexander Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser The post How Moral Panic Creates Black Markets appeared first on Reason.com.
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