Today's guest is Stimson Center Senior Fellow Emma Ashford, a foreign policy analyst who has written widely on post–Cold War strategy, the Middle East, and the limits of American power. An adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program, a columnist at Foreign Policy, and a former Cato Institute staffer, Ashford is the author of First Among Equals: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World.

She talks with Nick Gillespie about the incoherence of President Donald Trump's Iran strategy and the surprising and disturbingly ineffective continuity of U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.

 

Previous appearance:

"Did Bombing Iran Make America Safer?" June 24, 2025

 

0:00—What is the U.S. objective for war in Iran?

5:32—Is Vice President J.D. Vance an anti-interventionist?

7:21—Trump's foreign policy rhetoric and history

13:26—Is there a continuity in post–Cold War foreign policy?

19:56—Was President Joe Biden an outlier on foreign policy?

22:16—U.S. involvement in Ukraine

24:13—Are we sending messages to China and Russia through Iran?

30:05—Does Trump have a de-escalation strategy in Iran?

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post How the Iran War Could Backfire appeared first on Reason.com.

This week, guest host Zach Weissmueller is joined by Jacob Siegel, a journalist and author of The Information State, a sweeping examination of how power has shifted in the digital age from traditional democratic institutions into a new system of governance shaped by technology, media, and elite coordination.

Siegel traces the emergence of what he calls the "information state," where control is exercised not primarily through laws or elected bodies but through digital infrastructure, platform moderation, and public-private partnerships between government agencies and tech companies. He argues that this system took shape in the aftermath of the war on terror, accelerated during the Obama era through the alignment of Silicon Valley and the political class, and expanded in response to populist movements under the banner of combating disinformation. Along the way, Siegel connects concepts like hybrid warfare, mass surveillance, and the "whole-of-society" approach to the way information is now managed domestically.

Weissmueller and Siegel discuss how these dynamics played out during Russiagate and the COVID-19 pandemic, why attempts at information control often backfire, and how the collapse of traditional media has given rise to a chaotic new information ecosystem. They also explore the limits of technocratic governance, the role of platforms like X in disrupting centralized control, and what the next phase of the information age might mean for democracy, expertise, and individual autonomy.

 

0:00—What is the information state?

10:11—Technocracy and the Obama administration

21:07—The "whole-of-society" approach

27:26—War and technocracies

37:32—Limitations of information control

50:41—Russiagate

1:02:39—Alternative media

1:12:18—Mitigating the effects of information state

 

Reason is hiring! Check out the two open roles on the video team now:
https://reason.org/jobs/associate-producer/
https://reason.org/jobs/producer/

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post The Rise of the Information State appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.), a self-styled "progressive capitalist" who represents such major Silicon Valley cities as San Jose, Santa Clara, and Cupertino in Congress but who also supported the independent Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders for president. He has shown an increasingly rare willingness to work across the aisle, cosponsored with the libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) a war powers resolution aimed at President Donald Trump's bombing of Iran. He also joined forces with the Massie last fall to push disclosure of the Epstein files.

In this interview, Nick Gillespie talks with the five-term congressman about the need for Congress to reassert its control over the initiation of military force. They also discuss whether high taxes and regulations are why California was one of just five states to lose population last year. They argue the merits of California's proposed wealth tax that some say pushed Steven Spielberg, Mark Zuckerberg, the founders of Google, and other ultra-wealthy people to leave the Golden State.

They also discuss the role of government in spurring and regulating AI and other technologies, the meaning of the Epstein files, and whether the United States can redefine itself in a way that reduces polarization without reducing pluralism.

0:00–What is the biggest problem with the Iran War?
3:00–Did Trump start the Iran War to distract from domestic policy?
4:36–What should Congress do about the Iran War?
6:59–What is progressive capitalism?
9:10–Does Khanna support the proposed California wealth tax?
12:23–Are taxes and regulations causing California's population loss?
19:21–The role of environmental policy in California housing
21:03–Do billionaires weaken democracy?
24:19–The track record of wealth taxes
25:50–Will federal spending ever be reduced?
27:47–Artificial intelligence and impacts on the labor force
33:09–Assessing the New Deal
40:54–Is there a need for a national purpose?
46:24–The next attorney general and the Epstein files
51:19–What defines us as Americans?

Reason is hiring! Check out the two open roles on the video team now:
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Transcript

This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: Hello everybody. This is The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie, and my guest today is Ro Khanna. He's a representative, a Democrat from California, who represents Silicon Valley cities like San Jose, Santa Clara, and Cupertino. He's known for working across the aisle with people like libertarian Republican Thomas Massie. They cosponsored legislation to force a vote on the Iran war, as well as pushing to release the Epstein files. And Rep. Khanna calls himself a progressive capitalist, and he's a big Bernie Sanders fan. We're going to talk about that and what we have as common ground and where there might be some issues about that. So, Ro Khanna, thank you for talking to Reason.

Ro Khanna: Appreciate it. Thank you for having me on.

Let's start with the Iran war. You've been outspoken against the Iran war. As I mentioned, you co-sponsored a War Powers Resolution, a call for a resolution about Iran, with Thomas Massie. What is the biggest problem you see with the Iran war as it's being prosecuted?

It's both a moral and a strategic blunder. It's a strategic blunder for two reasons. First, we're not making America any safer. We have replaced Khamenei with his son, Khamenei Jr. Khamenei at least had a fatwa against nuclear weapons. Khamenei Jr. does not. If we replaced Khamenei Jr. by assassinating him, we would have the IRGC, the military, which is even more hard-line. They oppose the JCPOA. And at this point, Iran has leverage with the bombing in the Strait of Hormuz. When we stop bombing, which we should, along with Israel and Iran, we've actually given Iran more leverage in any deal that's going to come from it. So that's a…

It's kind of amazing that somehow we start this war and then the Strait of Hormuz is gatekeepered in a way that it had never been before. Not going well. You said recently Trump should just declare victory and get out. Do you think realistically there is any chance of that?

Yes, because he keeps going back and forth. I think Trump instinctively understands the American people don't want a long, drawn-out war. Unfortunately, today we had a plane shot down. One of the people was rescued. We're still waiting to see what happened to the second service member. We've seen 13 casualties already. Seven thousand of our troops are at risk. We've seen gas prices explode. Trump gets the risks, but he's got other people in his ear saying that he can somehow destroy the Iranian regime and bring about a new regime. And he's been, you know, made a terrible decision. But my hope is he can understand and recognize the longer we escalate, the more risk there is to the country and to his own legacy.

You mentioned people whispering in his ear. Two kinds of questions related to that. Why do you think Trump started the Iran war when he did? If you look back at somebody like Bill Clinton, to take a Democratic president, he bombed Kenya and Afghanistan. He bombed Kosovo when domestic politics got very messy for him. And it was very uncomfortable to witness that. Trump seems to respond to—when something is going bad for him in one place, he starts something new. Do you think Trump started the Iran war to take the focus off domestic policy failings?

It has taken the focus off of Epstein. I mean, the search results are down, but I don't believe that is the only reason. He, in my view, saw the Maduro capture and a more client leader coming there. I was opposed to that, but he saw that as a success and they thought, "Well, I can do this around the world." Of course, there've been three famous great American presidents, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and FDR. People said, "Wow, they all won wars, so what are you going to do, Donald Trump, to have your military glory?" I mean, the State of the Union was all about the regalia of military achievement. So I believe that he's been talked into saying, "Well, you're going to be the one who gets rid of bad guys around the world." He thought it was simpler than it is, given what he did with Soleimani in his first term and Maduro, and has made a mistake of hubris.

What can Congress do, or what should Congress do? This is something that is beyond partisanship. The president has been dictating foreign policy and when wars start and kind of when they stop for decades now. Is there anything that Congress can or should be doing that it is not?

First, we should be showing up. I don't mean this rhetorically, but we're in one of the major wars that we've been in in many years. And the Congress is out for two weeks. Like, I'm not saying that members of Congress are having a vacation. Some of them are doing district work.

Well, some of them are vacationing, right? We saw those horrific images of Lindsey Graham at Disney World, for instance.

And Lindsey has been the biggest cheerleader of the war. But even if they're working in their districts or doing things, I mean, don't you think that when we're engaged in a war where Americans are dying and where the president is saying, "I want 400 billion more dollars," that we should be every day debating that from the House floor? That we should be voting on War Powers Resolutions?

Is that a failure of Speaker Johnson, essentially?

Yes, but he's not the only one. We've had these speakers, candidly, who've given up an assertion of our authority. One of the things that Massie and I, when we succeeded with the Epstein Transparency Act, is we were relentless. People could have said, "Oh, they're going to ignore a discharge petition. Oh, Donald Trump will ignore you. They'll never sign the law." But we said, "No, we're going to speak about this night and day and we're going to push it." If you have an executive branch, which is taking maximalist power when it comes to war and peace, and we've seen this obviously with Trump, but we've seen this, as you alluded to, with other presidents, Democrats and Republicans, and you have a Congress which is basically silent, then who's going to win that fight? Obviously the executive branch. We haven't seen Congress stand up and say, "No, we're going to push back" in a meaningful, assertive way, where then you really have a conflict between two branches. And that's why the Federalist Papers aren't working, is because we've got a pliant branch of government on war and peace, because many members of Congress are fine not having to deal with these complicated, controversial issues.

But you guys, you've got a lot to do, right? You've got to get reelected. So, you know, we all have different priorities. Let's talk about an area that I find very fascinating about you. You call yourself a progressive capitalist. What do you mean by that?

I mean that I believe in entrepreneurship, I believe in markets, but I don't believe in unfettered capital going wherever it wants. For too long, we've had capital basically dictating to the state with deregulation and allowing for the free flow of capital.

Before we get to the progressive part of this equation, who are some of your favorite capitalists? Because I want to talk to you about kind of tax policy and your take on tariffs and things like that. But, you know, are there capitalists who are—you're like, "These are the people we need more of"? You know, who are your favorite businessmen or women heroes?

Well, Bill Knudsen, he came in FDR's government and basically helped industrialize America to win World War II, off the top of my head. That's one person. But, you know, Warren Buffett is someone who has talked about having more fairness for billionaires and having economic development—I mean, there are other people. Andy Grove is someone who talked about….

Intel. Long-time head of Intel, yeah.

You know, David Packard and Bill Hewlett were people who built HP, but had a sense of ethics, of contributing back to the…

Are there any billionaires today who fit that bill for you, you know, a kind of Hewlett-Packard model, or are they all…

I'm having a fireside chat with Jensen Huang of NVIDIA. I don't want to put him on a pedestal, not knowing all his views, but certainly he's, for example, said that, "Well, if I have to pay a tax, a billionaire tax, so be it." And he is really focused on how do we make sure that the economic development in this country is more even. I'm not saying he's a saint, but he's in a direction, I think, more of economic development and building an economy that works for everyone.

So you've come out in favor of a billionaire tax, you know, generally, and you've worked to introduce things. You've said recently, if Bernie Sanders were 15 years younger, he'd be the next president of the United States…

I believe that.

Yeah, and that kind of encapsulates the progressive element of this. Let's talk about billionaire taxes. I have read kind of differing, or I have a surmise of your view, on the proposed ballot initiative in your home state of California for a one-time 5 percent wealth tax on billionaires. That would be retroactive. Do you support that initiative?

I support the idea of a one-time 5 percent tax to pay for health care and to pay for child care. I've had issues which I'm hoping get clarified, which is that it should not be a tax on founders' voting shares and it should not tax illiquid assets of paper billionaires.

It shouldn't be on unrealized gains, basically.

Well, it could still be on a— I don't want to, you know, if you had public stock, for example, that still may be a tax on unrealized gains. But I'm talking about people who have totally illiquid assets and some startup that's valued at a billion dollars, but really haven't—could go down the other day. And—

How do you feel about the retroactive nature of the tax? This seems also kind of, it's a little bit different than usual, that if it passes in California in the fall, it would tax all of 2026. Is that good constitutional lawmaking or is that problematic?

Well, it's retroactive just to the first of the year. I think that was to disincentivize people leaving and exiting California. My view is that people who did it looked carefully at the law and thought that would be constitutional to do it within the year so people don't leave. But obviously, I assume people will challenge that. But I think at a federal level, it is much harder for folks to leave because we tax, as you know, by nationality, we don't tax by territory.

Yeah, for a long time it was the U.S. and Libya were the only two regimes that did that, and now it's kind of just the U.S. So it's not a great club to be part of, Congressman. But so talking about people leaving California, billionaires leaving California, this is part of the problem, right? If you say, "Ok, we're going to start taxing billionaires," last fall Steven Spielberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, left California. Others did just over the threat of this. Are they wrong to leave California if you say, "You're a billionaire and we're just going to take more of your money because you can afford it?"

Yes, because we live in a democratic society and 99.9 percent of Americans can't just get up and leave if their city council or state governments pass laws that they don't like. They say, "Yeah, I'm part of a democratic society and I'll work to elect someone else or I'll live with the laws that we pass."

But California also last year was one of five states that actually lost people, and it started doing that for the first time in 2020, partly because of COVID deaths as well as people moving. But, you know, does tax and regulation policy in California, is that one of the reasons why California is losing people—not just, you know, Steven Spielberg?

No. I'll tell you why. And I'm trying to give a fair critique and assessment of California. My district is producing 25 percent of the wealth of the country. We have $20 trillion in my district. It is the heart of the AI revolution. We're going to produce more wealth over the next five years than any place in human history. The argument that somehow California is having an exodus of wealth generation is just contradicted by…

No, no, but it is having an exodus of people. It's working-class people, middle-class people.

Yes. But that's not because our policies aren't good enough for entrepreneurship or our policies aren't enough for innovation or wealth generation. That's because we've had bad housing policy in California. We have not been building enough housing. We've had too much NIMBYism. And so the cost of housing is much higher than the cost of housing in other parts of the country. That's a genuine issue in California. We have had not sufficient investment in our public schools after Prop. 13 and have not had an education system that has delivered results like New Jersey or Massachusetts or other places and that's…

New Jersey schools are not—I'm wearing a Rutgers T-shirt, I grew up in New Jersey—their schools are not delivering for anybody except for teachers and bureaucrats, I must say…

But they're number one. Massachusetts and New Jersey are number one in student achievement…

But California— Well, not to get bogged down in per-pupil spending in California and things like that, but you're saying that the billionaire class, like, you can hold it captive in California. And I know I've listened to you talk about how, you know, if you're in Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley people are not going to go anywhere. The companies are not going to go anywhere because there's benefits to being in that place near each other, competing and sharing and all of that. But the fact remains, places like Texas and Florida are gaining people by leaps and bounds, and they're moving from places like New York state, where I'm talking to you from, and California. 

Is this an optical illusion? 

Yes!

A state like California will be able to keep more people by taxing people even more? California is like the number one most highest-tax state in the country, or it's always in the top three.

Not for working- and middle-class families. But you know, this idea— I've been hearing about Miami becoming the next Silicon Valley for 10 years. And Austin, it's a joke compared to Silicon Valley. It's 1/37th of the venture capital. They don't have the ecosystem of Stanford and of Berkeley…

Well, what about Hollywood? Hollywood is dying. They're doing everything they can to try and bring productions back there because it is too expensive to shoot movies in Hollywood. So Silicon Valley is a newer industry. Maybe that'll happen 50 years down the road. But what I'm saying is, I mean, you're saying that the California model—and I'd say California and New York, they share similar models of governance, where it's like, "We're going to tax a lot, we're going to regulate a lot, and we're also going to, at least on paper, offer high levels of services." Texas and Florida—and they're distinct from each other, as are New York and California—but they're like, "We're gonna tax and regulate less and we are also going to offer less." But then when you look at what Florida offers in higher education, it's actually available to people and it's great in a way that the UC system, arguably the best public university system in the country, it is like, you know, nobody can get in anymore. People leave partly because of that. 

