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- [00:01]
Jon Stewart
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- [00:56]
Nick Gillespie
Compatible with select apps.
- [00:57]
Jon Stewart
Requires Google Gemini account Results may vary based on input. Check response for accuracy. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Weekly show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. I come to you today broken but not bowed, for I had an owie on my finger. I'm going to show it now. You're probably I, I wrapped it up, I heard it on the show. Doing my classic brand of physical slapstick comedy that never works and always gets me hurt. It's the second time on the Daily show that I have broken a drinking vessel. The first one was glass. The second was ceramic. For those who thought I should have had a breakaway mug. Yeah, now you tell me. Ceramic is one of my least favorite materials to have embedded in my skin. But I bled out. It really, for a comedian is humiliating. And I say that because the greats, the Buster Keatons, the Charlie Chaplins, Buster Keaton would stand in front of a house with a little window cut out. It would fall on his head. Harold Lloyd would hang off of a clock with no net. I, I nearly died being vociferous with a coffee mug. It's, it does not speak well of the legends of my business, but I, I, I, I don't imagine they ever had to have their sets childproofed. Can I tell you what's not smart to do when you have a cut? Hold it below your heart for 20 minutes because it really does it. It just makes your whole arm a straw and it just all just flows out and it makes it look way worse than than when I picked it back up to look at it. Even I for a second was like, what the was I shot. I glued it that night, and then it's pretty gnarly looking, but it's all good. So it goes. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes. We have a ton to get to today. We're taping on Wednesday, so God knows if we'll even still be in the. In the alliances that we were in the day before. But I'm excited to talk to today. You know, there's so much that's going on, and we talk about Democrats and liberals and Republicans and conservatives and Doge and maga. I wanted to get kind of the libertarian view, and I know that's not monolithic in any way, but I thought there's no better person to get that from than our guest today. So let's get to that right now. Ladies and gentlemen, we are very pleased in this moment to have with us Nick Gillespie, editor at large of Reason magazine, host of the Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie podcast. Nick, the og, in my mind of kind of grounded libertarian thought is. Is in my mind, I think of Nick Gillespie. And I'm very pleased that you could be here and join us today.
- [04:13]
Nick Gillespie
Oh, well, thank you, John. It's. It's a real treat. And it's always nice to be called grounded, because normally I am talked about as something less than grounded. So thank you.
- [04:23]
Jon Stewart
Is that really true? Because, you know, I. It's so interesting to me. Libertarian is, you know, you think of political movements sometimes and you have a tendency to group them as a monolith, and libertarian movement is anything but a monolith.
- [04:38]
Nick Gillespie
It.
- [04:38]
Jon Stewart
It has, you know, there's this sort of the side of it that's getting maybe the most attention in this day and age is maybe the kind of more edgelord side of it, that kind of young male. But when I call you the og, you know, I feel like you were always grounding everything in Friedman and Hayek and, you know, all. All the things that you imagine libertarianism's foundation is. Is built upon. Would that be correct?
- [05:07]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, I think so. And, you know, part of it is that I grew up as a journalist, or I, you know, or I started working as a journalist. Then I went to grad school for literary studies. And then, you know, I had to come back. It was still in my blood somehow that the big payoff in being an English professor didn't materialize.
- [05:23]
Jon Stewart
So you didn't get your start in. In dank memes. That was not how you got your start with all this.
- [05:29]
Nick Gillespie
Well, I actually did get my start working at teen magazines and music magazines. I worked for a place called Teen Machine at some point.
- [05:38]
Jon Stewart
Teen Machine.
- [05:40]
Nick Gillespie
But even in my Teen Mag days, I was always interested in. In starting with, like, some facts. You know, it's not like a card you lay down and then everything. The conversation stops. But, you know, starting. I've been a reason since 1993. The magazine started in 1968. You know, I did a cover story about how everybody was talking about. And this was a big Hillary Clinton thing, you know, that children were at risk like they had never been before. Like, you know, worse than the Little Rascals. Those. Those kids had a good. Compared to kids growing up in the fucking, like, late 1990s. And all I started with was like, a list of, you know, how much better children are doing.
- [06:20]
Jon Stewart
Right. Let's start with one. No polio. Okay. Let's move on from there.
- [06:24]
Nick Gillespie
Well, you know, I'm 61 years old. I was born in 1963. The average lead level in kids growing up in the 60s would have triggered massive medical interventions in the late 90s because, you know, lead. Leaded gasoline, lead paint, lead pencils, you know, lead cereal, I'm sure Leadios, I.
- [06:45]
Jon Stewart
Believe it was called. It was delicious, stayed crunchy. The one cereal that stayed crunchy in the bowl was Letios.
- [06:52]
Nick Gillespie
And they filled you up for the whole day. Yeah, no, but, but so, I mean, this just gets back to the point of, like, I think it's always important to. When we start talking about stuff, especially today, because, you know, people are Nuts is like, can we agree on some common facts? Right.
- [07:09]
Jon Stewart
People are Nuts would be a good title for. For the book. But, Nick, so you just gave me, in many ways, the perfect segue kind of into our conversation because I think I want to talk to you about Doge and how you're feeling about that, the Trump administration, all those things. But first, I think I've always been libertarian. Curious.
- [07:27]
Nick Gillespie
Sure.
- [07:27]
Jon Stewart
If that would be the right.
- [07:29]
Nick Gillespie
Every comedian is. Right.
- [07:31]
Jon Stewart
I think you would probably have to be.
- [07:33]
Nick Gillespie
You have to be because you want to go where the jokes are and you want to be able to think a certain way and then express it.
- [07:39]
Jon Stewart
But here's what I always come up against, and you just brought it up. Years ago, there was a lot of lead in kids cereal, and through government regulation, the lead was removed. So how. How do you square that kind of essential tension?
- [07:55]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. So. And this is where I guess I am grounded because I'm not an anarchist or an anarcho capitalist, which a lot of people say, where, you know, no government is ever necessary. Or kind of the same thing that anything the government does is by force and theft and is illegitimate. And they also suck at everything they do. Why would we have them do anything, et cetera? You know, that's, that's one strain of kind of libertarian thinking. I'm much more like Milton Friedman, you know, a proud New Jersey and everything. Good Friedman.
- [08:28]
Jon Stewart
Where was he from?
- [08:29]
Nick Gillespie
He's from. I think he was born in Newark and grew up in Robway. You know, Robway's two most famous residents are Milton Friedman and Reuben Hurricane Carter.
- [08:38]
Jon Stewart
I was going to say, if you don't name somebody from the prison, you're just not working hard enough.
- [08:43]
Nick Gillespie
But over the course of my career, I become much more of what I call a directional libertarian, which is that I'm not that interested in like, okay, let's build a perfect philosophical foundation that makes perfect mathematical and philosophical sense. It's like, are we heading in the direction of more individual freedom, where people can live how they want to, where business owners can do what they want to, where, you know, where things are looser and people are able to make more choices that matter in their lives? For me, the question isn't, you know, whether or not the government is funding something. It's are we going in the right direction or not? And so to bring that back to this question of regulation of things like lead, you know, the single biggest thing to help air quality in the United States arguably was the environmental pollution, you know, kind of standards that were passed in the late 60s and early 70s under the Clean Air act by RA.
- [09:39]
Jon Stewart
By Nixon. Who would have, who would be considered at this point, I think, like a gay leftist for Nader, like, he would, you know what I mean? We've so shifted in terms of the paradigm.
- [09:50]
Nick Gillespie
And you know what, by banning, you know, and it took many years, DDT.
- [09:56]
Jon Stewart
And all those other things.
- [09:57]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, well, no, let me. I'll. Because I am a libertarian, I will pick a knit with you about DDT in just a second. But, but with leaded. Getting rid of leaded gasoline, you know, and the, the atmosphere is a common. So it's not like you can't say, oh, you know, the lead you're emitting, you know, I'm going to sue you in court for that because it would take forever and it's never going to work or anything. But, you know, when there is a.
- [10:22]
Jon Stewart
True commons that you think the market won't address, like, there's too many externalities, right. And so if the market won't address it, the free market, that's a place where in your mind you're. You're able to come in. Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
- [10:35]
Nick Gillespie
And, and you know, by saying, okay, we're taking leaded gasoline, I mean, you know, most, most people in America now, I think probably were not, you know, grew up with leaded gasoline versus unleaded, you know, and all of that kind of shit. And it's like by taking leaded gasoline out of the air, you know, that, that had a major positive effect on, you know, on the environment.
- [10:54]
Jon Stewart
Listen, Nick, you and I grew up at the same time in Jersey. I'm sure you did what I did, which is ride your bicycle behind mosquito trucks. Like, we didn't even, we didn't even get excited about the ice cream man coming. It was when the mosquito guy with the giant. He had a pickup truck with a giant fire hose of who knows what. And we would ride our bikes behind it, be like, this smells interesting. Just let it wash over us.
- [11:18]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, it's like, just breathe in, you know, because you're huffing anyway.
- [11:22]
Jon Stewart
That's right.
- [11:23]
Nick Gillespie
So even when you're saying like, okay, we're going to build a consensus and say we want to get leaded gasoline out of the air because it has these negative effects, you can do it smarter and dumber and like the, you know, the way the government did it, and this was Nixon's EPA said, okay, we're going to mandate catalytic converters, which is a particular type of technology that takes a lot of the lead out of emissions, I mean, as well as changing how we formulate gasoline. But, you know, it's like the government probably shouldn't be dictating technology. Or it could set a goal and say you have to reduce pollution by so much. But then we're going to let you. And we're going to let the market innovate to figure out what's the best way to do it.
