Hi, Daniel. Thanks for being here. Hi, Tyler. It's a pleasure to be back. Do you believe that the public has fundamentally misunderstood RFK Jr.? Yeah, I mean, I started this thinking the thing that everyone around me thought, which is that this man is a

maniac. And to even engage with his theories or to read his books is to stumble down a dangerous vortex.

I no longer think that. I've read those books. And I see him as a important social figure, which is a skeptic.

Skeptics can be dangerous.

Skeptics can be destabilizing.

Skeptics perhaps shouldn't be the country's top health official.

But skeptics are important, and I've come to understand him in that way.

That's Daniel Imrewar, a historian at Northwestern University, who just wrote a piece for the New Yorker about the death of expertise in American society.

It's about how, somewhere along the way, a big chunk of the country stopped trusting institutional experts, like scientists and doctors.

One vivid example of this is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who went from being an environmentalist,

widely respected by other Democrats, to becoming an outspoken skeptic of vaccines and the face

of the anti-expertice movement. Kennedy, of course, is now the Secretary for Human Health

Services. Daniel and I spoke about how Kennedy's assent reflects a broader cultural shift.

The places where experts like Anthony Fauci

may have gone wrong, eroding public trust

in the government, and what all of this means

for the future of public health, democracy, and science.

You're listening to the political scene.

I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

Thank you. political scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker. You just wrote a piece for The New Yorker titled The Revolt Against Expertise.

How much of this revolt is about ideology or science versus institutional gatekeeping and the idea of who gets to speak authoritatively

in public life? I had assumed just reading the headlines that this was an argument between

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