The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

This week, guest host Zach Weissmueller is joined by Katherine Dee, a writer chronicling the subcultures of the internet at her Substack default.blog and in columns for The Spectator, Tablet, GQ, UnHerd, and various other publications. Dee also hosts a weekly call-in show that's an homage to the late-night AM radio show Coast to Coast. Dee talks about the internet as a mystical "other place": fairyland or the astral plane, somewhere you journey and play by different rules, interact with unusual entities, and hope you emerge with your sanity intact. In this interview, they discuss the shift from the "internet utopianism" of the '90s and early 2000s, where cyber philosophers mused about netizens "forming our own social contract" in a borderless digital space where "governments have no sovereignty," to internet pessimism, where politicians fret about online misinformation and extremism, parents worry their kids are "cooked" by short-form brain rot, and the media tell us AI will replace our jobs, our friends, and our romantic partners. Dee has a remedy, and she calls it "internet realism." It's time to step out of fairyland and remember what the internet is: a tool. We humans use tools to reshape the world, but so, too, do tools reshape humans. Wield them wisely.   The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least a more interesting—place by championing "free minds and free markets."   0:00—Introduction 1:42—Dee's relationship with the internet 7:16—The early days of the internet 13:48—Has the internet changed us? 18:21—Mythological analogies 23:00—Benefits of logging off 27:15—Falling in love with AI chatbots 33:39—Smartphones and anxiety 42:11—Defending pseudonymity 50:46—The death of reading 55:52—Internet nihilism and violence 1:01:20—Embracing internet realism Producer: Paul AlexanderAudio Mixer: Ian KeyserThe post Did the Internet Break Our Sense of Reality? appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Sarah McLaughlin, a senior scholar at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and author of Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech. She explains how governments in places like China and the United Arab Emirates restrict academic freedom and expression not just in their own countries but also at colleges and universities in America by exploiting speech codes and threatening to end lucrative satellite campus arrangements. McLaughlin and Gillespie also talk about whether it was a good idea for American comedians to censor their material at Saudi Arabia's Riyadh Comedy Festival and what to make of President Donald Trump's repeated minimization of the murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives. The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie, goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and scholars who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least a more interesting—place by championing free minds and free markets.   0:00—Introduction 1:14—Trump's response to Khashoggi's murder 7:26—The Riyadh Comedy Festival 11:29—Foreign influence on U.S. college campuses 23:55—The NBA and the Chinese government 28:39—Sensitivity exploitation 34:36—Changes to campus culture 39:46—Satellite campuses 43:50—Matthew Hedges and the UAE 50:03—McLaughlin's path to FIRE 51:55—Solutions to campus censorship 58:12—Climate of free speech under Trump   Upcoming Reason Events Reason Versus debate: Big Tech Does More Good Than Harm on December 10 Producer: Paul AlexanderAudio Mixer: Ian KeyserThe post How Foreign Governments Police U.S. Speech appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is the science writer Matt Ridley, author of best-selling books such as The Red Queen, The Rational Optimist, and, with Alina Chan, Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. At a live event filmed in New York City, Ridley tells Nick Gillespie that political and cultural elites had already turned science, our best tool for understanding and improving the world, into a centralized, hyperpoliticized priesthood even before COVID. He walks through the collapse of public trust in 2020 as experts flipped on masks and transmission, declared Black Lives Matter protests safe but religious services dangerous, and insisted on certainty where none existed. Ridley also explains how the lab leak hypothesis went from being a forbidden conspiracy theory to the most plausible explanation for the pandemic. He shares his thoughts on why climate alarmism is finally waning, the future of innovation in an age of overregulation, why he's bullish on the future of nuclear power and AI, and how America can spark a new technological renaissance—even when leaders seem determined to smother dissent. Please donate to Reason's annual webathon, the one time a year when we ask our online audience to support our principled libertarian journalism with tax-deductible donations. Click here for details, swag, and more information. The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least a more interesting—place.   