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Evolutionary Psychologist Gad Saad on Consumerism, Sex, Advertising, and Human Nature

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:30:00 EST

"The Ferrari is exactly the same in the human context," says evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad, "as the peacock's tail is on the peacock."

Saad is an evolutionary behavioral scientist at Concordia University and author of the book The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal about Human Nature, in which he argues that most consumer behavior can be explained by evolutionary psychology.

Reason.tv's Zach Weissmueller sat down with Saad to discuss why most Ferrari owners are men, whether or not advertising executives manipulate our minds, the strong political opposition to the evolutionary sciences from across the spectrum, and the evolutionary significance of Sir Mix-a-lot's "Baby Got Back."

About 10 minutes. Interview by Zach Weissmueller. Shot by Sharif Matar; edited by Weissmueller.

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Lee Doren - Author of "Please Enroll Responsibly" and How the World Works

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EDT

Lee Doren is a former think tanker who now runs the YouTube channel How the World Works. He’s also taken to digital self-publishing; his first ebook, Please Enroll Responsibly: Avoiding Indoctrination at College, was released in August.

Doren has described the book as a “helmet for higher education,” and says he was inspired to write it by emails from parents and students asking him how to deal with an overtly progressive college faculty.

Doren also describes the creation of How the World Works, which he started in 2008. Since then, his series of two-minute videos about his political and economic beliefs has garnered 36,000 subscribers and invitations to speak to a variety of web and broadcast news outlets.

Interview by Reason's Nick Gillespie Shot and edited by Joshua Swain.

About 4.14 minutes long.

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Matt Welch Talks School Choice with Journalist Michelle Bernard

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EDT

At FreedomFest in July, Reason's Matt Welch talked with journalist and school choice advocate Michelle Bernard. Bernard explains how she got into the school choice movement as well as where she sees the movement in five years.

Shot by Zach Weissmueller and Jim Epstein. Edited by Paul Detrick. About 5:30 minutes.

Held each July in Las Vegas, FreedomFest is attended by around 2,000 limited-government enthusiasts and libertarians a year. Reason.tv spoke with over two dozen speakers and attendees and will be releasing interviews over the coming weeks.

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Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Vernon Smith on Experimental Economics, Adam Smith, The Housing Bubble, and His Journey Towards Libertarianism

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:00:00 EDT

Vernon Smith is a pioneer, discovering a whole new way to study economics and winning a Nobel Prize for doing so.

Smith sat down with Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie to discuss a variety of topics, including growing up in Kansas during the Great Depression, his ideological journey from socialist to libertarian, how and why some of Adam Smith's most important intellectual contributions are overlooked, and what experimental economics has to say about the collapse of the housing market.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Shot by Zach Weissmueller and Hawk Jensen. Edited by Weissmueller.

Approximately 24 minutes.

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Austrian Economics and Pedagogy: A conversation with Universidad Francisco Marroquin professor Albert Loan

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 EDT

What does Austrian economics have to do with teaching? What's the best way to teach students about dispersed knowledge? What can classical liberals learn from Maria Montessori?

We sat down with Universidad Francisco Marroquin professor Albert Loan to discuss UFM's ongoing experiments in pedagogy.

Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.

Approximately 6.5 minutes.

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The Green Regulation Machine: Saving the Planet or Killing Jobs?

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:00:00 EDT

When Dwayne Whitney started his trucking business decades ago he had only one truck. Today he has eighteen and 20 employees. But that's about to change.

"The State of California says my trucks are killing people," says Whitney. "What do you say to that?"

In a few years, new air quality regulations approved by the California Air Resources Board will render Whitney's entire fleet illegal.

"New CARB rules are putting me out of business," he says.

CARB claims that diesel particulates, a type of pollution emitted from buses and trucks, contributes to 2,000 premature deaths in California each year. But UCLA epidemiologist Dr. James Enstrom says the number should be closer to zero.

In 2005 Enstrom authored an extensive study that found no relationship between diesel particulates and premature deaths. He says his study, as well as other evidence that agrees with it, have been ignored by an agency bent on passing ever more stringent regulations regardless of their effect on California's economy.

