Nick Gillespie

Read/Write/Record/Repeat. Editor at Large @reason. Instagram: gillespienick. Named to Roger Stone's 2014 Annual Best-Dressed List. "Mostly True"-Politifact

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Book Recommendations:

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

Fantastic-sounding book by Ran Abramitzky and @leah_boustan on actual impact of past and current immigration. Review by @joeljmiller. cc @okrent @jialynnyang @AlexNowrasteh @David_J_Bier @LynnNovick @KenBurns @heymiller @chavezlinda @shikhadalmia https://t.co/ElKARGrVjY (from X)

Forbes, Best Business Books of 2022 Behavioral Scientist, Notable Books of 2022 The facts, not the fiction, of America’s immigration experience Immigration is one of the most fraught, and possibly most misunderstood, topics in American social discourse—yet, in most cases, the things we believe about immigration are based largely on myth, not facts. Using the tools of modern data analysis and ten years of pioneering research, new evidence is provided about the past and present of the American Dream, debunking myths fostered by political opportunism and sentimentalized in family histories, and draw counterintuitive conclusions, including: Upward Mobility: Children of immigrants from nearly every country, especially those of poor immigrants, do better economically than children of U.S.-born residents – a pattern that has held for more than a century. Rapid Assimilation: Immigrants accused of lack of assimilation (such as Mexicans today and the Irish in the past) actually assimilate fastest. Improved Economy: Immigration changes the economy in unexpected positive ways and staves off the economic decline that is the consequence of an aging population. Helps U.S. Born: Closing the door to immigrants harms the economic prospects of the U.S.-born—the people politicians are trying to protect. Using powerful story-telling and unprecedented research employing big data and algorithms, Abramitzky and Boustan are like dedicated family genealogists but millions of times over. They provide a new take on American history with surprising results, especially how comparable the “golden era” of immigration is to today, and why many current policy proposals are so misguided.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

'If I'm going to screw the public, I might as well get the going rate.' @normajeanalmo. Would LOVE to see a docuseries on this LAPD cop turned call girl turned libertarian activist. Read her book! https://t.co/UMfFenOb9x (from X)

The author recounts her career with the LAPD, the corruption that caused her disillusionment, and her exploits as a glamorous call girl

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

This Monday, come out to @caveatnyc for a live @reason Interview taping with me and @laurakipnis talking abt her new book Love in a Time of Contagion, sexual paranoia on campuses, and threats to free speech. $10 tix, details: https://t.co/DQSMyPaDFi (from X)

In this timely, insightful, and darkly funny investigation, the acclaimed author of Against Love asks: what does living in dystopic times do to our ability to love each other and the world? COVID-19 has produced new taxonomies of love, intimacy, and vulnerability. Will its cultural afterlife be as lasting as that of HIV, which reshaped consciousness about sex and love even after AIDS itself had been beaten back by medical science? Will COVID end up making us more relationally conservative, as some think HIV did within gay culture? Will it send us fleeing into emotional silos or coupled cocoons, despite the fact that, pre-COVID, domestic coupledom had been steadily losing fans? Just as COVID revealed our nation to itself, so did it hold a mirror up to our relationships. In Love in the Time of Contagion, Laura Kipnis weaves (often hilariously) her own (ambivalent) coupled lockdown experiences together with those of others and sets them against a larger backdrop: the politics of the virus, economic disparities, changing gender relations, and the ongoing institutional crack-ups prompted by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, mapping their effects on the everyday routines and occasional solaces of love and sex.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

On the latest @reason Roundtable pod, I recommend @JMchangama's Free Speech: From Socrates To Social Media, a fantastic defense of "egalitarian free speech" over "elite free speech." This is THE book the current moment demands! Starts at 55.41. https://t.co/tQtRss2KcI (from X)

