This week's question is, has America lost its mind? And if so, how do we get it back?

Welcome to this week's Reliable Sources Podcast. I'm your host Brian Stelter and this

weekly podcast in between our Sunday television program is a chance to go more in

depth with media leaders and newsmakers talking about how the media world really works or doesn't work.

And the role of the media is a central part of a new book by Thomas Patterson. He's the Bradley Professor of

Government and the Press at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. His book is

titled How America Lost Its Mind, the Assault on reason that's crippling our democracy.

And Professor Patterson joins me now.

Thank you for coming on talking through this.

Oh, thank you, Brian. You write about something called collective rationality. What is that and how have we lost it?

Well, I think collective rationality means that we have our feet on the ground, that we pay attention to the facts, we try to find the facts, and what we've seen over the last 30 or 40 years is that Americans increasingly

are living in alternative worlds.

Misinformation is rampant. You look at issue after issue and millions of Americans have ideas about

those issues that are wildly at odds with the facts and that makes it difficult to have discussion

about the issues that face us. It makes it difficult for policy makers to get agreement.

If you can't agree on the facts facts it's very difficult to take the next

step and that's what are the solutions going to be. There are a lot of problems

that happen when we begin to lose touch with reality.

And who do you blame or what do you blame for this situation where tens of millions of Americans

don't buy into basic facts about our country?

Well I think it's a fairly complicated story, it's not a simple one, and as I indicated,

it's unfolded over the last couple of decades.

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