Enstrom blew the whistle on CARB for, among other things, failing to publicize that the lead author of the study that was used to justify the new regulations falsified his education history (he purchased his PhD from an online diploma mill).

But UCLA didn't come to Enstrom's defense. In fact, officials informed him that, after 34 years at the university, he was out of a job.

"The environmental regulation machine in powerful in California," says Adam Kissel of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is defending Enstrom in the fight to keep his job. "When Dr. Enstrom went up against that machine he was retaliated against."

A hearing that begins on April 4 will determine whether Dr. Enstrom keeps his job, and the final decision rests with UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.

Says Kissel, "If Dr. Enstrom loses his job because he exercised his academic freedom, then it's a message to other researchers that you'd better not rock the boat because you might be next."

Approximately 9 minutes.

"The Green Regulation Machine" is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Field Producer: Paul Detrick; Camera: Alex Manning, Hawk Jensen, Josh Swain, Austin Bragg.

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Walter Williams: Up from the Projects

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:05:00 EDT

In 1981, Secretary of Health Education and Welfare Patricia Harris wrote in the Washington Post that libertarian economists Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are "middle class" so they "don't know what it is to be poor."

In fact, Williams grew up in a single-parent household in a poor section of Philadelphia. He was raised by his mother, who was a high school dropout. The family spent time on welfare, and eventually moved into the Richard Allen public housing project. (Sowell, whose father died before he was born, was the son of a maid.)

Drafted into the peacetime Army, Williams eventually earned a PhD from UCLA in the late 1960s and quickly became a sought-after researcher and public intellectual. His best known book, 1982’s The State Against Blacks, argues that a major cause of black unemployment is government intervention in the labor market.

Williams’ contrarian views have had wide exposure through documentaries, public appearances, and for the past 30 years, a syndicated weekly column. Since 1992, Williams has also been a frequent guest host of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Now a professor emeritus at George Mason University, Williams has taught at Temple University, California State University-Los Angeles, and other universities. (Go here for his personal web page.)

His new book, Up from the Projects: An Autobiography, is a fascinating look at his childhood, his half-century-long marriage to his recently departed wife, his unusual career path, and the genesis of his views on race, economics, and politics.

Throughout his career, Williams has used his own life to illustrate how government regulations often work to deny opportunities to poor blacks, and his memoir is no exception. For example, Williams recounts that when he was a teenager, he was fired from a great job at a hat factory when a fellow employee complained to the Department of Labor that his boss was violating child labor laws.

Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie recently sat down with Williams to talk about his life, how his experiences have informed his scholarship, his lead role in turning George Mason University into a center for libertarian scholarship, and whether the Obama presidency has improved the lives of blacks in the United States.

Williams is also an emeritus trustee of the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that produces Reason.tv.

For more on Williams' new memoir, check out Damon Root's review, which calls the book "a revealing and sometimes hilarious account of his rise from Philadelphia’s Richard Allen housing projects, where his neighbors included a young Bill Cosby, to 'brown bag' lunches at the White House where he gave advice to President Ronald Reagan and his staff."

Produced, shot, and edited by Jim Epstein. Additional camera: Joshua Swain.

Approximately 30 minutes.

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Who Wants to Live Forever? Dr. Stephen Coles on the Secrets of the World's Oldest People

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 09:00:00 EDT

UCLA's Dr. Stephen Coles studies the oldest people in the world. Hitting the century mark isn't enough to pique his interest because Coles' research focuses on supercentenarians, that is, those at least 110-year-old. Today Coles recognizes only 88 people worldwide as supercententarians, and the list is available at the Gerontology Research Group website.

Dr. Coles sat down with Reason.tv's Ted Balaker to explain why supercententarians live so long, what eventually does them in (it's not old age), and what could be done to help them (and the rest of us) live longer lives.

Topics include: FDA regulations, the Singularity, and immortality.

Approximately 12:20 minutes. Music by Jason Shaw @ audionautix.com.

Shot by Hawk Jensen, Zach Weissmueller and Paul Detrick. Edited by Detrick.