The UC system has produced results so much better than almost any place in the country.

Yeah, but it's an elite— I mean, you know, why hasn't UC created more campuses? 

We should. We should be investing in that.

But what I'm getting at is…

That could be something that taxing the billionaires…

You're not, you don't see anything in the current kind of ecosystem where California and New York are losing population to Florida and Texas, and that doesn't make you think twice about a high-tax, high-service model.

Because of the fact that Florida is not producing nearly the wealth or innovation of California to make it think twice. I mean, there's a reason no one in the world knows what's happening in Austin or Miami and everyone knows Silicon Valley and that we're leading the United…

I don't know. I worry for you. You know, that you're saying like nobody knows that, but it's like those states—Texas, every year Texas—that when Texas is going to become more populous than California grows closer.

And people in California are like, no. The wealth gap and generation between Silicon Valley and Miami and Austin has leaps and bounds grown over the last couple of years because of the AI revolution. What builds wealth is not marginal tax policy. It's whether you have a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship and building new companies. I've literally got $5 trillion companies in my 50-mile radius in my district. How many trillion-dollar companies are in Florida? 

Yeah, I don't know. 

Zero. How many are in Texas? Zero. Zero.

And then you've got at least one in Arkansas, right? Probably with Walmart…

But I don't even think Walmart is a trillion-dollar company. So now, does California have problems? Yes. The problem is on housing policy. There are people leaving California because they want to go for cheaper housing. And does California have a problem in terms of not having high enough wages? Yes, we need to have higher wages. We need to have child…

California also routinely has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, it's always above the national average, and you're saying basically if we say the minimum wage, instead of it being $7 or whatever it is at the federal level, we're going to make it $20 or $30, that's going to make people stay in California, or is that going to make jobs that much harder to get?

Well, I believe that we need a living wage, we need child care, we need health care, but we also need to have federal investment, state investment in new jobs. And then if we had a housing boom, because we didn't have restricted zoning, we would create many more jobs. 

What's the role of environmentalist policy? And this is interesting. And I enjoy this conversation. I'm not trying to, like, you know, do gotchas or anything. Florida and California are interesting in that Florida has—and this certainly started under Jeb Bush and other Republicans—they have a strong conservationist streak because the environment there is just kind of precarious. So it's not like they don't care about the environment. But is California's real strict statewide environmental review systems, etc., is that what kind of energizes the lack of housing development or the lack of development of new property that people can actually live on or work at?

We had made it too difficult in some places to get permitting, and we've reformed that because the environmental legislation was being abused by people who had nothing to do with the environment to try to slow down building. And we just passed, the governor signed, a reform on permitting on CEQA, which was a reasonable reform that we needed. But there are other issues. The rich people don't want to have their aesthetics ruined. They don't want people moving into their communities who are lower income. I mean, I think if you want to critique California, critiquing the housing policy is fair, critiquing the education policy in terms of our not having delivered enough is fair, critiquing the high cost of living in terms of lower- and middle-class families is fair. But the critique that we're not producing enough billionaires or wealth is just factually false.

Well, actually, though, I mean, in a way, if I can say this politely, I think your fixation on billionaires gets things wrong. I mean, if you look at post-tax-and-transfer income in America, inequality stabilized a couple of decades ago, according to the work of Scott Winship and other demographers. So it's, you know, fixating on billionaires. Like, I'm not poor because Jeff Bezos has a thousand times more income than me.

Well, but I think…

It's really it's about where are people in that, you know, the thick part of the income distribution

Well, I disagree with that for two reasons. One, and we understood this, I think, in the Gilded Age, that there was a correlation between wealth and power. The fact that people have this kind of wealth and they can put $300 million into super packs is a problem for a democracy. That when you have the top 19 billionaires controlling 12.5 percent of the GDP, $3 trillion, three times the wealth concentration of the Gilded Age. When they're using that to buy up companies and platforms and exert political power, that diminishes our equal voice in democracy. And that's why I believe that wealth inequality of this extreme is not helpful for a democratic project.

How do you fight that, then, as the congressman from Silicon Valley? And that, you know, accurately, that's how you define yourself, and you have megacorporations in your district. How do you withstand the pressure to dance to the tune that you're essentially saying that billionaires are calling?

Because there are enough engineers and vice presidents and leaders and even some billionaires who understand that the social contract is broken, who understand if you do good in America, you need to do good for America, and support my call for a new social contract in this country where we celebrate the creation of wealth and entrepreneurship. But we ask, of those billionaires, their help to fund health care, child care, a Marshall Plan for America…

So according to the Tax Foundation, which is a pro-market but generally well-regarded organization, the top 1 percent of income earners in America pay about 40 percent of the income tax, and they capture about 26 percent of the wealth in America. How much more of the federal government should the top 1 percent pay for if 40 percent isn't enough?

But the problem is that a lot of this wealth is never being taxed because they're in stock, folks never pay tax on it, they hold it til they die, they borrow against it, and then their heirs inherit it with a step-up in basis. So I'm talking, not about the tax on income, I'm talking about the tax on all of this capital. Which isn't being taxed, and it's not the 1 percent, we're talking about the 0.00001 percent.

You know, since about 1960, about 14 European countries tried wealth taxes. All but three of them repealed them because they found them unwieldy or counterproductive. Does that give you pause at all in saying, "What we need now is a wealth tax?" Even as we spend $7 trillion as a federal government, California's state budget goes up. Virtually every state budget goes up every year. So we're spending more and more, but we're getting less and less results. And is the answer to that, say we've got to squeeze billionaires more, because when we spend this much more, then we'll finally be able to achieve state capacity on delivering…

Well, first of all, I don't believe that we're getting less and less results. I mean, President Obama's Affordable Care Act got 20, 30 million people health insurance who never had that. Saved many, many lives. The fact that we had infrastructure projects under President Biden, the fact that we had investment in solar and energy and wind and geothermal was deeply important. Do I think there's waste and fraud in government? Absolutely. That's why Burchett and I have proposed audits to make sure that the government spending isn't wasteful. But the reality is there are too many people who don't have health care, we don't have child care. Instead of spending $400 billion on these wars in Iran, I'd rather keep up with college, I'd rather do child care, $10 a day. I'd rather have an economic bill of rights…

I would love to see the war spending just stopped and reduced. I mean, we're spending like $7 trillion a year in the federal budget, and this was unimaginable even seven years ago when things were in the $4 trillion range. Do you see any way in which that spending comes down? Or is it just we're going to keep spending more and more and more and then we'll figure out how to pay for it?

The Pentagon budget is 56 percent of all discretionary spending. We should reduce…

But the big-ticket items are so secure. And I agree with you, it's insane, but Social Security, Medicare, interest on the debt, and defense spending are the giant ones.

So that's one of the big—scrapping the cap on Social Security taxes would make that solvent in a huge way, meaning if after $170,000 you should pay your Social Security tax. Mitt Romney proposed…

But that's not the 1 percent either. I mean, that's, you know, if you are like two college graduates who have been working for 25 years, you're probably making that as a household. So that typically attacks not on the super-rich, but on the upper middle class, right?

I would do it after $400,000, but yes, you'd capture a fair amount of people who are upper-middle-class professionals with that. But I think people would be fine with that to secure Social Security and make sure we can increase Social Security benefits. And then I would go on taxing the ultrawealthy, and then I would get rid of some of the Medicare Advantage fraud. That's been a huge drain on our—

That is an insane policy, right? Medicare Advantage plans, that the government will pay more for them, and it just doesn't make any sense—if you have single-payer health care, why you would allow that?

Can I ask, you've said some things interesting about AI and the way AI innovation needs to be respectful of the people driving it—and this is in your district—the people driving AI need to be respectful of the possibility of dislocation, mass dislocation of employment and whatnot. What does that look like? You've talked about how workers need to have a say in how this stuff develops, around policy around it. What does that mean?

Well, let's take a very concrete case where you have autonomous vehicles used in public transport, and the building trades and transportation unions work with some of the cities. And they said, "OK, if you want to add autonomous vehicles, it can't displace the existing fleet, and you need to make sure that our members are going to have a job, whether it's dispatch or maintenance, and we're going to do the maintenance here domestically, we're not going to offshore it." And they came up with agreements to have autonomous vehicles added. So they weren't sort of saying no to technology, but very concrete commitments for their members to get jobs and to be part of that future. And what I'm saying is that's the kind of model we need as technology is adopted.

I mean, that can get out of hand, though. And I was thinking as I was talking about this, my father worked for SeaLand, which is a shipping company that is now owned by, I think, CSX or something. But they pioneered containerized shipping. The big fight that they ultimately had while they were rolling out this technology—which everybody says is one of the major reasons why the post–World War II world is richer than it was—is because of containerized shipping. It reduced costs of shipping goods, limited spoilage, all sorts of things. But they had to take on the longshoremen's union, which still exists in a much beggared form. But if the longshoremen had been able to direct the development of that technology, it never would have happened. I mean, the automobile industry might not have happened, etc. So how do you make sure—and this, I guess, goes back to your progressive-capitalist idea—how do you make sure that you're not strangling innovation by, you know, saying, "OK, well, nobody can ever lose a job. Nobody can ever be displaced by technology," which is going to benefit everybody in the medium or long run?

Well, it's a balance. It's saying that we can find jobs for the longshoremen on the containers. I mean, we could have figured out—no one's saying stop the technology. We're saying make sure those longshoremen have jobs, make sure as you're developing automobiles that people have jobs as mechanics, as car drivers, as doing things, and have that bargaining and not a complete ban on technology development. I guess the question in my view is, is the central problem in America a lack of efficiency, or is the central problem in America a lack of social cohesion? And of course you want both. You want efficiency and cohesion. But I would argue that the central problem in this country is a lack of cohesion, that the working class has gotten shafted. That people have not had jobs because of offshoring and the hollowing out of communities because of globalization and automation. And that we should be cautious in doing things that are going to exacerbate that as opposed to making sure that the AI revolution works for all of us. That's not to say "Stop the technology." I'm not one calling for a moratorium on the technology.

Doesn't Bernie Sanders tend toward that? I mean, you know, he seems to be very Luddite in technology. He also tends to be very anti-immigrant. I worry about that.

No, I would reject that characterization. I mean, Bernie has campaigned on a multiracial, multiethnic democracy. That was every one of his speeches and his campaign ads. And he just sat down with a lot of the technology leaders in Silicon Valley. I mean, he understands the technology. He wants to make sure that the technology works for ordinary Americans. But I certainly don't support, you know, what Elon Musk was for just a year ago, which was, let's just have a pause on AI development. I believe that there are uses for AI development and mRNA. We could develop the RNA genome. We could figure out cures for rare diseases. But when we are adopting it, we have to make sure we don't just displace millions of blue-collar workers. I mean, if there's anything that we should have learned in our politics, even for those who are more pro-market than I am, it is that the massive displacement of people in the working middle class causes angry populism that poses the greatest threat to the rule of law and to capitalism itself.

Let me ask, as a final question—

Let me ask you one question. How do you assess FDR's New Deal, a positive at this time or a negative?

I actually think that FDR—and there's a guy down at UCLA, an economist named Lee Ohanian, who I find very convincing—that most of FDR's interventions actually extended the Great Depression and that there are at least two Great Depressions. And also that the Depression did not end with the mega-buildup of the economy during World War II, but after, when government spending, federal spending, fell precipitously right after. I think the bold, if I may, the bold, persistent innovation or intervention that he talked about—experimentation—it made it very difficult for businesses to restart. And if you look at the economic data, I'm thinking of something like Amity Shlaes' book The Forgotten Man, unemployment and business starts went sideways for a long time. I think having simple rules and having a social safety net for people who need it is good. But I don't think that FDR was, ultimately, the New Deal was not what we are taught. I think it actually—

But if you look at just the data on unemployment, when FDR takes over, it's about 25–27 percent. It falls to about 18 percent because of the New Deal. And then he goes with the Works Progress Administration because of the '36–'37 recession, where it falls a little bit more. But it's undisputed that in '41, '42, '43, it falls to like 4 percent because of the war.

Yeah, but it's also, you know, first off I don't want war to be the health of the state, you know, broadly, even though I support, you know, obviously we should have fought in World War II. My father actually literally fought in World War II.

No, no, I'm not…

No, no, no, I get that. The government can direct the economy and goose economic growth for some period of time, but that gets problematic. And when you look at what life was like when the federal government was controlling most of the economy, there was rationing on everything. People were not necessarily doing better. That came after the war, when the government actually reduced its year-over-year spending. It's massive. We reduced our debt, we reduced our spending, and the economy roared back to life for a lot of reasons, most of which I think have to do with the federal government getting out of the way rather than…

The industrial base was built, but I think it's an interesting—the reason I ask that is because, of course, I have an admiration for FDR, with the caveat that it excluded the Black South.

Oh, and the Japanese internment is horrifying—

Yes. Of course. But I think that is a fair sort of insight into where our worldviews may differ, both in American politics, where FDR sees himself as saving capitalism from itself, and you see him as having overreached.

Well, yeah, and I agree with you. One of the things that I think people on the right and the left who are not populists—and I'm certainly not, and I don't think you are—thinking about where…and you know there are left-wing and right-wing versions of populism. And where do they come from? And they come from moments of dislocation where large numbers of people, or substantial numbers of people, feel left out. Trump called back to FDR in 2016 when he said, "I'm speaking for the forgotten man." 

We need to make sure that people understand that they're connected and that there's a society where they have a place and something to connect them. I tend to think most of the time freer markets—not absolute anarchy or whatever—deliver better for people than larger and larger numbers of state controls on capital, on tariffs, on immigration, on things like that. And that the dislocations in industries tend to be slower and more digestible than we think. When we talk about industrial workers, which Trump won't stop talking about, the industrial percentage of the labor force peaked during World War II, and it's been kind of a straight-line decline since then. Long before globalization. And you learn how America got richer over that time. More people moved into houses, more people went to college, more people had more stuff. So we can digest and we can handle economic creative destruction, I think.

We can handle it on a macro sense, but I think what Trump's election twice showed is that there was a great anger that we didn't anticipate, of a loss of pride. And, you know, I do describe myself as an economic populist, but I don't think economic populism needs to be hostile to immigrants or hostile to a role in the world or hostile to technology. And this is what I'm trying to reconcile with progressive capitalism and FDR, putting aside the internment camps, which is a big….

But you also did mention the South. This is part of the thing—A number of analyses show this about…more money went to the places that voted for him in larger numbers. So I worry about political control of largesse.

Yeah, I think that's a fair concern. I mean, obviously, we have to—you know, it's funny, because at first when the Public Works Administration came, Ickes was a great champion on integrity, and it was the Hoover Dam, and of course that largely people think was a good project. And then by the time the '36–'37 recession happened, you get FDR saying, "Well, I don't care about all of the constraints," and you have the Works Progress Administration that hires 3.8 million people. But the word boondoggle comes out of that, because it's hiring people who may not be doing the most productive work. But overall, I guess I assess FDR as having really saved capitalism. And I believe you need a kind of moment like that that's more inclusive. I mean, that's…

Well, I also, to be honest too, we're not in that moment now. And one of the things that is amazing to me is really—this is an odd thing to be saying, because this has been a hell of a century, right? But, you know, we've gone through 9/11, we've gone through the financial crisis, we've gone through COVID and things like that. Median household income is higher than it's ever been. We're actually doing pretty well, even though we've had a ton of stuff thrown at us.

