Smart people are too powerful | David Goodhart - Ideas Sleep Furiously Podcast E07

David Goodhart is a British journalist, commentator and author. He is the founder and a former editor of Prospect magazine. He's probably most famous for his 2017 book The Road to Somewhere in which  he argued that a fault line existed in Britain between "Somewheres", those people firmly connected to a specific community which consists of about half the population, and "Anywheres", those usually living in cities, who are socially liberal and well educated, the latter being only a minority of about 20% to 25% of the total population, but who in fact had "over-ruled" the attitudes of the majority. This divide is something which is by no means unique to Britain, it's highly relevant to America with both Brexit and Trump being a revolt led by the Somewheres.   In this conversation, David and I talk about his most recent book, Head Hand Heart, in which he argues that a good society needs a balance between aptitudes relating to cognitive skills, manual skills, and caring skills. David argues that the recent decades in the West have seen far too much emphasis on rewarding cognitive ability as the gold standard of human esteem. For David, readjusting this balance is the story of the struggle for status and dignity in the 21st century.