“The best history of free speech ever written and the best defense of free speech ever made.” —P.J. O’Rourke Hailed as the “first freedom,” free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat. In Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama traces the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of this idea. Through captivating stories of free speech’s many defenders—from the ancient Athenian orator Demosthenes and the ninth-century freethinker al-Rāzī, to the anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and modern-day digital activists—Mchangama reveals how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide. Yet the desire to restrict speech, too, is a constant, and he explores how even its champions can be led down this path when the rise of new and contrarian voices challenge power and privilege of all stripes. Meticulously researched and deeply humane, Free Speech demonstrates how much we have gained from this principle—and how much we stand to lose without it.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

Check out @TrotterWrites' Setting the Bar: Preparing Our Kids To Thrive in an Era of Distraction, Dependency, and Entitlement. Don't agree w everything but wish I'd had this book when I was a kid--and when my kids were younger. Great for #SchoolChoiceWeek https://t.co/eW4wIHWm1K (from X)

Criticizing the newest generation is a tradition as old as time. But there is truly something worrisome about the trends we are seeing in today's kids. You've likely had this intuition yourself as you side-eye that family across the restaurant-kids and parents alike hunched over their individual devices. Or maybe you've bemoaned the decline of childhood hallmarks like pick-up games and biking across town-replaced by the allure of infinite entertainment and the growing expectation that parents manage every aspect of their kids' lives. Or perhaps you're a high-school teacher who has watched firsthand as students grow less comfortable socializing, less energized, less responsible, and less capable of setting out into the world, much less thriving in it. It sounds progressive to dismiss these concerns, equating them with the typical brand of back in my day rhetoric. But that forgoes the opportunity for course correction at a time when it is most critical. Kids these days, like the societies they grow up in, are increasingly unhealthy, depressed, anxious, and plagued by a sense of meaninglessness. They are protected, entertained, and celebrated, but starved of something much more essential to their fulfillment. With his diverse perspective as a decade-long educator, a respected voice in fitness coaching, and a writer featured everywhere from Quillette to Spartan, Shane Trotter synthesizes the most timeless wisdom and the most timely research to craft a unique vision of how we can adapt to create a generation that has the tools to thrive in an era marked by unprecedented change. Blending philosophy, psychology and bold, honest storytelling, Trotter takes us on a journey to discover what has gone wrong and how we can turn the tide, both individually and collectively. Setting the Bar is an investigation into the human condition-who we are, what we need to flourish, and where we are going as a culture. This is a book for every concerned parent, teacher, or coach, and every conscientious citizen who cares about our kids and our future.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

"About three times as many Europeans leave their homelands and immigrate to the United States every year as the other way around," notes @davidharsanyi in his book Eurotrash. Yet many on left & right are pushing Old World solutions to our problems. Podcast https://t.co/VHmBGxfnhi (from X)

Why should America try to be more like countries that are worse in nearly every way? Europe has been declining under the weight of its antiquated institutions, economic fatigue, moral anemia and cultural surrender. Yet American politicians, technocrats, academics, and pundits argue, with increasing popularity, that Americans should look across the Atlantic for solutions to the nation’s problems, including on issues like health care, the welfare state, immigration, and a bloated bureaucracy. InEurotrash, David Harsanyi argues we are looking in the wrong place. By every economic and societal measure, the United States is more tolerant than Europe. It is more welcoming of immigrants, but also far more successful at assimilating them. Minorities do far better in United States. Our economy is dominant. Only one European company appears in top 10 corporate powerhouses in the world and only seven in the top 50. Americans make up nearly half of the list. Americans are far more charitable and happier than Europeans. Our slightly lower life expectancy and our slightly higher infant mortality rate are not a result of substandard care, but a statistical misunderstanding based on the fact we treat every life as one worth saving. In this biting, fast-moving, and well-researched polemic, Harsanyi debunks prevailing notions about European supremacy and makes an unapologetic case for American exceptionalism, offering insight and reasoned arguments to counter current policy prescriptions.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

Working on a video about today's super-high inflation rates and looked back at this 2008 interview I did for @reason with @washingtonpost's Robert J. Samuelson, whose book The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath had just been published. Worth a look! https://t.co/qX35spl4VK (from X)

