Just Asking Questions

Latest Episodes:

Mike Solana: Can San Francisco Be Saved? Jun 06, 2024

Show notes

Can San Francisco be saved?

San Francisco, the beautiful city on the bay, has become a national punchline. During his debate with Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis displayed a map of citywide poop sightings, which were apparently reported to 311 more than 35,000 times in 2023, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Works. The city's population slumped starting in 2018, but has slowly crawled back. And a 2022 San Francisco Chronicle poll found 65 percent of respondents say life is worse in the city now than when they moved there.

Today's guest, Mike Solana, wants to be part of the solution. He's the chief marketing officer at Founders Fund—the Peter Thiel–founded venture capital firm—and editor in chief of Pirate Wires, a new media company covering tech from the Silicon Valley perspective.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

Time stamps:

00:00 Introduction to Just Asking Questions
01:04 Introducing Mike Solana: A Voice for San Francisco
03:36 San Francisco's Current State: A First-Person Perspective
09:37 Homelessness and Housing Crisis
18:56 Comparing San Francisco to Other Major Cities
23:01 Crime and Policing in San Francisco
38:27 Education and School System Challenges
49:37 Funding and School Choice in San Francisco
52:33 Homelessness and Nonprofit Funding
54:45 Drug Decriminalization and Harm Reduction
58:14 Origins of the Opioid Crisis
01:04:59 Libertarianism and Policy Wins
01:12:36 Immigration and Social Welfare
01:35:24 Who Is Actually in Charge?

The post Mike Solana: Can San Francisco Be Saved? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Chase Oliver: What Does the Libertarian Presidential Candidate Really Believe? May 30, 2024

Show notes

Who, exactly, is Chase Oliver? And what does he really stand for?

Oliver is the Libertarian Party's 2024 presidential nominee, selected after six rounds of voting at a contentious party convention in Washington, D.C., this weekend, which featured speeches from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, and former President Donald Trump, who suggested himself as the nominee to a chorus of boos. Oliver was not the preferred candidate of the Mises Caucus, who remains in control of the Libertarian Party, and several of their higher profile members, such as Dave Smith, have said they will not vote for him, with several accusing him of being too woke, too pro-immigration, and too soft on COVID restrictions. We'll ask him to address all of that today.

Oliver, a 38-year-old sales executive, rose to prominence in the party as the 2022 Libertarian Senate candidate in a highly competitive race in Georgia, where he pulled 2 percent of the vote and forced it into a runoff, which ultimately resulted in the Democratic candidate winning, tipping the balance of the Senate in their favor.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction to Chase Oliver
01:40 Campaign Message and Strategy
04:02 Foreign Policy Stance
06:31 Internal Party Divisions
12:07 Controversial Positions and Clarifications
13:31 Transgenderism and Parental Rights Debate
25:41 Immigration and COVID Policies
30:07 Debating Vaccine Mandates and Property Rights
31:17 Cultural and Legal Perspectives on Mandates
32:37 Impact of State-Imposed Mandates
33:37 Economic Consequences of Mandates
36:34 Libertarian Views on Free Trade and Tariffs
38:01 Addressing Criticism and Building Unity
42:08 Libertarian Outreach and Big Tents
44:51 Trump's Speech at the Libertarian Convention
48:51 Libertarian Party's Strategy and Goals
52:16 Addressing Past Statements and Moving Forward
57:04 Final Questions

Photo Credit: Robin Rayne/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

The post Chase Oliver: What Does the Libertarian Presidential Candidate Really Believe? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Ted Nordhaus: How Bad Is Climate Change? May 23, 2024

Show notes

How bad is climate change?

People are freaked out by climate change, especially young people. Scientists for Nature conducted a survey of 10,000 16- to 25-year-olds in 2021 and found that 59 percent of them were extremely worried or very worried about climate change, and large majorities reported that climate change made them feel sad, anxious, and/or afraid. On Earth Day this year, President Joe Biden shared a picture on X (formerly Twitter) of himself standing next to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) with the caption, "Young Americans know that the climate crisis is the existential threat of our time. They deserve leaders who believe them."