0:00—Introduction 1:59—Bill Gates' climate change reversal 6:15—How COVID diminished public trust 14:27—Centralization and confirmation bias 17:53—Vaccine skepticism 21:29—Sex and evolutionary theory 29:47—Politicization of science 31:34—COVID lab leak theory 37:50—Human progress 46:10—The role of storytelling Previous appearances: "Matt Ridley: Why Did Anthony Fauci et al. Suppress the Lab Leak Theory?" "Matt Ridley: The Coronavirus Pandemic Shows 'That There's No Monopoly on Wisdom'" "Matt Ridley on How Fossil Fuels Are Greening the Planet" "Matt Ridley on Ideas Having Sex, Free Trade, and Apocalyptic Science With Reason's Kennedy" "Matt Ridley on His New Book, The Rational Optimist, & Why 'Ideas Having Sex' is a Very Great Thing Indeed" Upcoming Reason Events Reason Versus debate: Big Tech Does More Good Than Harm on December 10 Producer: Paul AlexanderAudio Mixer: Ian KeyserThe post Why Science Lost Its Way appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Ken Burns, the filmmaker who has massively reshaped national conversations about everything from the Civil War to baseball to jazz to immigration to national parks with epic documentary series that have aired on public television. His latest work is The American Revolution, a 12-hour series about the nation's founding that he codirected with Sarah Botstein and David P. Schmidt. As the nation prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary next year, the American Revolution foregrounds the bloodiness of the war for independence from the British and the high levels of disunity among the colonists before and after the conflict, themes especially noteworthy in a society that is increasingly concerned about political violence and polarization. The series can also be seen as a rebuke to recent, overtly ideological attempts to recast the American experiment as morally irredeemable from its origins (The 1619 Project) or as a Disneyfied morality tale (The 1776 Project). Burns talks with Gillespie about the role of truth in documentaries and why we should embrace contradictions in historical storytelling. They also debate whether PBS, defunded earlier this year by the Trump administration, should continue to receive tax dollars. The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie goes deep on the thinkers, doers, and artists who are making the 21st century a more libertarian—or at least more interesting place—by challenging outmoded ideas and orthodoxies.   0:00—The American Revolution was a global war 7:52—Slavery in the Revolution and competing narratives 21:48—The logic of the Declaration of Independence 29:14—The impact of Native Americans 32:41—Why the Revolution leaves Burns feeling optimistic 39:09—The importance of New York in the Revolution 46:15—Funding for public broadcasting 53:16—What's next for Ken Burns? 56:26—Why understanding history is important for unity   Previous appearances: "Filmmaker Ken Burns on Prohibition, Drug Laws and Unintended Consequences," October 1, 2011 "Ken Burns on PBS Funding, Being a 'Yellow-Dog Democrat,' and Missing Walter Cronkite," October 1, 2011 "The Vietnam War Is the Key to Understanding Today's America: Q&A with Filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick," September 13, 2017 "How Closed Borders Helped Facilitate the Holocaust," September 15, 2022   Upcoming Reason Events Reason Versus debate: Big Tech Does More Good Than Harm, December 10 Producer: Paul AlexanderAudio Mixer: Ian KeyserThe post What We Get Wrong About the American Revolution appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Katie Herzog, co-host of the popular Blocked & Reported podcast and author of the paradigm-shattering new book Drink Your Way Sober. Katie writes about her and other people's experiences with The Sinclair Method—a medication-assisted approach to alcoholism where you use one drug to counter problematic use of another. Her story—and the cutting-edge research and treatment she reports on—upends just about everything we think we know about drug use, recovery, and autonomy. She talks with Nick Gillespie about naltrexone, the drug that helped her retrain her brain, why Alcoholics Anonymous works for some people but not for others, and how modern medicine is finally catching up to the idea that we should treat adults like adults when it comes to what we put in our bodies. They also get into the insane cancel culture politics that gave rise to her and Jesse Singal launching the Blocked & Reported podcast in 2020, whether we've passed peak woke, and if conservatives are now simply presiding over their own version of cancel culture. Previous appearance: Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal on Left-Wing Cancel Culture, June 17, 2020. The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, activists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and visionaries who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least more interesting—place by championing free minds and free markets.   0:00—Introduction 1:34—What is the Sinclair Method? 6:59—Herzog's experience with alcoholism 15:50—Sexuality, self-identity, and self-loathing 22:22—Recognizing addiction and the myths of willpower 27:43—Alternatives to Alcoholics Anonymous 35:03—Herzog on differences in weed and alcohol use 38:44—Beta-blockers for overcoming anxiety 43:51—Transgenderism in media and cancel culture 58:29—Tolerance vs. agreement Producer: Paul AlexanderAudio Mixer: Ian KeyserThe post There's More Than One Way To Get Sober appeared first on Reason.com.