It’s a giant gap in our history. The Great Inflation, argues award-winning columnist Robert J. Samuelson in this provocative book, was the worst domestic policy blunder of the postwar era and played a crucial role in transforming American politics, economy, and everyday life–and yet its story is hardly remembered or appreciated. In these uncertain economic times, it is more imperative than ever that we understand what happened in the 1960s and 1970s, lest we be doomed to repeat our mistakes. From 1960 to 1979, inflation rose from barely more than 1 percent to nearly 14 percent. It was the greatest peacetime inflationary spike in this nation’s history, and it had massive repercussions in every area of our lives. The direct consequences included Ronald Reagan’s election to the presidency in 1980, stagnation in living standards, and a growing belief–both in America and abroad–that the great-power status of the United States was ending. The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath traces the origins and rise of double-digit inflation and its fall in the brutal 1981-82 recession, engineered by the Federal Reserve under then-chairman Paul Volcker and with the staunch backing of Reagan. But that is only half the story. The end of high inflation triggered economic and social changes that are still with us. The stock market and housing booms were both direct outcomes; American business became more productive–and also much less protective of workers; and globalization was encouraged. We cannot understand today’s world, Samuelson contends, without understanding the Great Inflation and its aftermath. Nor can we prepare for the future unless we heed its lessons. This incisive and enlightening book will stand as the authoritative account of a watershed event of our times. Praise for The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath "Newsweek and Washington Post columnist Samuelson is one of the rare journalists who debates politics and economics with a healthy skepticism toward conventional wisdom. Politicians would do well to study [the errors] the past that teach that choosing quick fixes only delays and worsens the inevitable.”– Booklist "If you want to understand the economic events of the last half century, you should read. . . Robert Samuelson's The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: --U.S News & World Report.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

Was it a lab leak? Incredible doc & interview by @reason's @TheAbridgedZach about the origins of #Covid_19, featuring @mattwridley & @Ayjchan talking about their new book Viral: The Search for the Origin of #COVID19. Must-watch! https://t.co/cDDguBao6Y (from X)

"Chan and Ridley write with an urgency...that inspires gripping depictions of what viruses are, how infectious-disease laboratories work and wonderfully lucid descriptions of bats. . . . They powerfully recount how dangerous pathogens can both leak from a lab and emerge in nature." (New York Times Book Review) Understanding how Covid-19 started is crucial for the future of humankind. Viral is the most incisive and authoritative book about the search for the source of the virus. A new virus descended on the human species in 2019 wreaking unprecedented havoc. Finding out where it came from and how it first jumped into people is an urgent priority, but early expectations that this would prove an easy question to answer have been dashed. Nearly two years into the pandemic, the crucial mystery of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not only unresolved but has deepened. In this uniquely insightful book, a scientist and a writer join forces to try to get to the bottom of how a virus whose closest relations live in bats in subtropical southern China somehow managed to begin spreading among people more than 1,500 kilometres away in the city of Wuhan. They grapple with the baffling fact that the virus left none of the expected traces that such outbreaks usually create: no infected market animals or wildlife, no chains of early cases in travellers to the city, no smouldering epidemic in a rural area, no rapid adaptation of the virus to its new host—human beings. To try to solve this pressing mystery, Viral delves deep into the events of 2019 leading up to 2021, the details of what went on in animal markets and virology laboratories, the records and data hidden from sight within archived Chinese theses and websites, and the clues that can be coaxed from the very text of the virus’s own genetic code. The result is a gripping detective story that takes the reader deeper and deeper into a metaphorical cave of mystery. One by one the authors explore promising tunnels only to show that they are blind alleys, until, miles beneath the surface, they find themselves tantalisingly close to a shaft that leads to the light.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

""Freedom was the slogan of the times. The word was invoked to justify everything." Great @reason Interview podcast with @harvard's Louis Menand abt his fantastic book The Free World, abt post-WW2 culture. Kerouac, Baldwin, Warhol, Sontag et al discussed. https://t.co/cD6h4bzKQF (from X)

