#101 — Defending the Republic

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2017

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Cass Sunstein about the polarization and fragmentation of American society, “choice architecture,” the importance of face-to-face interactions for problem solving, group polarization and identity politics, virtuous extremism, the wisdom of crowds, direct democracy, the limits of free speech, the process of Presidential impeachment, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
0:12.1	hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing
0:16.2	the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense
0:20.7	Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharis.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed
0:26.1	to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads
0:31.2	on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers.
0:35.8	So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
0:46.9	Today I'm speaking with Cass Sunstein. Cass is the Robert Womzli University professor at Harvard
0:53.2	Law School, where he's the founder and director of the program on behavioral economics and public
0:58.2	policy. He is by far the most cited law professor in the United States. Amazing. From 2009 to 2012,
1:08.8	he served in the Obama administration as administrator of the White House Office of Information
1:13.1	and Regulatory Affairs. He is testified before congressional committees that involved in
1:18.8	constitution making and law reform activities in a number of countries and written many articles
1:24.4	in books, including Nudge with Richard Thaler. Thaler actually won the Nobel Prize in economics
1:32.1	since we recorded this podcast. He's written other books on his own, two of which are under
1:36.7	discussion today. The first is Hashtag Republic divided democracy in the age of social media
1:43.6	and the forthcoming impeachment, a citizen's guide. And Cass and I talk about the polarization
1:52.0	and fragmentation of American society. We talk about choice architecture, the importance of face-to-face
2:00.0	interactions for problem solving, group polarization and identity politics, virtuous forms of extremism,
2:08.0	the much-vanted wisdom of crowds, the possibility of ever having a direct democracy, rational limits on
2:16.3	free speech, the process of presidential impeachment and other topics. As I said at the end, I found
2:24.2	this conversation truly educational. There was a lot I didn't understand about impeachment in
	...

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