Certainly we're not in a Great Depression with a collapse of demand in the same way. And yet the sentiment among Americans is that we're not. And I don't think it's just driven by envy. I mean, I don't think it's, "Ok, that Jeff Bezos is making all this money and I see him on Instagram and so I'm not doing well." I think there's a real sense that people feel anxious about not having a $35 job and being able to buy housing and child care.

I agree with you that there is a lot of anger. And then how much of it is driven by actual material circumstances and how much of it is driven by narratives that take advantage of that? I think a huge part of it—you are about to turn 50, right? So you are part of Gen Z, or Gen X rather. Correct?

Yeah, we've been the skipped generation.

Whereas millennials and Gen Z, who are very pessimistic, feel like they are, in many ways, they are doing better than anybody. When you look at the number of Gen Z people at the same age as their parents, more of them own houses than 25-year-olds did 50 years ago, but they feel cheated and robbed by everything. And I think that's not a material issue, that is a narrative issue. And I think one of the biggest problems—I'm the grandchild of immigrants. I know you are the child of immigrants, am I correct? 

Yes. 

That era when you could talk about America being a nation of immigrants, and that helped create a sense of belonging and community, that's been over for a long time. The common identity of Americans as "we are not the Soviet Union," that's over. We don't have an overarching national identity that helps us see where we are in relation to our peers. And I think that's a huge issue. And I don't know where the fix for that comes from, but I doubt it is from billionaire taxes, to be quite honest, or more industrial policy on the part of the state.

Well, I agree with the central theme, which is that we're missing a common national purpose and we're desperate and hungry for leaders who will ask us to be bigger and to come together. And one thing I would argue is that a vision of economic renewal could be that. Now, we can disagree about how much of a role the state will play in that, but certainly we could agree that whether it's business leaders, technology leaders, labor leaders, faith leaders, that someone can summon the American people to help rebuild communities that have been left out, to help create economic pathways for those left out, and can make it a national call. And then, you know, if you're more libertarian, like Thomas Massie, he may rely more on the private sector. And if you have more faith in the role of the state, I may rely more on initiatives with state collaboration. But the point is we're missing a common national purpose.

Right. Well, and also if I may—and then I have a final question for you, that you mentioned, and Massie brings up—I think it's important also to recognize that a national purpose does not mean that we are trying to make people fit into a singular vision of America as the greatest nation on Earth. I'm not saying you are, but that people—

I do think America is the greatest nation of the Earth, but I don't think we have to have a thick conception of the common good. But we do need a conception of an allegiance to some sense of common mission. Even, you know, I think even this Artemis launch, which has some finally feel-good stories there. But, you know, there are only Americans who've landed on the moon, the 12 Americans who actually walked on the moon. And it's Americans again who are now going, 50 years later, not to land on the moon, but circle the moon. And I do think things like that matter. And we've been missing moments like that.

Well, another Bay Area denizen is Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, as well as The WELL in San Francisco and the Long Now Foundation. He is somebody who I think is worth thinking about in these terms, of where you build a common vision that's kind of opt-in but is transcendent, and it allows for diversity of individuals but also a kind of commonality of belonging or purpose. And that can be great. Because when I think back to my grandparents who left Ireland and Italy, and they were leaving other people's ideas of like, "Ok, this is your role in our great story of some kind of national purpose." It's something that we need to address because people do feel alienated from one another in a way that, I agree with you, it leads to political polarization and populism. And I think very little good comes out of populism, to be quite honest.

Well, I think the populism that recognizes the anger against systems that aren't working is a necessity. But if it's just that, without a positive vision, then I think it can feed into cynicism and nihilism. So it's a concept that—

Let me ask you…

And this Epstein [unintelligible] is an example of, I would argue populism, in terms of standing up against a group of people who raped or abused these young girls. One could argue that that is, in essence, standing up against bad guys in a system, is populist.

I was going to ask, I guess, two questions. One, with Pam Bondi out, you know, what happened as attorney general— What happens to the Epstein files? Because there's still like half of the files have not been released yet, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think Congress should make that a prerequisite, the Senate for confirmation, that you're going to release the rest of the files and you're going to make sure that we have investigations, and a future attorney general has to make those commitments. And if they lie in those confirmation hearings, they will be held accountable, just like Pam Bondi was. This is an issue that too many Americans care about, including Trump's voters. So it's a time for a great reset to get the rest of the files out.

In the Epstein saga, on the most kind of baroque level, people talk about a kind of global ring of pedophiles who are well-placed in business and universities and governments, are kind of running the world as their own pleasure palace. Does that go too far? Or what ultimately is the essence of the Epstein files saga, which has had an incredible hold on the public imagination?

I think it's a look at the recklessness, immaturity, venality, and callowness of our modern elite class. Not all of them, but that they were seduced by networks and power. And some of them participated in the abuse and rape of young girls, who thought the rules didn't apply to them. And others were so enamored by being part of this network of the privileged that they turned a blind eye to women and young girls being treated as dispensable. And so this culture that was created of impunity, a culture that people of decency could get caught up in. I don't think that everyone who went to Epstein's island was evil or a bad person, but how did we create this culture of an elite group that felt apart from the country? 

And it goes to what we were talking about earlier, that there's sort of different lived experiences for Americans. It used to be, you know, when I was growing up on Amsterdam Avenue in Bucks County, my father was an engineer, my mom a schoolteacher. We were middle class on our street. We had an electrician and a track technician, a nurse. We had a vice president at a big company, and that person had the pool and we would go to the pool, but we all were on the same Little League teams and went to the sports games and the Phillies, and you had a shared common experience. And now I feel like that's missing. And this Epstein class highlights a type of experience that most Americans can't relate to and don't understand. If you're in a small town and you have an affair, it's not like human nature is perfect, but there's a sense of shame. There's a sense of, "What is the church gonna think? What's my neighbor gonna think?" And here you have, you know, obviously the abuse of girls. But even behavior that may not go as far as abuse, but just one that is totally shameless.

How do you restore that and, you know, that sense of a kind of multiclass common experience? And, you know, if we had more time, I would probably pick nits about, you know, your experience, which I'm sure was much better than many people in the greater Philadelphia area or in Pennsylvania. But how do you bring something like that back? Because I don't think it's going—one, it's not going to be easy…it's not going to be by taxing Steven Spielberg 5 percent. Right?

Well, I think it goes to the sense of how do we create a common sense of purpose again in this country, and an experience where we're dealing with other folks. I mean, one of the places I'm thinking about is called for Work for America, where if you're a young person, the federal government will help hire you whether you want to work for a company, whether you want to work in local communities, whether you want to come for the federal government, and you're doing things with other people in a common way. But, you know, I think this is the big question—I mean, some of it is housing policy, right, restrictive zoning. Some of that is a sense of basic health care and child care. But I don't think it's just material, and I think you're fair to point out that it's not just material, it's not just government. There is a sense of speaking to the American experience and identity. We have to be inspired again.

Can I ask, and this is hard to put you on the spot like this, but what is that flexible identity matrix that defines us as Americans? Because we're all going to have different, ultimately different experiences, and we're never— I have a background in American literature, and for years Americanists were always saying, "Oh, America was the first classless society." That's just wrong. I mean, we always have had and always will have different classes, but that doesn't need to get in the way of having a shared sense of purpose. What is it for you? What defines the American essence?

The idea is that our country is going to be the first cohesive, multiracial democracy in the history of the world. That you can come from Ireland, you can come from India, you can come from Italy, you could come from anywhere you want, and that the country will give you the chance - based on your hard work and your own initiative -  to live out your dreams. To live the kind of life that you want to live, and that there's been no society in the history of humanity that has actually achieved that, to give everyone the shot to live out their dreams, exude their own genius, as opposed to just the genius of founders in Silicon Valley or kings, but every person to live their own genius and potential, regardless of their race and background and class. And that is the most grand civilizational achievement that should motivate us.

Do you worry that, you know, I mean, that kind of identity politics as practiced, particularly in the Democratic Party, and now there's a kind of white identity politics that is kind of growing among Republicans, but that's one of the problems, right? Is that we have to start thinking about individuals again, rather than everybody as a marker for whatever group we assign onto?

I think that at our best, our leaders, even who have talked explicitly about race, like Frederick Douglass, enslaved for 20 years, have talked about a composite nation. A nation where we ultimately transcend that in allowing people, despite their background, to have the basics. I believe that I got a lot from this country. I mean, I was able to go to a good public school, I didn't have to worry about health care. I had a wonderful childhood as a middle-class son of immigrants, and I just wish at least that for everyone. I think I have too many loans for higher education, but can we do that? And I grew up in a 97% white community in Bucks County, and yeah, there were times I was teased, etc., but overall, I remember a community that really embraced me. 

How do we build that kind of positive vision? It doesn't mean that we say to people who argue, "Well, race matters because of disadvantage, class matters because of disadvantage," it doesn't mean we shut their voices out, but we say to them, "That is not determinative of the American story. That is an input, and the North Star is still being a composite nation." But that isn't the final diagnosis or end aspiration of America. The end aspiration is to transcend it, but with the honesty to acknowledge it.

You know what, I think that's a wonderful note to end on. Thank you, Rep. Ro Khanna, California's 17th District, Silicon Valley. Thank you so much for talking to Reason.

Well, I enjoyed the conversation.

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Ro Khanna: Congress Has Surrendered on War appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is the Niskanen Center's Brink Lindsey, whose connection to Reason magazine goes back decades and who for years worked at the Cato Institute.

His new book is called The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing, and it raises important questions about life in the 21st century. Thanks to capitalism, he argues, we've essentially conquered poverty, but are progress and growth slowing down? People in advanced economies are increasingly pessimistic about the future, populism is on the rise, and many social indicators are trending in a negative direction.

Nick Gillespie talks with him about how to restore economic and cultural dynamism, his intellectual journey, and what a brighter future might look like.

 

0:00—Introduction

0:56—Mass abundance and prosperity

6:20—The effects of globalization

12:05—Mass affluence and pessimism

15:01—Slowing rates of innovation

24:10—Capitalism and its cultural contradictions

31:06—Fears of conformism and elites

39:42—Declining fertility rates

48:52—Religion and community

59:08—Does Lindsey consider himself a libertarian?

 

Reason is hiring! Check out the two open roles on the video team now:
https://reason.org/jobs/associate-producer/
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The post How Capitalism Lost the Working Class appeared first on Reason.com.

In a precedent-setting verdict this week, a Los Angeles jury held Meta and YouTube responsible for addicting a young woman to their services and exacerbating her mental health struggles. The jury recommended the two companies pay $6 million to the plaintiff, now 20, identified in court documents as Kaley or KMG. The verdict came a day after a New Mexico jury found that Meta harmed the mental health of children, failed to protect them from sexual predators, and violated state law.

In this special bonus episode of The Reason Interview, Nick Gillespie talks with tech journalist Taylor Lorenz, founder of User Mag, who covered the Los Angeles trial. She recounts testimony from Kaley's deposition describing physical and psychological abuse from her parents. Lorenz argues that Kaley's unstable home life was a more significant factor in her mental health issues than social media use. Kaley even used Instagram to complain about her mother, who at one point would communicate with her daughter only through the app.

Lorenz and Gillespie discuss rising cultural and political calls for regulation of social media, pending legislation such as the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), and how Meta and other major players are simultaneously defending themselves in court while pursuing regulation that may benefit them at the expense of free speech.

Previous appearance:
"Taylor Lorenz Makes Sense of Online Culture for the Rest of Us," February 26, 2020

 

0:00—Observations from the trial

1:56—The plaintiff's mental health and history of abuse

6:34—Mark Zuckerberg's testimony

7:04—Is social media becoming the cultural scapegoat?

10:19—The impact of this verdict on setting legal precedents

13:15—KOSA

14:47—How sexual content drives regulation efforts

16:33—Are companies liable for not enforcing age verification?

17:56—What are the privacy threats with age verification?

19:05—Why more regulation stifles competition

21:48—Do younger generations value free speech?

 

Reason is hiring! Check out the two open roles on the video team now:
https://reason.org/jobs/associate-producer/
https://reason.org/jobs/producer/

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Taylor Lorenz: Is Social Media Responsible for Bad Parenting? appeared first on Reason.com.

In a recent interview with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, veteran news anchor Katie Couric asked him whether he "had a Zoolander" problem, fretting that being "so ridiculously good looking" might make it hard for him to be taken seriously.

That exchange set off today's guest, podcaster Adam Carolla, who saw in it a microcosm of much of what's wrong with contemporary media and politics. Couric's fawning betrays a clear political bias, he said, and it overlooks Newsom's longstanding incompetence as a governor who has overseen a decline in people and businesses since taking office in 2019.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Nick Gillespie, the former construction worker and Comedy Central host lays into how legacy media has traded in its watchdog role for access and skepticism toward power for affirmation. Carolla talks about how the Golden State's regulatory dysfunction makes everything more expensive and time-consuming, squeezes tax-paying and law-abiding residents, and has created a place that puts "safetyism" and the status quo at the center of every policy decision.

They also discuss the rise of independent journalism and podcasting—a field Carolla helped pioneer in the late aughts—and why, compared with President Joe Biden in 2024, President Donald Trump successfully appealed to people who wanted to build homes, businesses, and a future in the United States.

 

0:00—Softball interviews

4:41—Legacy media monocultures

9:53—Why Carolla started his own podcast network

11:35—Why are people leaving California?

16:24—Overregulation in California

25:33—The importance of meritocracy

28:39—How Carolla developed his work ethic

38:15—Why Carolla likes Trump

41:40—California high-speed rail

44:09—Is Carolla optimistic about the future?

 

Reason is hiring! Check out the two open roles on the video team now:
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Transcript

This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

 

Nick Gillespie: Adam Carolla, thanks for talking to Reason.

Adam Carolla: My pleasure, Nick.

Let's start this interview talking about Katie Couric. Recently, you went to town on her. She was interviewing Gavin Newsom, the wonderful, fresh-smelling governor of California, next president of the United States and maybe Canada. 

She was great. She was like, "Gavin, is your dick too big for porn?"

She literally said, like, "You may have a Zoolander problem," but not meaning you might be so fucking stupid…

Right. 

That you won't be able to find your way out of your car door, get out of your car to the election booth, but that you're too good looking for politics. Why did that set you off?

OK, here's what I sort of realized with journalism. There's this sad tacit agreement, which is you can't ask tough questions or follow-up questions because then that person would never come back. Right? And so that's, you know, Gavin Newsom did my show 13 years ago, and he's never come because I asked follow-ups, you know, and…

And you even had, I mean, that was not, it was a tough interview, but it was not a hostile one.

No, it was not hostile at all. I just kept asking. And so people don't do it now because Katie wants to get Gavin again down the road after he announces he's running for president. But that's not journalism. Journalism is asking the questions. And so if everyone just did it at once, then they wouldn't have a choice because there'd be no friendly confines for them to go. If all journalists just started acting like journalists and we all did it at once, then they'd still have to come back to you. They just have to answer your questions.

Katie Couric, in this case, is a kind of standing for the legacy media. What we're calling it.

