Resources

If you're going to get information somewhere, might as well get it from people smarter than me and are able to devote more time to this than me. Enclosed are sources I take information from, some more than others. Whether I use the source a lot or a little, these are all sources that generally have informative discourse, interesting commentary, and are honest about it.

I intake more libertarian sources than most, not only because I find libertarian views most closely aligned with reality, at least through my eyes, but they also have the most interesting arguments, whether right or wrong. Besides, I get plenty of progressive and conservative exposure just talking to other people in real life and exposure to more mainstream sources. I get pretty much zero libertarian day-to-day exposure talking to people in real life. 

I generally don't list newspapers or other traditional media outlets here that claim to be hard news. I don't think remaining unbiased is possible and if you claim to be completely unbiased, I am immediately skeptical of you. I will mostly rely on news aggregation and Ground.News to provide balance for that. Some newspapers are better than others, but most of the mainstream ones are hot garbage. If needed, I'll typically try to use a source normally biased against the point I'm trying to make, unless I'm specifically trying to understand a viewpoint from a certain perspective. Everything listed below has a bias and is disclosed, but they make no bones about it.

Current Events and Opinion

Reason Magazine
print . articles . videos . podcast / across the spectrum libertarian
[www]
It's a rare day that I don't visit reason.com. They provide daily coverage of events going on around the world from a libertarian perspective. Although not strictly a news outlet, they often get in front of things and correct papers of record, like they did with the Covington kids story. It was Reason's Robby Soave that corrected the story when newspapers and television talk shows were still smearing them with false accusations. Their YouTube channel is fantastic, full of documentary-style informational videos along with hilarious comedy clips featuring Andrew Heaton and Austin Bragg, rounded out with brilliant song parodies by Remy. They feature a weekly podcast called Reason Roundup which features Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman who discuss the events of the week.

Part of the Problem
podcast / anarcho-capitalist libertarian
[www]
I pretty much listen to every episode of Dave Smith's podcast. Dave and Robby "The Fire" Bernstein are almost definitely the most informed and thoughtful comedians, as it relates to politics. Other mainstream comedians that do politics like Lewis Black, John Oliver, Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah, Steven Colbert, Bill Maher, Sarah Silverman, etc, don't come anywhere close to understanding politics like these two. The podcast is always fun to listen to, even when I'm disagreeing with them. He's also not afraid to take on third rails, and has interviewed people that make the left go berserk, like Nick Fuentes, and people that annoy those on the right, like Ben Burgis. He will criticize libertarians as fiercely as anyone, always done to advance liberty as he sees it.

The Fifth Column
podcast / eclectic with libertarian hosts
[www]
Three journalists team up to provide critical insight into the journalism world in a meta podcast. Kmele Foster brings his swagger, Matt Welch his witticism, and Michael Moynihan his fun. Kmele and Matt worked together on The Independents with Kennedy. Matt writes and podcasts on Reason. Michael is with Vice News. Together, they tackle the current events and the media's biased and dishonest coverage on them. They'll often have on other journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Bari Weiss to discuss things with them. This is another podcast that I will listen to every show as it comes out.

Stossel
videos / classical liberal libertarian
[www]
If you're starting out with libertarianism, this is the guy to read and listen to. The way he condenses and simplifies arguments to easy to comprehend topics is second to none. When he talks to others, he plays devil's advocate and lets the guests lead with their responses. Stossel is the gateway drug.

Joe Rogan Experience
podcast / progressive host, eclectic guests
Joe Rogan himself is no libertarian, as he seems to really like Bernie Sanders, although he has voted for the Libertarian candidate for at least two presidential cycles in a row. I don't really get his underlying philosophy, but he'll talk to anyone while being honest and open to them. He has had on plenty of libertarians like Dave Smith, Larry Sharpe, and Peter Schiff. I've never gotten the sense that he is ever dishonest about things and is always thoughtful while calling out things he sees as BS. Each episode is a thoughtful conversation, not a shouting match, and they try to hash out a topic in a long-form discussion or debate.

The Political Orphanage
podcast / classical liberal libertarian
[www]
I adore Andrew Heaton, especially the work he's put into the comedy sketches for Reason. His podcast is witty and informative, and tends to steer clear of the drama within the libertarian circles, as he goes "across the aisles", so to speak. He's so orphaned, he's even an orphan within the liberty movement. I had the honor of smoking a cigar with him (well, to be more accurate, he smoked his cigar like a boss while I more or less destroyed it) at a Libertarian Party Convention along with Adam Kokesh. Heaton is just someone who is larger than life and knows how to command the attention of the room.

Glenn Greenwald
articles / social libertarian, progressive
Libertarians will always be grateful to Glenn Greenwald for the work he has done on the Snowden story and his scathing remarks against wars and corporate media malfeasance. He founded The Intercept with several others and left in 2020, lambasting the editors there of suppressing a negative story on Joe Biden. He has since launched a Substack where the rest of us get to enjoy his content unrestrained.