Today's guest says it's time to stop catastrophizing. Ted Nordhaus is the co-founder and executive director of the environmental nonprofit The Breakthrough Institute. He recently published an essay in The New Atlantis titled "Did Exxon Make it Rain Today?" which argues that while climate change is a real phenomenon affected by human activity, "we're actually safer than ever before." He says a deliberate campaign of fearmongering and exaggeration about the effects of climate change has misled the public and damaged the credibility and effectiveness of the environmentalist movement.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

Nature survey on climate anxiety
"Did Exxon Make It Rain Today?" by Ted Nordhaus
Global deaths from climate-related disasters
Number of tropical cyclones globally, 1980–2023
"Glacier Park's Glaciers Have Shrunk, But They Haven't Disappeared," by Aaron Bolton
Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis by the National Snow and Ice Data Center
Antarctic Daily Image Update by the National Snow and Ice Data Center
Carbon Brief: "Explainer: Nine 'tipping points' that could be triggered by climate change"
United Nations 2023 climate change report
"Climate Change: Global Sea Level," by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Summary for Policymakers
How many people die from air pollution? by Our World in Data
CO2 emissions per country

Timestamps

00:00:00—Introduction
00:02:50—The Evolution of the Climate Change Narrative
00:05:23—The Political and Social Impact of Climate Change Rhetoric
00:14:57—Analyzing the Science and Misconceptions of Climate Change
00:23:46—The Economic and Societal Resilience to Climate Extremes
00:35:30—A Rational Perspective on Climate Change Anxiety
00:42:55—Human Migration Toward Climate Risks
00:44:50—Revisiting Predictions From An Inconvenient Truth
00:50:03—Addressing the Fear of Climate Tipping Points
00:55:39—Human Ingenuity and Climate Resilience
01:02:35—Carbon Emissions and Economic Growth
01:10:36—The Climate Movement and Public Perception
01:19:02—A Vision for a Focused Environmental Movement

The post Ted Nordhaus: How Bad Is Climate Change? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Phil Magness: Who Really Pays the Most Taxes? May 16, 2024

Show notes

How much do billionaires really pay in taxes?

"Today, the superrich control a greater share of America's wealth than during the Gilded Age of Carnegies and Rockefellers," said Gabriel Zucman in a recent New York Times opinion piece entitled, "It's Time to Tax the Billionaires."

Zucman is an economist at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, and a frequent collaborator with superstar economist Thomas Piketty, author of the extremely influential book on wealth inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

But today's guest, Phil Magness—an economic historian, author, and the David J. Theroux Chair in Political Economy at the Independent Institute—says the work of Piketty and his circle of inequality-obsessed colleagues is deeply flawed and sometimes outright deceptive. He points out that billionaires do pay taxes…a lot of taxes. And the inequality literature is riddled with errors and bad statistics.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction to Just Asking Questions: Billionaires and Taxes
01:38 Unpacking the Misleading Tax Rate Graphs
06:38 The Political Motivations Behind Misleading Tax Narratives
15:39 Analyzing the Impact of Tax Credits on Lower-Income Earners
22:32 The Real Tax Burden: A Closer Look at Wealthy Americans' Contributions
27:05 Countering Piketty's Inequality Data With Accurate Accounting
34:58 The Practical Problems With a Wealth Tax
40:04 Piketty's Inequality Narrative and Its Flaws
48:50 Global Financial Transparency and Taxation Proposals
54:40 The Moral and Economic Case Against High Taxation
57:48 Listener Q&A: Defending the Show's Title

The post Phil Magness: Who Really Pays the Most Taxes? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Nico Perrino: When Does Protesting Become a Crime? May 09, 2024

Show notes

What should colleges do about pro-Palestinian encampments?