And I don't have anything against her personally. My feeling is, and here's my beef with her. She is the legacy media and all these people are, you know, they're all, you know, Don Lemon is right down the middle of everything. As soon as they get off the reservation they're all hard leftists, which is who they were the whole time. So it's sort of like you're sitting around going, "I'm not vegan, I'm not vegan, I'm not vegan." And as soon as you quit your job, "Meat is murder." Right? Well, that's how you were thinking the whole time. So now I don't really believe that you were doing a sort of fair and balanced…

Do you think…was Katie Couric's famously televised colonoscopy, was that part of a left-wing agenda for America?

That was a rear wing agenda.

Who else in the media do you, either people who have recently left or are currently there that you are like, "Come on, just be honest for a minute."

Any time somebody interviews Gavin Newsom or Barack Obama and I see the hard deep leg cross of the person which is inviting them in going, "No tough questions from this fella, I got a deep leg," it's the deep leg crossers that I never trust. If you watch Obama and if you watch Newsom, Newsom gets into positions that they don't get into in hot yoga. Getting those deep leg crosses then Obama does the same, but the guys interviewing them do the same too. Whereas Trump makes a diamond with his thumb and forefinger that accentuates his nutsack

It's something from like a 1970s pick-up manual or something. 

Right, right. 

He learned that.

I just want people…I don't want there to be safe places to go to be interviewed, you know what I mean? Like I want all interviewers to do their job.

And that's particularly with politicians, but also with celebrities or anybody.

You know, look, I don't care, if you're a celebrity, who you're having an affair with. That's not policy. But you're interviewing a politician to find out what their policy is and so they come on your show and then you ask what their favorite ice cream is. And then there's also a trait that bothers the hell out of me where they… at some point, everyone caught on to these people, right? So they go, "You didn't even ask them about the border. You didn't even ask about the border." So they go, "OK, so they caught on." So they go, "And Mr. Biden, what about the border?" And he goes, "The border's secure", and they go, "OK. Now, I hear you have a birthday coming up." And it's like, "I asked about the border." Yeah, you asked about the border. He gave a bullshit answer, and you left it. You let it go.

Do you feel like more right-coded media outlets, something like Fox News or One America News Network, stuff like that, do they do the same thing? Do they kind of shield their people?

I think everybody does it to an extent, you know, like, OK, this is your team and the coach of your team is coming on for an interview. But I feel like the right still asks, you know, "It's fourth and seven and you're on your own 40 and you went for it, Coach. I mean, you didn't think about punting." And I'll tell you why I know this and I think this is true or I think this is proof of being intellectually honest. I said to Tucker Carlson once, several years ago, I said, "Why don't you break off and form your own media company, bringing in all the people from the right, all the conservative people to be under the umbrella — under your umbrella." And he said, "None of them get along." And I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "They all disagree with each other." And I was like, you go to CNN, COVID comes out, Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, they know everything. They're all on the same page. No one at CNN or MSNBC went, "Well, hold on a second. Wet market? I don't think so. Maybe it came from a lab. Come on, use your brain." No, they were all on the same page, But amongst the right, Ben Shapiro feuding with—

Candace Owens

Tucker Carlson. Everyone's going at it. And you can say, "He's right, she's right. They're wrong." But they're intellectually being honest.

Let's say they're being honest. I'm not sure that Candace Owens is being intellectual. 

Yeah, I don't know about intellectually. Yeah, and I'm not going to vouch for Candace Owens. But what I'm saying is, they did not get their talking points because they're going at it in five different directions on everything from vaccines to Iran.

The rapture versus Jews versus Christians.

They're all over the place, right. So at least, here's my thing. I at least believe they believe what they're saying.

There are really popular and far-reaching outlets or things that have been created like the Daily Wire, you know, what Ben Shapiro has done, and obviously there's a range of opinions. Do you feel like that's a good solution to kind of legacy media monocultures? Is it enough? And obviously your whole career has kind of been moving out of what was legacy media, or kind of like mainstream entertainment to running your own empire. Is it enough to counter the media?

I think it's, all right, let's look at it this way. In 1972, the big three American auto manufacturers had 85 percent of the market. And then someone goes, "These Japanese cars, is that enough?" It's like, well, not enough in 1972, it was 12 percent. But fast forward to 1980. And it's starting to add up a little and then smash cut to 2020. And Big Three are trying to catch up to the Japanese imports. So it's like if you went back pre-COVID, you'd kind of go, "Hmm." But after COVID, with the rise of a lot of podcasts and these independent networks and things like that, it's there. And it's going to…my son's 19, he doesn't watch CNN or TV…

He doesn't even watch cable, right? I mean, it's just something might come on a TV, but more likely it's a phone or a computer screen, right?

You're right, right, they talk about Joe Rogan or this comedian or that comedian and you know so…

Which is kind of fascinating, we're about the same age and it is like the idea that you're not even talking about cable anymore, it's just like this stuff shows up in my hand and I know who I trust and not.

Yeah, I know who I trust. I trust this guy, I trust that guy, I don't trust that guy. I'm harking back on a weird conversation. I could probably date it about 10-years-ago. I moved into a house and the house didn't have a landline working or something. And I was saying to my assistant, "We gotta get the landline, we gotta get the phone working." And he's like, "What do you need a land line?" I said, "What you mean? You need a phone. How are you not going to have a phone?" He's like, "Well, you could use your cell phone." I'm like, "Yeah, for some stuff. But you need a landline. Don't be stupid. Call the phone company. Arrange it, whatever. And wait for the guy to show up in a van." And it's like I look back on that and it's like, oh my gosh, he was 100 percent right. He was 26 at the time saying, "Hey, old man."

You started your, what has become a podcast empire, in like 2008-2009?

Yes.

What prompted you to do that because I mean you actually were one of the first people, not necessarily to podcast per se, but to kind of create this—"OK, this is a system or a kind of related shows that are going to go big"—I mean, where did that come from?

I've been kicking around in this system for a long time and had a radio background and kind of understood what that world was. Also I had a radio job and I lost my radio job and I was kind of at this crossroads where I had like nine or 10 months left on my contract, so I was sort of getting paid to stay home.

Were you allowed? I mean, you couldn't appear on other networks, but were you allowed to? 

Well, I could appear, but I couldn't.

But couldn't host, yeah.

I mean, I couldn't take another job, or I could take another job, I'd stopped being paid when I took the other job.

But could you podcast and that's…?

Yeah.

Really? That's fascinating.

Well, yeah, because who knew and who cared? I don't know if they didn't know what a podcar was, you know, "Like go to your den and have fun with your friends." Yeah, like then it was what the Big Three did with Datsun, you know what I mean? Like little pea shooters. Who wants that Jap shit? "You know, let's buy that shit." You know what I mean? So they were sort of that way. But, you know, they're that way about everything. 

So, let's go back to Katie Couric for a second. What should she have asked Gavin Newsom? Like what would — you interviewed him years ago on, you know, on a wide variety of issues, including how difficult it is to just do anything in California, business-wise, housing-wise but also about, marijuana legalization. What should she have been asking? It's not just that the legacy media is kind of soft on people, but what are the questions they need to be asking somebody like Newsom?

Well there's a kind of a bottom line which is, "People are leaving California, why?" And then he'd go, "We have the fourth largest economy" and they go, "OK, well then there's a perception about California, and maybe they're all wrong, but they're still packing up U-Hauls and leaving. So what is it that they think is going on even if… You're telling me it's the greatest place in the world, we've never been better, fine." There goes another U-Haul for Texas. "Venture a guess as to why they're leaving," and then you know it's like, "we got a shortage on housing." Or OK, I'll give you what I would've said to him, "Gas is $5.50 a gallon, it's $3.50 everywhere else, right? Why is that?" "Exxon is is gouging us." "OK why are they just gouging California? Why aren't they gouging Nevada? Gouge the whole nation Exxon and make good money. Why just here? Do you think that's reasonable that they would just gouge California?"

What about something like the housing issue, which is coming up everywhere, but especially in places like California and New York. Talk a bit about one of your ongoing kind of complaints about California, a place you love, obviously, because you're staying here. How does the state just artificially make it so difficult to build and maintain housing?

It's so heavily regulated that it's stifling. And so when you make something so difficult that it's not practical to comply, then people don't do it, whether it's fast food franchise or it's building a home. I'll give you a perfect example. California would love everyone to put solar panels on their house, and we'd be green, and we're on the vanguard of green, let's just say. 

So many years ago, probably 20 years ago or a little bit more, I bought a big sprawling place on top of Lake Hollywood, a big Spanish place. And it was in very bad shape, and I was going to do a huge renovation on it. And there was space on one of the roofs and one part of the house that was big and broad and flat and I said, "I want solar panels on this roof," so like I'm not an environmentalist but fine if I can generate kilowatts from the sun and a little less out of my pocket, a little less coal burning, then good I'll do it. So I started to talk to some solar guys and plan out putting solar panels on my roof. I was told that in California that - maybe it was even Los Angeles - that the problem was that there needed to be a main shut off for the solar that was outside of the front gate. Meaning, if there's an issue, I don't know what the issue would be but the fire department could hit the master on it. Now, in every other municipality and every other state that solar shutoff was on the panel, the electrical panel. So the fire department could come in, see the panel, see the big solar shut off, and shut it. The regulation in Los Angeles was it had to be separate and on the street. Well, the gate was 200 feet from where the solar panels were and by code, I needed a two foot deep trench with conduit, the two-inch wide conduit that ran and I was like I'm not gonna pay a hundred grand to put a switch on the outside of…

So you know what I said? "Fuck solar," I had no solar. So I didn't pay for solar. I didn't get solar, the solar company didn't get money, we didn't save anything. More kilowatts, more fossil fuel. They made it too difficult for me to get solar. And they look at that as sort of a win — not me not getting solar but more safety. More safety, more rules, more regulation.

Drill down into that a little bit, because when you were saying Newsom, what Newsom would say, like he must understand this. The regulators at some level must understand this. Where does common sense come back into the equation?

I don't know.

Or what is just driving this insanity?

First off, I do not know what Newsom understands. I truly don't. I've heard him interviewed a bunch of times. I've interviewed him for over an hour. I don't know what he understands. I think there's a part of people like us that's almost a little generous, like, "Well, he must know what he's doing," but obviously he's doing something else. I don't know that anymore. And I'll tell you this about regulators, like you go, "Well, they must understand." Regulators make regulations. It's in the title. And I used to have this saying about producers in Hollywood, but I'll say this about regulators. I said, "If you take beavers and you put them on the roof of the Empire State Building, they start looking for wood to build a dam. 'And someone goes, what do you need a dam for? We're 2,000 feet in the air.' And the answer is, 'we're beavers. This is what we do.'" They're regulators, they make rules. So get rid of rules, they add them and they keep adding

I mean you've lived your whole life in California, was there a period where this was not the case? 

Yeah.

So then what happened?

Well, I'll blow your mind if you want to know, period, of 'not the case'. Carroll Shelby, famed automotive manufacturer, Shelby Cobra and beyond, lived in Texas, is a Texas guy, was at like a chicken ranch in Texas. Moved from Texas to Venice Beach, California to build cars. Now, could you imagine anybody coming to Venice Beach to build cars with all the paint and the lacquer and the materials. You know how physically impossible this state would be? That would be physically impossible. Right. But there was a time when people came here to do what they wanted to do.

So what is it? 

I'll tell you what I think it is. It makes me unpopular, I think the regulation is always propelled by safety—so we needed a master cutoff switch for the solar outside the gate, why? Safety. But what do you mean safety? Just safety. But explain…safety. Right, we just got screwed by COVID because of safety, that schools closed down for two years, blah, blah. Women are much more safety oriented. And so the regulations are almost always about safety. So if you take more women and put them in those positions of regulating and city council and that kind of stuff, you are gonna get many more safety related rules.

Where does somebody like Margaret Thatcher fit into that? Or where did that go to die?

Yeah, so that, so there are women that are wired like men, which is Megyn Kelly, and then there are men who are wired like women, that's Gavin Newsom. That's where you get this leg crossing… 

Now I cannot…I wanna cross my legs, but I'm not going to.

Women cross their legs. So you get Obama, and you get these guys, and you get the sort of chick wiring, and then you get Thatcher, Megyn Kelly, and handfuls of others. So then there is crossover, which is, you know, but it's sort of like when people go, "Oh, there're no Jewish guys starting in the NFL," and like someone will go, "I had a Jewish friend and he was a starting outside linebacker for Cornell." And you go, "Ok, all right, there was that guy." But it's not a thing.

But is safetyism, I mean, is that a kind of predictable consequence of people getting richer and softer? I would disagree that it's a gender thing as much as I think it's more of an income thing.

It is a gender thing, but it's not necessarily pejorative. 

All right. The mom, the dad, the 9-year-old kid wants a dirt motorcycle. The dad's, "Give him a dirt," and "He's going to kill himself." And then by the way, that's a balance. So then what you end up with is, "We give him the dirt bike, but he has to wear the helmet, he has to be supervised, and we're not doing it in the street, we have to go to a place." That's all fine.

But so in California, though, is it, you know, when did that, when did Carroll Shelby come here? Was that in the '50s or postwar era?

Early, super early, '62.

Oh ok, is it…there were enough people here who were like, "You know what? We like it this way so screw anybody who's coming after us." Or you know, is it you know, how do you get to a point where like California is losing people, it's losing businesses, and like I guess my question is like: how bad does it have to get before people either vote out the types of people who are here or the people who are in power are like, "Oh, Jesus Christ, we have to be more like Texas and Florida"?

Well, you know, they're trying to roll back a lot of the stuff as it pertains to runaway productions and it's weird because they get it. You know, they just did a whole thing where it's like, "Hey, we're going to give you a 70 percent break. Come back and film," you know, because they chased everyone out with the regulatory and taxes and all the whole burden system. And they chased everyone to New Mexico and Atlanta and Prague and everyone laughed. And now they miss the revenue. So they're trying to entice people back by going, "No, we're not that greedy and we're gonna make it easy. We're gonna expedite." And my thing is, why don't you just take the film industry and use it as a metaphor for all the citizens. You know what I mean? Like you got too burdensome, you got too expensive, oh, you're over-regulated and people went somewhere else to live. Now in this case, they went somewhere else to film. But now people are just leaving to live somewhere. So use that model, rein it in, and bring them back. But they never… They just want the millionaire tax.

What would it take for you to leave California?

I'm building a house in Nevada.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, so I'm ready to go.

And how pissed will you be if you move to Nevada but then they're like, "No you still owe us money in perpetuity?"

Well you know that's another kind of interesting concept, if you're like sitting around trying to figure out ways to get money from people you're driving away, maybe you should think about why they're being driven away, not how to get the money after you've driven them away. It's an interesting mindset like New York's trying to figure that out. California's trying to figure that out. All these successful people who have completely soured on our state, how do we extract more money from them? Well, I've got a novel idea, how about you make it enticing for them to stay?

You know, in an interview with Reason done around 2011, you described yourself as pretty libertarian, that if you're minding your own business, you're working hard, you pay your taxes, then they should be lowered, like just let things go. And you were a vocal proponent of marijuana legalization. But it seems to me, in a lot of ways, you're not as much ideological as it is more like, "I believe in competency versus incompetency." 

Is that a fair characterization?

I would like confident people and sort of meritocracy-based stuff and I think we are a nation that is based on meritocracy.

What do you mean by meritocracy?

Well, whoever the best person for the job is, they get to do the job and we are not really going to factor in anything else. It exists in sports, for sure. And that's why we're attracted to sports, because we assume…I'll tell you the day football would be over. Football would be over if there was some middle-aged spindly white guy on defense, and I'd go, "What's that guy doing?" "That's the coach's son, that's the owner's son." I'm now done watching this, because I feel like he's not the best person to be out there. But the thing that's attractive about sports, even though it's kind of unspoken, it's like a meritocracy.

