Today's guest is Swedish historian Johan Norberg, author of The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World, which caught the eye of Elon Musk. "This book is an excellent explanation of why capitalism is not just successful, but morally right," Musk tweeted. 

Norberg wrote the book to combat a growing belief on the right and the left that libertarian values of individual autonomy, property rights, limited government, and free enterprise are failing to raise living standards and need to be ditched in favor of more centralized power and control over virtually all aspects of our lives. A senior fellow at the CATO Institute, Norberg shows that life is actually getting better for all of us—especially the world's poor—and that economic globalization, political liberalization, and cultural freedom are the main drivers of that improvement.  

We talk about how liberals and conservatives get the past wrong, why he's not worried about China's supposedly unstoppable economic growth, and why the cases for free trade, free expression, and more immigration need to be constantly updated and renewed.

Today's sponsor:

The Best of Reason Magazine. Every Tuesday, listen to a curated selection of some of the best writing from Reason, read aloud to you by a robot voice modeled off Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward.

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The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

Johan Norberg: Why We Need a Capitalist Manifesto

This is the audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern.

"At its core, money is a ledger," writes investment analyst Lyn Alden in her new book Broken Money: Why Our Financial System is Failing Us and How We Can Make it Better. 

And if money is a ledger, she says, the most important question to consider is, "Who controls the ledger?"

Zach Weissmueller spoke with Alden about her book, which is a true tour de force that lays out the history of money from its inception to present, takes you deep into the dueling schools of thought around money's fundamental properties, offers a macro analysis of today's global monetary and fiscal situation, and charts a path forward for transitioning the world to better, more sound money in the future. If you care about any of this—and really, who doesn't care about money?—this one is a must-read.

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Lyn Alden: Our Money Is Broken

Reason's Nick Gillespie talked with one of the great pioneers of podcasting, Dan Carlin, the host of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. Carlin has been putting his thoughts out there for all to hear since the aughts. His deeply researched and urgently delivered takes on everything from Julius Caesar's wars on the Celtic tribes of Gaul to 20th century Imperial Japan's horrific conquest of Asia are downloaded by the millions.

They discussed Carlin's upcoming live tour, how he would update his 2019 book The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments From the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses in light of COVID-19, and whether he believes we can really learn meaningful lessons from history.

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Hardcore History's Dan Carlin: 'History Is Not Like Math'

Today's guest is Amanda Knox, an activist, writer, and host of the podcast Labyrinths. In 2007, while studying abroad in Italy, Knox was accused of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in what the lead prosecutor claimed was a bizarre sex game gone wrong. Despite mishandled DNA, a coerced confession, and a lack of credible evidence, Knox was convicted and spent nearly four years in an Italian prison before being exonerated in 2015. Her case was a media spectacle that sensationalized every aspect of her life.

Reason's Billy Binion talks with Knox about her views on true crime after her story became one of the biggest examples of the modern era. They also discuss the psychological impact of being imprisoned for something she didn't do; what Knox thinks the U.S. criminal justice system gets right and wrong; and how she reacts to people who still believe she's lying. What's more, she shares a fascinating tidbit about her relationship with the lead prosecutor on her case—something that will be featured more in her new book Free, which is available for preorder.

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Amanda Knox: 'I Have Felt Utterly Exploited' by True Crime

"Even paranoids have real enemies," said the poet Delmore Schwartz, who was both clinically paranoid and definitely on to something, according to today's guest: Michael Shermer, the founder of Skeptic magazine, Substack superstar, and author of many best-selling books about rationalism, the evolution of morality, and pseudoscience.

He quotes Schwartz in his latest book, Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational, to drive home the point that big, world-changing secret plots happen all the time, but there are reliable ways for us to decide whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, 9/11 was an inside job, or vaccines cause autism. For the record, Shermer says yes, no, and no on those counts.

Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with Shermer about whether conspiracy thinking is on the rise, whether it's coded left or right, how wokeness poisons science, and whether the reelection of Donald Trump means free thought is ascendant. This interview was recorded at a live event in New York City in January.

