Here’s the new Reason Roundtable podcast, featuring
in for a vacationing . It’s a raucous conversation about whether America is a great country or the greatest ever, the details on the budgetary and big-government awfulness of the Big Beautiful Bill, and why it’s beyond disturbing that ICE agents and other police are donning masks while going about their business.In the cultural recommendations section, I recommend
’s intense new memoir, How To Lose Your Mother, which is about her complicated and ambivalent relationship with her dementia-suffering mother Erica Jong, how literary fame casts a long shadow (her grandfather was the communist writer of bestsellers Howard Fast and her father is a writer of note too), and what it’s like to deal with ageing parents while your own life is filled with kids, cancer, and other drama.I read it also as a deeply moving coda to the Second Wave feminism in which Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying played such a large role. A half-century after its publication (and the publication of other liberationist novels such as Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, Rubyfruit Jungle, and The Women’s Room), Fear of Flying seems almost as dated as, say, Portnoy’s Complaint, at least when it comes to sexual liberation.
That’s a good thing—the sexual revolution was necessary and mostly successful in loosening up a society that was unbelievably uptight, repressive, unfair, and patriarchal in all the worst ways (even Philip Roth would admit as much). The zipless fuck turned out to be a dead end and lord knows sexuality is never settled or simple, but we are in a much, much better place than we used to be, especially with regards to equality between (among?) the sexes. How To Lose Your Mother also shines a light on a coming generational divide as Baby Boomers and Gen Xers head towards assisted living while Millennials and Gen Zers start to come into their own. It’s a version of a major cultural shift that will be everywhere soon.
Here’s the writeup for this week’s show and links to two upcoming Reason events in NYC. Below that are links to YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and Soundcloud versions.
This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Nick Gillespie and Reason reporter Eric Boehm unpack the passage of President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, focusing on its tax carve-outs, its special-interest subsidies, and what happens when key provisions expire in 2028. They also examine the potential fallout from Trump's looming trade deadline with the European Union, answer a listener question about the legality of masked federal law enforcement, and discuss the viability of Elon Musk launching a new political party.
0:00—America is still the greatest country on earth
6:18—The One Big Beautiful Bill becomes law
12:39—Medicaid cuts and what they mean
20:51—Sunset clauses will cause more instability
33:33—Listener question on masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents
42:16—Elon Musk announces new third party
49:47—Weekly cultural recommendations
Events!
The Reason Roundtable Live in NYC! July 15
The Soho Forum Debate: Jacob Hacker vs. David Goldhill, July 16
If you like what I’m posting here, please subscribe and share! And check out Reason, the planet’s leading source of politics, culture, and ideas from a principled libertarian angle.
Share this post