Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Shouting and shaming, lying and trolling: How did we ever learn to speak to one another the way we do now? In matters political and cultural, public and private, on social media and in major newsrooms, it seems as though over the past few years a bizarre and frightening irrationality has taken hold of our discourse. But what is irrationality, and what is that thing—reason—with which we oppose it? The historical period known as the Enlightenment represented a triumph of reason over the dark forces of irrationality and superstition. And yet some of today's most ardent defenders of the Enlightenment’s legacy—from scientists to artists, from atheists to political theorists—express themselves in ways that often seem suited to zealots and dogmatists. Reasoned political debate has been supplanted by trolling, with the occupants of some of the highest offices in the world reflecting and at times encouraging such discourse. In this conversation at the very beginning of the century’s third decade, on the eve of Brexit