"An engrossing and impossibly wide-ranging project . . . In The Free World, every seat is a good one." ―Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post "The Free World sparkles. Fully original, beautifully written . . . One hopes Menand has a sequel in mind. The bar is set very high." ―David Oshinsky, The New York Times Book Review | Editors' Choice One of The New York Times's 100 best books of 2021 | One of The Washington Post's 50 best nonfiction books of 2021 | A Mother Jones best book of 2021 In his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand offers a new intellectual and cultural history of the postwar years The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense―economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize–winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind. How did elitism and an anti-totalitarian skepticism of passion and ideology give way to a new sensibility defined by freewheeling experimentation and loving the Beatles? How was the ideal of “freedom” applied to causes that ranged from anti-communism and civil rights to radical acts of self-creation via art and even crime? With the wit and insight familiar to readers of The Metaphysical Club and his New Yorker essays, Menand takes us inside Hannah Arendt’s Manhattan, the Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Merce Cunningham and John Cage’s residencies at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, and the Memphis studio where Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley created a new music for the American teenager. He examines the post war vogue for French existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, the rise of abstract expressionism and pop art, Allen Ginsberg’s friendship with Lionel Trilling, James Baldwin’s transformation into a Civil Right spokesman, Susan Sontag’s challenges to the New York Intellectuals, the defeat of obscenity laws, and the rise of the New Hollywood. Stressing the rich flow of ideas across the Atlantic, he also shows how Europeans played a vital role in promoting and influencing American art and entertainment. By the end of the Vietnam era, the American government had lost the moral prestige it enjoyed at the end of the Second World War, but America’s once-despised culture had become respected and adored. With unprecedented verve and range, this book explains how that happened.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

On today's @reason podcast, I recommend reading @art Tavana's brilliant new book, Goodbye, @gunsnroses." It's a brilliant cultural history of one of the bands that closed out the rock era and a searing analysis of middle America failed its children. https://t.co/Aaf3VE43xX (from X)

Goodbye, Guns N’ Roses transports the reader into a mind-altering trip through the colors, scandals, nihilism, and mythology that make Guns N’ Roses so much more than another “hair metal” band. A valentine and a breakup letter to one of rock’s most controversial bands. Goodbye, Guns N’ Roses is a genre-rattling attempt to explain the appeal of America’s most divisive rock band. While it includes uncharted history and the self-lacerating connoisseurship of a Guns N’ Roses fetishist, it is not a recycled chronicle ― this book is a deconstruction of myth, one that blends high and low art sketches to examine how Guns N’ Roses impacted popular culture. Unlike those who have penned other treatments of what might be considered a clichéd subject, Art Tavana is not writing as a GNR patriot or former employee. His book aims to provide an untethered exploration that machetes through the jungle of propaganda camouflaging GNR’s explosive appeal. After circling the band’s three-decade plundering of American culture, Goodbye, Guns N’ Roses uncovers a postmodern portrait that persuades its viewer to think differently about their symbolic importance. This is not a rock bio but a biography of taste that treats a former “hair metal” band like a decomposing masterpiece. This is the first Guns N’ Roses book written for everyone; from the Sunset Strip to a hyper-digital generation’s connection to “Woke Axl,” it is a pop investigation that dodges no bullets.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

Here's a great new @reason Interview podcast I did with @damonroot abt his new book A Glorious Liberty: Frederick Douglass and the Fight for an Antislavery Constitution. If you care abt history, individualism, and libertarian ideas, take a listen https://t.co/C4QvcpV7bV (from X)

2021 Choice Outstanding Academic Title In this timely and provocative book, Damon Root reveals how Frederick Douglass's fight for an antislavery Constitution helped to shape the course of American history in the nineteenth century and beyond. At a time when the principles of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were under assault, Frederick Douglass picked up their banner, championing inalienable rights for all, regardless of race. When Americans were killing each other on the battlefield, Douglass fought for a cause greater than the mere preservation of the Union. "No war but an Abolition war," he maintained. "No peace but an Abolition peace." In the aftermath of the Civil War, when state and local governments were violating the rights of the recently emancipated, Douglass preached the importance of "the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box" in the struggle against Jim Crow. Frederick Douglass, the former slave who had secretly taught himself how to read, would teach the American people a thing or two about the true meaning of the Constitution. This is the story of a fundamental debate that goes to the very heart of America's founding ideals—a debate that is still very much with us today.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