And it took a while to get there, right? Because it's fucked up that Jackie Robinson or Marion Motley in the NFL it took forever for them to get that.

Yeah, running back, Browns?

Yeah. That's right. Fullback.

No, '86. Oh, a non-fullback number. Yeah, what it takes… I mean, the way it works is there's no black quarterbacks. So they go, "Well, blacks can't play quarterback because we have no black quarterbacks." And then at some point, we get a black quarterback. And then they're good. And then now we can do it. So if you take the Oscars versus the Super Bowl, as a young guy, the Oscars and the Super Bowl were equally as big when I was a kid. Both were poignant viewing…

Once a year and you're gonna watch it…

And everyone's going to gather around, figure out who's got a color TV, and go find them. And we'd all watch. And it was kind of equal. And now it's the Super Bowl. I can't tell you the number of people where I go, "Well, did you guys see the Oscars?" "The Oscars? Was that last night? I didn't know it was on." "I didn't know it was on," is like the worst thing you could say about any entity. So it went from appointment viewing anytime it was on and I think it's because they screwed with the meritocracy. People stopped going, "I don't think that was the best. I thought Mission: Impossible was the best movie and you gave it to Moonlight? I didn't like that movie," and now we're screwed.

Talk a bit about…Meritocracy also is based on people's ambition and willingness to work hard. Very few people are naturals at anything. You know, your work, and we were talking before the interview. I'm a big fan of Not Taco Bell Material, your mid-teens memoir. 

How did you develop your work ethic?

Well, I think it started out of desperation for me. 

Maybe it sort of happened with sports. I had a strange trajectory with football, which in sports — I went from like naturally gifted, sort of stand out, to sort of middle lower pack. Sort of riding the bench by the time I got to high school. And I got to some weird crossroads where I was like, "Wow, you're just not that good at this thing you used to kind of dominate at and now you're just not that good." And so it was like this crossroads where I was like 15 and a half. I was like, "You either have to essentially quit and just not be good at anything," because I wasn't good at school. I was only good at football. So it was quit and do nothing, "or you're gonna have to live your life like it's a Rocky training montage." Drinking raw eggs and living and running up a sand dune with a tire on your head or something. And I just kind of committed to the Rocky montage. And I ended up starting on varsity the next year, and then the next I was like an all-valley player, best defensive player, stuff like that. And I kind of got it in my head that if you're willing just to really gut it out and kind of push through the pain kind of thing, that you could get from this middle of the pack, lower middle of the pack. Not gifted, not ability beyond anybody else's to just kind of willing yourself into this all-star player using a work ethic with also like a lot of technique. You know, you're not gonna run faster than people. You're not stronger than them, but you can out technique them and you can kind of outwork them. And so I guess I kind of got it in my head. And then we were poor, I was poor. My parents didn't do anything for their kids. And so I had a very strong understanding, "You're on your own. You are on your own." Like, I knew it when I was nine, but certainly by the time I was 18, I was like, "You're 100 percent on your own, so you can starve, you could sleep outside. Or you could drive a Ferrari, or whatever it is, it's just gonna be all you."  And so I kind of did it like I did it with football, like I was like, "All right, I'm not gonna say anything, I'm not gonna make a lot of noise, I'm just gonna go to work." And I just set about going to work, and I ended up in construction, which you just have to work. And then later on when I got into show business, I'm like, "Well, this isn't work. I know what work is, work is pushing a blocking sled in the middle of the summer."

Right, or pouring hot tar on a roof.

Yes, scraping shingles on a roof in July in the San Fernando Valley—but this is we're sitting in air conditioning, you know making shows…

Obviously, the necessity of work helped you really propel you to have a great work ethic. Are there any negatives to that, of where it's just you are…it's do or die and the world is an unfriendly place?

I mean, I guess the negative would be that if somebody…Usually when I commit to something then it just is. You know, and if somebody said "Your mom's sick and she has maybe days to live" I'd be like, "Well after the podcast, I'll come visit her. Well, I'm going to Texas to do shows this weekend." They go, "Well your mom's sick" and I'd go, "We already sold all the tickets for the show. I got to do the show and then I'll come by." Like I have…it's probably a little too much of that. It's not even a work ethic. It's like a whole bunch of people bought a whole lot of tickets and we've already committed to this and we just can't.

Was Arnold Schwarzenegger an inspiration to you? Because that story, and obviously it's a scenario, but it sounds like the story he told, which was not his own, in Pumping Iron, where he said he skipped his father's funeral because he was training. I don't know, but who were your idols? Because in a way, I mean, you are very much of a self-made man. Did you have idols growing up, or was it?

I really didn't, I mean my idols would have been Dr. J or Terry Bradshaw or something you know…

Well, Bradshaw made it happen and I mean there was that string of quarterbacks like him or Ken Stabler. Not pretty to look at but they knew how to win.

Yeah, I would have been more like Jack Lambert or something, you know? But I just like sports guys. I didn't really have…I did listen to the radio a lot. And I'd listen to morning radio and afternoon talk and I would listen…I wouldn't go, "that guy is my idol," but I'd go, "I would love to be doing what that guy's doing. I'd love to be on in the afternoons giving advice or on in the morning, telling jokes." I wanted to be where they were. I was very much, I'm driving, my life is, I have a '79 Datsun pickup truck with a bench seat and no head rest and a plastic steering wheel and a four speed and no air conditioning, and it's a piece of junk. And I'm living in an apartment in North Hollywood on Laurel Canyon, and I working in a strip mall, cabinet shop in Chatsworth, and it's the summer, and it 110 degrees outside, and all I can do is roll, crank the windows down on the truck, and I sitting on the 118 in traffic at 6:45 in the morning. And I'm listening to the radio, and I'm hearing these guys laughing, interviewing rock stars. And I'm like, "To be out of this truck and in that studio, God, would that just be awesome." 

How do you transmit that hunger and that motivation to your kids? And I don't necessarily mean on a personal level all that something, but also societally because we're much richer now and it's hard to get richer people to be "OK, well really fucking go to the floor for something."

Yeah, I'm now kind of realizing that the things that drive people or motivate people are either desperation, which I had. I wanted air conditioning. I didn't have an air-conditioner in my apartment, I didn't have an air conditioner in my truck, and no one in my family had a car with it. I wanted some cold air. So I had a sort of desperation drive. My kids, that's done because they grew up in 7,000 square feet with lots of air conditioning. They had their own zone.

So that's off the table. What is still on the table is a passion. Like, "I want to design, or I want to do comedy, or I want to produce, or I want to make music." You know what I mean? Like that can still be, you can come from a rich, well-to-do family and have a pampered upbringing and still have an incredible passion for music, for instance. Now you're not going to have an incredible passion for being a roofer or swinging a hammer somewhere else or working at the post office. And these are low percentage jobs, musician, comedian, DJ, whatever journalists. 

But I think some of those people, when you remove the misery index and they lose the eye of the tiger, a passion can replace that. And I actually was lucky to some degree in that I had a misery and a passion, so I was sort of dual motivated.

And you're clearly motivated by Rocky, the Rocky franchise, right? It seems to loom large in your imaginary. 

Let's shift to Donald Trump, because is Trump the equivalent of Gavin Newsom on the national level? You seem to have, I would say, an ambivalent relationship toward Trump. There's things about him that are…

I like Trump. I realize why people don't like Trump. It's hard, there's certain…

What do you like about Trump first?

I like that he's a commercial builder and he's always in a hurry. He's like, "Why? Let's go. Let's do this." You know what I mean? Which I identify with as a builder. Builders are always like, "What's taking so long?" You know, when you saw him with that presser with Karen Bass after the fire in Palisades, he's like, "People should be clearing their own lots themselves. They should be going tonight." She's like, "whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, safety. Do it safe." And she's like that's a process person talking to a 'let's get it done' builder. That's a career bureaucrat talking to someone who builds skyscrapers. Whose like, "let's go." So I like the, "get it done" I like that kind of 'why not?' part of him. Like a sort of like "You can't do that." And he goes, "Why not?" You know what I mean? Like I sort of, it's a sort of reason why I like Elon Musk. You know, like it's just, I like those guys who go, "Why not, we'll just do it."

"How are you going to get to Mars?" "Because we're going to Mars." That's admirable. He talks shit about Rob Reiner after he dies, and then he can't, that's indefensible. I also think people get too caught up in…and it shows a kind of naivete and a narcissism where they go, "That guy would be a good guy to have a beer with." You know what I mean? "Like Barack Obama. That'd be a cool guy to have a beer with." Right, with horrible policies. This guy would be a horrible guy to have a beer with, but he's got policies. Like, I don't know, just stuff like, "We're gonna start a savings account for all these kids, by the time they're 18, they'll have $100,000 in the bank." I'm like, yeah, good, do it.

What are the limits on that though? Because, you know, I mean, you've talked a lot about government does too much, it spends too much. Under Trump, spending has gone up, it went up last year, it's going to be even more this year. How do you, how do you gauge that kind of stuff? And part of it is like the Trump accounts, right?

Yeah, I mean, for me, in a world where…I'm from California, we got, you know, 24 billion on homeless and no homeless apartments. We've got, you know, 18 billion on a bullet train that's never going to get finished. We have God knows what on the hospice care now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm sort of over the part of, "Look how much we're spending." If something comes out the other end, I'm now happy. Like when people go, "Oh, that tram that they're building at LAX cost a billion dollars."

But if it moves…

If I can ride it, I'm at the point where if I can get on that goddamn tram at some point, I am OK with it.

It's almost unique in California, the dream of the high-speed bullet train from Bakersfield to Corcoran State Prison or something. I mean, Newsom could have jettisoned it, he backed it—Jerry Brown. Like, what is it in California that people…you know a state that is famous for driving or flying. But it's like, "No, what we really need is a 19th-century technology to go nowhere."

The left has an obsession with Europe. And I know it because I grew up with these idiots and it was always like, you know, "In Paris, the whole family eats together and the children eat and drink wine and the mom's topless and everyone takes a four-hour nap and they don't care about money and they get they take nine months for summer vacation." It's like ok, all right, you love that. "And they have their bullet trains, they love… And they give out free needles so that the people… and the prostitution is legal but it keeps it safe," you know and they have these kind of…They've glorified Europe so a lot of it is just kind of, "They got bullet trains over there you know so they must… we need to be like them" there's that. Then there's a lot of—we always do this shit where we're like, "We're the tip of the spear. Everyone looks to us. 'California, what's the future? What's the future?' So we need to have a bullet train because everyone is looking to us for like, what's the future." We never really think, is it feasible? Is it practical? Can we pull it off? No, we can't. But there's this sort of utopian. You know, "Here's where the innovators are, here's what the artists are," it's very sort of Euro-centric, you know? And I think the Newsoms of the world, like when he's talking about California, he's always talking about doing it first, being on the tip of the spear, being on a vanguard, the nation looking to us for the next trend. And we used to do that, like people, all the movies came out of here, and the music came out here…

Yeah, bell-bottoms and fashion and so yeah if you lived in Japan you watched our movies; you wore Levi's, you wanted a Corvette. That's what you did, you know, you did a sort of United States California thing, but that's that's in the rearview.

Are you optimistic about the future and the world that your kids are growing up in?

Yeah, I mean, the thing about them in that world is it has a lot of possibilities mixed with lots of pitfalls and potential. You know, it's like, "You know, well, they're not going to be morbidly obese because there's this Ozempic shot," you know. And like that kind of stuff. 

Do you like that or is that like you don't because you should lose weight by not eating, not through…

I'll tell you what I worry greatly about and I worry about Ozempic and universal income and all this kind of stuff. Like, "Let's give them $3,000 a month so they can live in dignity." Like, live in dignity and not work? That's not living in…

But what about the baby bonds for Trump?

Well, I like that, but you know, "You go, what's the difference?" Well, babies can't work, that's number one. 

Well, maybe they, maybe we can change those laws, right, finally.

They can model, yeah. But I mean like if somebody just said: Look, Social Security, like first off retiring at 64, that's insane. Everyone lives till 85 and people could work and no one's in a salt mine and we're like bump that to 70, and by the way the people that don't need it shouldn't get it. Who cares if rich guys get Social Security? And then why do we take that money and put it into some sort of bond or something that could get a yield like you brought up at the beginning? Like, those kinds of things, perfectly good. I like all that stuff. The kids are like the phone gives you the ability to look up every date, and every historian, and every thing ever, or you can stare at porn 19 hours a day. 

Society is basically a gun, and a gun is great when it's in the hands of a hero. And it's bad when it's in the hands of a gangbanger. But when it's left alone it's still just a gun. Like we can use it for good. You can use it for evil. And we're now at the point where every kid's got—they're gonna all have a gun, metaphorically. We have to just teach them to use this for good. And yeah the fact that my kids get to do what they want or at least dream of a world where they get to have a job that they enjoy, whereas I grew up, it was like, no one even talked about career. They just said, "Get a job, you gotta get a job, you make 11 bucks an hour, you have a job." Like, yeah, all that's good. I do think there's a big dose of reality that is like not washing over these kids, and people are getting really soft and lethargic and I'm sort of an RFK Jr. guy, like let's get out there and eat good food…

Can you explain to me why whenever he works out, he wears jeans and work boots? Does he have metal legs? What's going on?

I'll tell you what, I think what happens is, stuff starts off as like a goof, like Minnie Pearl leaves the tag on her hat, you know? Hey kids, there's a timely reference. And at some point everyone starts laughing, and then she buys a new hat, and she goes, "I gotta cut this tag off." And then someone goes, "no, no no no, that's your thing, Minnie. You gotta have the tag hanging, that's, that's your thing." I think he's doing it.

Final question. If you could change one law in California or the country that would make things better, what would it be?

Ah, one law. I'm trying to think of what law that would be nationwide that I would write. I would make it a law that doors couldn't have the word push or pull on them. It would be push and yank because they both start with the same two letters and people bang them.

Lord, that's what's holding us back. That's why the Chinese are beating us.

I ordered cheese enchiladas the other day, which I love. I got chicken enchilada, which I hate, and the reason is because they start with the same two letters and people are too screwed up. If I was in control of California, I would go on an insane tear saying, "You can turn right on a red in this state and not enough of you do it. And I'm gonna write your ass a ticket if you don't go. Stop sitting there." They sit there, cars pile up, no cars, because the guy who's driving is either from Honduras or New Jersey, but wherever they're from, it's illegal to turn right on a red. But we can do it here and they just sit there. And no one honks, and everything backs all the way up, and it drives me insane. I would do an entire nationwide awareness campaign on turning right on reds.

All right, we're going to leave it there. Adam Carolla, thanks for talking to Reason.

Thanks, Nick.

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Adam Carolla: Why No One Under 30 Trusts Legacy Media appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is the legendary Stewart Brand, who has spent decades shaping how we think about technology, the environment, and the future.

He first came to prominence in the 1960s as a Merry Prankster and the co-creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, the counterculture bible that helped inspire personal computing, the hacker ethic, and the modern environmentalist movement. Since then he's launched the Long Now Foundation, championed nuclear power and deextinction, and pushed us to think in 10,000-year time horizons. He's also been the subject of two biographies (From Counterculture to Cyberculture and Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand) and an excellent documentary called We Are As Gods.

In his new book Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One, the 87-year-old Brand argues that the real work of civilization isn't flashy invention but the long, patient care of complex systems. He talks with Nick Gillespie about what that means and whether his vision of planetary stewardship conflicts with libertarian values of individualism, creative destruction, and decentralized power.

