3min chapter

You Are Not So Smart cover image

256 - The Persuaders - Anand Giridharadas

You Are Not So Smart

CHAPTER

The Persuaders

Anand Gadaas is a journalist and author of four books. The Persuaders is the newest, is the fourth in the series. "I write about people and change," he says. He was inspired by Tocqueville's work on democracy.

00:00
Speaker 2
So let's just get right into it. Here is our discussion with a non-geared artist, the author of The Persuaders.
Speaker 1
I am Anand Gadaas. I'm a journalist and author of four books. And The Persuaders is the newest, is the fourth in the series. And I write about people and change, I would say. People are trying to make change, people are trying to withstand change, people are trying to change each other, people in change.
Speaker 2
That's great. How did this become an obsession for you?
Speaker 1
I think I am someone who has a deep conviction in and passion for the idea of democracy. And democracy, not in the narrow sense that we often talk about it, you know, voting or some other kind of civic behavior that we may do occasionally. But democracy as a culture, democracy as a way of life. And democracy as a set of ideas about all of us being equal, a set of beliefs around 24, 7, 3, 65, conversating among everyone as the way we choose the future. And so a lot of my books have been about, I was very educated by the work of Tocqueville in America. A lot of my work is about the kind of broader culture of democracy he wrote about in various contexts. My first book was about India. I was a foreign correspondent in India for the New York Times. And there was a lot of things happening in India in the moment that I was there in the 2000s. But the thing that I felt was most significant that was happening there was a collision between an ancient, quite in some ways quite intact ancient culture, incredibly stratified hierarchical culture that was built on the idea that everybody has a role, a duty, a prescribed role, a role that you don't make up in your head, but that you get from the world, from your family, from others, a position. And that idea was colliding with a new idea that was coming to India, which is what Tocqueville called the leveling principle, the idea, the heart of democracy, which is people are, no one has been in anybody else. People can make their own fate, make their own destiny. And those ideas were in real collision in India, the new idea of making your own destiny colliding against the old idea of finding out your destiny from the world and following it. And so from that, that was my first book and my first reporting assignment. And I think from then on, I've just been really interested in that broader notion of democracy. Again, not just voting, but the idea is that define how we live in a society where we choose the future.

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