This is a great @reason q&a in which Charles Koch (yes, that Charles Koch) and @ckochfoundation head Brian Hooks talk with me abt their new book, Believe in People, why they've forsaken partisan politics, and the future of the #Libertarian movement. https://t.co/wkKoLiLK04 (from X)

A surprising take on how you can help tackle the really big problems in society–from one of America’s most successful entrepreneurs. People are looking for a better way. Towering barriers are holding millions of people back, and the institutions that should help everyone rise are not doing the job. Crumbling communities. One-size fits all education. Businesses that rig the economy. Public policy that stifles opportunity and emboldens the extremes. As a result, this country is quickly heading toward a two-tiered society. Today’s challenges call for nothing short of a paradigm shift – away from a top-down approach that sees people as problems to be managed, toward bottom-up solutions that empower everyone to realize their potential and foster a more inclusive society. Such a shift starts by asking: What would it mean to truly believe in people? Businessman and philanthropist Charles Koch has devoted his life to answering that question. Learn what he’s discovered during his 60-year career to help you apply the principles of empowerment in your life, in your business, and in society. By learning from the social movements and applying the principles that have enabled social progress throughout history, Koch has achieved more than he dreamed possible – building one of the world’s most successful companies and founding Stand Together, one of America’s most innovative philanthropic communities. Stand Together CEO Brian Hooks and Koch show how the only way to solve the really big problems – from poverty and addiction to harmful business practices and destructive public policy – is for each and every one of us to find and take action in our unique role as part of the solution. Full of compelling examples of what works – including several first-person accounts from individuals whose lives have been transformed – Koch and Hooks’ refreshing approach promotes partnership instead of partisanship and speaks to people from different perspectives and all walks of life. They show that no injustice is too tough to overcome if you share a deep belief in people, are willing to unite with anyone to do right, and work to empower others from the bottom up.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

A year ago, I interviewed @HardcoreHistory about his new book, The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses. It's a great conversation from a time when nobody knew what was right around the corner. https://t.co/msCdrwLma2 (from X)

Now a New York Times Bestseller. The creator of the wildly popular award-winning podcast Hardcore History looks at some of the apocalyptic moments from the past as a way to frame the challenges of the future. Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology or capabilities ever peak or regress? No one knows the answers to such questions, but no one asks them in a more interesting way than Dan Carlin. In The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin looks at questions and historical events that force us to consider what sounds like fantasy; that we might suffer the same fate that all previous eras did. Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone. Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history and weirdness Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colorful ways. At the same time the questions he asks us to consider involve the most important issue imaginable: human survival. From the collapse of the Bronze Age to the challenges of the nuclear era the issue has hung over humanity like a persistent Sword of Damocles. Inspired by his podcast, The End is Always Near challenges the way we look at the past and ourselves. In this absorbing compendium, Carlin embarks on a whole new set of stories and major cliffhangers that will keep readers enthralled. Idiosyncratic and erudite, offbeat yet profound, The End is Always Near examines issues that are rarely presented, and makes the past immediately relevant to our very turbulent present.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

Did you know that 17th-18th century France once treated calico prints imported from India the way the US govt treated cocaine in the 1980s? Great podcast with former @reason editor @vpostrel abt her new book The Fabric of Civilization. https://t.co/Q7se2a2Xaf (from X)

From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide. The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

The new book Listening To Ecstasy by @CharleyWininger is a fantastic memoir, history, and meditation on how to turn on, tune in, and live your best life. Check out his website https://t.co/14PlupO6zo (from X)