- [12:04]
Jon Stewart
Are you for government then incentivizing those kinds of changes? Like, is, Would that be or is that considered an intervention that sullies a free market?
- [12:15]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, well, it, I mean, it gets complicated pretty quickly and. Yeah, you know, obviously. Right, yeah, but it's, but it's where it might be that, you know, we want you to reduce your amount of pollution. However we define it, that's one thing. But then say, oh, and by the way, we're going to give you a massive tax sub taxpayer subsidy and then give taxpayers credits to buy this one kind of technology. You know, it could be a solar panel. You know, I don't think Build your own wind farms have taken off yet, but I'm sure they're, they're coming. You know, like you probably, you want to make it as simple as possible to say like, okay, we've come up with like, here are the basic rules. And then what free markets are really good at is figuring out innovative ways to do stuff for lower costs with better outcomes. And that's not always perfect and it's not always, you know, sometimes it needs a kick in the pants or sometimes you just need a top down regulation or restriction on something. But I think things generally work better, you know, when you let markets operate more freely to kind of figure out what people want. Because a lot of times we don't know what we want and then how to get there more quickly with ddt. If I may.
- [13:25]
Jon Stewart
All right, pick the DDT knit and then I'll go back to the sort of more macro view and then we'll get into sort of what's happening today.
- [13:31]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, DDT is a really interesting example. I mean the kind of planetary ban, almost complete planetary ban on DDT comes from Rachel Carson in Silent Spring, Silent Spring, and she was making a series of cases and you know, the modern environment, environmentalist movement in a lot of way comes out of that book and the, the movement that she helped inspire, you know, and it turns out that DDT is really good at killing mosquitoes.
- [13:57]
Jon Stewart
The best.
- [13:58]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. You know, and it, it's, banning was not necessarily a good thing because everything has costs and benefits. And it turns out in people are using lower levels of DDT in order to really powerfully eradicate mosquitoes. And you know, so like people, we, we are constantly held captive by these old things. Like, you know, DDT was killing people, you know, as if like everything good didn't come out of an era where boys were riding spider bikes, jumping ramps into vats of ddt. But you know, it, it turns out that it gets much more complicated and we, you know, it's, it's worth going back and thinking about this stuff and you, you mentioned, sure, we'll talk about Robert Kennedy at a certain point. You know, Robert Kennedy, who's old enough to really remember polio, is like, you know, the polio vaccines have, you know, killed more people than they saved. And it's like, you know, I want to see the stream of iron lungs, you know, going up in front of Health and Human Services.
- [14:58]
Jon Stewart
But it's, it's really difficult right now, Nick, to make those choices and balances. Especially now because you bring up the point about ddt. And you're right, I mean, it was an incredibly effective killer of mosquitoes which were causing malaria and all kinds of disease. But then it was found to have mutagenic properties and cancer properties and.
- [15:17]
Nick Gillespie
Well, at, at certain levels. Right, because this. Yeah. And then this is, you know, one of the things I, I gave a talk last fall, you know, which was about what I call the agony of abundance. Like the, the biggest problem I think we have today, you know, in, in a kind of macro sense, is we forget how to learn from the past. And there was a poll last year and it's preach. Yeah. And it's like almost 60% of people last year said that life was better in America in 1974 because you were a kid. Yeah, let's go look at 1974. And like the Pinto was the best selling car in 1974, which was invented.
- [15:56]
Jon Stewart
To make the Gremlin feel better about itself, as you know.
- [16:00]
Nick Gillespie
Well, I was partial to the Pacer because I just remember them having an ad where a guy delivered a six foot sub in the back of the Pacer, but then it was all glass. So it would have, by the time it got there, it would have flies and maggots on it.
- [16:14]
Jon Stewart
I had a Gremlin.
- [16:15]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah.
- [16:15]
Jon Stewart
I was, I was the idiot who worked his whole fucking high school career to buy an $800 off Brown Gremlin just to find out it's front heavy. And making a left meant you fishtailed into the neighbor's yard. So.
- [16:28]
Nick Gillespie
But the Pinto, the Pinto not only was explosive, literally and figuratively. Well, not figuratively, just explosively. But it was a bad car. And like we have done so much better to make better cars, you know, and. But yet people are constantly being born back into the past thinking that it was a simple, you know, a simple decision.
- [16:49]
Jon Stewart
A simple time when cars were cars and segregation was allowed.
- [16:54]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah.
- [16:54]
Jon Stewart
All right, gonna take a quick break. Be right back. This episode is brought to you by Greenlight. Get this. Adults with financial literacy skills have 82% more wealth than those who don't. From swimming lessons to piano classes, us parents invest in so many things to.
- [17:12]
Nick Gillespie
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- [17:13]
Jon Stewart
But are we investing in their future financial success?
- [17:16]
Nick Gillespie
With Greenlight, you can teach your kids.
- [17:17]
Jon Stewart
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- [17:22]
Nick Gillespie
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- [17:25]
Jon Stewart
Education and future today with a risk free trial at greenlight.com Spotify greenlight.com Spotify Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you Knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com hey, we're back. But let's talk about that central tension because I think here's where I probably have the hardest time embracing kind of the, the foundational philosophy, which would be kind of the way that Jeff Bezos is going with the Washington Post now. Personal liberty and free markets. And this is the part that's hardest for me because in my formulation. Right, right. One of the greatest limiters of personal liberties oftentimes turns out to be free markets.
- [18:39]
Nick Gillespie
Okay, what's an example of that?
- [18:41]
Jon Stewart
All right, so the way I would look at it is this. The greatest inhibitor of personal liberty, in my mind is not necessarily overzealous regulation or something along those lines. It's poverty, it's struggle, it's the inability to get enough of the fruits of your labor to allow yourself the personal freedom that you need. You know, survival and, and being on a tenuous razor's edge is for my calculation the greatest inhibitor of personal liberty. Free markets. This, the operating system that we're running. Capitalism, whether it's free or not, is by its nature exploitative of, of labor. So their goal is to get you to work for them for the least amount of money they can. They can pay you because they need to drive the biggest profits. Right, sure. So because of that, it's hard for me to reconcile those, those two dynamics feel at odds.
- [19:53]
Nick Gillespie
I totally hear where you're coming from and I, you know, libertarianism, historically, you know, it's like a Post World War II phenomenon, really. A post 1968 phenomenon, really, as an organized movement.
- [20:05]
Jon Stewart
Really? Why 1968, do you think?
- [20:08]
Nick Gillespie
It was partly the people who founded the modern Libertarian Party, people who were working at places like Reason, they felt left out of politics. You know, Republicans and Democrats. Like, you know, when you're, especially if you're a young man in a draft year and your choice is Richard Nixon or Hubert Humphrey or George Wallace, you're like, okay, where's the exit? Right. You know, it's not, it's not good. Right.
- [20:33]
Jon Stewart
Would you draw it further back to like objectivism, or would you say that.
- [20:37]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, yeah, A huge, huge factor. And people like Ayn Rand. I never personally went through an Ayn Rand phase, but, you know, she was massive.
- [20:46]
Jon Stewart
You didn't smoke that much pot. See, I went through it.
- [20:48]
Nick Gillespie
Oh, wow. You know, I, the objectivists, I knew, I, you know, they didn't even get drunk.
- [20:54]
Jon Stewart
Oh, wow.
- [20:54]
Nick Gillespie
Much of smoking weed. So it's like, okay, I'm out.
- [20:57]
Jon Stewart
It was the only time I ever found it.
- [20:58]
Nick Gillespie
Interesting thing because for me, the 1950s, I mean, post war America is the first time when America became kind of a wealthy country. And also that's when individual liberty flourished. Suddenly you had, even among minorities who had it really shitty in the 50s if you were black. I mean, Brown versus Board of Education only took place in 54 schools. Didn't get fully desegregated until Nixon in the early 70s. I mean, it was bad, but at every level, people were doing much better and there was so much more stuff to buy, so many more choices to make. On every level. It makes sense that libertarianism started to become more interesting and attractive. I was more into Jack Kerouac and the Beats who were exploring individual liberty.
- [21:45]
Jon Stewart
Sure. The Merry Pranksters and.
- [21:47]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, you know, so these, these are all like kind of, you know, parts of us of a broad movement. But in any case, I was going to say that I, you know, I'm a libertarian because I grew up lower middle class, not because it's characterized as. This is a philosophy for upper middle class people, highly educated people, men mostly, and some women who are like Ayn Rand or something, like use cigarette holders or something.
- [22:19]
Jon Stewart
Wear monocles.
- [22:20]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, that's right. My whole point, I agree with you in the questions you're asking. I think capitalism, broadly speaking, as an operation system, generates more possibilities for people. I agree. And this is why I'm not an anarchist. You know, when you talk about poor.
- [22:40]
Jon Stewart
People, not even poor people, I mean like working class or even regular middle class, which is how I grew up.
