#175 The Death of Expertise w/ Tom Nichols
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 22 June 2020
⏱️ 91 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tom Nichols is University Professor at the Naval War College, where he specializes in international affairs, and a respected commentator on US politics and international security. A former Republican, Tom broke from the party during the Trump administration and has since been a vocal critic of the current administration. In this episode Bob and Ben speak with Tom about the current state of American politics and his book The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, (Oxford University Press, 2017). You can follow Tom Nichols on Twitter at @RadioFreeTom.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Southern Songs and Stories is a documentary series on the artists, music, and culture of the South, |
| 0:15.3 | with interviews, songs, a good bit of history, and insights into how all of it fits together. |
| 0:21.5 | I'm your host, Joe Kendrick, inviting you to come explore the music of the South |
| 0:25.5 | and the artists who make it on Southern Songs and Stories. I'm Ben Sawyer. |
| 0:42.8 | I'm Bob Crawford. |
| 0:44.0 | This is The Road to Now. |
| 0:46.0 | And today's episode is an interview with Tom Nichols. |
| 0:49.8 | Bob, you book Tom. |
| 0:51.2 | Give a little bit of hype up front for this one. |
| 0:53.9 | Sure. He's the author of The Death of Expertise, a book that. Give a little bit of hype up front for this one. Sure. |
| 0:54.5 | He's the author of The Death of Expertise, a book that came out in 2018, which was actually |
| 1:00.1 | an expansion of an article he wrote a year before that that went viral. |
| 1:06.0 | And it's all about the death of expertise is all about really for me. |
| 1:11.9 | It's how we got to this situation in this moment in our history. |
| 1:16.3 | The idea of questioning the expert, of doubting the expert, and even of how experts did lead us astray at certain times and how that led to a suspicion for expertise. |
| 1:30.5 | That dichotomy of fact and truth versus hyperbole and you can't tell me what to do or how to |
| 1:40.4 | behave or to wear a mask. Tom Nichols' work, really even the articles that he writes, like we highlighted his |
| 1:49.6 | Atlantic piece about Trump being the most unmanly president. |
| 1:53.2 | And he even had a recent one about Trump on Twitter in the USA Today. |
| 1:57.6 | It really highlights the suspicion of expertise and the doubt that led to or made the |
| 2:07.0 | ground soft for a Trump presidency and the moment we're in now. |
| 2:11.0 | So one of the things I want to share with everybody right now is that you may have |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Benjamin Sawyer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Benjamin Sawyer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.