In my ideal vision, yes, we are replacing elected officials with ordinary citizens for the purpose of legislation.

And I understand it's a leap, but that's a leap that the Greeks did first.

So that's a real test of your faith in ordinary citizens.

Hey, everyone, it's Adam Grant.

Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with Ted on the science of what makes us tick.

I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people

to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

Ellen Landmore is a political scientist at Yale who studies democracy.

She's written at length about the role everyday people can play in the politics that shape their lives,

and she has a bold idea for fixing politics.

In her new book, Politics Without Politicians,

Elan argues that electoral politics is broken, but democracy is not.

And she asked the question,

what would it look like if we replace career politicians with citizen assemblies filled with people chosen by lot or lottery? It seems like a radical idea, but some countries, at least one

U.S. state, have already started experimenting with it. I think what's scary for people is that when they think ordinary citizens for some reason,

they immediately go to like the most extreme people in the population, the trolls on the

internet, the disgruntled voters, the mass protesters who, you know, break things.

But that's not the reality of a random sample of ordinary citizens. Ordinary people are

statistically quite, you know, average and reasonable. They are engineer, nurses, Uber

drivers, craftsmen, workers, stay-at-room moms, students. How did you first come to this idea? How did I first come to this idea? Ah, how did I first come to this idea? I think it

started in the 1990s when I read Bernard Manon, the principles of representative government.

It was kind of a revelation, but it didn't quite turn me to this more radical vision of politics right away until I would

...