- [22:45]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, I, well, you know, part of the problem with political discourse in America, and I think it's always been this way, is that, you know, 90% of us say we're middle class. And so you get middle class people. And this happened under, you know, it happened under George W. Bush, it happened under Trump, certainly under Biden, where you suddenly. Households who are making $400,000 are being subsidized by the government. And you hear this, you know, I'm talking to you from Hell's Kitchen in New York. And you'll hear people in New York say with a straight face like, oh, you know, making 300 grand in new York just isn't really a lot.
- [23:17]
Jon Stewart
It's just not happening right now.
- [23:19]
Nick Gillespie
You know, it's like, you know, we're pinched and it's like, then move, or whatever. But what I was going to say is that the libertarian argument for helping people who need it and assistance in the market goes something like this, or part of it is that, you know, if you're a kid and you're parents, for whatever reason, aren't they're not well off, you don't have a lot of options. Giving kids access to education and to healthcare will allow them to grow so that they can fully participate in society, which is a good thing. Then we can say, okay, well, that's why we have Medicaid and why we have public schools. And then it might be the case that we say, well, you know what, let's maybe give the parents money so that they can pick the school their kid goes to. Like, the government doesn't have to run the schools, et cetera, but there should be some aid and assistance in the interest of helping people fully participate in society. I think I can make a case that is consistent with libertarian beliefs and a belief in mostly free markets and laissez faire and certainly personal liberties, that the state can exist to help people in terms of safety nets and in terms of helping to guarantee or at least multiply opportunities. But having said that, the reason why cars became cheaper and better isn't because the government said, hey, you know what? We're going to give you a subsidized loan in order to buy that Gremlin. Actually, cars in America got better and cheaper, when you think about it in terms of the amount of work that people have to do to buy them. When we opened up to competition and through the mid-70s, car markets in America were basically, you know, it was very hard to get imports. And as a result, we got, you know, the cars that you and I grew up driving. You know, the one good thing is, you know, I think about this all the time. And again, this is a question of progress that we should not celebrate uncritically but take note of. I can remember people would have parties on the street if their car made it to 100,000 miles and the odometer went to zero.
- [25:24]
Jon Stewart
Sure. The rollover, baby, you had to get to them. Zeros.
- [25:27]
Nick Gillespie
There were like two or three in your lifetime.
- [25:29]
Jon Stewart
Yeah.
- [25:30]
Nick Gillespie
And now you don't even Change the spark plugs on a new car until 100,000 miles. You know, and it is true that, that business owners want to, you know, they want you to work for as little as they have to pay you. But then if you're a good worker, you're going to be competing. You know, other companies are going to be like, you know what? This guy is actually pretty good at what he's doing. I'm going to woo him away with a better wage.
- [25:53]
Jon Stewart
Yeah, I would. I think that's probably where you and I would, Would. Would disagree a little bit.
- [25:58]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, I. Well, I also think it's. It's kind of, you know, you can push it too far. I was looking in anticipation for this. I was looking at the percentage of households and whatnot that are on SNAP benefits. And things happen. Like, I think almost everybody in America, regardless of political persuasion or ideology or anything, would say, you know what? Like, we don't want people to starve.
- [26:21]
Jon Stewart
Yeah, I wouldn't even question that at this point. There's a Republican congressman the other day who was like, kids should have to work for their lunch at school. And you're like, okay, that's interesting.
- [26:32]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, I agree.
- [26:34]
Jon Stewart
And by the way, SNAP benefits are controversial.
- [26:37]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah.
- [26:38]
Jon Stewart
I mean, they really are within the government. And the other side, I would say to it, is when governments do provide that. Right. They attach all kinds of conditions to it that they don't attach to subsidies that are for corporations. I mean, you get billions for, you know, things. And yet food stamps, you're not allowed to buy hot food.
- [26:57]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. No, it drives me nuts. And this is, again, from a libertarian point of view, I think you can say, okay, we're going to have certain social welfare, you know, safety net programs. Those are important. But then when you start getting to like, well, okay, you know, people who are making, you know, three times the poverty line or something are still getting a benefit. Maybe that's not a great use of taxpayer money because that money's coming from somewhere else. But also, you know, and you find this in all sorts of giveaways under Covid and whatnot, where people just, you know, okay, well, you know, why. Why do seniors get prescription drug benefits, you know, regardless of how much money they make or why are they getting them anyway if. If they don't actually need them?
- [27:42]
Jon Stewart
So you're more of a. You would say means testing is the most important aspect of the safety net.
- [27:49]
Nick Gillespie
It's two things. One is, I would say it would be better to give people like, you know, we know people are poor because they're below the poverty line. Like, give them cash. You know, just give them cash and say, okay, here we trust you not to buy, you know, not simply to buy Ledio cereal for your kid.
- [28:07]
Jon Stewart
Right.
- [28:07]
Nick Gillespie
Instead of.
- [28:08]
Jon Stewart
Which, by the way, they don't. I mean, almost entirely those benefits are used to the positive and not.
- [28:14]
Nick Gillespie
Absolutely. Yeah.
- [28:15]
Jon Stewart
The whole idea is like they're gaming the system for gambling money and cigarettes. Like, yes, it's.
- [28:19]
Nick Gillespie
And, and it's like, well, they'll figure out how to do that anyway. But what, you know, to get to this point, because you, you mentioned and Jeff Bezos who just recently said he wants the opinion section of the Washington Post to focus on supporting personal liberties and free markets. And it's true. Like when government gives a benefit and then says, oh, but you know what? You have to get the 2% milk or the non fat milk because we don't trust you to make a good decision. That is so patronizing. To my mind, it shouldn't be allowed.
- [28:50]
Jon Stewart
But you're not against the government subsidizing those that are left out of whatever economic prosperity comes from the capitalist system, which is, I think for a lot of people would be surprising. You know, I've always said, you know, Rand Paul is kind of the avatar for all this in my mind, only because having lobbied down there for Zadroga act for 911 and PACT act for Veterans and other things.
- [29:17]
Nick Gillespie
Right.
- [29:17]
Jon Stewart
I always started to get the impression that like, like a libertarian was a Republican whose town hadn't hit, hadn't been hit by a tornado yet.
- [29:26]
Nick Gillespie
Right, right.
- [29:27]
Jon Stewart
Like it was like no money for Sandy relief and then Kentucky gets hit by a tornado and they're like, come on. Which made me feel like it wasn't a practical operating system for people to be talking about.
- [29:40]
Nick Gillespie
You'll have fights over where the line gets drawn. Exactly.
- [29:42]
Jon Stewart
That's right.
- [29:43]
Nick Gillespie
And things like that. But you know, to me, and I like the way that you phrase it, it's, you know, it's like, like who, who are the people who are left out and particularly the people who are left out, you know, through no actions of their own, how do we give them a shot at participating in society?
- [29:59]
Jon Stewart
And this, I think is going to surprise people. I think they view libertarianism in some ways as kind of a purest form of a kind of selfishness. Right. That you don't do. And I would say that's a more charitable view than I hear from the Republican Party almost in its entirety. I think they view poverty and being left behind as vice as somehow it went in certain areas. I think if you were to look at like, like, let's say the Midwest in the Rust Belt, Right. I think the view there is those poor people, globalization has hollowed out our manufacturing base. And then you would say, what about Chicago and New York City and minority communities? And they would say, pull your pants up and get a fucking job. It's almost an analog of what happened to our manufacturing base, yet viewed almost entirely differently and without any sympathy.
- [31:00]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, what you're describing is broadly, a lot of Republicans think this way. I think a lot of conservatives, I think liberals go back and forth when you're talking about Chicago and it's like, oh, we got to help these people. But then if it's some fat Walmart Mart shopper in a small town in Indiana, it's like, just bucket up, pal.
- [31:20]
Jon Stewart
No, no, no, you're right. It does. It goes across lines. People have their prejudices against different groups.
- [31:26]
Nick Gillespie
And this is one of the things that is fascinating about Donald Trump is that he is a master of playing all of this kind of stuff against itself.
- [31:34]
Jon Stewart
All right, quick break and then back. Get the Angel REEF Special at McDonald's.
- [31:42]
Nick Gillespie
Now let's break it down.
- [31:44]
Jon Stewart
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- [32:32]
Nick Gillespie
This is one of the things that is fascinating about Donald Trump is that he is a master of playing all of this kind of stuff against itself. Because, you know, when he's talking about tariffs and when he's talking about help, you know, he just was praising the longshoremen for, you know, getting a good deal by resisting modernization of, you know, of containerized shipping. It's, you know, he knows how to play all of this.
- [32:57]
Jon Stewart
Do you think that's genuine? Because I find him to be incredibly dismissive of labor and workers, and he views them, you know, I think in his unguarded moments, like the podcast he did with Elon, where he was laughing with Elon about how badly they had cut, you know, the workers at Twitter. And where do you think they are in reality?
- [33:19]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, I. Well, you know, Donald Trump. And this is probably the only time this sentence has been spoken in the English language. I think of Donald Trump like Bob Dylan. And by that I mean that he.
- [33:31]
Jon Stewart
Hold on a minute. Are we recording this?
- [33:34]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, he has.
- [33:37]
Jon Stewart
He's certainly blowing in the wind, but.
- [33:39]
Nick Gillespie
What a million different Persona. And at any given point in time, Bob Dylan absolutely believes what he's singing. You know, and when he was, you know, anti war, he believed that when he was. When he thought Reuben Carter was. Was innocent.
- [33:54]
Jon Stewart
He believes it in the moment.
- [33:55]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. And then when he thought that God was going to come and kill his friends and throw them into a lake of, you know, everlasting hellfire.