Timcast IRL
video / anti-establishment, from the left
His titles seem a bit clickbaity, but he usually follows through. Tim Pool is one of those that came from the left side of things until he saw through the bullshit and started calling it out. I think he's made some overtures to the libertarians but was turned off by the Libertarian Party when Jo Jorgensen made a few woke tweets. He is definitely a fan of Ron Paul. Hopefully with the changes in the LP, Pool will reconsider. As far as I know, he is currently politically homeless.

The Liberty Report
video / minarchist libertarian
[www]
The Liberty Report is the broadcast home of every libertarian's favorite politician and physician, Ron Paul. Even in his advanced age, he is sharp as a whip, still winning people over with his straightforward and honest message of love and compassion through liberty, ever uncompromising in his morality.

Lions of Liberty
podcast / libertarian
[www]
This podcast was started by a couple of Penn State grads. It's okay. I forgive them. It's segmented into several shows within the podcast. My favorite is Brian McWilliam's segment called Electric Libertyland. He is slightly more conspiracy-minded and has given out some info that I knew to be false, but he wasn't intentionally misleading people on it. I tend to not trust his information as much but he generally has pretty good takes on things and is very fun to listen to. Felony Fridays have held pretty good projects and have had interviews with people on death row. 

Common Sense with Dan Carlin
podcast / social libertarian, constitutionalist
[stitcher] [apple] [google]
This show is not updated frequently. In fact, it's updated very rarely. But when it does, it's usually a good show. Dan Carlin, more famously of the Hardcore History podcast, talks about current events and his own views, particularly from a historical perspective. I wish this would be a more regular show, but he has stated he has difficulty summarizing shows when so much shit goes on in the world so quickly.

Penn's Sunday School
podcast / classical liberal libertarian (formerly?)
[www]
I owe a lot to Penn Jillette. He is the first person I've heard mention the word libertarian and was the person who got me started down the rabbit hole into libertarianism. He was the one who got me thinking more about ethics, epistemology, religion, and skepticism. He played no small part in shaping me into a libertarian, atheist, and skeptic. I don't, however, listen to his podcast much anymore since it has strayed much more toward stories in the entertainment industry, but he'll still have some episodes that discuss politics here and there. It was very interesting during 2016, listening to him talk about Trump since he was on Celebrity Apprentice. Also, be sure to catch his old short talks on Penn Point. Unfortunately, he has strayed from libertarianism in 2020. His older stuff is solid, but I don't know, moving forward, how reliable his stuff will be. To be clear, I don't think his departure was due to any nefarious or ill-intentioned thing, but that he became disillusioned based on what I believe to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation that swayed him, and the underlying libertarian philosophy regarding it.

Kennedy (definct)
live tv / libertarian
[www]
Currently, if you're looking for something on cable television, she is all you've got for a libertarian hosted show, on Fox Business. She is entertaining, on point, and will often have three guests on for a topic, a libertarian, a conservative, and a progressive. Unfortunately, it is a typical cable news show setup where they have a whole six minutes to hash out an entire topic, which is approximately enough time for each person to sling out a bumper sticker slogan or two.

Foreign Affairs

Antiwar.com
articles / libertarian
[www]
This is the one source on the internet where you can find the entirety of war efforts online. There's no rah-rah, go-country-go tribalist nationalism here. Nothing is sugar-coated. When the United States starts a war in the Middle East, this is the place to find out about it, why the reason to start it was the result of US foreign policy in the first place, and why it's about to turn into a disaster. I just wish the site had a redesign to modernize the look and experience, as well as an Antiwar 101 page for beginners to get an overview of the Middle East quagmire. 

The Scott Horton Show
podcast / libertarian
[www]
[stitcher] [apple] [google]
Scott Horton is perhaps the most universally loved libertarian among us, second only to Ron Paul. His knowledge of foreign policy is quite literally second to none. And I don't mean second to none among libertarians. He could run circles around the Secretary of State. Every time I listen to him talk, I am astounded as to just how utterly stupid I am with regards to foreign policy.

China Uncensored
video / anti-ccp
I don't know the politics of the host, Chris Chappel (I'm guessing some form of conservative, since he seems more hawkish than I'd like), but this much I know for sure: he is no fan of the Chinese Communist Party. His show is dedicated to uncovering the bullshit du jour from the CCP including a touch of humor, with the backing of his very own 50 cent army. He keeps talking about how he gets demonetized from YouTube. So please, click on the Odysee link, not the YouTube link.

Libertarian Theory and Analysis

Tom Woods Show
podcast / anarcho-capitalist libertarian
[www]
Tom Woods is a tireless podcaster, putting out a show every day. Each show is a new subject to teach us all about some new thing in libertarian-land and half of them I had no idea was even a thing. If you're not listening to Tom Woods, you're not feeding your mind to its fullest potential. His is also one of the few shows on here that is actually family-friendly.

