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**The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie**

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Can We Save American History From Partisan Politics? Jan 14, 2026

Show notes

This week, guest host Eric Boehm is joined by Colleen Shogan, the former archivist of the United States and head of the National Archives, the federal agency responsible for preserving presidential records and stewarding the nation's historical documents. Shogan explains what the archivist actually does, how the National Archives approaches custodianship of presidential records, and why those materials belong to the public rather than to individual presidents.

The conversation then turns to the country's upcoming 250th anniversary and Shogan's "In Pursuit" essay project, which aims to foster a shared civic memory at a time when history has become a battleground in the culture war. Shogan reflects on how a divided country can commemorate its past without collapsing into partisan narratives, and what it takes to present American history in a way that invites disagreement without descending into zero-sum politics.

Boehm and Shogan also discuss how the Archives became caught up in the Trump documents controversy, why Shogan believes she was fired without explanation, and how disputes over records and transparency have increasingly turned into political flashpoints.

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

0:52—The role of the U.S. archivist

9:54—Celebrating 250 years of history with "In Pursuit"

17:17—The importance of keeping history nonpartisan

22:47—Celebrating the lesser-known U.S. presidents

28:13—Wall Street Journal's criticism of Shogan

37:27—Getting removed by President Donald Trump

40:11—The importance of presidential records

44:51—Politicizing nonpartisan institutions

50:43—President Joe Biden and the Equal Rights Amendment

56:16—Shogan's Washington murder mystery novels

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The post Can We Save American History From Partisan Politics? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