- [34:02]
Jon Stewart
It was only a couple of years, Nick. You know, that was only a couple of years. He got out of that quick.
- [34:06]
Nick Gillespie
But Trump believes what he's saying. Like, so I don't. I don't think he's being calculated and saying, I'm screwing around with the longshoremen.
- [34:13]
Jon Stewart
It's a Costanza thing.
- [34:15]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, that's right.
- [34:16]
Jon Stewart
Not a lie, if you believe it. And in that moment, he believes it.
- [34:20]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. And. But, you know, it does get into this, this larger question for the country. You know, surprisingly, I think my worldview would fix just about everything in the world.
- [34:31]
Jon Stewart
But why didn't we talk to you sooner, Nick?
- [34:34]
Nick Gillespie
You know, I've been waiting. No, but, you know, what we have now is a government that pretty much at all levels, but certainly at the federal level, is spending way too much. It cannot or won't raise revenue to cover its costs. So it's creating debt. And we can talk about why debt is a problem beyond some kind of accounting fetish. But. But we are trying to do. The government is trying to do so many things, it is doing them poorly, and it's unsustainable. And I think we're reaching a moment where this long period after World War II and even after the Cold War ended, where, okay, there's a reset coming, and you can't keep spending $7 trillion a year and taking in $4.5 trillion, which is what we're doing, and we're going to have to make choices. And this is where, you know, I think if we would say, here's the goal of government. The goal of government is not to make sure that everybody, ever, everywhere, keeps the job they had when they were 25 even if they're 65. But it's like government is here to provide several core functions and to kind of keep things moving in a direction. Then how do we pay for that? Like, how much does that cost? How do we pay for it? And how do we empower people to. To, you know, to use, you know, whatever money we're giving them?
- [35:54]
Jon Stewart
I. Listen, I think you're putting your. Your finger on the essential questions that we talk about. I guess the way that I would maybe address that is, Is slightly different, which is government exists. Getting back to the operating system. The operating system being capitalism.
- [36:08]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, which is a wonderful metaphor for everything.
- [36:12]
Jon Stewart
In my mind. The government exists to soften the blow that a by definition, exploitative system is going to extract. You know, capitalism is extractive. They're goods, raw materials, labor. It's got to be the cheapest drive, the highest profits, and the people that will benefit that are necessarily a smaller slice of people, because it's a shareholder operation, not a people operation. And the labor is not valued in the same way that investment or capital is. Capital is king.
- [36:44]
Nick Gillespie
Can I push on this a little bit? Because. Yeah, what I was going to challenge is like, capitalism is inherently exploitative and that labor is always getting punched in the head or hit in the kidneys with a baseball bat by. Who was the guy? And on the Waterfront. Johnny Friendly, I think.
- [37:04]
Jon Stewart
How did he get that name? He wasn't.
- [37:06]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. I mean, and maybe he had a bouncer who was really fat that they called Tiny. I think it was an ironic universe. Right.
- [37:13]
Jon Stewart
Oh, that's how it works.
- [37:14]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. But I don't necessarily agree with that. And in a lot of ways, I would push back on it because when you talk about, you know, okay, you know, the boss, the boss man, and, you know, now we're back in Springsteen universe. Right. Because, you know, for, for Bruce Springsteen, things have never recovered from the Great Depression. You know, he's still mumbling along the mean streets of Rumson.
- [37:39]
Jon Stewart
You know what? We can argue about economic systems, but you were in dangerous territory, my friend. Y territory.
- [37:45]
Nick Gillespie
What, what I'm getting at is that, like, you know, employers are desperate, generally speaking. Like, if you are a good employee, and I worked as a manager at reason for 20 plus years, like, if there was somebody who was putting in a better, you know, than average effort, I would do everything to keep them.
- [38:04]
Jon Stewart
But you're running a small business.
- [38:06]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, yeah, I get that.
- [38:07]
Jon Stewart
Reason is a small. It's not a multi. I'm. I'm talking writ large about multinational corporations. And I'll make the case, I think, because if you look at wealth in systems that are poorly regulated in terms of, of capitalism. Right. There is in the same way that political power is accrued through a kind of contrived incumbency. I think wealth also accumulates through a contrived incumbency by those that are wealthy. And what you find is so, so let's go back to times when capitalism was less fettered and that would be sort of Gilded Age. It's one thing to say, oh, competition, you know, iron tempers iron. It makes everybody stronger and it gets stronger. But what happens is, as we've seen with monopolistic tendencies in capitalism, once wealth is accrued, it becomes much easier to then keep tilting the table more in their favor. And it almost inexorably, it's, it's a law of nature. It's a, you know, kind of Newton's law.
- [39:13]
Nick Gillespie
I hear you, but I, I, you know, we will disagree with this to a large degree on this and. Oh, okay, you know, not, I don't think it changed, but I, you know, and I'm not saying that there weren't times where, you know, capitalism was, you know, red and tooth and claw and exploitative.
- [39:30]
Jon Stewart
When was it not? I guess that would be the easier question.
- [39:33]
Nick Gillespie
Well, the reason, what I'm, what I'm getting at is saying that when you, you know, if you go back and this is something, there's a, there's a type of school of economic thought called public choice economics, which talks about how, you know, the story that progressives tell Capital P, Progressives in particular tell about capitalism is that it was awful.
- [39:53]
Jon Stewart
Not awful, but it's not awful. It's, but it's a system that requires exploitation and extraction. I mean, it generates rates, but more wealth than any other system. No question. But that wealth accumulates unusually.
- [40:08]
Nick Gillespie
Right.
- [40:08]
Jon Stewart
You, you brought, you brought up earlier the 50s, which I thought was a great time. And you're right, but tax rates then were 80% or 90%. And the GI Bill, which was a giant government expense, is what helped build that stable middle class that you're talking about.
- [40:25]
Nick Gillespie
Well, first off, nobody paid those tax rates because those, those were the printed rates. No, seriously. But that's why people, that's like expense accounts, you know, and all sorts of things were invented for upper level people.
- [40:39]
Jon Stewart
Sure. And they cut all kinds of deductions and rich people always find a way out of it. True.
- [40:43]
Nick Gillespie
The main engine, the main engine of things like people being able to buy their own homes and whatnot it was increases in productivity through industrialization and mechanization. It was not, I would argue it was not unionization. It wasn't the GI Bill. I'm not saying those things didn't have an effect effect, but that it's because we became wealthier, because suddenly we were building an economy that used machines and other things to become massively more productive.
- [41:10]
Jon Stewart
Wages went up, but I think that wages do not match productivity gains. They'll always lag.
- [41:17]
Nick Gillespie
They. Sometimes they're higher, sometimes they're higher, sometimes they're lower. But like right now in America, we're basically, we have like the highest, highest median household income that we've ever had, adjusted for inflation.
- [41:28]
Jon Stewart
Isn't 50 to 60% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck?
- [41:32]
Nick Gillespie
No. You have to, you have to look into what that means. You know, like, you know, 60, 60 plus percent of Americans own their own home. Compared to in the 50s, it was much lower. You know, they have college educations, they have more stuff.
- [41:45]
Jon Stewart
Oh, you're saying that our standard of living is now higher.
- [41:49]
Nick Gillespie
Comparatively massively higher. And food is cheaper. You know, everything is more abundant. Plus you get personal liberty stuff which I think is part of capitalism. I don't think. It's not like capitalism is an economic thing. And then it's the weekend and you're going to go to Plato's retreat or Studio 54. They're all part of a same system. Right? Right. Having said all of that, just to get back to it, it's like what capitalism does. And there's an economist named Joseph Schumpeter, the guy who created, he coined the term creative destruction. And in a book During World War II, two called capitalism, socialism and Democracy, he said, you know, the, the, you know, the great achievement of capitalism was not making more silk stockings for queens, the queens of England, the queens of Europe, but bringing them in reach of factory girls.
- [42:38]
Jon Stewart
You're saying the Henry Ford, the sort of. The mechanization of goods and services allowed more people, which I don't in any way quibble with. I think that's, that's why we use this operating system. System. I'm just saying the basis of this operating system is inequality. And you see it in fits and starts. It's why economics goes through cycles and that, like if we hadn't done the New Deal, we'll talk about it this way. Government intervention to ease the burden of those who are not able to protect their wealth through incumbency and really profit at that arithmetic or geometric level level from the fruits of capitalism is what preserves the stability of the system. If we went more libertarian, I think you'd find the system is too volatile and revolution then becomes much more inevitable.
- [43:32]
Nick Gillespie
So you've heard of the massive economic crash that happened in the early 20s that was bigger than the stock market crash in 1929?
- [43:42]
Jon Stewart
No.
- [43:43]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. And the government didn't do anything and the stock market recovered very quickly.
- [43:48]
Jon Stewart
You're suggesting that after 1929 if we hadn't gotten the New Deal, everything would have been fine.
- [43:52]
Nick Gillespie
I'm not saying everything would have been fine and it would have been difficult. But the New Deal, it's worth going back and looking at. How did the New Deal affect the economy and did it string out bad times? Because there are two economic depressions in the 30s that economists talk about and that every government intervention has costs and benefits and oftentimes we have lost sight of things.
- [44:16]
Jon Stewart
Well, let's use a more recent example example, which would be the 2008 financial crisis versus the pandemic in 2008. In the financial crisis, it's caused by risk taking behavior within our investment economy, not our working economy.