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Crazy U's Andrew Ferguson on How to Get Your Kid into College w/o Going Insane

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST

Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and the author of, most recently, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College.

Drawing rave reviews from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Crazy U is a very funny yet very serious look at the higher-education industry, especially the status anxiety college invokes in parents. Ferguson roams the countryside with his diffident son, touring various campuses and meeting characters such as a sharp-tongued counselor who charges $40,000 to shepherd high schoolers through an increasingly competitive and byzantine admissions process.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Ferguson and his son Gillam, who is now a sophomore at the University of Virginia (discussed as "Big State University" in the book). Shot by Jim Epstein and edited by Josh Swain.

Approximately 5 minutes. Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to our YouTube channel for automatic notifications when new material goes live.

Ferguson is also the author of Land of Lincoln and Fools' Names, Fools' Faces. For more on those books and the author, go here now.

In 2008, Gillespie interviewed Ferguson as part of an experimental interactive media studies class taught via videocam for Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Watch the discussion with Ferguson, Gillespie, and the students of IMS 390B by going here. Among the topics covered: Land of Lincoln, Ferguson's dislike of Twitter, and his years as a speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush. About 50 minutes.

3/11/2011 Update: Ferguson's book is temporarily sold out at Amazon. To purchase at Barnes & Noble, go here.

The Libertarian Youth Movement: Q&A with Michelle Fields of Students for Liberty

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:00:00 EST

Do college students dig libertarianism? Which libertarian issues play well on campus?

Michelle Fields is the campus coordinator for the Los Angeles chapter of Students for Liberty. She sat down with Reason.tv's Tim Cavanaugh at Libertopia to discuss the state of libertarianism on college campuses.

Approximately 3 minutes. Camera by Zach Weissmueller and Adam Hawk Jensen. Edited by Weissmueller.

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What You Can't Say on Campus: Greg Lukianoff on Free Expression in Higher Education

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:30:00 EDT

If you think that, like the Macarena, campus speech codes were mocked into obscurity during the 1990s, think again. Approximately 71 percent of American campuses still impose highly restrictive "red light speech codes" on college students, notes Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

Recently Reason.tv's Ted Balaker sat down with Lukianoff to discuss the sorry state of free expression in higher education, why you can't call Harvard men sissies, and how a student got expelled for criticizing a university president on Facebook.

Approximately 8.5 minutes.

Shot by Paul Detrick and Hawk Jensen. Edited by Austin Bragg.

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Stone Age Minds: A conversation with evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby (extended version)

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:00:00 EDT

Based at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby are two pioneers and leading lights in the field of evolutionary psychology. This multidisciplinary approach seeks to develop a better understanding of human nature by taking seriously the idea that our brains evolved to solve a variety of adaptive problems routinely faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

While our "stone age minds" have programs that are very good at things like detecting lies, attracting mates and avoiding predators, they are in many ways ill equipped for the kind of complex market-based society that we live in today. The lens of evolutionary psychology, for example, provides insights into why so many people in industrialized nations are overweight and sympathetic to socialist ideas.

Reason.tv's Paul Feine sat down with Cosmides and Tooby to learn more about evolutionary psychology, the history of the field, and the implications for our society.

Approximately 25 minutes. Produced by Paul Feine; shot by Alex Manning and Hawk Jensen; edited by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.

For a 10 minute version of this interview, go here .

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Stone Age Minds: A conversation with evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:00:00 EDT

While our "stone age minds" have programs that are very good at things like detecting lies, attracting mates and avoiding predators, they are in many ways ill equipped for the kind of complex market-based society that we live in today. The lens of evolutionary psychology, for example, provides insights into why so many people in industrialized countries are overweight and sympathetic to socialist ideas.

Reason.tv's Paul Feine sat down with Cosmides and Tooby to learn more about evolutionary psychology, the history of the field, and the implications for our society.

Approximately 10 minutes. Produced by Paul Feine; shot by Alex Manning and Hawk Jensen; edited by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.

For an extended version of this interview, go here .