Previous appearance:

• "We Are As Gods: Stewart Brand & The Fight to Bring Back Woolly Mammoths," March 31, 2021

 

0:00—Introduction

1:19—Maintenance as the hidden foundation

7:09—Mastery of tools and understanding systems

12:00—Interchangeable parts and individualism

20:54—The importance of manuals

27:04—Environmentalism and techno-pessimism

32:45—Government efficiency and the political system

42:54—How Brand is maintaining his legacy

 

Reason is hiring! Check out the two open roles on the video team now:
https://reason.org/jobs/associate-producer/
https://reason.org/jobs/producer/

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Why Civilization Needs Better Manuals appeared first on Reason.com.

Mark Chenoweth is president and chief legal officer of the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a nonprofit that brings lawsuits and files amicus briefs designed to reduce the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Trade Commission, and other parts of the administrative state.

In 2019, the NCLA litigated against President Donald Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to levy tariffs, a case that helped set the stage for this year's Supreme Court decision striking down the president's "Liberation Day" tariffs. The NCLA played a key role in the 2024 Supreme Court cases that overturned "Chevron deference," a policy that required judges to defer to federal agencies' interpretations of vague or ambiguous statutes.

In this episode, Chenoweth talks with Reason's Nick Gillespie about his group's ongoing litigation in Powell v. SEC, a case challenging that agency's notorious gag-rule order, which silences people settling with the agency from publicly denying allegations against them, even if they never admitted guilt. He also makes the case that Chief Justice John Roberts—often criticized by libertarian legal critics for accommodating too much to government power—has taken the lead over the past several decades in reducing the power of the administrative state.

This interview was taped in front of a live audience at an event in New York City.

0:00—Civil liberties and the administrative state
5:33—Congressional failures in limiting administrative power
10:12—Social media platforms and censorship
13:07—Is the administrative state growing under Donald Trump?
20:57—The SEC gag rule
26:59—The NCLA's fight to repeal the gag rule
35:17—Elon Musk and Mark Cuban SEC cases
43:44—Powell v. SEC
50:11—Chief Justice John Roberts

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Can the Government Ban You from Telling the Truth? appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest on The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie is Jonah Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Dispatch, a publication that launched a half-dozen years ago and whose contributors include conservatives such as cofounder and former Weekly Standard editor Steve Hayes, libertarian-leaning Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, and liberal science writer and Blocked & Reported cohost Jesse Singal. A longtime fixture at National Review (where he launched the magazine's website and created its popular staff blog The Corner), best-selling author, and podcast host (The Remnant, GLoP Culture), Goldberg and Gillespie discuss the Iran war, President Donald Trump's second term, the rise of the populist right, and the prospects of a coalition consisting of centrist liberals, conservatives, and libertarians.

"I have no sense that the Republicans are my team in any way. And that's very, very liberating intellectually and journalistically," says Goldberg.

Long known for withering takes on the left—one of his books is titled Liberal Fascism—it's the right wing that is currently piquing his anger. "All presidents have lied," he says. "But the scale of lying with Trump is different….Bullshit does not care what the truth is, and I think that that's sort of the essence of Donald Trump, going back to his days as a condo salesman. He just says whatever he has to say to get through the moment."

"I'm not a big fan of J.D. Vance, but eating giant bowls of feces handed to you by the president is the job of vice president," he says, adding it's the former Ohio senator's "whorishness" that especially offends him. "It's not so much that he agrees with Nick Fuentes or he loves everything that Tucker Carlson is doing, but he'll be damned if he'll tolerate excessive criticism or any attempt to silence or cancel these people. He exerts more effort defending people making 'how many Jews can fit in a Volkswagen ashtray jokes' than he does his own wife or anything else."

Goldberg predicts that when Trump leaves the national stage, the people around him in politics and the media will face a radically different world, one in which they will not be able to adapt. "Once the celebrity goes, you're left with a bunch of politicians, some of whom are really dumb or mean," who will "have to actually make arguments not based on bullying."* He thinks "that's a great world for…mainstream conservative [and] mainstream libertarian stuff because those guys actually have good facts on their side."

 

0:00—Jonah Goldberg introduction

3:32—Congressional authorization for Iran war

11:34—MAGA and policy coherence

22:36—The political calculations of J.D. Vance

31:58—The postliberal right and power over principle

35:24—The evolution of Tucker Carlson

39:31—Religion in politics and Christian nationalism

52:49—The state of the Democratic Party

57:50—Generational attitudes toward institutions

1:08:36—Political realignments for 2026 and 2028

 

*CORRECTION: The original version of this article mistranscribed a quote from Goldberg.

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Jonah Goldberg: The GOP Is Becoming Anti-Conservative appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest on The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie is Pete Buttigieg, former secretary of transportation and already a leading, if undeclared, contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.

Buttigieg reflects on his time in government, his evolving views on federal power, and why he thinks DOGE was a good idea that was poorly executed. An outspoken critic of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Donald Trump, Buttigieg says that the use of masked agents and martial tactics against nonviolent immigrants contributes to a loss of trust and confidence among the public. That trust can be restored, he argues, through transparency and restraint.

"If you're here and you shouldn't be and you're dangerous, you've got to go," he says, "but it does not to follow from that that it's okay to see all of this abusive behavior coming from federal immigration troops…in our cities."

Gillespie and Buttigieg debate the role of government, federal spending, subsidizing high-speed rail, and the rate of social progress, and they explore possible areas of overlap between Democrats and libertarians.

0:00–ICE accountability and immigration policy
8:40–What can Democrats offer libertarian voters?
11:05–The national debt and federal spending
15:50–Automation and government efficiency
21:23–The private sector versus public benefit
26:31–Tariffs and free trade
34:20–Democratic Party failures in 2024
41:35–Identity politics
43:40–Responding to Kamala Harris' comments
46:25–Perceptions of Millennial and Gen Z voters
49:00–Republican messaging around trans people
52:23–National service and shared identity

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. Thanks for listening. Today I'm talking with former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, one of the most visible, nationally recognized Democrats.

He's been making the rounds of colleges and podcasts and cable news shows over the past few months. He's going all over the country. My producer tells me that he's headed to New Hampshire soon, according to his mailing list. Which might be an indication that he's running for president or thinking about it.

I'm talking with him today less because he's one of the most prominent Democrats in the country, and more because he's been reaching out to libertarians on issues recently such as holding ICE accountable. Pete Buttigieg, thanks for talking to Reason.

Pete Buttigieg: Thanks a lot for having me on. Glad to be with you.

So first up, are you running for president?

I'm a long way from any kind of decision like that. But I do know that as somebody who has a level of national visibility and really cares about the issues going on in the country, that I should be speaking out, traveling, trying to reach different kinds of audiences, and that's what I'm doing.

And listening, right? You should be listening.

Yes, absolutely.

As much listening. Well, let's talk a little bit about ICE because I think you recently, about a couple of weeks ago, you had a tweet. This was after Rénee Good and Alex Pretti were shot and killed by ICE agents. 

You tweeted, "If there was ever a moment for libertarians and conservatives to step up and join the rest of us, we're in it. Americans have to unite and stop this descent from a freedom-loving nation into the kind of place where masked, militarized government agents are sent to politically noncompliant areas to roam the streets, terrorize civilians, and deploy violence with impunity."

To which I say, absolutely I would, for the record, Reason, which has been around since 1968, we don't have house editorials, but all of our writers opposed the PATRIOT Act and then the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which created DHS and ICE. What should we be doing in terms of removing illegal aliens who are in the country? Just as a kind of starting point?

Well, look, I think there is a kind of common sense consensus among most Americans, left, right, and center, that if somebody is a danger to society, if somebody has a criminal record, then they need to be dealt with. They need to be deported and/or dealt with in our criminal justice system. And I don't think there's a ton of disagreement with that. And I think a lot of people who voted for this administration did so believing that they would prioritize the most dangerous, the people with the worst criminal records. After all, they said that they would.

The challenge, of course, is we've seen something that's gone so far beyond that, where you have people who have been in this country, everything legal other than they don't have permission to be here. Everything else, paying taxes, often having work permits, doing what they're supposed to do, as well as people who are a hundred percent legal. People with some kind of asylum or refugee status. And even United States citizens, all being caught up in being on the abusive end, the business end, of this administration's immigration policy. So I think we can start with a reasonably consensus place that says that, "Look, if you're here and you shouldn't be and you're dangerous, you got to go." And not have it follow from that, that it's okay to see all of this abusive behavior coming from federal immigration troops, basically, agents in our cities.

How much is it? It's stuff like the masking and the rush to hire thousands of new ICE agents. Clearly, the training couldn't have been as good as it was going to be beforehand. You've talked a lot about this. I certainly do in my writings, about a loss of trust and confidence in government institutions. People don't trust ICE; they don't trust the police. They certainly don't trust the government or the media or the church the way that they used to. How do you go about changing ICE quickly so that people are more comfortable actually helping it do its legitimate functions?

Yeah, this breakdown of trust has obviously been going on for a long time. I think it's a huge problem. I wrote a whole book about it about 5 or 6 years ago now. And it's only become more serious since then. And I thought a lot about how trust, in particular between law enforcement and citizens, is earned, because of my time as mayor. Where I oversaw a police force, we had a lot of challenges with that police force and its relationship to the community. And part of where trust was earned was that people knew each other, the members of the community and the members of the police department. The policing worked best when people trusted those in uniform, they'll keep them safe, turned to them when they needed help, when they had information that could help solve a crime.

Was South Bend a sanctuary city by any chance?

We didn't have that kind of formal policy. We did believe that there was a distinction between what our police were supposed to be doing and what federal immigration were supposed to do. And that was important because I was very worried that if local residents thought that our police were out there conducting immigration raids, they were going to be less likely to talk to us when we needed their help to solve a crime, including a violent one.

One of the arguments for a variety of sanctuary city policies is that it actually helps with local law enforcement substantially.

But another thing is, I think it's inconceivable in at least any police department I've ever seen, that you would have your police officers at a community-level be unwilling to show their face. So that's a good starting point to think about. Shouldn't that community model have at least some relevance to what we expect from our federal law enforcement?

Another way to put it is, if we're going to give you the power to use deadly force on American soil, potentially against citizen or non-citizen alike, there's some really basic things we're going to need from you in terms of, first of all, I think showing your face and identifying yourself and having a body camera, so there's a record of what you're doing. But also of course, more deeply, a level of accountability and a level of responsibility and a level of training, of course.

How do you respond to people? Conservative critics will say, "Well, ICE is uniquely doxxed all the time. That people are following them home, that they're at a particular level of risk that no other type of law enforcement is." You hear this quite often.

I think we should approach this in a fact-based way. So what I've seen in terms of people losing their lives and being physically harmed, is that happening much more frequently to people who are being abused by ICE than to members of ICE. 

But let me be clear, it is completely wrong to harm or dox anybody, including anybody doing their job as a federal employee or law enforcement. But we have ways of dealing with that, right? Part of what the FBI does is if there is a threat or a physical attack directed against anyone federal, from federal law enforcement to a member of the US Cabinet, the FBI should be dealing with that.

But ICE has now been given more money than the FBI itself. And the question comes with, if you pump that much money and that much authority into a law enforcement agency that's supposed to have a very specific, relatively narrow mission, what are they going to do with it? So I think it's a real problem when this administration tries to make it sound like ICE is the victim, including trying to make it sound like they were the victim in cases where they killed somebody. And I think it shows you how removed from reality they are. But I also, I want to confess, as somebody who had many late-night arguments with conservative and libertarian friends over beers as a college student where they would invoke the idea of federal agents running amok through our streets. I never believed…

Jackbooted thugs. Jackbooted thugs.

Yeah. So I feel like in a way, I was right on one hand and they were right on one hand. I think they were right that that's more real than I ever could have imagined. I still think I had a point in what might lead us there. Which turned out to be the kind of administration we have. But that's precisely why I think people in my party ought to be reaching out to conservatives and especially to libertarians saying, "We're not going to agree on everything, but there's got to be some common cause here."

Let's talk about those common causes a little bit. More broadly, Reason's motto is "Free Minds and Free Markets." We like civil liberties and economic liberties. Being able to run a business the way you want, watch the kind of culture that you want to watch, things like that. What's the Buttigieg agenda that will speak to libertarians who tend to be kind of politically—certainly in a partisan way—homeless. Often vote Republican, not my personal experience, but many of that. What do you have to offer libertarian voters who would definitely be enough to sway any kind of election that we're going to be seeing over the next couple of years?

I think the core of what I have to say is that I am driven by a commitment to freedom, and I think as anyone libertarian views themselves as having that same core commitment. To me, there are three things, three categories of things, that the government has to do in order for us to be free. One, it has to provide basic services, because you're actually not free if you can't get clean, safe drinking water out of the tap or if you don't have national defense. Two, it has to constrain anybody who could make you unfree. This is traditionally the thing progressives are more interested in. Right? I would say that means if your boss can make you unfree, if your neighbor can make you unfree, if your cable company can make you unfree, there can be a role for government.

But then the third part is, in order for you to be free, the third thing a government has to do is constrain itself. And this is the area that I think, honestly, it was conservatives and libertarians who paid more attention to, or talked about it more, for most of my lifetime in most of the kind of commentary spaces that are out there. But the now is a moment that I think all of us are alive to. So I guess what I have to offer is a politics where of course we're going to have a push-pull tug-of-war on exactly what it means to make good on those three things.

Right.

But the result should be that if we get government right, make it maybe more powerful in certain ways where I think it should have more power to deal with monopolies, for example, or with inequality, but also make government less powerful when it comes to surveillance and intimidation and some of the other things we're seeing on the streets of American cities right now that we would in fact enjoy more freedom as Americans.

Yeah. Let's talk about some of the big-picture issues, which have to do with things like the national debt. Taxes get lowered incrementally, etc. But generally speaking, we are usually pulling in somewhere between about 15 and 19 percent of GDP as tax revenue. Spending has really skyrocketed from being close to that to now being in the 20, 25 percent range of GDP. I was watching a clip of you on a podcast recently, and you were talking about how like if there had been a legitimate Department of Government Efficiency, that would've been a good thing. How do we restrain spending where we're spending $6–7 trillion where 5, 6 years ago we were still spending under $5 trillion?

Yeah, I mean, this is where I think there's a real tragedy in what DOGE did, not just because they were very, in my view, very destructive, but because they missed a chance to make real change that could have made government run more efficiently. And here too, even though my federal government experience was running a very large agency with a very large budget, my original instincts were fashioned when I was mayor of a city with a comparatively small budget, about $300 million. We did our budget in cash. I couldn't go print money. And if we wanted to do something more, we either had to do less of something else or to figure out a way to do it for less money. 

And there are certainly opportunities. I saw them myself. 

I saw, to take a very small example, our database for customer complaints about airlines running on 1980s technology that meant that the time, and therefore money, associated with running it for department staff was just overwhelmingly more than it had to be.

You go from there all the way up to things that we know happen, certainly in the DOD. My time in Afghanistan, I saw a building that was built at enormous expense, never used and then tore down over the years. We know there are many examples like that. Now, I also think if we're going to talk about spending, which we should, we also have to talk about revenue. I think there is a happy medium, a reasonable place where giant corporations aren't paying zero. Where very wealthy people aren't paying less proportionately than school teachers and firefighters. That is not so heavy in tax that it stifles innovation and growth, but is enough that we're not looming this big debt.