CNN's Scott Jennings: The Conservative Movement's Identity Crisis Jan 07, 2026

Show notes

This week, guest host Billy Binion is joined by Scott Jennings, a political analyst best known for his viral debates on CNN, where he is often the lone conservative voice. Jennings is also the author of A Revolution of Common Sense, a new book arguing that President Donald Trump's political comeback is rooted in what Jennings calls a common-sense governing platform. Jennings and Binion discuss whether Trump's policies on such issues as tariffs, deportations, and foreign affairs live up to that description a year into Trump's second term. They also talk about Jennings' experience working at CNN, his criticisms of the legacy media, and why he feels Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump are more similar than they appear. The conversation also turns to the growing civil war on the right, including recent public infighting among conservative factions and influencers. Jennings explains where he draws lines within the conservative movement, his views on free speech versus free association, and why he believes some figures are doing lasting damage to conservatism's ability to articulate a coherent set of values and priorities. 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 more interesting—place by championing free minds and free markets. 0:00–Introduction0:59–Being a conservative at CNN6:53–The future of media17:01–Going from Trump critic to Trump supporter19:53–The influence of Mitch McConnell24:00–Limited government and the One Big Beautiful Bill30:25–The Trump administration and free speech39:31–Trump's immigration and tariff policies56:45–The shortcomings of DOGE1:01:24–Antisemitism and conspiracy theorists on the right1:09:08–Alignment between the GOP and libertarians Transcript This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy. Billy Binion: Scott Jennings, thank you for talking to Reason. Scott Jennings: Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for having me in. So you've been very critical of the mainstream media, and you're also on one of the most visible mainstream media networks. So I'm wondering, what is your objective at CNN? And do you think that you get a fair hearing on those panels? Well, my objective is to participate in debate. I think debate is good. I think the country was founded on debates—and some muskets—but also debates. And I think to the extent that we can foster more debates in our political culture, it's gonna be a good thing for America. CNN used to, years ago, sort of pioneer this. You know, this was the network of Crossfire. And then we got away from it, and there's really not that much debating content out there on the air. And so last year, they decided to do this debating show. And I thought, "This is a great idea." And it's worked. I think it was supposed to be a temporary thing. And then it was so popular, they left it on the air, and it's still going here over a year later. So my purpose is to participate in debates. My purpose is to give half, or more than half, or sometimes 90 percent of the country, like, somebody who can argue and articulate on their behalf. And I just—I'm here to pop bubbles, you know? I think it's bad when we get stuck in our ideological bubbles. I meet a lot of people in this line of work who—I might be the only Republican they know. That's a bad thing, ok? This is not a good thing for America. And so that's my purpose. Do I get a fair hearing? I mean, I think I make it more than fair out there for my point of view. I mean, certainly, there are more people out there who would disagree with me than agree at the table. And none of the hosts agree with me, of course. But no one's ever censored me. No one's ever told me, "You can't articulate that view." No one has ever put a script in front of me and said, you have to do this. So to the extent that I get to do what I do and say what I wanna say, it happens every time. To that point, why do you think that the makeup is always you being outnumbered? Do you think it would be better if it were just 50–50? What do you think about that? Well, I don't know. I'm not a television producer. I mean, I think it actually is sort of interesting when you have one person, you know, fighting a mob, you know? I mean, just for television. I mean, to me it's kind of interesting. And certainly people who are of my political persuasion like it that way. They think it's kinda neat that one guy can disarm, you know, four or five people at the same time. At the same time, I think you could probably do quite well, you know, putting an even-handed thing out there. But for what CNN is trying to do and what they have done, I don't have any criticisms at all because they're the only network that actually has stepped its foot back into the idea that debates are a good thing to platform. I go all over the country. I hear two things: I love you and I love the debates. I don't care for you, but I love the debates. The commonality is the debates. And so CNN and our CEO, Mark Thompson, realized this and they decided to put some debates on the air. And most of the time, I think it works pretty well. Could you make a go of it with a totally evenly split show? Probably. But that's not what they've chosen to do. And that's…for me right now, that's perfectly fine. I do think there could be other evolutions of this and other iterations of it, but that—that's above my pay grade. How do you think the legacy media is doing covering Trump this time around? Do you think it's better or do you think it's worse, the same? Not great. I mean—no, look. I think… Trump broke a lot of people—he broke a lot of institutions and he warped a lot of things. One of them is institutional media, which has decided that it needs to defeat Trump, that it needs to subdue Trump, that it needs to finally get Trump. That's different than covering Trump. And it's been that way for 10 years. And so do I think there are people out there covering him fairly? Yeah, I do. Do I think that there are people out there who are grinding axes and basically executing on a political agenda? Absolutely. And I think—look, I mean, don't take my word for it. Look at the Gallup poll. You know, they take this confidence-in-institutions survey every year. Trust in the mainstream media is lower than it's ever been. There's a reason for that. And so I think there is a way to cover Trump where you can tell the truth, and where you can be critical, and where you can shine lights. And I think there's also a way to do it where you can appear to just be grinding an ax to fit a narrative. And I think a lot of times the ax grinding and the narrative building is what you get, right? The show versus tell quandary. Yeah. And I also think, you know, a lot of mainstream media is very insular. And they don't really consider the viewpoints of people outside of their little bubble. And that's not good either. So look, you know, I think—I believe you asked me, why am I at CNN? I believe in a free press and a trusted free press at that. I also believe in popping ideological bubbles. And I also believe that conservatives need to be represented in news organizations. So there's a lot of reasons for someone like me to do this. But one of the ways that they could reform themselves is to take a little bit of an introspective look at: How are we covering not just Trump but all conservatives, all Republicans? How do we cover that movement or that political persuasion versus our preference? And if they were able to do that, I think, and do it, you know, with a really critical eye, they might find some shortcomings in what they've done. And it would help explain why people don't trust them, or why they have fled to independent journalism or independent news sources. And it might be a little bit of a roadmap back. That is a perfect segue to something I wanted to ask you. In your book, Common Sense, you talk a lot about how the influence of the mainstream media has receded over the last few years. How have you experienced that shift? And what do you think the future of media is? Well, I've experienced it for the last 25 years in politics. You know, I'm in media now, but really, for the last quarter century, I have been a political operative. I've worked on presidential campaigns, Senate campaigns, all kinds of Republican politics stuff. I've been in public relations, and now I'm with CNN and Salem Radio. So I've seen this from all angles. And for most of my career, what the mainstream media said in a presidential campaign mattered a lot. You know, the narratives that they would strike, the storylines, the vectors—what they said mattered a lot. It mattered, frankly, more than TV ads, or the paid advertising. That just wasn't true in 2024. I mean, you think about what you heard in October of '24 about the narratives that were closing out the campaign—you know, all the Puerto Ricans are mad and Harris is going to win Pennsylvania because of it, or there's a poll in Iowa, or…You kept hearing these things. What they wanted people to believe the vector or the momentum of the campaign was was something altogether different than what was actually happening in the country. That was borne out on election night. And so what I learned in 2024 is that, probably in my career, this was the least influential the mainstream media has been in a presidential campaign cycle. Not to say that there isn't influence, and not to say that the mainstream doesn't have an impact. But in terms of overall influence, if you look at the way Trump ran around them and did all sorts of things in alternative formats, that obviously was extremely helpful to him. And if you looked at the ways Harris kind of ran towards the mainstream media—I mean, all she was really capable of doing was standard-issue mainstream media stuff. And even at that, she didn't do it very well. But she was not really capable of the unscripted, outside-of-the-mainstream. Right, the criticism of her was that she was inauthentic. Exactly. And you have to have some of that in order to participate in the new media stuff. Trump obviously did it, and his people understood it. And they kind of ran circles around it. And so they just didn't live or die by the narratives of the mainstream media. They created their own communications ecosystem outside of that. It obviously worked. And so that's why I argued in the book that it seems to me that in 2024—and I said this on election night—this was kind of the death of the political information distribution complex, which has heretofore controlled the narratives in our politics. But I don't think that's true now. We're seeing this White House prioritize some of these independent creators, smaller right-leaning outlets, which I think is interesting and good in a lot of ways. I will also say, though, some of the people who have gotten the opportunity to be in the briefing room who otherwise wouldn't have been have gotten some criticism for using the chance to kind of lob more softball questions. You know, like there was one guy who asked about, like, "Will Big Balls get the Medal of Honor?" or that kind of thing. I very much agree with you that the mainstream media has squandered a lot of credibility by being very deferential to one side—and very obviously so. And so I'm wondering what you think the right's role is in rectifying that. Well, I agree with you that it's good for the White House briefing room to be reformed. I think it's good that they brought in other people. Look, a lot of these people—and I'm new to this—but a lot of these people I'm learning have millions upon millions of followers. And they get lots of views. And in some cases, they have more views than certain mainstream outlets. Totally, yeah. I mean—and so in terms of audience, if I'm the White House—and the, you know, the White House that I worked for, we came just before the advent of social media. Bush 43 was kind of the last old-world White House before 24/7. You know, I think Politico came out in 2007 and then social media comes shortly thereafter. And so that was basically the dawn of Twitter. Right. Exactly. And so we existed before. But if you had told me back in those days, well, you have all these different channels where you can talk to hundreds of thousands or millions of people without having to get, you know, hammered by The Washington Post or whatever, I would have taken it in a heartbeat. So it's smart for the White House to do this. It's also good, because there's a lot of people that get news and information that way. So that's a good thing. You know, the right's responsibility here, I think, is to produce honest, true content and understand that we're in a moment where the marketplace is desirous of new political content. They want it presented in authentic ways. They have questions they'd like to get answered. And so my only advice would be: Do something creative. Do something authentic. Do something that's pleasing to the viewer. I mean, after all, it is a business. But do something with your time if you're given a seat in there. Ask a good question. Think of something that no one else has asked. I try to do this on the shows that I'm on: What is nobody else saying? What is the question that no one else wants to ask that would lead to a line of conversation that might be new and unique to your deal? That will enhance your position in all this. I don't want to single out or be critical of anybody who's gotten a seat in there, because I think it's good what they're doing. But if I were giving any of them advice, it would be: What's the thing nobody else is willing to ask in here that actually might be illuminating to the overall conversation? That's a good way to do it. So right now, CNN is in the spotlight with this merger. What do you make of Trump's role in the media merger and, you know, purporting to have a voice in CNN's future? Yeah, he has lots of opinions about lots of things in the media business, and that's not gonna stop— He's a showman after all. I think it is hard. He's a television producer… Right, exactly. I mean, in some of the interactions I've had with him and observing him over the years, I think he—and look, he had one of the most successful television shows out there. He knows a little about the TV business. And so I'm not surprised that he has opinions about it. And of course the federal government does have some regulatory oversight here in terms of how this goes. So I don't really know how to answer that, other than to say: not surprised Trump has an opinion. And it's a little bit above my pay grade. You know, when you're talking about this amount of money, it's way above Scott Jennings' pay grade. But I don't know who's going to own it. I don't know what it's going to look like. But do I think Donald Trump is going to continue to voice an opinion about what he sees on CNN? One hundred percent. I assume he will not answer this, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Do you have a preference? I do not. I have no answer for that question, other than to tell you that I'm quite happy with my deal and quite happy with my role. And as I said earlier, for all the criticisms of the right of CNN—some warranted—it was CNN and Mark Thompson who brought back the debating format that ultimately put conservatives in a position at CNN to articulate our viewpoint. And look, I th…

