Goody, humans. Welcome to Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas. I'm Josh Zeps and one of the most

dangerous ideas of all time was the idea that ordinary people, regular folks, you and me, baby,

should be champions of our own future, should be the source of authority for the people who rule us,

that we should be the ones, calling the shots, not our kings or queens or leaders. How, though,

do you sustain that idea when the you and the me and the they gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and more and

diverse. And we invite more and more different kinds of people from all over the world

into our little camp. And then we all have to quarrel and argue and figure out what we think

about the people who are ruling us, what norms we want,

whether or not we're going to have feminism or Sharia law, whether or not we're going to have

hijabs or who knows what other kind of theocratic nonsense people might be importing

from whatever part of the world they happen to come from as they settle in our safe,

liberal, tolerant, democratic societies.

Yasha Monk is an academic who has wrestled with this kind of thing.

He's a total delight.

I read his most recent book called The Great Experiment, Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart

and How

They Can Endure.

I didn't actually read it.

I listened to the audiobook.

You'll hear us talk about that in this interview.

Because he's really trying to wrestle with this idea of how do you take countries that have

previously sustained their democratic consensus on the basis of some kind of homogeneity.

...