Social Panic, Moral Panic

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The PMRC, the Parents Music Resource Center, created a list of songs called The Filthy 15. They were occult songs because they believed Satanism and drug abuse were as dangerous. One of the songs was a Cindy Lauper song called Shebop, which is widely understood to be about masturbating. And it's like social panics, moral panics. While you're going through them, they don't seem as ridiculous as they are later revealed to be. But I think a lot of what we're going through is a social panic, a moral panic, over the fact that a lot of people can speak more freely.

Nick Gillespie is the host of the Reason Interview and an editor at large at Reason. Nick is one of the most interesting libertarian thinkers in America, and has been described by the New York Times as being to libertarianism “what Lou Reed is to rock ‘n’ roll, the quintessence of its outlaw spirit". Important Links:

Show Notes:

Is libertarianism dead?
Saying what you think
The case for rational optimism
Labels and empathy
President Nixon, the Great Reshuffle, Bitcoin
Bureaucracy and responsiveness
The rapidly changing world
Prohibition and legalisation
Why America does not have enough immigration
The enfranchising power of social media
Obscenity and moral panics
Empathy with the dispossessed
And MUCH more!

Books Mentioned:

The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America; by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch
The Rational Optimist; by Matt Ridley
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; by Douglas Adams
The Population Bomb; by Paul Ehrlich
The Beginning of Infinity; by David Deutsch
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy; by Joseph Schumpeter
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism; by Howard Bloom
One Summer: America, 1927; by Bill Bryson
The War on Alcohol; by Liza McGirr
Immigration and Freedom; by Chandran Kukathas
The Illuminatus! Trilogy; by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea
What It Means to be a Libertarian: a Personal Interpretation; by Charles Murray
Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society; by Tipper Gore
Ulysses; by James Joyce
The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It; by Will Storr
Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine; by Derren Brown