Thinking Clearly

With the view that America is now as polarized as it has been since the civil war, and that this amount of polarization drastically impairs our democratic process, the organization Braver Angels was founded "to bring Americans together to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic." From his experience as head of marketing, digital, and communications strategy for Braver Angels, Ciaran O’Connor discusses political depolarization, the work of Braver Angels, and what people who use the variety of programs offered by Braver Angels can experience and learn.

When making a judgment about what to do or believe—when there are risks involved—it becomes important to look at the consequences of our choices, and this involves accurately assessing both the risks and benefits of those choices. With the help of guest David Ropeik, who coined the term "perception gap" and has authored two books on the subject, Bob and Julia examine risk-benefit as a critical thinking tool.

Starting with a discussion of taking an evolutionary perspective and then briefly describing: Human Evolutionary History, Predictive Processing, The Dual Processing Model, Cultural Co-evolution, Group Polarization, Identity Protective Cognition, and the impact of Cultural Change on Polarization, the hosts conclude with thoughts about the COVID pandemic as a challenge to our ability to find common ground and work cooperatively toward common goals.

As many of us search for ways to escape from this post-truth world and set foot on solid ground where we can trust each other to make legitimate arguments about our differing beliefs and strive together to find shared truths, Jonathan Rauch, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, offers a possible path forward. Jonathan is an experienced journalist, deep thinker and author of eight books and numerous articles on a wide variety of topics. His most recent book is: The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.

As part of background research for his new book How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason, philosopher, educator, and author Lee McIntyre attended the 2018 Flat Earth International Conference in Denver Co. In this episode, Professor McIntyre discusses that experience, describes the nature of science denialism, and suggests what to do when we encounter it.

Colonel (retired) Steve Gerras teaches critical thinking at the Army War College. On this edition of Thinking Clearly, he shares his advocacy and passion for the subject, and his experiences of teaching it to future military leaders. Professor Gerras has a Masters Degree and PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Pennsylvania State University and has authored and coauthored many publications including the widely circulated: “Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession.”

The term “attention economy” has become a buzzword in our current zeitgeist. But 30 to 40 years ago Michael Goldhaber, who has a PhD in physics coupled with a passionate 1960’s brewed concern about social and political justice, began thinking and writing  about human attention as a scarce resource and made predictions about how the newly emerging internet would interact with our attention and eventually transition us to an attention economy. His early predictions were then rediscovered and described in a New York Times article published in Feb., 2021. Topics discussed in this episode include: the attention economy, how it contributes to misinformation and what we can all do can do to reduce the pollution in our information environments.

Hosts, Bob Froehlich and Julia Minton, review the Thinking Clearly definition (and longer description) of critical thinking and discuss the importance that genuine curiosity has to the critical thinking process. They then discuss a number of "deep questions" that have grown out of their background research from doing Thinking Clearly for almost five years. 

With their guest Andy Norman, Bob and Julia discuss the idea of applying biomedical concepts such as infection, immunity, and inoculation to what happens when humans are exposed to invasive false, misleading and harmful ideas and beliefs. Andy Norman is the author of the recent book: Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think and the founder of CIRCE, The Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative.

Dr. Bill Doherty, professor in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota, joins hosts Bob and Julia to discuss how to best manage those difficult political discussions with family and friends who have viewpoints sharply different from ours. Also discussed is the work of Braver Angels, an organization co-founded by Bill Doherty with a mission to: “bring Americans together to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic.”