Full show notes at the publisher

The Politics of Permanent Outrage Dec 30, 2025

Show notes

This week, guest host Eric Boehm is joined by Lauren Hall, a political science professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the author of The Radical Moderate's Guide to Life, a Substack newsletter that encourages readers to reject binary thinking and keep politics from consuming every part of their lives.

Hall's work focuses on the roots of tribalism and political polarization, examining where they come from, why they are so powerful, and how they distort both public debate and personal relationships. She has grown increasingly concerned about the populist impulses shaping American politics on both the right and the left, and about how political elites frame elections as a choice between the lesser of two evils.

In the interview, Boehm and Hall discuss what it means to be a "radical moderate," why she believes that outlook offers a way out of America's broken political compass, and the diverse intellectual influences that have shaped her political philosophy. They also talk about what Hall did not anticipate in the second Donald Trump White House, and how moderates can navigate a political culture that rewards outrage, loyalty tests, and constant engagement.

0:00—Introduction

1:17—What is radical moderation?

6:24—Third parties in America

9:19—Polarization and elitism

15:13—Evolutionary biology and tribalism

27:24—Hall's path to political science

35:06—Culture of Rochester, New York

41:39—Expectations for the second Trump administration

47:19—Radical moderate advice for Democrats

51:03—Lessons from Edmund Burke

The post The Politics of Permanent Outrage appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Andor Creator Tony Gilroy on Bureaucracy and the Surveillance State Dec 23, 2025

