45 Years, 45 Days: 30 Years of Reason Interviews

For the next 45 days, we'll be celebrating Reason's 45th anniversary by releasing a story a day from the archives—one for each year of the magazine's history. See the full list here.

Since its founding in 1968, REASON has interviewed scores of people, ranging from Nobel Prize winners to TV stars, anarchists to statists, friends to foes. What follows is a sampling of the more provocative, memorable, and–on occasion–absurd comments, collected for our 30th anniversary issue in December 1998.

From "Break Free!," an interview with therapist, author, and Ayn Rand protégé Nathaniel Branden

Reason: What about sex without love?

Nathaniel Branden: What about it?

Reason: Do you approve of that?

Branden: What am I, your mother? Are you asking my permission? Of course there can be sex without love….the question is not: sex with or without love?–but rather: sex with or without personal involvement? Sex without personal involvement, sex between two people who…are not interested in each other as persons, is degrading to both participants. However, it happens between people who are married all the time….

From "Why I Did It!," an interview with Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg

"To whom did [the Pentagon Papers] convey a great deal of information? To whom were they valuable? Not to foreigners on the whole, or foreign adversaries. Ho Chi Minh did not need a document to know the president misrepresented the very things being said to Ho Chi Minh in negotiations, or the actions the U.S. was taking against North Vietnam….But to credulous Congressmen and many American voters who wanted very much to give the benefit of the doubt to the President, then the existence of documentary evidence made a great deal of difference."