- [44:34]
Nick Gillespie
And particularly, if I might, that was behavior that was heavily incentivized by the federal government in terms of guaranteeing mortgage loans and things like that.
- [44:45]
Jon Stewart
Well, Freddie Mae and those guys got into the game pretty late. Late. And I think it's. You'd be hard pressed to say that the hedge funds did it because they thought the government incentivized it.
- [44:54]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, I mean, but it was the Federal Reserve first off, like kept interest rates artificially low for a long time. And then the government had a policy of its, you know, government sponsored entities buying up all of the mortgage paper that was going. So banks did not do the due.
- [45:11]
Jon Stewart
Diligence, but they jumped into that later.
- [45:13]
Nick Gillespie
Everybody has, you know, some schmutz on their hands from all of this.
- [45:16]
Jon Stewart
But the schmutz, it's funny, I think where you and I would like society to settle is probably almost the same place.
- [45:26]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah.
- [45:26]
Jon Stewart
I think you and I would look at it as, and here's my path to get there. And you would say here's my path and you've got to trust both of those paths. You got to go and ultimately you got to trust me. You know, that that's where it comes down to theology.
- [45:41]
Nick Gillespie
I, I would argue that it's also, you know, we would probably agree on, you know, on, on a similar path because I susp. Suspect, I mean, you know, we went, I was looking this up beforehand in 2000, in 2001, which was Bill Clinton's final budget year as president. You know, he left office in 2000 or early 2001 fiscal year lasts, you know, a little bit longer. He spent less than $2 trillion here. That was the entire federal budget. We are over $7 trillion now. In 2019, the year before COVID it, we were spending $4.4 trillion a year. That went up to $6.6 trillion in 2020. It is now $7.2 trillion in spending. And I suspect that you would agree with me that we should not be. It's not clear why we're spending $7.2 trillion.
- [46:37]
Jon Stewart
Well, I certainly don't think we're spending it effectively. That's. I think that's for sure.
- [46:41]
Nick Gillespie
But like, why at all? Like, how do you go from, you know, know, were postco.
- [46:46]
Jon Stewart
So here's, here's what I would say with that. There are different ways to stimulate the economy. So I think since Reagan and probably before that, probably Carter, there has been the idea that supply side, sort of what they would call neoliberal policy is the best way to stimulate the economy. Which means that the money tax cuts for incentivizing wealthier people and corporations and allowing for more M and A and allowing for consolidation within industries, which in some ways, you know, these, these really. It's the rise of these gigantic multinational corporations. And it gets back to sort of what we're talking about in 2008 versus the pandemic in 2008. The crash came from the financialization of all these products. Products. It came from the white collar markets. We bailed them out as taxpayers, which.
- [47:45]
Nick Gillespie
I would totally, totally against as, as was I.
- [47:48]
Jon Stewart
But not against bailing out homeowners. That's maybe where you and I would differ.
- [47:53]
Nick Gillespie
It depends.
- [47:54]
Jon Stewart
But yeah, but in the pandemic, when the era that rent assistance went out and the 600, the stimulus went out, what it showed to me was it took us 10 years, it took us a decade after 2008 to even get back to a semblance of where we were. The pandemic. It took us a year or a year and a half financially to be back. What it says is, in my mind, direct stimulus at a demand side level is far more fiscally responsible than these trickle down neoliberal policies. I think we can spend less and get more.
- [48:32]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, I, we can definitely be more effective in intervening in economic, you know, situations. Yeah, I don't think part of the government's role should be like. It's not like going to a Personal trainer. And you come in and they're like, hey, you're looking a little fat. Let's do some abs today. And have the government constantly be smoothing the economy or. I think it's hubris to think that it can control things. It's one thing when you have a catastrophic adventure, but isn't it to prevent.
- [49:00]
Jon Stewart
More catastrophic adventures venture at some level?
- [49:02]
Nick Gillespie
Well, this is where, this is where.
- [49:06]
Jon Stewart
The theology comes in.
- [49:07]
Nick Gillespie
No, no, but it's also like, remember, you know, in the early 2000s, you know, we had the tech bubble crash.
- [49:14]
Jon Stewart
Yes.
- [49:15]
Nick Gillespie
And then we had a bunch of, you know, accounting rules that were going to make sure that, you know, big, you know, the financial sector never fucked around with shit anymore. Then, you know, the financial crisis hits large, I would argue is largely because of government actions or is heavily abetted by government actions. Actions.
- [49:32]
Jon Stewart
But don't you think those actions were all influenced by the lobbyists from the finance. You know, when the government sets out to do something smart, that gets watered down almost immediately by the moneyed interests.
- [49:43]
Nick Gillespie
This is, you know, public choice. Economics talks about how, like, we think people want to think of the government as acting somehow differently than the private sector, but it's oftentimes completely captured by the interests that it's supposed to regulate. Or it is also just trying to build its own empire, so it's going to try and regulate more and more stuff.
- [50:02]
Jon Stewart
So is the idea, Nick, if we were to boil this down, let me ask you, this is the idea, maybe that's fundamental to our disagreement, that because government can be captured by the same corrupt and corrosive interests that maybe business can be captured by. And I remember having Greenspan on the show and saying, why did we have a crisis in 2008? And he said, well, I think we thought that the banks would have done a better job of regulating themselves. And I was like, well, yeah, I did.
- [50:29]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. Yeah.
- [50:29]
Jon Stewart
But the point being is the only way to prevent that, to remove government, is that. Is that your sort of foundational principle?
- [50:39]
Nick Gillespie
Not necessarily remove it completely, but minimize its attempt to rig the system in favor of particular outcomes, whether that's for the little guy or the big guy.
- [50:49]
Jon Stewart
Or whatever, and let the natural order and that it. You don't fear the natural order will be that the little guy's got no chance against money.
- [50:58]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, I don't. And I say this again, you know, this is coming from, you know, my father was born in Hell's kitchen in the 1920s. He did okay. I did much better than him. But what I'm getting at is the idea that, I actually think that capitalism offers more opportunities specifically for people to rise up from the, you know, the lower classes and the middle class classes.
- [51:25]
Jon Stewart
You mean as opposed to communism or socialism, Is that what you mean?
- [51:28]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, or like, you know, a super regulated market where you're only getting into schools because of, you know, what family you come from and all of this kind of stuff, right.
- [51:36]
Jon Stewart
Which is still a large part of the operating system that we work.
- [51:40]
Nick Gillespie
Absolutely. No, and nothing is perfect, right? Nothing is perfect. But you know, we came out of the financial crisis with, oh, now we know we're not going to do anything too big to fail, right? And it's like, in fact the financial industry, the financial sector is more, more, you know, is more concentrated than it ever was. And everybody in it knows that like, oh no, we're too big to fail. Which also means we can fuck around and find out how.
- [52:03]
Jon Stewart
That's right. Just watch us.
- [52:05]
Nick Gillespie
It is a very tricky thing. And once you start thinking like, okay, the government can control stuff and make good outcomes like it, it does until, you know, you realize, oh, this was a big catastrophe. And I think with something like the COVID stuff, you know, when we're talking about, there's, there's economic issues which are worth talking about and I think, think the massive increasing and extending of unemployment benefits was really bad and it's generated so much debt that's not going away. Even if the annual GDP growth is increasing and things like that. There were so many interventions into the economy where if the government had done smaller, targeted things for shorter times, I think we would be better off.
- [52:50]
Jon Stewart
Well, I think they were also not practiced with demand side stimulus. And so maybe they just didn't understand quite what the real value of it was because the amount of economic activity it generated, even with wrecked supply chains. But so this brings us sort of around and Nick, I can't thank you enough for, you know, sitting and having the conversations because there's so much in it that is relevant to today, but also so many places of agreement that people may not have thought, well, this.
- [53:21]
Nick Gillespie
Is not an extreme philosophy and it is not a fringe philosophy.
- [53:26]
Jon Stewart
It is most people although can be exploited as such.
- [53:30]
Nick Gillespie
Oh yeah, totally. And it can be vilified wrongly and it can be taken in bizarre directions and stuff. But like, basically what you're talking about is like you want to live in a world where you can, you know, figure out who you are and build the world that you want to live in. And you know, you, you know, and not to get too libertarian, you know, on this, like, it means, you know, that, like, if you want to, to. If, if you want to marry, you know, if you're a man and you want to marry a man, you know, like, you know, anything that is among consenting adults is good. If you want to smoke weed rather than, you know, whiskey, than drink whiskey, like, you shouldn't go to prison for that. And it shouldn't be illegal to buy and sell this shit. And, you know, and if you want to run a. If you want to run a business that does this versus that, like, you know, anything that's peaceful.
- [54:15]
Jon Stewart
Yes. And coming from somebody who still believes in government's ability to give people help. Yes. I also believe government is far too onerous, far too bureaucratic. If I could give it anything, it would be a moonshot to dispel unnecessary paperwork.
- [54:33]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah.
- [54:33]
Jon Stewart
And to make it so that they don't have such ridiculous rules for every project that has to satisfy every interest group that ever walked the earth.
- [54:44]
Nick Gillespie
But that's part of what government is designed to do. Right. I mean, I think that's, I don't think that's a bug. I think that's a feature maybe, of government. And, and you, you would argue, you know, and I, I understand this. Capitalism's the feature is.