Show notes

This week, guest host Eric Boehm is joined by Tony Gilroy, the creator, writer, and director of Andor, the critically acclaimed Star Wars series that reimagines the origins of the Rebel Alliance. While Andor is set in a familiar sci-fi universe, it stands apart for its focus on the mechanics of authoritarian rule. Gilroy discusses how Andor portrays the Galactic Empire not as a cartoonish evil but as a bureaucratic system that centralizes authority, normalizes surveillance, and absorbs previously independent planets, corporations, and cultures. Rather than relying on superweapons or singular villains, authoritarianism in Andor functions through institutions, incentives, and ordinary people just doing their jobs. Boehm and Gilroy talk about how these themes connect to Gilroy's earlier work, including the Bourne films. They also discuss how Andor approaches moral compromise, resistance, and responsibility, why it matters that fascists still care about mundane details like parking spots, and why the series has resonated with viewers interested in liberty, power, and the quiet ways systems enforce obedience. 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–Introduction1:23–Behemoth3:21–Andor in the Star Wars timeline5:04–Cassian Andor's character development12:04–The moral compass of Andor18:31–Constructing the authoritarian regime22:05–The reality of bureaucratic institutions25:04–Mass media representation in Andor31:43–Exploiting loneliness and vulnerability37:40–Would Gilroy return to Star Wars?39:21–Gilroy's contributions to Rogue One42:25–The Bourne movies and whistleblowers46:10–What is the libertarian view of Andor?53:48–Gilroy's origin story57:08–Themes in Gilroy's work Transcript This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy. Eric Boehm: Tony Gilroy, thanks for talking to Reason. Tony Gilroy: Pleasure. Now, you are probably best known—at least right now—as the showrunner behind the two-season Disney+ show, Andor. I don't think I'm overstating things here to say that it is the best piece of Star Wars media since the original trilogy, at least. And maybe even the best piece of Star Wars media ever made. That show is a prequel to Rogue One, which I think we'll probably also talk a bit about in this conversation. You were involved in the writing of that movie as well, and that's also in the conversation as the best piece of Star Wars media since the original series. You're also the writer behind the Jason Bourne movies. We may get a chance to talk about that as well. But you are joining us, if I'm not mistaken, while you're also in the midst of working on a new movie. So I want to start there. This is a production titled Behemoth, and you're shooting this—again, if I am not mistaken—with Pedro Pascal and Olivia Wilde. I am really excited about that. That sounds really cool. Can you tell us anything about the new one? It's an original. It's about movie music. It's about a cellist that returns to Los Angeles to do studio work. I guess that's about all I'll say about it right now, until we get out to sell it, whenever we do. No, it's all about music. I've been living in music for the last year, and I'm fully immersed in it right now. I've been living in California. It's a very California movie. It's a Los Angeles movie. And we're a little over halfway in shooting, so you're catching me on the weekend of a busy time. Well, we are very glad you made the time for us. That sounds like a nice break from Andor, honestly. After all the politics and the drama and the sci-fi-ness, to do something so grounded that must be nice. It's really been a great place to hide out for the last 10 months, yeah, to live in music. It's escapist for sure. That's nice. We all need a little bit of that. So let's talk about Andor, the show that is out there, that is now finished. The second and final season was released earlier this year to widespread critical acclaim. Look, there's obvious political themes to that show. This is a political podcast—we've got to talk about that. You know, one thing that came up to me, I think, as I was watching that…well, I guess we should start here. I imagine most people are familiar with Star Wars and Andor if they're listening to this conversation, but just for anyone who isn't: Catch us up very briefly on where this is in the Star Wars timeline and how this show fits into the broader overarching story of good and evil and Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader—because it kind of doesn't fit into that story exactly. Rogue One is the discovery of the plans to the Death Star that will lead to what people traditionally know as the beginning of Star Wars. This is the five years gathered around the main character of Rogue One, Cassian. One of the main characters of Rogue One, Cassian Andor. It's the five years of his life prior to that film. Our last image, our last scene in Andor, is him walking into what would be the first scene of Rogue One. So it's a five-year tranche of history right before the destruction of the Death Star, and it is a five-year period where the Empire is sort of really tightening its grip around the throat of the galaxy in the most extreme way. You were involved in writing Rogue One, which in a very similar way leads directly into the events of the first Star Wars movie. Now you're sitting down and writing a prequel to a prequel, and you have to get this one central character to the point that he's at in Rogue One, where Cassian is somebody who's willing to do literally whatever it takes for the Rebellion. There's a lot of constraints there as a writer, I would imagine, to have to build this character out. How did you sit down and think about who he was going to be five years before—or two years before—and lay out that arc? What were you thinking about? Where were you getting inspiration from as you were writing Cassian's character specifically? Well, it's two issues that you raise. One is the idea of limitations. Limitations are really good, creatively. Boundaries and limited materials or this is what you can work with. Any kind of restriction is usually very beneficial in the creative process, to fill that vacuum. I was given a five-year— The setting is a five-year piece of history that has some very specific guidelines to it. There's a few canonical markers that happen that are well-established. I guess most notably would be Mon Mothma's departure from the Senate. Mon Mothma is a character Genevieve O'Reilly plays, and she's a big character for us all along the way. There's a moment in canonical history where she calls out the emperor for something called the Ghorman Massacre. And it was never detailed what the Ghorman Massacre was, but she's— Just to clarify, this is a pre-existing thing in other Star Wars media that you had to write around. Pre-existing canonical Star Wars, exactly. So what's the frame? So that's on the calendar. I have a couple of other events on the calendar. Things have to sort of line up. So that's the setting I'm given. And then, dramatically—I mean as a creator, as a writer, as a dramatist—Cassian Andor in Rogue One was sort of an all-singing, all-dancing, brilliant warrior-spy. I mean, he kind of has the full complement of skills. There's nothing he sort of can't do. He can lead; he can seduce; he can lie; he can plan; he can adjust. He's an assassin. He can fly. He does all these amazing things with a great deal of low-key commitment— a very casual, comfortable vibe to it. There was no backstory for that character before. He