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In a world where change is accelerating, how do we find meaning, comfort, and connection?

Whatever your spiritual beliefs, if any, the PRX podcast, How God Works, offers a rare combination of cutting-edge science and ancient wisdom,

meant to help us all grapple with some of life's biggest questions. Join me, Dave Dosteno, for season three,

from meditation to psychedelics and burning man to techshabot, we're going to take a look at what role spirituality might play in what comes next, available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the weeds on the Vox Media Podcast Network. My name is Drew Slim Demsys. We're taping the show on January 6th, 2022, which is a year after the storming of the Capitol.

I was really interested in talking about radicalization, terrorism, the far right, with an expert who could walk us through some of the social science research here.

I decided to call up Professor Peter Newman. He's a professor of security studies at the Department of War Studies at King's College London. He's written several books on all those topics, including a bunch of papers on homegrown radicalization and the far right.

I'm excited for the conversation you're about to hear. Welcome, Peter.

So, first things first, we're going to be using the word radicalization a lot and it feels important to have a more specific grasp on what that word actually means.

I think for my part, I often see people using the term to describe the individual process by which someone becomes willing to engage in actions that we consider outside the bounds of regular political expression.

And go on to the road to violence and take on the sort of tactics that we would consider illiberal or undemocratic expression. So, is there a better way of defining that or thinking about it?

No, I think that's actually pretty good. I would always distinguish between two types of radicalization. There is the cognitive radicalization, which involves beliefs.

And you talked about that whereby people become so extreme in their belief system that they are willing to overthrow a democratic system.

They are no longer willing to tolerate others' views or expression. And then there is violent radicalization whereby people expressly engage in violence in order to pursue these objectives.

And it's important to distinguish the two of them because even though it's true that cognitive radicalization often is a precondition for someone becoming violent, that doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

And so, you can be, for example, a racist, right, without being violent about it.

And most people would still say that's a pretty extreme opinion or a pretty radical view to hold. So, cognitive radicalization, I believe, is a thing, but it's also clear that it's not violent radicalization and it's not necessarily criminal, but it's still a form of radicalization.

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