- [54:59]
Jon Stewart
That's what I'm saying.
- [55:00]
Nick Gillespie
You know, it is like, really. No, we need more girls in the shirt waist triangle factory.
- [55:06]
Jon Stewart
I mean, in some respects, like, because they started off with imperialism and colonialism and slavery, and so everything that they give us from that feels like, you know, it's a consensus recession. You know, we're at. What. What are you talking about? We're paying you. You're not a slave. Yeah, but, but let's, let's flip it now to at least what's happening now, because I think, you know, there is a feeling that the Trump administration is libertarian friendly and that Doge is libertarian friendly. And I guess my vision of what they're doing does not match. Like, the idea that, you know, RFK Jr. Is a give to libertarians seems crazy to me. But. But. Or that any of this is. It's. They're not talking about freedom, they're talking about fealty, and they're talking about, yes, free speech is a wonderful value unless we don't like it, and we will bring to bear an even more authoritarian way to. So. So how are you feeling in this moment?
- [56:10]
Nick Gillespie
So that is, you know, it's a fascinating kind of question, and I can't really speak for other libertarians sure. But I am. You know, what I liked about Trump winning is that I think it put a cap on a broad series of developments and kind of policies and attitudes that had settled over the country. Kind of like, you know, a DDT fog that wasn't going away.
- [56:41]
Jon Stewart
Are you saying I'm riding my bike behind the Trump administration as a fire.
- [56:45]
Nick Gillespie
Hose, of popping a wheelie on my banana seed and all this? No, it. But, you know, and that had to do. You know, there were certain things about wokeness and about kind of, you know, policing of speech in a public way that was onerous, you know, and the only solution to that, really, is for people to say, like, you know what? I am not going to allow you to call me a racist. You know, and I'm going to speak my mind. I'm going to be public about that.
- [57:12]
Jon Stewart
Do you think that's purely a purview of the left?
- [57:15]
Nick Gillespie
No, no. I mean, this is, you know, people are now talking about the woke left is being replaced by the woke right. And, you know, I mean, the idea that, you know, policing language so that, you know, if you're in the presence of Trump or a Trump tard, and you call it the Gulf of Mexico, they will be like, you. You no longer exist to me, or something. And, like, this is not progress by any stretch.
- [57:37]
Jon Stewart
See, I always looked at it more as a function of social media, media, which kind of gave the villagers who wanted pitchforks and torches a way to go after everybody, you know, and that includes, by the way, things that have nothing to do with politics. If you were to criticize, you know, One Direction, you would get a shitstorm coming your way.
- [57:55]
Nick Gillespie
Oh, it was great, though. And I. I like that. I mean, I think it's empowering even as it fractures us. But.
- [58:01]
Jon Stewart
Well, that's the other side, is that's people expressing their speech.
- [58:04]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, yeah. And I. I mean, I was early on in Twitter, or not that early on, but I remember when Bill Cosby, he was coming back with a Netflix special and a tour and stuff like that, and he had a Twitter feed, an official Twitter feed, and they would put out stuff saying like, hey, Dr. Cosby wore great sweaters on the Cosby show post your favorite sweater. And everybody just immediately went after him for all of the sexual assault and rape allegations. And it's like, that's the world I want to live in, where the big people and the little people are suddenly kind of in the same room. And that can be terrifying. It's especially terrifying if you're a big Person. Right.
- [58:44]
Jon Stewart
So I never had a pro. Look, I. I feel like I operate, you know, a small artisanal talk shittery. And if people want to, like, operate their talk shittery back at me, that is only fair. So I guess I'm trying to separate wokeness from people just giving each other incessant.
- [59:02]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah.
- [59:02]
Jon Stewart
About everything.
- [59:03]
Nick Gillespie
But then you get to places where it becomes implemented in terms of various kinds of speech codes, as well as hiring polic at universities, at corporations, you know, because corporations are not in the business. You know, corporations are just doing whatever they can do to make the next buck.
- [59:20]
Jon Stewart
I got a bumper sticker. Corporations are pussies. Like, they base. They don't want any trouble. Like, I'll tell you what, in terms of content creation, the biggest sort of censoring blanket that went over show business, I didn't think was wokeness. It was when Ron Desantis sued Disney.
- [59:38]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah.
- [59:38]
Jon Stewart
As soon as that happened, you saw people back off of content that they thought. Or like when Trump threatens to jail Zuckerberg.
- [59:47]
Nick Gillespie
Right.
- [59:47]
Jon Stewart
That. I guess that's my problem is just the hypocrisy of it all.
- [59:51]
Nick Gillespie
I know, I agree. You know, and I'll. I'll say, you know, because you, you brought this up. You had a really good and powerful and instructive moment when you were raising questions about the lab leak theory on the, you know, on Stephen Colbert show. On.
- [60:04]
Jon Stewart
On Colbert show. Yeah, yeah. On. On the Late show, you know, and.
- [60:06]
Nick Gillespie
And again, it's like, you know, Biden and I suspect if you go back far enough, there was some of this under Trump and under Obama and Bush and like, back before the fcc, Nixon, you know, all of this stuff, but where the government was actively leaning on people to say, do not permit this discussion or tamp it down, et cetera.
- [60:26]
Jon Stewart
Have they ever.
- [60:27]
Nick Gillespie
Not less now than ever. And this is one of the things to bring it back to Trump. You know, he signed an executive order saying that nobody in his administration should be trying to shut down conversation on social media. Media. Does he mean that?
- [60:41]
Jon Stewart
No, I can tell you he doesn't mean it. Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious he doesn't mean it. Listen, man, I've. I've honestly never seen a president and I know they lean on people. I'm not naive. I've never seen someone threaten to jail people who don't use the terminology. I've seen them try and reveal sources in a way that I thought was. I think what they did to Snowden was insane. Like, all those different things. I've seen, seen it. But he's making it explicit and yet was was hailed as the free speech king.
- [61:14]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. So what I, what I will say. And again, this is, you know, I, I, I didn't vote for Trump. I voted for the Libertarian candidate because, you know, why not? But yeah, Trump, Trump will be ineffective in, in, he's not going to actually jail people.
- [61:34]
Jon Stewart
But isn't the threat of it all that matters? Whether he jails them or not is kind of not the issue.
- [61:39]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, it's terrible. No, it is. It's not all that matters, but it is bad and he should be called out for it. I mean, in a way, Trump, in a way, his whole career, his whole politics career is the triumph of talk back, of telling the system go fuck yourself. Because nobody wanted him. The Republicans didn't want him originally. Nobody wanted him. So in a way, he personifies a world in which we are freer than ever to just say, fuck it, I'm doing whatever I want want.
- [62:07]
Jon Stewart
Unless it's against him.
- [62:09]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. As president, it is an awful thing. And when you look at governors, DeSantis did this. Greg Abbott in Texas did this too, where they started writing laws that were tailored to screw over social media companies they didn't like because they thought they were censoring conservative voices, which turned out not to be true. Yeah.
- [62:27]
Jon Stewart
Or educators that were teaching in a way that they didn't. For all the complaints of the woke left.
- [62:32]
Nick Gillespie
Yes.
- [62:32]
Jon Stewart
They've rarely fairly ensconced it in law in the way that the right.
- [62:36]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. I, and you could argue they didn't have to. Maybe. But it's all bad. Like any, anytime the government, you know, you know, Congress shall make no law, you know, abridging speech. That's it. Like. And that, that, that should be the case at the state level too, and all of that.
- [62:52]
Jon Stewart
So are you aligning with their, their other goals of, you know, like, I personally, if you could make governance government more efficient. Oh, my God. I don't necessarily know that that's what they're doing. It feels awfully inefficient the way they're doing it. But.
- [63:08]
Nick Gillespie
Well, and it's a, it's a real mix of, you know, for me, the biggest problems with Trump as a figure were had to do with immigration policy and tariffs and, you know, he's just categorically awful.
- [63:22]
Jon Stewart
You would not, a libertarian would not be protectionist in terms of, of. You even made the point earlier in terms of cars.
- [63:28]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah.
- [63:29]
Jon Stewart
You think that opening up that, that competition. Let me ask you this Maybe this is a different way to frame kind of dei. So for me, if, if you reframe that argument economically, it maybe aligns a little bit more with how you feel. Because what I think diversity and inclusion and equity means maybe not in the practice. And I, I don't think it means sitting through that hour long seminar where everybody looks at each other and goes, right, I never said that about her ass.
- [63:58]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah.
- [63:59]
Jon Stewart
Like, it's not that, but I look at it as more competition.
- [64:04]
Nick Gillespie
Right.
- [64:05]
Jon Stewart
You know, we have supply lines in this country, entrenched poverty and groups that have been explicitly kept out of, you know, equity through government action and all kinds of other ways. If you reanimate those supply lines, lines, you strengthen totally the resilience. Don't think of it as diversity, think of it as emerging markets, think of it as that. And suddenly you view it as an engine of economic growth.
- [64:33]
Nick Gillespie
Right. I mean, is there a sports league that got worse after blacks were allowed to play? No. And in every possible way. Right. It's just, it's like you were walling off a huge source. Source of, you know, powerful possibilities.
- [64:51]
Jon Stewart
Veterans have been walled off in many ways. Women were walled off. People in poverty stricken neighborhoods are walled off. Appalachia has been walled off forever. That, to me, that's what inclusion and diversity and equity means.