But what can be done to, as I was saying, tax revenue, and this is something… If you go back to the 1950s, even when the top marginal rate was in the '70s or '80s or even '90s, the revenue that's generated tends to be pretty stable because billionaires… Companies pass costs on to customers or employees. Billionaires, they're the ones who are creating the new pathways to avoid taxes, even while the top 1 percent pays a massive amount of taxes, we have the most progressive tax system in the OECD, so there's taxes, we can talk about that. But spending, we went from $4.7 trillion to $7 trillion. We peak in COVID and then nothing fully comes down. What are the big ticket items that we really seriously, I have to say, it's not just a question of we're going to squeeze a bunch of people to close gaps, we shouldn't be doing this as a federal government.

Well, this is where I probably will part ways with a lot of conservatives, but I think there's still some common ground to be found. I think if we really did a scan of wasteful contracts, I think we would find a lot, and not only in the national security side of the house. I think a lot of IT generally in the public sector, multi-billion dollar IT projects wind up becoming overwrought, unaccountable, or at least very difficult to connect the inputs to the outcomes. The money going into it, to the results you get out.

By the way, there's a real opportunity here. I am concerned to the point of being skeptical about what AI could bring. But also recognize that AI could bring a chance to automate parts of our bureaucracy. A lot of things that are lumbering, whether it's IT improvements or just the way paperwork moves in our government that could be made more efficient. I think that the underlying cost of providing a certain level of results in healthcare could be driven down if we use technology in the right, accountable way.

Let's talk about that a little bit, because obviously automation is the great disruptor, not trade, not free trade and not foreign companies undercutting us. Manufacturing, mostly manufacturing jobs, which peaked as a percentage of the economy in the '40s during World War II, it's been going down since, and most of that was automated away. So there is a way that in healthcare, say something could be automated and it would be quicker and more efficient and ideally cheaper. What's a case study of that? What could that actually be doing?

Well, if you look at the American health care system and the fact that we pay more per patient and get worse outcomes per patient than a lot of peer countries, that would suggest since the kind of state of modern medicine, the forms of therapy that are known to the medical community in different countries are relatively similar, that it has something to do with our system. Now, I've proposed a form of coverage that I think would help with that.

But whether we're talking about public coverage or the private system we have or something in between, it's very clear that a lot of this has to do with how claims are handled, which kind of tests and just procedures are used when they're not needed versus when they are. A lot of things that would seem to suggest that a higher share of the healthcare dollar goes to administrativia than should. And a lot of…

That's a difficult word to pronounce, but it's an important one.

It's one that I think about all the time, because we have…

Administrativia.

I've dealt with a lot of it. That's definitely a big factor there. Again, thinking back to my time trying to deliver infrastructure projects. A lot of why the infrastructure dollar in the U.S. doesn't seem to go as far as it does even in Spain or Germany, places that have strong environmental protection, strong labor standards, and still seem to be able to deliver more per buck than we can. That has to do, again, with that kind of bureaucracy.

But I don't want to leave your earlier question about what we need to do less of, without making one other point. Which is, we have a lot of backdoor subsidies or just open subsidies that we probably need to think about. Fossil fuel being probably the one that I would point to the most. I can't tell you how many times I was on Capitol Hill, we were talking about EVs. I talked to somebody who, from the right, who sounded like they had a principled objection to supporting a certain form of propulsion or energy or transportation in this country. That was why they were against our policy of using tax credits to make EVs cheaper. But seemed to have no interest at all in reconsidering the form of propulsion and transportation that we subsidize enormously, which is of course on the fossil side.

Do you see a role for just spinning certain things off from the government? As secretary of transportation, you oversaw the air traffic control system. You mentioned peer countries in Europe, places like Germany, England, closer to home, Canada, have privatized or corporatized their air traffic control system. Where they basically say, "OK, the airlines, you guys do this." They upgrade the technology, they have a very vested interest in making things efficient and safe. They're using new technology as opposed to the kind of Cold War technology we're still doing. 

Do you see either in something like the air travel control system, or then also they've privatized most of their airports and they've taken away the kind of fake national security warning, which is one of the reasons why we really can't have companies that are owned by foreign—that are based in foreign countries do airports or ports here. Is there a role for instead of saying, "OK, the government can do this more efficiently," is like, "Hey, maybe we actually give this to the private sector most affected by it"?

So I'd take that up in a results-driven way. And I wouldn't be dogmatic about it. So air traffic control is one where I'm more skeptical of that idea. And to be clear, a lot needs to change in our air traffic control system, but I do want to point out that the system as it stands, has delivered an extraordinary standard where America went something like 15 years and billions and billions of passenger enplanements with zero crash fatalities. So again, I'm not saying that means we should be content with the status quo, especially some of the old technology that's there. But I do think that there's a very real risk of throwing out the results with the bath water.

But to your broader question, I definitely saw for myself a lot of models where there was opportunity. Ports is one area where there can be lots of different models. In L.A., Long Beach, the landlord, so to speak, is public, but then you have terminal operators kind of working within that. I think that it would certainly, we could certainly learn a lot from a place like the U.K., which has had airport models. Not perfect, but some pretty impressive project delivery, in the U.K. example. And then on rail, an area where we've really struggled to mobilize private capital. One of the projects that I was happy to support is set to bring high-speed rail between Las Vegas and Southern California. That was a public-private partnership, couldn't have happened without private investment, without private leadership, really, to make that happen.

So then why should the public be involved in that? And I'm not trying to bust your chops, but we have a privatized freight rail system, which is incredibly good, and it's virtually all maintained by private dollars. But if there's a market for a passenger line—a high-speed line, or even a minimum, a decent sized line—why shouldn't the private sector be doing that? Because they're the ones who are going to benefit from it mostly and their passengers and things like that. 

Why not take the public out of that partnership?

Yeah, well, I think I have maybe a dimmer view than you do about the freight rail system. I think it's gotten so consolidated, there's so little competition. Some of the people who were even madder at the railroads than I was were their customers. I would hear from companies that because they had to choose between, at best, two alternatives, and sometimes only had one to move their product, were sure that they weren't getting a very good deal. And I think it's something we should look at. Where do you have these areas where you're just going to almost, unless there's some intervention, almost inevitably wind up coming down to a monopoly or a duopoly. I'm worried that our airlines could eventually get to a scenario where it's kind of Coke or Pepsi.

But to the philosophical question you're asking. I guess to me, it makes most sense for the public to be involved when there is some kind of benefit that just isn't going to be captured by the private investors. And I think passenger rail is an example of that. Which is why while I was happy to support a private-sector-led effort on the high-speed rail. It was also one that I think either party couldn't have made it work without the others. You had to have a public part there too. If you look at Japan, there's no question that there was a colossal return on investment on those high-speed rail lines. They put them in starting in the 60s, and the value of the real estate, the value that was created around them at a national GDP level was enormous.

But we're not real… I mean, if you're talking about connecting, first off, California's high-speed rail, which has gotten a lot of federal money literally is a… I mean, we should have just been flushing that money down the toilet for all that it's brought us. 

But in Japan, there's a different density of population in places. There has been a mostly privately funded rail system from Miami going up to Orlando. So in places where it makes sense. And Amtrak, the nation's passenger rail system, it makes sense to run a line from Boston to D.C. and maybe a little bit further south. But then you have these other lines that go through multiple states where hundreds of dollars per customer are being held up for something that just seems to be pork-barrel spending really.

Well, I think that every geography, definitely every market, has its own characteristics. But I wouldn't short America's suitability for more rail. And I say that comparing places like where I live, the Midwest, to the kind of population patterns of Europe. Obviously, when you're talking about the West, it's a little bit different. But again, the West is what furnished this example of the high-speed rail from Las Vegas to Southern California.

I also think the more we can develop a domestic industry, the less it might need public intervention. High-speed rail has more in common with aviation than it does with regular speed rail, in terms of the intensity of creating the technology, the rolling stock, that kind of thing. And I do believe the more we're actually in the habit of doing it on US soil, the better we'll get at it. And in many markets you would hope, I mean this is what I hope will eventually happen with things like electric vehicles, the public touch can get lighter and lighter and the market can do what it does best more and more.

So let's talk a little bit about tariffs. If we're talking about electric vehicles, and again, I've seen you recently speak out about Trump's tariffs, which are ridiculous. And I don't know, can we say economically illiterate or whatever? But they were stupid ideas to begin with. And it was chilling to see how many economists, particularly people who, for decades even, were free market economists and then suddenly saying, "Oh, you know what? We should give a second look to tariffs." They brought nothing but the best trade, biggest trade deficit with Japan and things, or with China. Manufacturing jobs have actually decreased since Liberation Day, all of this kind of stuff. You mentioned EVs. Should we be lowering… Should we be allowing more Chinese or foreign EV cars to come into the U.S., because they would be cheaper and that would be good for the environment and it would be good for consumers?

Well, I don't think everything cheaper is automatically better without scrutiny. So Chinese technology is a good example. It's one thing if we're talking about certain kinds of low-stakes consumer products. It's another, if we talk about what we know China is doing. Which is not exactly a free market approach. They're using enormous amounts of excess capacity so they can prop up an industry so that they can take it over from us because they know the economic stakes of dominating the future of the auto industry. So this is one, I think a good example, where to me it makes sense not to be too dogmatic.

I think there are places where protection is appropriate because we have an industry of strategic importance. But that doesn't mean that you do the kind of tariffs this administration is doing. As you pointed out, they haven't even led to increased manufacturing employment. Manufacturing employment is down under this administration. So they've really been self-defeating according to their own stated goals. The one thing they have done is they've increased the prices all of us pay. The last estimates I saw said it was about a thousand bucks per household last year, set to be more than that this year. And that's a very real cost despite the administration rhetoric making it sound as if somebody else pays that. We definitely pay that, right? 

Oh, and you don't need a lot of dolls at Christmas, right? You only need one or two dolls, or something like that.

Right. What was it? You get a pencil and a doll or whatever the president said.

But can I ask, what's your kind of… You've said you don't want to be dogmatic. And I think that comes through. But what's the limiting principle to say, "Well, you know what? Generally speaking, free trade is good." Or "We don't want tariffs." But then Chinese EVs, and in the '70s, and certainly, obviously, you grew up in the South Bend area… So I spent much time in Ohio as well, and I went to graduate school in Buffalo. I know the Rust Belt pretty well. And I know the arguments against: "Well, these cheap foreign cars, these cheap Volkswagens, these cheap Japanese cars, these Korean cars are even worse." Like ,there's always going to be a moment where in order to protect an incumbent or a domestic industry, we've got to hold tariffs up.

But it always seems like all that does is it doesn't save industries; it just kind of makes them bleed out longer. And then they kind of have to adapt more quickly at the end. So I guess what's your limited principle in saying, "OK, this is a public benefit of X amount, so we should intervene in the market"?

Well, one way to think about it is that if there is an artificial attempt to distort a market by a foreign country, then we should have a countermeasure. So this is why I'm pointing to what we know China is doing. Now, to be clear, they are producing innovative and, in many ways, technologically impressive vehicles. Which is why they're doing well in European and other markets. But we also know that they're doing it with a big thumb on the scale of the economics of the whole thing.

And that's an area where I think it makes a lot of sense in terms of fairness, philosophically, but also strategically, for the U.S. to play an active role. But to take your question very seriously, I think where it tips over into something counterproductive is if you over-index to the point that you are telling U.S. companies that they no longer have to innovate, that they no longer have to keep up. And I grew up, as you mentioned, in the industrial Midwest, seeing the effects of both.

Actually in the post-industrial Midwest.

Well, that's just it. So all around us, our auto industry saw the effects of trade and automation in the '90s. But the big employer in my hometown died in the '60s, and it died because it…

Was that Duesenberg?

Studebaker.

Studebaker, excuse me.

The Studebaker car company, which was massive in its day. And I grew up…

I'm sorry to interrupt. I think a lot of people don't know just how integral Indiana was to the car area. I mean, the Detroit Pistons were the Fort Wayne Pistons. Fort Wayne was cooking long before Detroit. And it is fascinating to see that rise up and then kind of rust out.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I grew up in a part of the state where there was the Haynes Apperson Festival. They celebrated some of the first ever engines. And if you go to the Studebaker National Museum, you can see the 1904 model horseless carriages they were working on, and it really goes back to that part of the country.

But the loss of Studebaker, which was kind of the foundational trauma of the city that I grew up in, I felt it everywhere, even though it happened 20 years before I was born. Part of it had to do with that company's inability to innovate. And so I do think that the role of the state, to the extent that it has a role in these industries, is partly to protect companies, not from their own mistakes, but from unfair competition from abroad. And then also to provide some of those underlying things that don't necessarily happen if industry's left alone. And my favorite example of this comes not from the auto industry, but from the tech industry, where you have the internet literally created by the federal government. And without that, we don't have all of these things like the smartphone, the computer, the app, that were created by industry. I would never want a smartphone that was designed by the federal government. I can't imagine that would be…

Yeah, or by the Defense Department. I think your point is taken that there have been times, and ARPANET is an example of this. Where massive amounts of particularly defense spending gave yield to products that ended up being consumer-oriented and transformative. But I would disagree with the idea that the government created the internet. I think, and we don't have to linger on this, but I think that's overstating what happened. It's like the private and kind of third space, particularly universities, started coming up with a way to build this out and to create it. And I mean, it's been decades since the government has had anything to do with the infrastructure of cyberspace. And what I'm trying to get at is our kind of larger philosophical questions of, "Where do the interventions start?" And on a certain level, and I think you're pointing to this, that oftentimes they are there before we even know markets exist. So that's a point worth taking.

One of the things that is good for Democrats, whether it's you specifically or certainly in the midterms, is that Trump's first year has been disastrous enough where the Democrats are looking very good. They don't have to work hard to win a massive victory in the midterms and potentially into 2028. But I want to go back to some things that you, on your latest kind of speaking jaunt, and your kind of political sprint, you're going around to different places and talking, is that you have been insistent in a way that makes many, I think, many Democrats or progressives uncomfortable in saying, "Trump got elected because people were not happy with the status quo. And they were not happy with the institutions that he's been burning down."

You were in the Biden administration, which had the most bizarre ending in American history with him stepping out of the race and Kamala Harris getting put in. What did the Biden administration do to make Trump's return victory possible, really? What were the big problems? Not Trump. Trump is almost self-evidently bad at this point. But what were the Democrats doing that made Trump Two possible?

Well, I think we allowed ourselves to be portrayed as the party of the status quo. Now, I could point to any number of important pathbreaking innovative things that certainly that I'm proud of having worked on in transportation. But the reality is, at a time when people were very frustrated with the way things worked, it seemed all too often like we were saying, without us having to say it out loud, that we would just represent a return or a continuation of what we have.

And that's one of the reasons I'm really concerned about the future of the Democratic Party. We're in a moment now where I do think the tailwinds are very encouraging for 2026. It's a long way till November, but there are many reasons to believe that Democrats, if we keep working hard, will do well in 2026. But if we win, if we have a big success in these midterm elections, it's very important that we not take that as some kind of indication that we should just set about having nothing to do but reverse all of the bad things that have just happened. Obviously, a lot of bad things have just happened. That doesn't mean that the right answer is to go back to what we had before. I would take as one example USAID. I think it was criminally wrong to destroy USAID. I think one of the most blatant examples of a US official lying to Congress was Marco Rubio testifying that nobody had died because of this, when, thanks to good journalism, we know the names of some of the children who died. 

Could you very quickly just explain why USAID was a vital program that should have continued?