College students across America are camping out to demand their universities divest all investments with Israeli-linked companies that they claim profit from the occupation and oppression of Palestine. It's gone on for weeks, and even administrators at schools known as bastions of progressive activism are finally getting fed up. Harvard's president is threatening "involuntary leave" for protesters. Columbia announced on Monday that it canceled its main commencement ceremony for safety reasons. The University of Southern California has, too.

UCLA called in the cops to clear its encampment, and police have arrested more than 2,100 protesters across all U.S. campuses since April, according to the Associated Press.

Congress has continued to interrogate Ivy League presidents, and a bill to explicitly define antisemitism for civil rights law enforcement purposes just passed the House with overwhelming support last week.

Joining us today to talk about the protests, the backlash, and what it all means for free speech on campus and the wider world is Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and host of the free speech podcast So to Speak.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction
01:33 Free Speech on Campus: A Conversation with Nico Perrino
02:13 The Historical Context of Campus Protests and Free Speech Debates
07:28 The Legal and Social Implications of Campus Encampments
31:38 The Role of Civil Disobedience in Campus Activism
38:31 Evaluating the Effectiveness of Campus Protests Through Polling Data
43:07 Congressional Involvement in Campus Free Speech Issues
50:48 The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2023: A New Legal Battleground
54:56 The Complexities of Free Speech and Political Expression on Campus
59:17 Navigating the Tensions of Privacy and Free Speech
01:03:42 The Role of Public Shaming and Cancel Culture in Free Speech Debates
01:20:03 Nico Wants You To Ask Yourself This Question About Censorship
01:23:58 Just Ask Us Questions: A Libertarian's Evolving Stance on Immigration

The post Nico Perrino: When Does Protesting Become a Crime? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Jesse Singal: Should Kids Medically Transition? May 02, 2024

Show notes

Should kids medically transition between genders?

The number of kids diagnosed with gender dysphoria has surged in recent years. In America, diagnoses have almost tripled from about 15,000 to more than 42,000 from 2017 to 2021. In the United Kingdom, the number of minors referred to the national Gender Identity Development Service grew from 51 in 2009 to 1,766 by 2016, leading to yearslong waitlists for care within the government-run health system.

This surge caused England's National Health Service to commission an extensive study of youth gender treatment. That study is known as the Cass Review, and its results dropped on April 10. The review's author, former head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Hilary Cass, concluded that modern youth gender dysphoria interventions are informed by "remarkably weak evidence" drawing on studies "exaggerated by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint" and that "we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress." The science, it turns out, is not settled—or anywhere close to it.

NHS England opted to stop routine prescriptions of puberty blockers following the review's publication, as have NHS Scotland and the Welsh government. Major American medical groups such as the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics, all of which endorse prescribing puberty blockers for gender-dysphoric kids, have yet to officially respond.

American media coverage of the Cass Review, which could throw the entire youth gender treatment paradigm in this country into question, has been remarkably muted. But today's guest is never muted. Jesse Singal has been covering this topic—and taken a lot of heat for it—for years in the pages of publications such as The Atlantic, The Dispatch, and on his Substack, Singal-Minded.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

Sources referenced in Just Ask Us Questions:

Reason TV: "A private libertarian city in Honduras"
Reason TV: "Don't 'Abolish the Police.' Privatize Them."

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction to the Show and Topic: Kids and Gender Transition
02:14 Media Coverage and Jesse Singal's Insights
04:50 The Impact of Social Media and Activism on Youth Gender Medicine
09:36 Exploring the Tavistock Controversy and Its Implications
12:38 The Debate on Informed Consent and Medical Ethics
28:37 Social Contagion Theory and Its Effects on Gender Identity
34:03 Scrutinizing the Science Behind Gender-Affirming Treatments
42:32 Navigating the Complexities of Youth Gender Medicine
43:03 The Role of Data and Evidence in Gender Transition Debates
44:34 The Impact of Politics and Misinformation on Transgender Health Care
47:34 Exploring the Cass Review's Recommendations on Gender Medicine
49:24 Comparing Gender Medicine Practices: U.K. vs. USA
51:25 The Influence of Activism and Politics on Medical Standards
55:16 Addressing the Concerns Around Puberty Blockers and Hormone Treatments
01:20:32 Just Ask Us Questions: A Discussion of Anarcho-Capitalist Security

The post Jesse Singal: Should Kids Medically Transition? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

David Beito: Was FDR a Tyrant? Apr 25, 2024

Show notes

Why has President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's dark side been hidden?

