313 - The 3.5 Percent Rule - Erica Chenoweth

You Are Not So Smart

Science, Psychology, Brain, Business, Mental Health, Culture, Neuroscience, Mind, Health

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you want to overthrow a dictator, resist an authoritarian regime, or create a movement that can change the national status quo, you don't need half the country, you only need 3.5 percent of the population to join – but there are some caveats, and Erica Chenoweth whose research led to the discovery of the 3.5 Percent Rule, explains them to us in this episode.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You can go to Kitted K-I-T-T-E-D dot shop and use the code Smart50, S-M-A-R-T-5-0 at checkout,
0:09.0	and you will get half off a set of thinking superpowers in a box.
0:14.4	If you want to know more about what I'm talking about, check it out.
0:17.0	Middle of the show.
0:26.7	Music Check it out. Middle of the show. On down into the middle of the party's and the game.
0:30.9	The cool thing of the happy.
0:32.4	They went fire.
0:34.6	And talking about the power of a gospel.
0:43.9	The cool thing of a happy. They went fire. Welcome to the You Are Not So Episode
0:45.1	Episode 313 That's what shifts the balance of power.
1:06.4	That's why 3.5% can do what it does,
1:10.4	because you don't't movements don't necessarily
1:12.9	need to get the majority of people over to their side they just need to get everybody one tick
1:19.5	closer to their side and that shifts the balance of power my name is davidraney. This is the You Are Not So Smart podcast. And in this episode,
1:34.9	we are discussing the 3.5% rule. That is the name of a crucial threshold, a measurement, a number, an outcome, discovered
1:48.3	about a decade ago by Harvard political scientist Erica Chinoweth. That's who you just heard.
1:55.6	And Erica is our guest on this episode, because the three and a half percent rule has gone viral twice.
2:04.3	Once a while back when Erica gave a TED talk about it and a second time right now at the
2:11.6	time of this recording on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, which is what I will always call that, Blue Sky, Facebook, thanks to a surge in recent protests.
2:23.6	Reset!
2:24.4	Reset! Reset! Reset! Reset! Reset!
2:27.4	Tens of thousands of people have marched in dozens of U.S. cities.
	...

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