Contributors

Chris Kjorness, an adjunct music professor at Longwood University in Virginia, explores the economics of the traveling bluesman in "Delta Dawn" (page 54). Banjos and fiddles were once popular at dances and socials, but when the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog first appeared in 1888, affordable guitars made it possible for even an impoverished musician to buy an instrument good enough to put on a one-man show. Kjorness, 35, plays guitar, standup bass, and piano. His "all time favorite" blues artist is Howlin' Wolf, but he also recommends "the '30s guitar/piano duo records of people like Tampa Red and Georgia Tom."

Julie Ershadi, 22, is reason's spring 2012 intern. Ershadi, a native of Sun Valley, California, graduated in 2011 from Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. in linguistics. Her brother, a libertarian and linguist at a major tech company, turned her on to reason. She spent a month knee-deep in the magazine's online archives and then "decided I wanted to work here." During her time at reason, Ershadi blogged about political prisoners in Iran, protests in Russia, and detainees in Afghanistan.

 The Burton C. Gray Memorial Intern for spring 2012, Nick Sibilla, 22, was born in Monterey, California, and lived in Austria, Russia, and elsewhere with his diplomat father. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in political science and religious studies. Previously he interned at Oregon's Cascade Policy Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Pittsburgh branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Reading reason helped convert Sibilla to libertarianism, but previous gigs at a U.S. embassy and a congressional office provided powerful first-person evidence of how "feckless and useless government bureaucracies can be."