Scholars consistently rank FDR as one of America's greatest presidents. The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey ranked him number two, below Lincoln, and respondents to the Siena College Research Institute studies have ranked him number one in six out of seven survey years.

Perhaps it's understandable that the longest-serving president who saw the country through the Great Depression and a World War II victory would rank so highly. But do presidential scholars exhibit a major blind spot when it comes to the authoritarian aspects of FDR and his New Deal agenda? That's what today's guest argues in his book, The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance.

Those civil liberties abuses, and how they permanently changed America and the relationship between citizen and state, are the subject of this episode. The book's author, David Beito, is an American historian and history professor at the University of Alabama and a research fellow at the Independent Institute.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:33 FDR's Legacy: A Closer Look at the New Deal's Impact on Civil Liberties
02:03 Exploring FDR's Authoritarian Tactics and Media Manipulation
05:00 The Power of Radio: FDR's Fireside Chats and Control Over Public Opinion
39:09 The Black Committee: The Beginnings of Mass Surveillance in America
44:38 The Black Committee's Investigation and Western Union's Resistance
45:26 The Extensive Telegram Surveillance Operation
48:09 Legal Battles and Public Outcry Against Privacy Violations
51:17 The Minton Committee's Further Overreach and the War on Fake News
58:13 FDR's Court Packing Plan and Its Echoes in Modern Politics
01:04:59 Revisiting FDR's Role in Japanese Internment
01:17:15 The New Deal's Dark Side: A Critical Reexamination
01:24:59 Reflecting on FDR's Legacy and Its Implications Today

The post David Beito: Was FDR a Tyrant? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Elica Le Bon: Is War with Iran Coming? Apr 18, 2024

Show notes

Is war with Iran coming?

Last Saturday, Iran launched hundreds of armed drones and missiles to attack Israel in retaliation for an airstrike on an Iranian consulate in Syria that killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, including a general. Israel and the U.S. report that they intercepted most of the drones, and the sole known casualty was a 7-year-old girl critically injured by falling missile shrapnel. Israel has not retaliated…yet.

In the wake of all that, today's guest had something to say about the way some American activists loudly defended the Islamic Republic of Iran after staying conspicuously silent during protests against the regime and crackdowns that began almost two years ago.

That was Elica Le Bon, a first-generation Iranian immigrant born in the U.K. and currently living in Los Angeles, where she practices law and runs several large social media accounts that bring attention to the plight of the Iranian people. On the latest episode of Just Asking Questions, she talked to Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe about the Iranian attack, the state of the protest movement and how social media has affected it, and her recent televised exchange with Dave Smith.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

Amnesty International: Iran executes 853 people in eight-year high amid relentless repression and renewed 'war on drugs'
Mahsa Amini | Flickr
Iran Population 2024 (Live)
Dancing Iranian taxi driver becomes unlikely anti-regime hero
Iranian advanced nuclear centrifuges: https://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Analysis_of_February_2024_IAEA_Iran_Verification_Report_March_4_2024_Final.pdf

The post Elica Le Bon: Is War with Iran Coming? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Why Did Harvard Fire Martin Kulldorff? Apr 11, 2024

Show notes

At least 40 U.S. colleges still require a COVID vaccine, according to nocollegemandates.com, an initiative that tracks and opposes the mandates.

Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine and biostatistician who lost his job at Harvard for refusing the vaccine even though he'd already survived a COVID infection, says such mandates are "unscientific" and "unethical." Harvard has since dropped the mandate, but Kulldorff likely won't be getting his job there back anytime soon because the Harvard-affiliated hospital that employs medical school faculty still requires a COVID vaccine.