A personal narrative and guide to the safe, responsible use of MDMA for personal healing and social transformation • Details the author’s 50 years of responsible experimentation with mind-altering substances and how Ecstasy has helped him become a better therapist • Explains how he and his wife found Ecstasy to be the key to renewing and enriching their lives and marriage as they entered their senior years • Describes what the experience actually feels like and provides protocols for the safe, responsible, recreational, and celebrational use of MDMA for individuals and groups In a world that keeps us separate from each other, MDMA is the chemical of connection. Aptly known in popular culture as “Ecstasy,” MDMA helps us rediscover our own true loving nature, often obscured by the traumas of life. On its way to becoming a prescription medication due to groundbreaking research on its use to treat PTSD, Ecstasy can offer benefits for all adult life stages, from 20-somethings to seniors. In this memoir and guide to safe use, Charles Wininger, a licensed psychoanalyst and mental health counselor, details the countless ways that Ecstasy has helped him become a better therapist and husband. He recounts his coming of age in the 1960s counterculture, his 50 years of responsible experimentation with mind-altering substances, and his immersion in the new psychedelic renaissance. He explains how he and his wife found Ecstasy to be the key to renewing and enriching their lives as they entered their senior years. It also strengthened the bonds of their marriage. Countering the fearful propaganda that surrounds this drug, Wininger describes what the experience actually feels like and explores the value of Ecstasy and similar substances for helping psychologically healthy individuals live a more “optimal” life. He provides protocols for the responsible, recreational, and celebrational use of MDMA, including how to perfect the experience, maximize the benefits and minimize the risks, and how it may not be for everyone. He reveals how MDMA has revitalized his marriage, both erotically and emotionally, and describes how pleasure, fun, and joy can be profound bonding and transformative experiences. Revealing MDMA’s versatility when it comes to bringing lasting renewal, pleasure, and inspiration to one’s life, Wininger shows that recognizing the transformative power of happiness-inducing experiences can be the first step on the path to healing.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

In a new @reason podcast @DrDebraSoh explains why she supports equal rights for LGBTQ ppl but also insists there are only two sexes. Her book The End of Gender is a must-read, esp. for libertarians who believe in science and radical autonomy. https://t.co/J0evQtYttM (from X)

International sex researcher, neuroscientist, and columnistDebra Soh debunks popular gender myths in this research-based, scientific examination of the many facets of gender identity. Is our gender something we’re born with, or are we conditioned by society? In The End of Gender, neuroscientist and sexologist Dr. Debra Soh uses a research-based approach to address this hot-button topic, unmasking popular misconceptions about the nature vs. nurture debate and exploring what it means to be a woman or a man in today’s society. Both scientific and objective, and drawing on original research and carefully conducted interviews, Soh tackles a wide range of issues, such as gender-neutral parenting, gender dysphoric children, and the neuroscience of being transgender. She debates today’s accepted notion that gender is a social construct and a spectrum, and challenges the idea that there is no difference between how male and female brains operate. The End of Gender is a conversation-starting work that will challenge what you thought you knew about gender, identity, and everything in between. Timely, informative, and provocative, it will arm you with the facts you need to come to your own conclusions about gender identity and its place in the world today.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

Great vid via @reason with @greggutfeld talking impulse control, @realDonaldTrump, Covid, and his new self-help book The Plus https://t.co/5lZsxL5ttw (from X)

New York Times bestselling author Greg Gutfeld wants to be your new guru, and he hates himself for it. Before Greg Gutfeld was a Fox News star and a New York Times bestselling author, he was a self-help writer for health magazines who had no idea what he was talking about. But now, after years of experience, he finally feels qualified to guide people on the journey of life—call this book punishment for his sins, and a huge reward for you! In The Plus, Greg teaches you how to brainwash yourself into better behavior, retaining the pluses in your life and eliminating the minuses. His approach to self-help is simple, and perfect for cynics; it’s not about positive thinking in the short term, it’s about positive being in the long term. With tough love and more than a little political incorrectness, he delivers sage wisdom such as: -If you aren’t getting happier as you’re getting older, you’re doing it wrong. -Resist the media’s command to expand destructive narratives. -If you’re in the same place you were three years ago, wake up. -Don’t tweet when drinking. Modern life grows emptier and emptier as society becomes increasingly polarized, and even those who don’t subscribe to New Age beliefs are seeking comfort and meaning. In The Plus, Greg shows how skeptics too can advance themselves for the betterment of their lives and the healing of their communities.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

