190. Jonathan Rauch — The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2021

⏱️ 101 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood.

In episode 190, Michael Shermer speaks with Jonathan Rauch as he reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the “Constitution of Knowledge” — our social system for turning disagreement into truth. His book is a sweeping and readable description of how every American can help defend objective truth and free inquiry from threats as far away as Russia and as close as the cellphone.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Shurmer Show.
0:08.0	Welcome to the Michael Shurmer Show.
0:10.0	I'm your host Michael Shurmer.
0:12.0	This episode is brought to you by Wundrium. W-N-D-R-I-U-M. This is the new name of the former Great Courses Plus and it's much broader, much cooler, much greater than they've offered before.
0:29.0	You remember that The Great Courses is a long time supporter of this podcast. You remember that
0:34.2	little app I would always show. I'm going to show you to that, show you that again in a
0:37.6	minute. But Wondrium offers fantastic video and audio learning experiences, tons of great content to enrich our lives with mind-blowing moments,
0:47.0	all the stuff from the great courses that you're used to, all those great lectures with dozens of lectures in each course and therefore thousands of
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1:05.0	Plus they're producing original documentary series.
1:08.0	Wondrium is the new Great Courses Plus, new and improved, and it's fantastic. Can't wait for you to give it a try.
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1:20.1	So I touched the now Wondrium app.
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1:25.3	There's a course called Everything and Nothing.
1:28.3	What is it?
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1:31.2	It's so cool. And so there's two documentaries. They're each an hour long. So if you go to episode one and you join the host who's a physicist and he starts talking about
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	...

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