never existed before. So, dramatically, my approach was to say, "Well, if we're going to go back five years, why don't we put him as far away from that level of competency and commitment and accomplishment as you could possibly get? Let's take a roach and turn it into a butterfly, essentially. How far away could you take him from where he'll end up to make that journey interesting?" That's my approach to how I did it. He's an entirely fictional character, and it's completely free-range what I want to do with it. But I have to put him in the maze of that very specific canonical framework and the rules of Star Wars and the cosmology of it that already existing, and the geography that's already existing, and the calendar. So I roll them back and find out who he is, back five years ago, and it's sort of a wind-up machine and you let it roll. You mentioned that constraints can be really helpful creatively. One of the other interesting things about Andor is that it sort of leaves aside—maybe not entirely—the mystical side of Star Wars. There's a sort of soothsayer, fortune-teller-type character who pops up in the second season there, right? So there's a hint of that. But you really left that aside. Was that something else you decided to do deliberately as a constraint for yourself? Or was that just a result of, "Hey, look, there's so many characters in this story already we can't also have a bunch of Jedi pop up somewhere?" You have to think of Lucasfilm and Star Wars—I've said this many times before—as sort of like the Vatican, in a way. I mean, it has a curia, and it has a whole bunch of cardinals of various… Our attitude was: we're gonna take the Latin Mass out of the church. So we're gonna do it a different way. That was the mandate. One of my original questions to them, to the experts there, was, "In the galaxy—in this huge galaxy—how many people would have ever encountered a Jedi? How many people would ever know about the Force? How many people know about this family you keep rotating these movies on?" And the answer is: nobody, or almost nobody. If you're living in the galaxy, if you're a being in the galaxy, you've probably never had any encounter ever with Jedi or even know what it is, or the Force. So that was my intention. Probably in the beginning, I was never, ever, ever gonna touch on the Force. We're certainly gonna do a show without lightsabers. And we'll certainly do a show that doesn't have anything to do with the same bunch of people that you've been dealing with all this time before. But the Force… We worked on the show for five and a half years. Coming into the second season, there was a really cool way to touch it and have it help us and have it enhance our story. And I think really gets a fundamental emotional feel for it as well—I mean, something that felt of value to me. So we touched on it. I liked the way we ended up doing it. A lot of discussion went into it, a lot of finessing of it. But yeah, we do touch on it a little bit. But as I said, the concept of the show was to put it in the kitchen and get it out of the dining room, and just talk about what happens when authoritarianism and fascism comes kicking down your door, ordinary people, and you're forced to make a choice. A lot of people in the show are forced to make choices because of events. And that doesn't really involve lightsabers, and it doesn't really involve a spiritual dimension that will help you. There's something that I actually wanted to ask you about that I think you're getting at right here. You did an interview with Ross Douthat at The New York Times a few months ago, and something that came up in that conversation but sort of got glossed over was: You described yourself as a moralist. You said when you start writing characters—I don't remember if you were speaking specifically about this show or just more generally—[you are] "a moralist." And that sounds like what you're talking about here: that there is a moral compass to this show, to Andor, that the characters are dealing with. It's not necessarily a religious or metaphysical one, right? They're not contacted by the Force and told to do something or not do something, and then making a choice. They're making choices for sometimes political reasons, but oftentimes like moral, calculated reasons here. That was an interesting interview, because he was really trying to pin the show down and pin me down. And to analyze it in a way, but certainly put it in a place where I didn't feel comfortable it should go. I think it's two different things again. One is what my job is as a writer and, again, as a dramatist. You have to just completely inhabit the people that you're writing about—in a generous way—to do it. You have to live through them. If you're writing anybody, you have to get inside them. Everyone's the hero of their own story, and everybody believes what they're doing. I really wouldn't want to… I'm trying to think. There have probably been characters over time that I've judged as I've been writing them, a little bit, but it's really not a great place to be. I want to be free to let them all let their freak flags fly. But I think when you're talking about the moralism, it really came around from him trying to push me into a left–right definition of the show. And I don't see the show in that context. I mean, I know what my politics are, and they're certainly left. But I don't think the characters in the show are ever advocating monetary supply or social safety net or better schools or less drug laws or whatever issues. No one's ever talking about what they wanna have, where they want to get. There's no list of demands. I found that conversation ended up pushing me to a place where—it wasn't a big revelation to me—but what I really do think is universal to the show, and what I really can stand behind as an ideology in the show is it's the destruction of community. And the parallels that people have found in the show—which made all the conversations about selling the show when it was coming out so interesting—and why we ended up in some pretty complicated conversations along the way. What do I wanna say? The parallels to what's happening in our world right now are even beyond moralistic, I think. There's an essential decency aspect to what's happening politically in the world right now that I don't understand. There is a personal decency aspect to what's happening in the world that I don't understand. There is a giddy rush—you'll see people cravenly move toward power because it's gonna benefit them, or it's warmer there, or they have no spine or moral commitment to really back up. What we're seeing now is on a level that I'm not sure… I don't know when the parallel is. People getting on board something—getting on board a train that's on fire that they know is heading toward a cliff. It's just amazing to watch the sort of giddy rush of people stripping off their clothes and jumping onto the fire here. It's quite amazing. And I think that's provoked in me more of a realization that—surprisingly, I mean more than—I just feel there's a level of decency and compassion that's worth fighting for. Were you surprised to see the response to the show being read in such… I mean, it's obviously a show with political themes, but being read as such a commentary on modern events? Oh, we saw that. We did the first season and that was just sort of done in a vacuum. That was done as per just trying to live and get through the show and make it happen. By the time we were in the second season and developin…