Kulldorff, who created one of the earliest disease outbreak surveillance software systems, was also booted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) COVID-19 vaccine safety commission and regularly de-boosted on Twitter and YouTube for his views. Former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins labeled him and his co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration "fringe epidemiologists" and demanded a "quick and devastating…takedown" of their call to end lockdowns in favor of a "focused protection" strategy.

Kulldorff joined Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe on the latest episode of Just Asking Questions to talk about his ordeal at Harvard, his retrospective on the pandemic and the cultural and governmental response to it, and his involvement in the ongoing Supreme Court case Murthy v. Missouri, in which plaintiffs argue that federal agencies violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to take down certain content about COVID-19.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or on the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

NoCollegeMandates.com's Google Sheet list of U.S. colleges with and without vaccine mandates
COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Group at the CDC
Flagged Kulldorff tweet
Our World in Data: vaccinated vs. unvaccinated U.S. COVID deaths
"Sweden during the pandemic," by Johan Norberg
"Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in randomized trials in adults"
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo's recommendation on COVID vaccines
The Food and Drug Administration and CDC's response to Lapado's recommendation
"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," by John P. A. Ioannidis

Timestamps:

0:00 - Forty colleges still require COVID vaccines
2:17 - What happened between Martin Kulldorff and Harvard
5:57 - How vaccine mandates are unscientific and unethical
7:54 - Why is there a push to vaccinate children?
11:30 - Being a dissident at Harvard
14:00 - Fired by the CDC for being too pro-vaccine
19:25 - Vaccines are good for some while bad for others.
21:33 - Being censored online for speaking the truth
25:54 - How masks were ineffective during COVID
28:29 - There has been no reckoning for what happened during COVID.
30:31 - No one should be allowed to violate the First Amendment.
36:21 - How Sweden handled COVID
42:19 - How a good health system kept COVID deaths down
44:25 - What is jawboning?
47:20 - What is the best public health use of the mRNA vaccines?
50:22 - How COVID vaccine data is unreliable
55:32 - What should the COVID policy recommendations be now?
59:16 - Is the peer-review process flawed?
1:03:24 - Will politicians ever be held accountable for their COVID policies?

The post Why Did Harvard Fire Martin Kulldorff? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Ethan Mollick: How Will AI Change Us? Apr 04, 2024

Show notes

"I discovered something remarkably similar to an alien co-intelligence," wrote Ethan Mollick in his new book Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, describing the "sleepless nights" he experienced upon first encountering ChatGPT 3.5 in November 2022.

Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of the One Useful Thing Substack, has studied, taught, and written about the effects of artificial intelligence on work and education for years. He joined Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe on the latest episode of Just Asking Questions to discuss the ways in which large language models like ChatGPT and Google Gemini are already transforming the workplace, the classroom, artistic production, and the truth-seeking process itself.

In this episode, they discuss why you should treat your chatbot like a person even though it's not, how AI is "decomposing" jobs, what tools like OpenAI's Sora mean for the future of filmmaking, how to protect one's identity in the age of deepfakes, The New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, the prospects for AI "doomsday," and whether regulation of AI is necessary or even possible.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or on the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Timecodes:

0:00- Creating a digital clone of yourself
3:21- What exactly is artificial intelligence?
5:40- No one knows why ChatGPT is so good
10:37- Why you should give your AI chatbot a personality
15:03- Microsoft's AI said it was in love with a reporter
22:21- Can AI replace business school?
23:47- How AI has already transformed the workplace
30:02- AI will "decompose" human jobs
35:50- Will AI replace therapists?
40:59- How will AI affect art?
45:05- Do you have a right to your image?
50:02- Why the New York Times is suing OpenAI
57:33- Does AI content lack originality?
1:02:35- Are deep fakes a threat?
1:11:47- Four possible AI-infused futures

Sources referenced in this conversation: