I'm Alan Alder, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

There's a quote Abraham Lincoln had in one of his speeches that kind of stuck with me and it said that if a man will stand up and assert and re-assert and repeat that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the

power of argument to stop him. I think one of the things that's really kind of concerning about

the misinformation about vaccines is eventually the truth comes out because you get a lot of

extremely ill children. You don't want the virus to

prove itself. But I think also it's understanding where the arguments are happening and what's

convincing people. Because even if you do have some people who perhaps are so ingrained in their

belief and have so actively sought out,

you know, incorrect evidence to kind of support those beliefs.

That's not necessarily true of everyone.

That's Adam Kacharski.

A mathematician and epidemiologist, his research helped save lives during the COVID pandemic in the UK.

And he did it by predicting the effectiveness of interventions like social distancing and masks. In his new book, Proof, the Art and Science of Certainty,

he tackles the thornyg problem of how you find truth in a world to wash with falsehoods.

I'm really interested in talking with you about this

because I think we had a worldwide communication problem during COVID.

And one of the problems was we didn't all agree on what was a fact.

And your book, Proof, shows the ways we've arrived at certainty over the centuries.

But certainty is hard to come by for a community if they have different ways of arriving at it.

There are people who doubt climate change just on spec.

It's easier for them to doubt it than it is to accept a complex situation that we're in.

I get the impression that arriving at certainty is partly a cultural problem.

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