Full show notes at the publisher

He's Serving 5 Years in Prison for Bitcoin Privacy Software Dec 19, 2025

Show notes

This week, guest host Zach Weissmueller is joined by Keonne Rodriguez, the founder of Samourai Wallet, a noncustodial bitcoin privacy tool. Rodriguez is currently facing a five-year federal prison sentence for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, while Samourai's former chief technology officer, William Hill, faces four years. The conversation was recorded just 48 hours before Rodriguez was scheduled to report to prison.

Rodriguez explains why he created Samourai Wallet, tracing its origins to bitcoin's cypherpunk roots and his belief that digital cash should offer the same basic privacy as physical cash. He walks through how Samourai worked, and why it never took custody of user funds.

In the interview, Rodriguez addresses the government's allegations that Samourai facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars in criminal activity, the role of blockchain surveillance firms in shaping those claims, and why he believes prosecutors ignored clear regulatory guidance from the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Rodriguez also explains why he ultimately chose to plead guilty despite believing he broke no law, citing the realities of federal prosecution, judicial reassignment, and what he describes as a stacked legal process.

We examine the broader implications of the case for privacy, free expression, and innovation, including parallels to encrypted messaging, past crackdowns on online marketplaces, and the growing tendency of governments to treat privacy itself as inherently suspicious. Rodriguez also reflects on President Donald Trump's recent comments indicating he would look into the case, the possibility of a pardon, and what it means to face prison time for building a tool intended to protect individual autonomy in an era of expanding surveillance.

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

0:39—What is Samourai Wallet?

3:31—Bitcoin and financial privacy

9:51—Money transmission and noncustodial wallets

13:15—Justice Department communication with FinCEN

16:27—Responding to the indictment

22:50—Why Rodriguez pled guilty

29:41—Money laundering accusations

34:59—Was Samourai's advertising evidence of guilt?

43:01—Canadian trucker protests and bitcoin

50:37—Trump comments on Rodriguez's case

55:08—Ross Ulbricht's advice to Rodriguez

The post He's Serving 5 Years in Prison for Bitcoin Privacy Software appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Did the Internet Break Our Sense of Reality? Dec 17, 2025

Show notes

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

The post Did the Internet Break Our Sense of Reality? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

How Foreign Governments Police U.S. Speech Dec 10, 2025

Show notes

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

The post How Foreign Governments Police U.S. Speech appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Why Science Lost Its Way Dec 03, 2025

Show notes

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

The post Why Science Lost Its Way appeared first on Reason Magazine.

What We Get Wrong About the American Revolution Nov 26, 2025

Show notes

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

The post What We Get Wrong About the American Revolution appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Rand Paul: Congress Is 'Afraid of the President' Nov 20, 2025

