You Didn't Lose That Election

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Gloria Borger: Usually when somebody high up in the group says, no, there's nothing to this, the rank and file usually fall into play. She said people are one of the reasons these tactics work is that it is so much more gratifying for us as individuals to have some one come along and say you're right all along. That's very appealing to us as humans," she said.

Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood.

In episode 190, Michael Shermer speaks with Jonathan Rauch as he reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the “Constitution of Knowledge” — our social system for turning disagreement into truth. His book is a sweeping and readable description of how every American can help defend objective truth and free inquiry from threats as far away as Russia and as close as the cellphone.