Mises Institute
research / austrian school libertarian
[www]
Evoking its namesake, Ludwig von Mises, this organization follows the Austrian School of Economics in its advocacy, research, and education. Located in Auburn, Alabama, they explicitly refuse to cater to the Washington DC crowd, instead opting to focus on educating people in the ways of Human Action.

CATO Institute
research / pragmatic libertarian
[www]
The CATO Institute was founded back in the day by one of the Kochs, in conjunction with Murray Rothbard. Rothbard brought the knowledge, Koch brought the money. Unfortunately, the two split up as Rothbard objected to CATO caving in on principles too much in attempt to gain establishment traction, and money won out. Still, CATO does a lot of good policy work, despite some of the weirdness that comes out of certain individuals there, for being a libertarian think tank. The Human Freedom Index that they compile with the Frasier Institute, for example, is a useful compendium of how libertarian countries are across the world. I like to think of it this way. CATO holds off those in DC that would harm us while the Mises folks try to figure out how to render DC irrelevant. At least, that's my ideal dynamic that the two would have. I just wish the CATO and Mises would stop fighting each other, as if we have resources to spend on infighting.

Foundation for Economic Education
articles / libertarian
[www]
This foundation aims to educate people on free-market economics, though they also write about social and political freedoms. 

Contra Krugman (defunct)
podcast / libertarian austrian economics (defunct)
[www]
Tom Woods, a brilliant historian, and Bob Murphy, a brilliant economist, teamed up to do a weekly podcast to dissect and criticize the most famous Keynesian today, Paul Krugman. Krugman, as Murphy put it, can be quite good in his formal economic work, but in his regular New York Times columns, Krugman is wrong more often than he is right. This podcast aimed to clear the smog that Krugman releases. It's built up quite a following, with an annual get-together called the Contra Cruise. Unfortunately, there's only so much material here, as you can debunk one person so long before it gets monotonous. But the archive is a treasure trove of information and hijinks between Woods and Murphy.

The Future of Freedom Foundation
articles / minarchist libertarian
[www]
This is Jacob Hornberger's site that he worked tirelessly on, putting out an article a day for I don't know how long. Even if this was my full-time job, I don't know that I could output an article a day. The man is a whiz and knows libertarianism inside and out, uncompromising on principles.

Interviews and Debates

Soho Forum
debate series / libertarian host with opposed partisan guests
[www]
Although libertarians have a distinct home-court advantage here, this debate series is phenomenal. Hosted by Gene Epstein and sponsored by Reason, this Oxford-style debate puts on topics that would appeal to anyone curious about politics. Watch Gene Epstein make the top socialist minds in the country like Paul Wulff look silly. Or take a break from the mindless binary debates about abortion between Democrats and Republicans to listen to actual nuance and ideas like evictionism (who, outside libertarians, discuss evictionism?). Or delve deep into the divisive politics within the Libertarian Party and watch Dave Smith destroy Nickolas Sarwark. Or watch Scott Horton drone bomb Bill Kristol into smithereens on Washington's war policy.

Your Welcome
podcast / anarchist host, eclectic guests
[www]
Michael Malice just may be one of the most intelligent people on earth. He doesn't just have one or two high marks in intelligence, he has all of them. His quick-wittedness is quite amazing to behold. He is well-read beyond anyone out there. While many quick-witted people can be entirely incapable of avoiding informal logical fallacies, Malice has the wit with the logic, something incredibly difficult to pull off. To top it all off, he is one of the funniest trolls on Twitter, harassing people that deserve to be harassed to no end. Twitter's entire reason for existence is Michael Malice.

Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie
podcast / libertarian
If you love to wear argyle (or black leather jackets) and engage in sesquipedalian persiflage at Manhattan cocktail parties while interjecting esoteric cultural references and ingesting psilocybin, then Nick is the guy for you. That's totally not me, but his interviews are still fun and informative to listen to, even if I don't get his Boomer references.

Other libertarian outlets

These are other media outlets that I just haven't had time to really dive in to. It's not that they're bad, it's just that there are only 24 hours in a day. I've listened to at least one show but less than ten and they are at least decent to good. Even if it doesn't suit my tastes as well as the above, hopefully, they may with you.


Kibbe on Liberty
podcast / libertarian
[stitcher] [apple]
[youtube]

The Rubin Report
podcast / classical liberal
[stitcher] [apple] [google]
[rumble] [youtube]

Run Your Mouth
podcast / anarcho-capitalist libertarian
[stitcher] [apple] [google]
[youtube]

Voice of North Korea by Yeonmi Park
podcast / libertarian
[youtube]

The Argument with Jane Coaston (defunct)
podcast / eclectic with libertarian host
[new york times]
[stitcher] [apple] [google]

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