Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway
Release Date: 10/30/2018
Context with Brad Harris
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There’s a lot that’s dividing Americans right now - lots of divisive narratives that have captivated lots of people. One of those narratives features the apparent widening political divide between urban and rural culture. But, the truth is that the evolution of America’s urban and rural communities has always been symbiotic.
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"Notes on Nationalism" was an essay written by George Orwell in 1945, just as World War II was ending. It caused quite a stir at the time, but most people these days have never heard of it. Nonetheless, "Notes on Nationalism" remains one of the most powerful examples of Orwell's timeless insight into human nature; in this case, focused on our instinct to gang up on each other, our instinct for tribalism.
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Like many others, I’ve begun to worry about the fate of higher education in American society.
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Postmodernism planted the seeds of the illiberalism that's erupting throughout our society today. The battle of ideas postmodern thinking provokes could very well determine the fate of liberal democracy our lifetime.
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"History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes."
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Plague, political chaos, the looming prospect of another civil war... what century are we in?
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I went slightly mad producing this episode. But then, the line between our reality and the fiction of 1984 has become far too blurry for my comfort.
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One of the worst features of our society, we are told, is wealth inequality. But, what is the historical truth about wealth inequality?
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The history of calculus may seem irrelevant to most of our going concerns, but as author and mathematician Strogatz shows, the spirit of calculus expresses one of the best ideas humanity has ever had: greatness is not to be found in the end, but in the effort.
info_outlineMerchants of Doubt is not just a book about how illusions of scientific controversy have been constructed, it’s also about the people who constructed them, and its most shocking revelation is that the very same people used the very same strategy to prevent regulation on cigarette smoking, acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming over the span of nearly 50 years.
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