The New Attacks on Free Thought

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Born in phoenix, arizona in 19 60. Always became a journalist because i was too curious and too restless to settled down pick up a real profession like law or academia. I quit my job to write a book that became kindly inquisitors, the new attacks on free thought,. published by a university f chicago press and the cato institute t e libertarian thing tan in 19 93. That book got a front page review in the new york times book review, and then disappeared without a trace. Now it's going to be a classic.

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.