Yeah. Well, I think two reasons. One strategic and one moral. The strategic reason is that the United States works with friends and allies and needs to demonstrate, through deed as well as word, that we care about improving conditions of people around the world and setting them up for greater autonomy, freedom and well-being. And moral, just because we shouldn't let children die of preventable disease if we can do something about it, for example.

But this brings me to the broader point. As much as I believe it was criminally wrong to destroy the U.S. Agency for International Development, anybody who worked in international development the last 10 or 20 years, none of them would've said, if you give them a clean sheet and a total fresh start, that they would've designed things the way that they looked in 2024 or in 2014. That we could have a system for international development that is more geared toward the autonomy and the success of the different countries, groups, children, people, and places that we think it's worth committing some sliver of the U.S. taxpayer dollar to support versus doing things the way that we always did.

And we have so many institutions, globally and domestically, that were fashioned really based on the way the world looked in the '30s, '40s, and '50s. And served us well for a time, then began to show their age. And I think we really need to think twice before we assume that the mandate for a future Democratic Party is to go in and just make everything look the way it was. If Donald Trump… Trump seems to be trying to turn back the clock to the 1950s, which I think is wrong. I want to make sure that my party isn't trying to turn the clock back to some earlier point in the 2010s or the 2020s which we don't want either. I don't think it's the right answer, and I certainly don't think it's good politics.

Is that landing with your audiences? I mean, I hope it is, but it's also very abstract, in a sense. But how are your audiences responding to that idea that, "You know what, we don't want to go back to 2022 or whenever, we want to go forward into the future?"

People are more prepared for that than I would've guessed. I think that it still takes a lot of pushing on my part to make that case, but when you ask people to reflect on, "Would you just want to go back to the way the world looked a few years ago?" I think most people recognize that something was wrong, many things were wrong, and that even the possibility of a Trump era reflects that a lot of things were wrong. I mean, to put it another way, if our social and economic and political systems were healthy or if they were working well, if they were representative and responsive, I don't think we'd be here in the first place. And I think actually that is something most people get. The challenge will be coming to terms with what that actually means for a governing agenda going forward, including, in my opinion, making sure we're willing to undertake some structural reforms so that our democracy is in fact more representative.

So what does that mean? What's a structural reform that would make democracy more representative?

Well, for one thing, doing something about the way our districts are drawn so that elections are more fair. We have 435 seats in the House. About one in 10 of them are actually competitive. And this year we went through, last year, we went through an arms race of redistricting and gerrymandering. And I can make all the points why if one side does it then the other side…

Of course.

The point is nobody should feel compelled to do it. And fair districts would make a big difference. I think there are other ways we could look at electoral reforms, lots of different flavors from ranked choice voting to multi-member to open primaries, anything that would…

How about increasing the number of congressmen?

Well, yeah, I've seen a lot of research that suggests that… Look, I understand and share the instinct that takes a look at the United States Congress and thinks the last thing we need is more of this. But it is the case that the number 435 is not in the Constitution. Kind of reached it because, I think, because the room got full. I mean, we just stopped adding. Now, I don't think we want thousands and thousands of members of Congress, but…

No. And Lord knows it'll take a thousand years to build a slightly larger capital building.

Some of the other issues. You have kind of criticized the Democratic Party for being too heavily invested in identity politics. Last fall at the Texas Tribune Festival—it's a good progressive publication that holds an annual festival. You said, "There were expressions in the Democratic Party that suggested all that matters to where you fit now is based on your identity, and therefore, the only things we can do for you have to do with your identity." Can you kind of elaborate on that? What are you getting at there and what needs to change?

I think that there's a real risk, especially for my party, of losing a vocabulary that it can speak to many different identity groups at once. So of course, people based on their particular experience might have particular policy concerns. And the reality is people in many different ways have been treated differently based on issues of identity. But all of us have certain things in common, not because we were this or that group, but because we were people. And if a political party tries to cater to different groups with totally different messages. A black message that's supposed to connect with black audiences, and a Latino message that's supposed to connect with Latino audiences, and an LGBTQ+ message that's supposed to… And so on. Then you run the risk of forgetting what the bigger things are that are supposed to thread through across that. And I think part of how the Trump campaign succeeded in eroding many of the constituencies where Democrats had a lot of strength was that bigger message. Obviously, I think a lot of it was lying to people.

He's giving it back. Like the gains that he seemed to gain or…

No question, especially among young people who said, "Look, I'm not sure about this guy, but—"

Young black men and Latinos.

Yeah. I think a lot of people said, "I'm not sure about this guy. I might not even like him, but I'll give him a chance, because he says he's going to make my life less expensive." And he's come in, he's done the opposite. But again, to me, that's not the solution for Democrats. That's an opening for Democrats. How we use that opening is what I'm concerned with.

Can I ask: Kamala Harris, who you campaigned for, you supported her candidacy and everything. But she wrote in her book that she would've picked you to be her vice president if she were a straight white man. And I really read that as, she would've picked you if you were a straight white man because she ended up picking a straight white man. I'm just curious, when you read that, how does that kind of thing make you feel? Because we profoundly should be passed that kind of in and out box for who's legitimate or who's going to be good to fill the role or whatever.

But I'm just curious your emotional response when you hear something like that. But then also within Democratic retail politics, how do you get past that? Because Kamala herself, Joe Biden very infelicitously, but I think honestly, said, "I'm going to pick a black woman for a vice presidential candidate." How does the Democratic Party get past that? And hopefully then lead the Republican Party beyond whatever reaction they have to that kind of stuff?

I mean, I wouldn't have run for president myself a few years ago if I weren't willing to give voters credit for seeing a candidacy in terms of the effect it's going to have on their lives. In my experience, there's no controlled experiments in this sort of thing, but I have the closest thing to one, which is I ran for mayor of South Bend once as a young single bachelor mayor. And then 4 years later I had come out and I was running again for the same office in the same place as someone who was out and had a boyfriend. And I got more votes the second time around in a quite socially conservative community, I believe, based on the results we were able to deliver during my time as mayor.

When I ran for president in Iowa, the margin that helped me just by the smallest sliver win the Iowa caucuses was provided by a lot of independents and some conservatives who were permitted to caucus in that system, helping to put me over the edge. And so what that taught me is that it is possible for a campaign to reach people in terms that have less to do with my identity and more to do with their experience. And look, I get that we as a country, in our politics, it is not past all of the things that we should be passed. But I do believe that when you give voters that kind of credit, you can reach them in a different way.

Yeah. Is that something… I mean, you were also, if I'm not mistaken, you were the first Millennial to kind of run a serious campaign for president. Is there something about younger people, and I guess I'm saying Millennials and Gen Z, there's an unwillingness to…

I'm sorry. I don't know if that was on my end, but the question broke up.

You were the first Millennial to run for president with a serious candidacy that got pretty far. But I'm also thinking as you were talking, I'm 62, so just in my lifetime, and then if I think about my parents who were born in the '20s, the amount of social progress that has been made where equality… Like really, there are still problems as you were alluding to, but it's like really people are fucking over the worst elements of American society as it was within the semi-recent past.

But it also seems to me a particular issue with many Millennial voters and Gen Z voters that they do not see social progress. So that your experience and your success like somehow doesn't lead to a larger understanding that we're actually gaining ground in ways that I… This is certainly, I think most libertarians believe, that people are increasingly judged on the content of the character, not the color of their skin or any other kind of ethnic or racial identity.

I think we've always been a three-steps-forward, two-steps-back kind of country. And I could point to extraordinary opening. Certainly, the fact that when I ran for president as an out candidate, that was only 5 years after it was impossible to get married in my state. And it was only 10 years after I could have been fired as a military officer for who I was. At the same time, we've seen a lot of ups and downs in acceptance. And you could certainly point to the same in terms of racial justice and attitudes in this country. I think a lot of folks greeted the election of President Obama as a sign that we had put away racism, conquered that demon as a country, because he was going to the White House. And some 15 years later we've got nakedly racist imagery sometimes emanating from the White House itself.

So I think part of that has to do with the kind of zig-zaggy nature of the social progress. I think part of it is the passage of time. The younger you are, the less you've seen much unambiguous wins in this country. On the policy level, I would say if you're any younger than me, then the Affordable Care Act is one of the only unvarnished policy wins. I'd like to add the infrastructure bill to that. But there haven't been a ton. 

And I do think that that leaves a lot of people cynical about the possibility of any progress where if you telescope it out a little further and look over many decades instead of a few years, you see a lot more grounds for hope.

How are you dealing with the transgender issue? Which is something that Donald Trump and the Republicans use very effectively. And I think even among many people who are liberals, even some self-described progressives, have said that transgender rights, when it was applied to adults and it was equal opportunity and kind of social equality, that's all great. And then things went overboard when talking about trans women competing in…trans men rather, I'm sorry, natal men who have transitioned to being women, being in women's sports, or youth surgeries and things like that. Is that going to be an issue that continues to bedevil the Democratic Party?

I think that Republican campaigns will invest a lot in trying to have that divisive issue be front and center again. But I think that the Democratic Party has already applied a lot of lessons about how to reach people where they are. We saw that in campaigns that succeeded in 2025 that continued to defend the rights of transgender people not to be discriminated against. But also took seriously where people are coming from when they have concerns or questions. I think that's the biggest thing that we need to do is take everyone seriously and understand why.

There are parents who are hearing a lot of different things, wondering what this could mean at their school. A lot of people who have reached some concern by a very honest path, that we should have a good-faith dialogue about that concern while standing steadfast on the idea that you shouldn't be harmed, discriminated against, made worse off just because of who you are. I really think there's a way for people to come together around this rather than be pulled apart. And again, I draw hope from the recent election results that that can be done, because we certainly saw that a unifying message prevailed over a divisive message in the fall of last year.

I have two quick questions for you. First, just to linger on transgender issues. As a libertarian, I'm actually very disturbed by state laws that say doctors and parents or patients, you can't have this type of treatment. That's probably a minority position, even among libertarians. But how do you feel about laws that ban transitioning or puberty blockers or hormone treatments for minors? Is that an overreach of the state or is that, OK, that's a common sense kind of compromise? Or how do you feel about that?

I guess my bottom line is that when it comes to anything in the medical field, I'm much more inclined to trust medical professionals and individuals and families working together than I am politicians. Especially when you see how politically motivated some of these things have been. I mean, again, we saw in some states, on the sports question, an entire legislature tying itself up for days in order to pass a bill that wound up applying to one athlete. And that really raises questions about whether this is making people better off or whether this is about politics.

Yeah. OK. A final question, and this goes back to these large questions about, "OK, Pete Buttigieg, libertarian-ish, or not." You, in a conversation last October with David Leonhardt of The New York Times, you said—and you were talking about what's going on with the pessimism, the darkness in America and the polarization—"I think part of what has to happen is a sense of a shared national project. It's simpler to do that in the context of something like a war—which we hope will not be the future of this country. If we think back to periods when there was a shared national narrative, the World War II generation is the example that shines most clearly from the last century." 

My question because— And I say this as the son of a Purple Heart–winning World War II veteran. He was the first person to say, "I don't want any of my kids to be in the military." Certainly if it was a draft military, "I don't want them to be forced to do public service."

How do we get to that sense of a shared, maybe it's not a national purpose, but a national meaning that doesn't force people in ways that I think would really turn off a lot of Americans? How do we build that sense? In the past, you've talked about national service as a potential program. I mean, just to be fair, obviously I'm too old and out of shape to be worried about that, but I have kids. And that kind of makes my skin crawl. But I also believe part of what's going on here is that we don't have a shared identity as Americans. We have a lot of bifurcated and balkanized ones. But could you talk a little bit towards that idea of generating a national purpose or a national, a sense of belonging, that isn't also going to become incredibly coercive?

Well, I think that there's a difference between coercing people into some national requirement and recruiting people into a national project. And I think that latter frame is something that a lot of people would respond to. A lot of surveys of younger people say that if they were given a chance to participate in some kind of service effort or program, that they would readily do it. For me, that was the military, but the military is not for everybody. And I think that there is a lot of concern and skepticism, precisely as you said, from generations that fought or that were drafted, about understanding that the military might not be for everybody.

But that doesn't mean that we should turn our back on opportunities to have those shared national experiences, because right now I think what this administration is offering is a sense of national identity, a sense of belonging, that's really based on this kind of blood-and-soil idea that it's really about…

It's deeply disturbing.

Yeah, I mean it would reduce us to an ethnostate.

It's about whether or not your ancestors were in the Tennessee Valley in 1805 or something. I mean, it really is a kind of blood-and-soil nationalism. So on the right, you're seeing this resurgence of a kind of nationalism that is very ancestry-based, very restrictive and exclusive. It seems like the Democrats, broadly, on the left maybe, that it got to a point where the only thing that held America together was that there were large groups of people who had a right for bad treatment in the past and somebody had to pay those bills.

I mean, how do we create, or in your world, how do we create a common sense of America that knits people together in a way that is not bullshit, but it gives us a shared identity, a shared commonality, and maybe not a purpose in the sense of like, "OK, you can do AmeriCorps for a while or something," but that we're Americans and that means something unique and powerful and inspiring?

Well, I think rather than ethnicity-based, it ought to be values-based. And I think that's how you get to a kind of sense of nationality, which is not the same thing as nationalism, that can call a lot of people to want to be part of it. I would argue that that's what people have in common from the founders and the revolutionary tradition that I think the most traditionalist people thinking about America should be able to co-sign. All the way through to the things that the left has paid more attention to in terms of the struggle for equal rights over the last 100 years. In fact, this is one of the reasons why I'm so troubled by this White House attempting to erase references to slavery or the struggle for civil rights in different places around the country, in exhibits, in the National Park Service and in museums. They would say that if we point to those episodes, it somehow means you're against America. 

To me, pointing to those episodes means understanding that part of what we should be proudest of as a country is when we faced our darkest demons as a country. Because in those clarifying fights, you could see where the best of American values truly lay. 

And I think when we talk about it in those terms, that we are in fact part of an American project that is defined not by, obviously, not by some shared race or ethnicity, but by this shared effort at self-governance. That is the thing that America introduced to the world, and that we clearly need to do some renewal of here at year 250, before it goes totally south. I think that's something that you can call people into, that you can situate as part of a tradition that reaches back through, and even before, the history of the founding, but also can make sense today and gives everybody terms to belong.

All right, well we're going to leave it there. Pete Buttigieg, thanks so much for talking to Reason.

Thank you. Really enjoyed speaking with you.

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post Pete Buttigieg: Federal Agents Are Losing Public Trust appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's guest is Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of the new book Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters.

Shermer explains how the release of the Epstein files has fueled conspiracy thinking, particularly through guilt by association and pattern seeking. He explains why ambiguous evidence invites overinterpretation, how skepticism differs from cynicism, and why the demand for total certainty often leads people away from truth rather than toward it.

The conversation also explores the broader collapse of trust in institutions after COVID-19, the role of influencers in amplifying conspiratorial narratives, and why scientific and historical denialism have found new audiences online.

 

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

0:54—How Shermer appeared in the Epstein files

3:04—Epstein conspiracy theories

6:35—Minnesota ICE shootings

10:14—The difference between truth and objective facts

15:43—Do science and religion conflict?

22:55—The rise of science denialism

26:45—Government intervention in transgender medical treatment for minors

29:59—The importance of historical truths and the Holocaust

36:36—COVID-19 and the collapse of institutional trust

42:19—Defending liberal democracy

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

The post How the Epstein Files Became the Ultimate Conspiracy Theory appeared first on Reason.com.