Thos book by @ShellenbergerMD sounds fantastic. Review by @JohnTierneyNYC https://t.co/maRl2IxwZY (from X)

Now a National Bestseller! Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem. Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed “billions of people are going to die,” contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction. Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas. Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions. What’s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

Must-read of today: @AllisonSchrager reviews @RobertJShiller's "Narrative Economics" at @reason, an important book abt how the stories we tell about ourselves can heavily influence or even create reality. https://t.co/xWjrDfV8BN https://t.co/J0XtHyIYuA (from X)

From Nobel Prize–winning economist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Shiller, a groundbreaking account of how stories help drive economic events―and why financial panics can spread like epidemic viruses In a world in which internet troll farms attempt to influence foreign elections, can we afford to ignore the power of viral stories to affect economies? In this groundbreaking book, Nobel Prize–winning economist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Shiller offers a new way to think about the economy and economic change. Using a rich array of historical examples and data, Shiller argues that studying popular stories that affect individual and collective economic behavior―what he calls "narrative economics"―has the potential to vastly improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lessen the damage of financial crises, recessions, depressions, and other major economic events. Spread through the public in the form of popular stories, ideas can go viral and move markets―whether it's the belief that tech stocks can only go up, that housing prices never fall, or that some firms are too big to fail. Whether true or false, stories like these―transmitted by word of mouth, by the news media, and increasingly by social media―drive the economy by driving our decisions about how and where to invest, how much to spend and save, and more. But despite the obvious importance of such stories, most economists have paid little attention to them. Narrative Economics sets out to change that by laying the foundation for a way of understanding how stories help propel economic events that have had led to war, mass unemployment, and increased inequality. The stories people tell―about economic confidence or panic, housing booms, the American dream, or Bitcoin―affect economic outcomes. Narrative Economics explains how we can begin to take these stories seriously. It may be Robert Shiller's most important book to date.

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Recommended by Nick Gillespie

"Say what you will about ISIS, but at least they're not Islamophobic." @TitaniaMcGrath in WOKE: A Guide To Social Justice. What a great book https://t.co/b65kxlCQdd cc @andrewdoyle_com @spikedonline @SpectatorUSA @MsMelChen @PamelaParesky @srsiskind (from X)

'The book everyone's talking about' The Times (Book of the Year) 'Titania McGrath is a genius' Spectator (Book of the Year) 'Beautiful classic satire' Ricky Gervais 'Hilarious . . . the most artful form of subtle parody' Joe Rogan 'Just as Bridget Jones was the embodiment of the anxiety-ridden Nineties feminist, a creation whose diary entries encapsulated all our hopes, fears and failures, so Titania McGrath is her millennial successor, a girl every bit as lost and confused, every bit as accurately observed - and equally, catastrophically, hilarious.' Sarah Vine, Daily Mail In Woke, Titania McGrath demonstrates how everybody can play their part in the pursuit of social justice. As a millennial icon on the forefront of online activism, Titania is uniquely placed to guide her readers through the often bewildering array of terminology and concepts that constitute twenty-first-century 'wokeness'. These new ideas often leave the general public bemused, particularly if they don't read the Guardian. Being woke is actually much easier than people think. As Titania demonstrates, anyone can be an activist. By simply adding a rainbow flag to your Facebook profile, or calling out an elderly person who doesn't understand what 'non-binary' means, you can change the world for the better. Indeed, social media has now made it possible to show how virtuous you are without having to do anything at all. Timely and indispensable, Titania's step-by-step guide will help you to become the woke person you need to be in an increasingly progressive world. In a non-patronising manner, Titania will explain why you are wrong about everything and how to become more like her.