This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 12, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

David Bose, the longtime Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute, was a great communicator

of Libertarian ideas.

Through his writings, speeches, editorial decision-making, adherence to the principles that

animate a free society, and the joy he took in those roles,

he was so much more to the Libertarian tradition and to us at Cato.

I sat down with two of David's longtime colleagues and friends Aaron Ross Powell and

Tom Palmer to understand more about what we should take away from the life of

David Bose. Bo's.

Before I came to work at the Cato Institute, I already knew David Boz.

In fact, I already knew David Boz in a sense before I ever met him.

I had read books that he had edited.

Most notably in high school, I had a dog-yeared copy of the Crisis and Drug Prohibition, which was a collection of essays from a wide

variety of people across the ideological spectrum, all making one element of the case against our counterproductive devastating war on drugs.

And I met David via email when I was just a freshman in college and became his friend before I became an employee at the Cato Institute,

but throughout all of that time he has always loomed large in terms of being an exponent of, a great communicator of,

and a great thinker about the ideas that we in this room hold very dear and believe are key to human progress, to human flourishing, and to harmony and peace in society.

Tom, if you don't mind, could you talk about David Bose and how important he was to liberty.

I would rephrase it ever so slightly how important he is to liberty

because his books and lectures are still with us and worth learning from.

One of the things that characterized David was a clear adherence to principles and to the public good, not just looking at what's good for me,

...