Show notes

Today's guest is Sen. Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky. He talks about why he cosponsored legislation to release all of the Jeffrey Epstein files, how President Donald Trump's tariffs and bombing of Venezuelan boats are bad policy and unconstitutional, and why fellow Republicans like Vice President J.D. Vance are Luddites and nostalgia merchants who want to regulate free markets to death. Paul, the subject of a 2014 New York Times Magazine article titled "Has the 'Libertarian Moment' Finally Arrived?", also talks with Gillespie about his plans for a 2028 presidential run, the enduring anti-war legacy of his father Ron Paul, and why he believes that he and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) are the only members of Congress who have stayed true to the Tea Party's commitment to lower spending and smaller government. The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and politicians who are defining the 21st century in terms of individual freedom and autonomy. 0:00—Releasing the Epstein files 2:32—Tariffs and protectionist propaganda 6:29—The economic policies of the GOP 11:32—Military strikes on Venezuela 13:27—Foreign intervention 15:16—Military aid and arms deals 19:38—Congressional spending and the debt 22:04—Federal hemp ban 23:30—What's happened to the Tea Party? 26:00—Will Paul run for president again? Transcript This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy. Nick Gillespie: This is The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie. My guest today is the libertarian-leaning senator from Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul. Sen. Paul, thanks for talking to Reason. Rand Paul: Glad to be with you, Nick. Thanks for having me. You are an outspoken advocate for releasing all of the material on Jeffrey Epstein and everything that comes out of that. You co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act in the Senate. After a very public delay, President Donald Trump has fully endorsed the idea of getting all the Epstein stuff out there. What is in the Epstein files that we don't know yet that you think will be important for the public to know about? I think it's important to know, first of all, that Donald Trump was for it before he was against it, before he was now for it. I have no idea what's in the files. It really has not been a big pressing issue for me. It's not something I've spent a lot of time either thinking about or researching. But as people talked about it endlessly, and as Donald Trump and his acolytes talked about it endlessly, it became a symbol for the idea of: does your government treat people differently whether they're wealthy or not? So, if someone is super wealthy, do they get a different form of government than someone who is not? And so the idea that we wouldn't reveal these people because they were rich—I guess I come down on the side of transparency, because I think that it's important. And if government's going to mete out justice, that the justice, you know, be impartial. Based on the color of your skin, impartial based on who you are individually, but also impartial based on your financial circumstances. But other than that, I have no idea if anything's gonna come out. I also think there are some complexities. For example, you know, I'm a public figure. If you accuse me of a heinous crime and it turns out I didn't do it, and they investigate me, is it really fair for you to now publicize that a grand jury investigated me for something terrible—that obviously people would not like—and I would be, you know, run out of town on a rail? Is it fair, really, to release that? So there are real questions here, whether or not accusations should be laundered in public that could be very, very damaging to people. But all that being said, I come down on the side of, you know, we need to have a justice system where it doesn't have an appearance of partiality toward people who have money. So let's talk about tariffs. Donald Trump has gone out of his way to unilaterally levy tariffs on basically every country on the planet. You have spoken out very harshly against the imposition of tariffs by government or executive order, essentially. Or claiming a national emergency. Leaving aside the unconstitutionality of all of this— which I suspect the Supreme Court will side with you on that issue. Can you explain to people who are struggling with the economic problems with tariffs—why are tariffs a bad idea? Well, there are two arguments that the protectionists make. They say we've been ripped off. That China's ripping us off. And we're somehow getting poorer and the middle class is being hollowed out. These are both fallacies and pretty easily proven wrong. So the first argument is that we're being ripped off. So you have to look at things, first of all, as an individual trade, not in aggregate. So if you go to Walmart and you buy a TV and you give Walmart $600, it is by definition a good trade because it's voluntary. No one forced you to buy it. You wouldn't have given your $600 unless you wanted the TV more than your $600. And Walmart wouldn't have given you the TV unless they wanted your $600 more than the TV. So what happens is then a million people go to Walmart, and then all the TVs came from China. And we now have this enormous trade deficit with China, and you all bought TVs from China and China didn't buy anything from you." I'm simplifying this, but this is sort of what happens. But how can a million individual purchasers all be happy? And you ask them at the end of the year, "Are you still happy?" "Yeah, I love my TV. I'm glad I gave my 600 bucks. I didn't feel ripped off. I wasn't ripped off." But then how can someone—a politician—draw a circle around a million Americans and say, "Oh, there it is. We've been ripped off. China's been ripping us off"? It comes from a measurement we call the trade deficit. And I think it's important that people, as they try to understand this… How is it…Sorry go ahead. I was just gonna say that a trade deficit is not just misinformation—it completely is a fallacy and means absolutely nothing. But we bought into this. And then they buy into it also for nationalistic reasons: that my circumstances may not be perfect, I'm not happy with my income, inflation's outpacing me. You know, the Chinese must be at fault. Foreigners are at fault. It's an easy sort of false nationalism or patriotism. But it's a fallacy, because we've gotten rich and the Chinese have gotten rich. Sometimes it's more apparent how rich they got because they started out so poor. So if they were making 30 cents a day in 1975 and now they make $4 an hour, you can see their richness more than you can see the increase in ours. We've all gotten richer. One interesting thing is: before China got in the World Trade Organization, before we began trading with them in 1975…actually our manufacturing output from 1950 to 1975 was actually exceeded by our manufacturing output from 1975 to 2000. There's a great book by Don Boudreaux and Phil Gramm on this recently—The Sevens Myth of Capitalism — it goes through a lot of the statistics on this. But anyway, it's a fallacy that we're being ripped off, and it's also a fallacy that the middle class is being hollowed out. If you look at the 70-year statistics on household income, you'll find that the middle class, while it's slightly smaller than it was 70 years ago, it's because they went to the upper class. The migration is from the lower class to the middle class and from the middle class upward. It's all migration upwards. HumanProgress.org does a wonderful job of bringing together these statistics and how well we're doing over the