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Michael Shermer: Conspiracy Thinking, Wokeness, and the Future of Free Thought

Today's guest is Susannah Cahalan, whose new book is The Acid Queen, a biography of Rosemary Woodruff Leary—muse, fugitive, and heavily indicted co-conspirator of Timothy Leary's psychedelic revolution.

She talks with Reason's Nick Gillespie about hippie communes, outlaw drug smuggling, the war on drugs--and how the '60s counterculture in its best moments ran experiments in radical individualism, where personal freedoms were used to build voluntary communities founded on altered consciousness and aesthetic liberation. The Acid Queen helps explain how the personal became the political, why libertarians should care about the messy legacy of the counterculture, and what comes next in drug policy, especially regarding psychedelics.

This conversation was recorded at a live event in New York City. Go here to find out about upcoming events. And go here to sign up for Reason's NYC events newsletter.

0:00 – Introduction

1:15 – Who is Rosemary Woodruff Leary?

7:02 – How did Rosemary meet Timothy Leary?

9:57 – Why America was ready to experiment with psychedelics

15:12 – Rosemary's connection to John Lennon and Yoko Ono

16:11 – How Rosemary and Timothy Leary became outlaws

21:07 – The jailbreak of Timothy Leary

28:45 – The political speech of Timothy Leary

31:45 – Why Rosemary and Timothy split up

35:31 – The final years of Rosemary Woodruff Leary

40:08 – The reconciliation of Rosemary and Timothy Leary

42:54 – The common thread between Cahalan's books

46:18 – Labeling in mental health

48:34 – Cahalan's experience with psychedelics

Today's Sponsors:

Reliance College: What if one day could change how you think—how you lead—and how you shape your future? Join Reliance College for Reliance Day—Saturday, June 28 in Los Angeles! This one-day, high-impact experience is designed for students, professionals, and lifelong learners ready to level up their thinking in an AI-driven world. At Reliance Day, you'll dive into collaborative Socratic discussions and sharpen the critical thinking and leadership skills that drive success in college, business, and life. It's a full day of intellectual challenge and creative exploration—rooted in the Great Books and Montessori-inspired methods that have transformed over 400 lives. Go to RelianceCollege.org/reliancedays to register today.

Future of Freedom: If you're tired of cable news debates and Twitter shouting matches and you're looking for serious, good-faith conversations between people who actually care about liberty, then it's time to check out the Future of Freedom Each episode dives deep into a single topic—tariffs, campus speech, the Department of Government Efficiency—and brings together two guests who disagree on the best path forward. But here's the twist: This isn't a debate show. No interrupting. No dunking. If you believe the future of freedom depends on more than just winning arguments and you're ready for something deeper than the usual echo chambers, check out the Future of Freedom podcast. Real disagreement. Real ideas. Real conversations. Subscribe to Future of Freedom wherever you get your podcasts.

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How LSD Helped Launch a Radical Libertarian Counterculture

Today's guest is University of Pennsylvania historian Sophia Rosenfeld, the author of The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life.

Her book explores why we've come to basically equate having more personal choices with having more freedom. She stresses it wasn't always this way—in the past, freedom was often defined as the ability to act in the way God wanted you to act, or to overcome base urges, to be more angel than beast.

Rosenfeld talks about how the Reformation, which enshrined a right to choose among faiths, and the rise of shopping, which allowed us to choose among many products, worked to change all that, even up to our current day, where rhetoric about choice still dominates many political and economic arguments.

0:00—Intro

1:15—Main arguments from The Age of Choice

4:03—Earlier conceptions of freedom

7:37—The Reformation and religious freedom

10:32—Capitalism and market freedom

15:37—Consumer choice and femininity

20:00—Choice as freedom in the 20th century

26:07—Abortion rights and the choice debate

31:26—Choices vs. mandates

36:50—Overwhelmed by choice

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The Surprising Origins of Modern Freedom

Today's guest is University of Texas historian John Lisle, author of the chilling and brilliantly researched Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA.

