Matt Welch is editor at large of Reason, the magazine of "free minds and free markets," and panelist on The Reason Roundtable podcast.
Welch served as editor in chief of Reason from 2008-2016, during which time the magazine won 18 first place awards from the Greater Los Angeles Press Club and five from the Western Publications Association. He was a magazine columnist before and after his tenure, on media and politics, respectively. He has written cover stories on COVID policy, the death of Communism, bipartisan fiscal incontinence, biased fact-checking, deregulation, John McCain, Rand Paul, Gary Johnson, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and the Ukraine War.
He is co-author, along with Nick Gillespie, of the 2011 book The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America, and also wrote the 2007 book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick. He was co-host of The Independents on Fox Business Network from 2013-2015; assistant editorial pages editor for the Los Angeles Times from 2006-2007, and co-host of The Fifth Column podcast from 2016 to present.
His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, New York Post, Columbia Journalism Review, and scores of other publications. He is a regular guest on The Megyn Kelly Show and HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, a frequent interlocutor on C-SPAN's Book TV, and a consistent presence on broadcasts and podcasts nationwide. He lived in Central Europe from 1990-1997, where he co-founded the region's first independent post-communist English-language newspaper.
Welch lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters.