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Experimental Economist Bart Wilson on the Meaning of "Fair"

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:20:00 EDT

Politicians and pundits often use the word "fair" to describe policies they favor. But what does "fair" really mean?

Chapman University experimental economist Bart Wilson argues that fairness should not be construed as equality of outcome, but as a process in which everyone plays by the rules and honors agreements. When lawmakers obscure the definition of this word, it may result in policy that is ineffective, arbitrary, and fundamentally unfair.

Approximately 8:50. Interview by Zach Weissmueller and shot by Austin Bragg. Edited by Weissmueller.

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Louisiana Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek on the New Orleans School Choice Revolution

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:00:00 EDT

Paul Pastorek has served as the Louisiana State Superintendent of Education since his appointment in 2007, less than two years after Katrina ravaged the region. The storm appeared to be the final blow to an already failing public school system. But then something amazing happened. In the wake of Katrina, reformers like Paul Pastorek decided to seize the opportunity to start fresh with a system based on choice.

Today, New Orleans has the most market-based school system in the U.S. More than 60% of New Orleans public school students currently attend charter schools, and a new voucher program allows children to attend private schools in and around the city. It's too early to tell if the New Orleans experiment in school choice will succeed over the long term, but the combination of autonomy and accountability has produced impressive results thus far.

Reason.tv's Paul Feine sat down with Paul Pastorek to learn more about the New Orleans school choice revolution during Reason Weekend, an annual conference held by Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason.tv. This year's event took place in New Orleans from April 15-18.

Approximately 8.5 minutes. Produced by Paul Feine; shot by Alex Manning and Dan Hayes; edited by Paul Detrick.

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Reason.tv at Sundance: Shouting Fire!

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:30:00 EST

Martin Garbus' client list spans from Nelson Mandela to Don Imus. He defended comedian Lenny Bruce against obscenity charges and argued for neo-Nazis' right to march in the predominantly Jewish town of Skokie, Illiniois.

Garbus is featured in the new documentary Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech. The film is directed by his daughter Liz Garbus, and screened at the Sundance Film Festival.

Reason.tv's Ted Balaker caught up with Martin Garbus at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

The Age of American Unreason: Nick Gillespie Q&A with Susan Jacoby

dan.hayes@reason.org (Dan Hayes) — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

On C-SPAN's Book TV, reason's Nick Gillespie recently sat down with Susan Jacoby, author of the new book The Age of American Unreason, to talk about anti-intellectualism on the right and left, trends in popular culture, and what Jacoby sees as a dangerous decline in the level of academic and political discourse.

From C-SPAN's description of the book:

In "The Age of American Unreason," Susan Jacoby offers a critique on American society and says that the combination of anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism in American culture is becoming a serious problem. In the book she focuses on issues including society's addiction to mass media, ineffective educational systems, and religious fundamentalism.

It's a spirited and intense conversation between a cultural pessimist and a cultural optimist that lasts for about an hour.

EXPELLED

ted.balaker@reason.tv (Ted Balaker) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:04:00 EST

Ben Stein's entry into the world of feature-length documentaries:

Ben realizes that he has been “Expelled,” and that educators and scientists are being ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired – for the “crime” of merely believing that there might be evidence of “design” in nature, and that perhaps life is not just the result of accidental, random chance.

Go here for some trailers, and an O'Reilly Factor appearance by Stein, in which Bill declares that the "secular pinheads haven't figured it out."

RELATED: Reason.tv interviews Michael Shermer .

Gun/Hug-Free Zones

ted.balaker@reason.tv (Ted Balaker) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:59:00 EST

Some University of Colorado students are protesting the school's gun ban by strapping on empty holsters. Turns out other schools, like Colorado State, allow students to pack heat.

(Thanks to protester Jim Manley for the tip; and to "Bear Arms" Orendy for the pic and the spooky way he anticipated this post)

Elsewhere in the Rocky Mountain state ...

If you're a student at Evergreen Middle School who's in a huggy mood--have at it. Just make it quick. "Prolonged" hugs are forbidden.

(Find this clip to the right of ABC 7's video screen)