Despite official attempts to destroy records of the CIA's LSD-fueled search for mind control in the 1950s and '60s, the truth has been dribbling out, especially in recent books and documentaries such as Steven Kinzer's Poisoner in Chief and Errol Morris' Wormwood.

Lisle's work draws on previously unknown depositions and documents to deliver the most definitive—and disturbing—account yet. He discusses the twisted logic of Cold War secrecy, the bizarre figures behind and victims of America's darkest experiments, and what MKUltra reveals about the dangers of unchecked power in a democracy.

And this might be the most important thing: He and Nick Gillespie talk about why conspiracy theories thrive in the absence of transparency—and how to preserve skepticism without surrendering to paranoia.

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How a Government Mind Control Experiment Backfired

What if one of the sharpest critics of centralized power, bureaucratic surveillance, and top-down social control wasn't a libertarian economist but a French postmodernist? And what if one of the economists most vilified by the left wasn't a cold-hearted market fundamentalist but a thinker obsessed with the limits of knowledge and the dangers of planning?

Today's guest is King's College London political economist Mark Pennington, author of the new book Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge and Freedom. A self-declared postmodernist libertarian, Pennington explores the common ground between Michel Foucault and Friedrich Hayek. He talks with Nick Gillespie about how Foucault's critiques of expert rule, scientism, and the construction of subjectivity can bolster the classical liberal fight for freedom—and how Hayek's warnings about the pretense of knowledge might offer the left a way to resist domination without defaulting to centralized authority.

If you're a libertarian who thinks Foucault is just woke nonsense—or a progressive who sees Hayek as a neoliberal villain—this conversation will blow your mind in the best way possible.

0:00 – Intro
1:20 – What is a postmodern Austrian political economist?
5:07 – Scientism and Hayek
10:45 – The limits of postmodernism
17:46 – The intersection of Foucault and Hayek
30:12 – Systems of control and surveillance
37:39 – Foucault's warnings on government authority
49:57 – Creating a postmodern liberal political economy
1:01:29 – Foucault and the Iranian Revolution
1:08:21 – Have we learned anything from Foucault and Hayek?

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The Libertarian Case for Postmodernism

Today's guest is Rep. Chip Roy (R–Texas), a fiscal hawk whose commitment to balancing the budget has led President Donald Trump to call for primary challenges against him.

Nick Gillespie sits down with Roy to talk about why he ultimately voted for the president's budget-busting One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), whether the controversial redistricting plan going on in Texas is legit, the expansion of the federal government under both major parties, and where libertarians and conservatives can work together to reduce the size, scope, and spending of the state.

0:00—Intro

0:41—Why we must control government spending

4:20—The OBBBA and the national debt

6:30—Facing off with Trump

9:25—The Federal Reserve's existence and independence

11:00—Reforming the health care system

14:21—Victories from the OBBBA

19:16—The influence of Ron Paul

24:51—Immigration, labor, and assimilation

35:17—Is there a new GOP consensus on foreign policy?

41:50—Texas redistricting

44:28—Cultural identity of Texas

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Chip Roy on Why He Backed Trump's Spending Bill

Founded in 1968, Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Our podcast offerings include:

The Reason Roundtable
Every Monday, the libertarian editors of the magazine of “Free Minds and Free Markets”—Matt Welch, Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Peter Suderman—discuss and debate the week’s biggest stories and what fresh hell awaits us all.

The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie
Want to know what comes next in politics, culture, and libertarian ideas? Reason’s Nick Gillespie hosts relentlessly interesting interviews with the activists, artists, authors, entrepreneurs, newsmakers, and politicians who are defining the 21st century.

The Soho Forum Debates
Reason presents a libertarian-themed debate series recorded monthly before a live audience in New York City. Moderated by former Barron's Economics Editor Gene Epstein, the Soho Forum features Nobel prize winners, radical thinkers, and other public intellectuals facing off over the future of bitcoin, veganism, sex work, illegal drugs, electric vehicles, abortion, robotics, government debt, and other controversial topics.

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