last century. Yeah. So can I ask you, you know, you've taken issue with President Trump talking about this. People like J.D. Vance, you know the Vice President, senator from Ohio, which borders Kentucky. Is this the beginning of the end of this stage of the Republican Party? Because you're talking about economic policy that all Republicans signed on to a decade ago, and now many in the Trump camp are saying, "Oh, that's crazy thinking." Where do you go with this, in terms of what Republicans are following you on basic economic reality? Well, you know, the Luddite philosophy started 150, 200 years ago, and I think that will be continued, and J.D. Vance will be the standard-bearer for that. For protectionism, for anti-trade— actually for the belief that mergers are bad, that capitalism is bad. But I actually think that there's a positive silver lining to this. That while the free market wing or the libertarian wing of the Republican Party has shrunk, there's a possibility now that perhaps the wing of the party that I come from may actually be able to be joined with the wing of the party that has been corporate America. So I think that corporate America understands, still, that trade is good. And they generally haven't been libertarian because they think, "Oh they're too hardcore on fiscal policy and balanced budgets. We don't care that much about that." But they are seeing now that I'm the only voice for trade, and I lean libertarian and am very hardcore on the debt. I think you actually can bring two groups together. I've often felt that the libertarian vote isn't big enough to win a presidential nomination on the Republican side. But what if you were ever to join the libertarian-leaning Republicans with those from corporate America and from the business world who understand that tariffs are harmful to the economy? Maybe there is a bigger group here. The J.D. Vance wing also hates mergers. They think the government should be involved with blocking mergers. Most people in big business realize that mergers and vertical integration are good for the economy, good for the consumer. So I think there's a lot of coalition-building that could happen. The other side of the coin is, right now it's only me. I am the only voice left on the Republican side in this planet talking about trade and willing to vote that way. So, you know, there is that. And so we may have faced an extinction event. Can you pick up people from the Democratic Party? Because, you know, it used to be Democrats—because they were in bed with the unions—they were against free trade. They think that, wrongly, they think free trade undercut wages, particularly for union members in America. Are there any Democrats that are coming around to the free trade philosophy, do you think? So we've had several votes on the issue of whether or not the president can declare emergencies and then declare tariffs or import taxes by fiat. And it's been almost all the Democrats—I think all the Democrats—and three or four Republicans, myself being one of those. And I think it is important to talk about this issue because there's the economical argument, but the constitutional argument is incredibly important as well. Because, you know, we fought the Revolution over taxation without representation. We gave the taxing power specifically to the House of Representatives, and it actually says literally in the Constitution: levies, duties, taxes are to be issued by the House. Now for 100 years, a lot of these powers the Congress sort of delegated to the president. And for most of that 100 years, the president was actually negotiating lower tariffs. And so everybody kind of tolerated it. This is the first time that power is now being usurped in the opposite direction. But I think it is important. The other reason it's important is because we found out during the pandemic emergency—when all these governors declared emergencies—they shut our schools down, they shut our restaurants down, they shut our churches down. It became authoritarian rule. And so emergencies and limiting emergencies may well be the most important control of the abuse of executive power in our lifetime. And so in our state, we made it such that emergencies expire after 30 days unless affirmatively approved by the legislature. I've been trying to do that in Congress. When Biden was president, we had probably two dozen Republicans that were interested in my bill to limit emergencies. Now that Trump is president, they're gone. They've all disappeared. And it really shocks me that people who were for emergency reform are voting to continue emergencies. Trump's declared emergencies with 130 countries. I mean, these are literally like the things you would do if you were at war. You're in the middle of the Vietnam War and you say, "We're not going to trade with Vietnam." Well, you can kind of understand that. But that's what we've allowed that to happen. Not me, but virtually every other Republican is looking the other way right now. Well, the other thing that you're outspoken on is Trump's actions on Venezuela. I mean, he's waging open war against Venezuela. And this is another thing that an autocrat or a tyrant would do. What is wrong with the Department of War under Donald Trump just blowing up Venezuelan boats that it says are carrying drugs or other bad things to America? Well, I have my own personal refusal to call it the Department of War, so I'm going to keep calling it the Department of Defense, but just the name change is probably obnoxious and… It's $2 billion in new signage, so it's an absolute waste of money for rhetorical purposes. The most important statistic that should give people pause about blowing these boats up is that when the Coast Guard boards vessels off of Miami or off of San Diego, one in four vessels they board does not have drugs on board. So their error rate's about 25 percent. It's hard to imagine that a civilized people would tolerate blowing up people—incinerating them, blowing them to smithereens—if the error rate would be about one in four. Some people are like, "Oh, they're drug dealers. It's self-defense. They're coming to America." Most of that we don't know. We don't know their names. We're presented with no evidence. Nobody's even bothering to pick up the drugs out of the water and tell us they were drugs floating around the boat. Nobody's bothering to say if they were armed. When we capture people alive, we're not even prosecuting them. We understand that there's no way we could prosecute them. We're just sending them back. So these boats probably don't have the ability to go more than about 100 miles without refueling. They're 2,000 miles away from us, and they are outboard boats. In all likelihood, they would probably have to refuel 10 or 15 times before they got to the United States—if they were coming here in the first place. Who knows where they're going. Yeah, you know, one of the great wins of libertarian policy or sensibilities over the past 20 years—and it's unfortunately rooted in really terrible foreign policy. Americans seem less interested in regime change overseas. Is it a hard sell to your fellow Republicans, because Donald Trump is a Republican, that like we really shouldn't have a president who is acting as if wars are going on all around us? My favorite among my colleagues is when they say, "Well, I'm for this intervention, but I'm not for policing the world." And I think my dad actually deserves a lot of credit for making it unpopular to say you were policing the world. But they still do believe in policing the world. I would say that most people in Washington are—on the Republican side, a good…

Full show notes at the publisher