The Lost Debate

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

When i was a kid, my my parents would debate. And they 're both medical professionals, so there was no reason why they were that interested in politics. I ad nots taken me some time to figure out why they were so obsessed with politics and history. They would just debate non stop about everything. So it's always been central to who we are. But over the past few years the debates have become less fun. They feel more existential. People are less like, i think, even tolerant of viewpoints that are different than theirs. We want to build a culture where people are able to face belief systems and people that are very different tin them. It's also fun to debate

Shermer speaks with Ravi Gupta, the Founder and CEO of Lost Debate, a new non-profit media company that launched in October 2021 to fight polarization and misinformation online. The company has seed funding of over $7 million dollars, with the largest investment coming from Netflix founder Reed Hastings. Before launching Lost Debate, Ravi founded Arena, where he led a team that helped elect over a hundred candidates and launched the largest campaign staffer training academy in the history of the Democratic Party — an effort that’s trained over 2500 political operatives over the past three years. He was a critical leader in Democrats’ efforts to retake the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018 and numerous state houses, including the New York State Senate and Virginia House of Delegates.

Shermer and Gupta discuss: growing up with a Democrat mother and a Republican father; the rise of polarized politics in association with political talk radio, TV, and social media; why Republicans supported (and still support) Trump; what’s in store for our democracy in 2022 and 2024; what it was like working on the Obama campaign from the inside; why freed felons should regain their right to vote after serving their time; education inequality; Joe Rogan, Whoopi Goldberg, and censorship; the moralization motivation behind cancel culture; Critical Race Theory and race relations in America.