- [65:09]
Nick Gillespie
Unfortunately, those policies never, you know, had any, you know, they weren't reaching those people. I mean, that's.
- [65:16]
Jon Stewart
Yeah, because they're doing what they can, not what they should. What, what, what, what they're allowed to do is you can't address those shriveled supply lines and reanimate them and get those, you know, communities involved. So here's what we're going to let you do. We're going to let you have an office on the eighth floor and every April you're going to give us a presentation for two hours that everybody hates. How about that? Yeah, and that's, and that's what we're doing. Are you excited about that project of, do you think it will bear fruit?
- [65:49]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, well, I am very excited by the idea of having, you know, a government that has done an audit of its workforce and of its activities, which.
- [66:01]
Jon Stewart
By the way, I think it does do. I think it mostly ignores it. Almost every department there has to be audited. Only Defense doesn't pass them. But, but they do do that.
- [66:10]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah. No, well, actually there's more like that. And you know, and this is, I was excited the other day when there were a bunch of tweets, you know, saying that, oh, doge has entered the Pentagon and it's like, okay, yeah, this should be very interesting.
- [66:22]
Jon Stewart
The question is, what are they, what are the metrics they're looking for? I just don't know yet if they're actually looking at. At value or they're just looking at size.
- [66:32]
Nick Gillespie
That's right. And you know, a good example of this, an economist friend of, of mine wrote about how at the FDA they had cut, apparently they had like cut 200 regulators, like people who actually go through stuff to see whether or not.
- [66:47]
Jon Stewart
It'S the very people who are doing it.
- [66:49]
Nick Gillespie
And if you keep the regulations in place and cut the workforce that is going to see if they're complying, you just make everything worse. And this is where I think the Trump administration, not across the board board, but in certain circumstances may actually be a good thing. So you take the fda, they named a guy, Marty Macquarie, who's a professor from Johns Hopkins, who's pretty smart. You know, he'll be reporting, I guess ultimately to Robert F. Kennedy, which is, you know, a whole other weird bag of weird. Right? I don't know. You know, like. But no, but I don't know. But if the FDA and you know, and this is something coming out of a libertarian perspective and analysis, like it costs way too much to bring new drugs to market. It takes too long and it brings. And, and it takes, it takes too long and costs too much. There are ways to bring more drugs to market without compromising safety. And if the government would restructure the fda. And Macri has talked about this RFK and the second, his deputy at Health and Human Services have talked about ways to do this. Like, if they do that so that it doesn't take a couple billion dollars in 12 years to bring a new drug to market, that's a big win. And that is something that we could completely do. We could do it overnight until the.
- [68:13]
Jon Stewart
Shit hits the Fed. The problem with government that, that using sort of first principles of business, like when I look at Elon. Right, yeah. What he's been able to accomplish, like however you want to feel about him, it's pretty remarkable.
- [68:27]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, totally.
- [68:28]
Jon Stewart
But it's a different ethos. Like you have to blow up a ton of rockets right before you figure out the right way. And the problem in the public sphere is the public demands agility and also perfection. Do you know what I mean? It's sort of like the same way with our criminal justice system.
- [68:46]
Nick Gillespie
I totally agree.
- [68:47]
Jon Stewart
You know, we demand perfection that anybody who's ever let out of purpose prison cannot Re, you know, recommit a crime, or else we have to make the system utterly ridiculous.
- [68:57]
Nick Gillespie
It have no. But I. You know, and in. And in its best iteration or its best kind of sense, if Doge is going to help us go through and just trim out, like, you know, clean out the house, there's just too much shit in the house, man.
- [69:12]
Jon Stewart
I just don't have confidence yet.
- [69:13]
Nick Gillespie
I know, and I agree because of the question. Question of, you know, like, are they doing it? Well, I have been thinking about this, you know, like, Elon is bragging about how, you know, he's got, like, a bunch of preteen coders who are quants, and they can go through spreadsheets and the stuff they're finding, like, you know, they keep finding massive mistakes, like where they were claiming a contract they ended with ICE was at $8 billion, and it was actually $8 million and things like that. Like, I worry that people think because you can fucking do excess Excel, you suddenly have wisdom. That's going to be problematic.
- [69:50]
Jon Stewart
I'll go beyond that, Nick. I think it's actually the bigger problem is it's ideologically antagonistic that they are viewing those people immediately through the prism of a parasitic relationship to our. To our money, and viewing them immediately as enemies and suspicious. And even in the sense of when they sent the email, it is in no way an unreasonable expectation that people who work for you, you would want to know what they're doing and that they've been doing something. But if you don't work in that department and just say to them, what have you been doing? And they tell you, you don't know if that's what they're supposed to be doing or not. Meanwhile, they have to spend all this fucking time figuring it out, which is inefficient.
- [70:37]
Nick Gillespie
And people at, you know, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and National Intell, you know, Tulsa Gabbard said, hey, don't comply with this. So you're already at odds. Having said that, it is important. Like, and this is where, you know, Trump. Trump was. Trump won. And more important, like, he gained in almost every possible demographic subgroup. So people are ready for a change, and that's the most important thing. And I think Trump has set the stage for this, and he's opened up ground where we can start having more conversations. It's up to each of us to come up with, like, okay, this is the way it should go. Like, I, you know, I was saying to my wife earlier this morning, like, I would love to go to Mars in my life, but I don't want to fly there with Elon Musk sitting next to me. Right.
- [71:27]
Jon Stewart
That's your breakfast convert. What's that over Eggos? What are we talking about, Nick? Have you guys run out of shit to talk about?
- [71:35]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, we've only been married, like, less than six months, so I. Yeah.
- [71:38]
Jon Stewart
Wait, is that really true?
- [71:40]
Nick Gillespie
Yes.
- [71:40]
Jon Stewart
Oh, congratulations.
- [71:43]
Nick Gillespie
In any case. You know, so what. What we're at, we are at a place where we understand, you know, this is why the Republican Party and the Democratic Parties don't make sense. Like, again, since the end of World War II, certainly the end of the Cold War, maybe even the beginning of the century. Like, it's all kind of played out and it's not working that well. Like, we need to. Maybe the House isn't a complete tear down, but we need to clean it up, we need to repaint it. We need to say, you know what, we're where we're going to sublet that whole part of it. Like, we don't. We don't need to be doing that. And that's really important and vital. And I agree with you in this sense of like, saying, if it's adversarial, if everything becomes adversarial, then what we. We've. This whole century, we've been going between you know, control, whole or partial control of the White House and the House of Representatives in the Senate, from Republicans to Democrats, back and forth in a way that hasn't been seen in over a century. And it's because we have. Haven't figured out a new consensus that is actually that people can live with. And so we just go from Biden being insane in this direction now Trump, you know, and we're not getting to a resolution.
- [72:54]
Jon Stewart
Oh, I think there's great opportunity. And I agree with you with that. Yeah, no, and I think it's true. And listen, I think one of the things I would say is a lot of people, I think you and I included, agree with a lot of the diagnoses that we look at these issues and we say it's sclerotic, or I would look at it as there's a really tough counterbalance now in that democracy is a by nature kind of analog system and we live in a digital world, and those tensions are really hard to resolve. But I would say in that moment, probably the conversation is about the remedies, and I'm looking at it right now with great fear that this is not the remedy that will bring that opportunity for that moment.
- [73:40]
Nick Gillespie
Well, I think let's. Yeah, it is the opportunity, you know, that's here. And then the remedies that are being proffered are not great. What is interesting is to see, you know, we're not even 100 days in. Right. To Trump, it's like a month. Month and change.
- [73:58]
Jon Stewart
Honestly, it feels like he's never not been president. I don't remember. I don't know. I've said this before. The presidency is supposed to age the president, not the people. I am withering.
- [74:13]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, it's really, really hard to think back even six months to what was going on. But again, it's helpful and it's essential because when we look back on where we were, we've gone through most of this stuff before, and we figured out ways to kind of improve on the past or to, you know, be better at what we're doing. And I think we need to do that, you know, right now in a way. You know, Trump has the high ground for a little while, but this is also true of every president. You know, by the summer, you know, we'll know whether or not he is popular, like, if his specific fixes are popular or not. I suspect that they will be less popular over time, but again, some of them, like, you know, let's, you know, let's legalize drugs at the federal level and just stop worrying about a whole bunch of shit we've been worried about for 100 years. Let's come to, you know, there is a broad recognition that the US should not be the world's policeman, but apparently.
- [75:11]
Jon Stewart
The developer of Gaza.
- [75:12]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, well, that's different.
- [75:14]
Jon Stewart
Apparently we shouldn't be the world's policeman, but we should just annex territories and build casinos there.
- [75:20]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, I mean, this is where it's confusing, you know, and. And we need to get to a place where the solutions that are being discussed are actually good and legitimate. And it'll be interesting to see if the Democrats. I'm very bothered by people being like, oh, my God, the Democrats have nobody. The Republicans will win every election for the next thousand years, because that's how history works. Yeah, Everybody has said that every. When Bush was elected and then reelected and then winnow Obama.
- [75:53]
Jon Stewart
I'm old enough to remember when Fukuyama said history was over. Yeah, yeah. We were just done. We had triumphed. It was over.
- [75:59]
Nick Gillespie
And he. But he was, you know, in a way, he was right in the saying, you know, that liberal democracy is the way forward. And the one thing, you know, I.
