A Lapsed Catholic Walks Into a Podcast with Two Jews...

...and other recent media and event highlights.

What a year the past week or so has been! Time seems as if it’s both speeding and slowing down, which might just be a sign of the end times or (my) male menopause.

I’m excited to share a really fun and exciting podcast I just appeared on today: Paloma Media’s Ask a Jew, which is hosted by “a godless, sinful Israeli” (Yael Bar tur) and “the holiest of holy women” (Chaya Leah Sufrin). To be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure why they wanted to talk a lapsed Catholic and self-described apatheist (I just don’t care that much about religion, even as I recognize and respect its central role in history and society).

But I tend to go where invited—and I’m glad I did. We spoke for two hours (!) about everything from my days as a teen mag editor in the late 1980s, where I interviewed Coreys Haim and Feldman; to my 1996 doctoral dissertation, Qualified Authority in American Fiction: Participant Observers and Market Orders, especially the very good chapter on The Great Gatsby (which inspired this 2013 Reason story); to the role of immigration, pluralism, and intentional communities in making America great. I learned far more from them than they could have learned from me, which might make me a bad guest, but it’s a really fun, deep, and often moving conversation about the role of religion, individualism, and community in life. Click below to listen.

Here are the show notes Yael and Chaya Leah put together:

Special Edition! We won't lie, this one got a bit out of control. Maybe we were starstruck, maybe hungover from Purim, or maybe our conversations are that good. Either way, you get over two hours of content, from Corey Haim to Corey Feldman.

Since a lot is going on, here are some approximate time stamps to guide you home:

Intro - Yael manages to offend our guest by mis-introducing him.

7:35 All literature that isn't American sucks

13:00 Nick's PhD thesis, oral defense - The Great Gatsby

20:45 Immigrants - we something something done.

25:40 Famous Jewish sports legends

27:00 Thank you Dr.Gillespie. Now tell us about the time you interviewed Jason Priestly for "Teen Machine" magazine

29:00 Nick and Yael get into a heated debate over the true meaning of BDE.

30:35 Back to Teen Machine. Nick compares interviewing Corey Haim and Corey Feldman to 9/11, or something.

35:00 Mel Gibson, the world's sexiest Anti-semite

38:35 Celebrities on social media are a libertarians dream come true, and we are the next Bill Cosby

42:40 Cancel culture, and why it's the best time to be alive.

48:40 It's the golden era of individualism

51:30 Yael says something really profound about social media

54:00 Revolt of the public

56:15 Finally, the Holocaust!

58:30 Postmodernism

1:00 The culture wars

1:07:40 The Declaration of Independents

1:10 National service, military and war

1:16:50 The Holocaust again (ok fine, WWII)

1:32 The girls give Nick an off-ramp, he doesn’t take it.

1:41 Come to Nick’s event April 4th about heroin

1:46 Kids today

Speaking of podcasts, I’m also happy to share today’s weekly Reason Roundtable with you. I’m lucky to start each week jawing with my colleagues Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch about “what fresh hell awaits us.” Today, we spent a lot of time talking about cancel culture, which The New York Times has belatedly seen fit to acknowledge as both real and problematic.

It’s an excellent conversation about recognizing two things that overlap but are distinct: First, we live in an era where more people than ever have the ability to make their voices heard, to really participate in conversations that matter. Second, we live in an era where many institutions—colleges and universities, corporations, etc.—and individuals are scared shitless of online mobs who are shouting for the heads of all sorts of real and imagined malefactors. Even just a few years ago, access to the public square was growing without cancel culture becoming the rule. Now, as I wrote for Reason last fall, it’s depressingly routine for people to cancel themselves in an attempt to stave off the pitchfork-and-torch crowd. That’s no way to run an open, libertarian society and we all need to do more to rebuild a culture of free speech in which people argue about stuff without immediately trying to get people fired for having the wrong opinions.

If you live in the New York City metro area, please think about coming out to the second “Reason Speakeasy” event, which are live conversations with outspoken defenders of free thinking in an age of cancel culture and thought police. We record the event and use it for episodes of The Reason Interview podcast. The guest this time is the brilliant maverick Columbia University neuroscientist Carl Hart, author of the controversial book Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear. The event takes on Monday, April 4, from 6pm to 8.30pm at Caveat, a bar and theater on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It’s a great place to meet Reason readers and

In a world where drug legalization efforts are on the march and the pernicious effects of drug prohibition on criminal justice, education, foreign policy, and racial and ethnic communities are being scrutinized like never before, Carl is breaking bold new ground on how we think about drug policy, substance use and abuse, and individual freedom.

"The Declaration of Independence guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all of us, as long as we don't disrupt anybody else's ability to do the same," says Carl. "That means we get to live our life as we choose, as we see fit. Taking drugs is a part of that for a lot of Americans." He writes that his use of drugs–including heroin–helps him be a better person. "I do not have a drug-use problem,” he declares. “Never have. Each day, I meet my parental, personal, and professional responsibilities. I pay my taxes, serve as a volunteer in my community…and contribute to the global community as an informed and engaged citizen."

We’ll talk about all that, his pathbreaking research on addiction, how he turned from an ardent supporter of the drug war to one of its leading critics, elitism within the legalization movement, and how he talks with his kids and students about responsible drug use.

Tickets are $10 and must be purchased online. Go here for details.

If you’re curious about the first Reason Speakeasy, which took place a month ago and featured the intense “lapsed Marxist feminist” and free-speech champion Laura Kipnis, you can listen to it as a podcast here or watch it below via YouTube.

I hope your week is off to a good start.