Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I'm your host, Julia Galef.

And before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to make a personal announcement that I wrote a book,

and it's coming out very soon on April 13th.

It's called The Scout Mindset, which is my term for the motivation to see things

as they are, not as you wish they were, basically to be intellectually honest and objective

and curious about what's actually true. The central metaphor of the book is that we're often

instead in soldier mindset, motivated to defend our beliefs against evidence or arguments that might threaten them.

And scout mindset is an alternative to that.

A scout's goal is not to attack or defend, but to go out and get an accurate map of reality.

And in the book, I talk about how to be more of a scout and why we should want to do that.

For example, how to tell whether you're in scout or soldier mindset.

How to make it easier to learn from opposing perspectives instead of being irritated by them.

How to acknowledge uncertainty or change

your mind without looking weak. It's called the Scout Mindset. It's coming out April 13th,

but you can pre-order it now, and pre-orders are very helpful to an author. And you can also

order the audiobook, which I narrate myself. I'll put a link on the podcast website,

but you can also easily find the Scout Mindset on Amazon or on the Penguin Random House site.

Now on to today's episode. My guest is William Bode, who is a law professor at the University of Chicago,

focusing on constitutional law. And you may have

read some of his writing over the years in the media or on the blog's volic conspiracy or summary

judgment. And I've actually been a fan of his since back in 2003 when he was writing about law

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