- [76:07]
Jon Stewart
Mean, retreat now, kind of.
- [76:10]
Nick Gillespie
Kind of. But it's also true that like China is, you know, China is not democratic, but it's like it's more capitalist than it was when he said, said that.
- [76:20]
Jon Stewart
But state run capitalism is not free markets. And that would be antithetical to everything that you're. And the more we become like Russia, the less we become like the free markets. That I think I totally agree with that.
- [76:31]
Nick Gillespie
But all I'm saying in China is that people are getting richer around the globe. I mean, one of the most important and fascinating facts that nobody discusses. Right. And I think this should be talked about much more. There is a global middle class. The majority of people on the planet are at the middle class or above level for the first time in human history. History.
- [76:50]
Jon Stewart
Is that really true? That that's actually very surprising to me.
- [76:53]
Nick Gillespie
There's a guy named Romy Karas at the Brookings Institution, has been writing about this for a decade. And most of it is happening in Asia and in Africa and South America and so we don't really care about that. But you know what happens, what happens when middle people, you know, get a little bit of extra money and then you say, oh, you know, here you've got more money in the bank, but you can't spend it the way you want to. People are like, fuck you. And like, you know, this, this is a good problem to have globally and things like that.
- [77:23]
Jon Stewart
But this is what I want to happen for the United States. I want there to be these, as we talked earlier, I want those entrenched places of poverty. I think those are great untapped engines of progress for things. But Nick, I'm, I'm cognizant of your time. I really appreciate the conversation. I've enjoyed it so much.
- [77:44]
Nick Gillespie
Thank you. I appreciate it too. And, and you know, I mean, one of the things that you're doing, which I think a lot of people who would identify themselves, you know, as not being a, you know, republic, like a MAGA Republican. Right. Like you are not freaking out externally.
- [78:00]
Jon Stewart
I am not.
- [78:02]
Nick Gillespie
Everybody. Well, I mean, yeah, but everybody is so oppositional that it's like, you know, you're either voting for Harris or you're voting for Trump. And if you're not, if you're not totally on point board, people don't want to talk to you.
- [78:15]
Jon Stewart
Right. Well, there's a purity test and a litmus testing in almost everything.
- [78:19]
Nick Gillespie
But there are more people now and this continues to grow, you know, that are independent. And we can argue about whether or not there are real independents politically, but fewer and fewer people are willing to identify as Democratic or Republican in polls. And that's saying something. And it means that these organizations don't represent the large masses of people anymore. And parties work better when, when they figure out, okay, where's the majority at? And how do we deal with that?
- [78:47]
Jon Stewart
Well, it's funny, we, it's almost like we have a parliamentary country.
- [78:50]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah.
- [78:50]
Jon Stewart
In a two party system.
- [78:52]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah.
- [78:52]
Jon Stewart
Government, you know, and it's, it makes it like you say it, it, it really makes it incredibly, you know, complex. But I'd love to have the conversation again. You know, we'll, we'll pick it up again to see where everything's been going.
- [79:05]
Nick Gillespie
Let's go to a child run factory in Bangladesh. Dash.
- [79:11]
Jon Stewart
Always so cheery.
- [79:12]
Nick Gillespie
Is there a budget for that?
- [79:14]
Jon Stewart
The always cheery Nick Gillespie as the jersey comes out of him. Editor at large of the Reason magazine hosted the Reason interview with Nick Gillespie podcast. Nick, thank you so much for spending the time today. Really, really enjoyed it.
- [79:25]
Nick Gillespie
Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you, John.
- [79:27]
Jon Stewart
Thanks, man. We are back. We're joined by Lauren Walker, Jillian Spear, Brittany Medic. By the way, I love talking to that guy. I felt like I was. He's so smart and he's got such a breadth of knowledge and even though we obviously like disagree on especially I thought the biggest one was exploitation of capitalism being exploitative. That, that surprised me. I, I never, I, I do think it's an engine of prosperity, but it very clearly has losers. So. But I thought it was a, a very interesting conversation and I very much enjoyed it.
- [80:02]
Nick Gillespie
Did we ever get that definition of libertarianism?
- [80:06]
Jon Stewart
I don't know that there is one.
- [80:07]
Nick Gillespie
I was really listening for it.
- [80:09]
Jon Stewart
It's whatever you want it to be. I think something that really stood out.
- [80:12]
Nick Gillespie
Was just while Gillian and I looking into this episode, just how diverse libertarians are. And I think a good, really much so example of that is the fact that some people feel RFK is within the libertarian camp. And most libertarians also, I think that.
- [80:30]
Jon Stewart
Ross Ulbricht is in the camp.
- [80:32]
Nick Gillespie
So one person, you know, for legalizing drugs and the other for banning like red.
- [80:36]
Jon Stewart
Number three, you know, hey, look. And in this world order now, it's like Andrew Tate is the libertarian. Yeah, I don't think that, I don't think that's what they're talking about. I don't, I think it's like a different philosophy. But, but he's an og. Yeah. And I like, I, you know, I spent a few days kind of in their quarter of the, the public square and like, while I vehemently disagree with a lot of the things that they believe in, I did appreciate that they.
- [81:05]
Nick Gillespie
Don'T arrive at those ideas with the.
- [81:07]
Jon Stewart
Same like gleeful cruelty that you see.
- [81:10]
Nick Gillespie
In right wing media. And they don't filter everything through that lens.
- [81:15]
Jon Stewart
It's really, it's clear there's a real intellectual, you know, anybody who's coming at you with, you know, Friedman and Hayek as the foundation of what they're talking about isn't just in it for the dank Pepe the Frog memes.
- [81:28]
Nick Gillespie
Yeah, it's nice.
- [81:29]
Jon Stewart
It's nice to be presented with ideas.
- [81:31]
Nick Gillespie
I don't agree with in ways that.
- [81:33]
Jon Stewart
I don't have to recoil from bars. Jillian, put that on a pillow. I like that very much. Britney. Are people just writing in today to see if I'm still alive? Because it appears the fragility of when you cut your finger. I literally got a call from my mom. Or like, are you okay? I'm like, you were with me in childhood. You know, I'm like, I ran headfirst into trees. What are you talking about, woman? People are very concerned about your well being. So pleased to see you, you know, when you're anemic to begin with. We did get one feedback that I'd.
- [82:08]
Nick Gillespie
Love to read to you.
- [82:09]
Jon Stewart
Please, John, I love you, but if you keep using the line, democracy is.
- [82:15]
Nick Gillespie
An analog system in a digital world, I'm going to lose my mind.
- [82:19]
Jon Stewart
I did it again today.
- [82:21]
Nick Gillespie
I know.
- [82:22]
Jon Stewart
Why? What? What? What do they think? Is, is it too cliched? Is it trite? What? What's the issue? You think? Well, listen to the rest of this. Okay.
- [82:30]
Nick Gillespie
I could get drunk in a drinking.
- [82:32]
Jon Stewart
Game for every time you say that. That is true. Much love, brother. But really? Well, we've been playing a drinking game this whole time, so. Wait. I gotta say though, it'd be a drinking game over a period of months, which seems like a long time to keep a drinking. I wish they had put in there. Why? So now I don't know if they think that's incorrect or just overused. Overused, definitely. Like, it's sort of like when you're trying to make something happen and then it doesn't happen. Like fetch. Yes, it's my version of fetch. But maybe that he'll write back and, and, and tell us or, or after listening to this episode, he may be too drunk. Where else have them to keep it coming? Where? Where? How can they keep it coming?
- [83:22]
Nick Gillespie
Twitter.
- [83:22]
Jon Stewart
We are weekly show pod. Instagram threads. Tik tok blue sky. We are Weekly Show Podcast and you can like subscribe and comment on our YouTube channel. The weekly show with Jon Stewart. Bang on, guys. Thank you as always for the incredible preparation and detail that you provide in every episode. That allows me to just sit and talk to somebody. Lead producer Lauren Walker, Producer Brittany Mametovic, video editor and engineer Rob Votola, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer Jillian Spear and as always, our executive producers Chris McShane and Katie Gray. Guys, thank you so much. That was a really fun episode and I will see you all next week. The Weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions. Pluto TV is the place for movie fans like me and TV fans like me. They've got something for everyone and it's totally free. You can visit, binge, laugh out loud sitcoms like Frasier and rewatch cult classics like Higher Learning.
- [84:37]
Nick Gillespie
Whether you're in the mood to solve.
- [84:38]
Jon Stewart
A little crime before bedtime with NCIS or Tracker, or curl up with a surefire hit like Forrest Gump.
- [84:44]
Nick Gillespie
Run Forrest.
- [84:45]
Jon Stewart
Pluto TV has thousands of movies and shows, all for free. Pluto TV Stream now pay Never New.
- [84:53]
Nick Gillespie
CBS Saturday A young romance is cut short when a mysterious car wreck leaves a man dead. His car was way over there and.
- [85:00]
Jon Stewart
His body was way down here.
- [85:01]
Nick Gillespie
There was footprints and tire tracks.
- [85:03]
Jon Stewart
She believes that this was no accident.
- [85:05]
Nick Gillespie
There's so many things missing from the story. 48 Hours is all new CBS Saturday.
- [85:10]
Jon Stewart
10, 9 Central and streaming on Paramount plus.
- [85:17]
Nick Gillespie
Paramount podcasts.