Podcasts about american unreason

The media's focus on military and warfare consumes a vast amount of attention, neglecting other major threats. Today, Colin Robertson sits down Joe Ingram, Dr. Ted Manning, Geoff Strong and Andrew Welch to discuss global warming, harming biodiversity, health impacts, and refusal to acknowledge the need for social change. // Participants' bios - Joe Ingram is the Chairman of GreenTech labs, served with the International Development Agency, former President/CEO of the North-South Institute, was the Deputy Director at the World Bank Institute, including as its Special Representative to the UN and WTO. - Dr. Ted Manning is the President of Tourisk Inc., a consultant to the UN World Tourism Organization, advisor to the World Wildlife Fund and lectures in tourism and environmental topics internationally. - Geoff Strong is an atmospheric climate scientist, sits of the Board of Directors for the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome, a fellow and former national President of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. He was nominated in 2023 for the prestigious Patterson Medal from Environment Canada. - Andrew Welch is the author of The Value Crisis and sits of the Board of Directors for the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome. He is an Emergency Response Team Site Manager (volunteer) with the Canadian Red Cross, and was a founding member of their National Disaster Management Evaluation Team. // Host bio: Colin Robertson is a former diplomat and Senior Advisor to the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, www.cgai.ca/colin_robertson // Reading Recommendations: - "Canadian Industry and Security on an Age of Existential Threat", by Joe Ingram. - The Value Crisis, by Andrew Welch. - Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change, by Vinod Thomas. - The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies, by Susan Jacoby. - Sustainable Tourism in the Americas, by Ted Manning. - Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. - Anaximander: And the Birth of Science, by Carlo Rovelli. // Music Credit: Drew Phillips | Producer: Jordyn Carroll // Recording Date: February 18, 2025 Release date: March 24, 2025

Welcome to another episode of the Bowie Book Club, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie’s favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read a wide-ranging screed on the intellectual wasteland of current American culture - Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason. And Greg reveals his ignorance of fairly presidential elections. Fun! #tuesdaygoths

  Susan Jacoby is an independent scholar specializing  in the history of reason, atheism, secularism, and religious liberty. Her best-known books include Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism and the New York Times best-seller, The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies.   At turns passionate, ardent, funny, and defiant, Jacoby lives her truth and embodies the vibrance of her beliefs. 

Encore release September 24, 2018. Encore release June 17, 2017. We interview Susan Jacoby, journalist and outspoken nonbeliever, about her new book The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought. Susan is also the author of (among other titles) Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism and The Age of American Unreason. The Great Agnostic is available in hardcover and forKindle. Also, be sure to read Susan's recent essay in the New York Times, "The Blessings of Atheism." For more about Susan and her work visit SusanJacoby.com. Plus: John recommends the book Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State and the Birth of Liberty by John M. Barry. On a non-freethought note, John also recommends the 1954 proto-Indiana-Jones adventure flick Secret of the Incas, starring Charlton Heston, and featuring the "Peruvian Songbird" Yma Sumac (for ultimately kitschy goodness, check out Sumac's albumMambo).

Talking to Trump voters during the campaign, we'd sometimes hear what felt like a unified sentiment bubbling up beneath the popular, and populist, reasons for supporting their candidate. Retired truck mechanic Fiore Napolitano from Long Island put it this way: "You talk to these idiots, supposed to be doctors and this and that, scientists, they got [expletive] for brains," he said. "They have no common sense.” Trump was Napolitano's man because he did not speak like a credentialed expert or someone with an Ivy League degree — the type of person whose depth of learning might actually make them dumb. About those kinds of people, Napolitano added, "I got more brains in my little thumb." What's up, America? Why the qualms about erudition and expertise? Where does this wariness spring from, and what role did it play in the rise of Donald Trump — opposed by just about every intellectual associated with either party but whose supporters simply did not care about that? Connie and Fiore Napolitano at a roadside hot dog stand off Montauk Highway in Suffolk County. (Chris Arnade ) In this episode, we tell the story of anti-intellectualism in America life. We talk to the learned and those who loathe them, including writers and commentators, a neuroscientist and a gun shop owner in a red-voting part of upstate New York. We quote a fiery pamphlet penned by a yeoman farmer from the Revolutionary Era, and we delve into the book that describes and frames this issue better and more enduringly than any other. We also explore insights by the author of that book, a Columbia University professor who wore a bow tie and Clark Kent glasses and whose grad students recalled that "he was continually hitching up his sagging trousers." A real egghead, in other words. Susan Jacoby is author of the 2008 book, "The Age of American Unreason," which she is revising for republication this fall. "New examples of unreason keep cropping up every minute," she quipped to WNYC Studios. She says the current tensions in our politics would surprise no one with a grasp of this country's history. "When people talk about two Americas today, wide-eyed, as though this were something new or we are more culturally divided now than we were 150 years ago or after the American Revolution, they're wrong," she declared before talking about the Puritans and their love of books. Jim O’Grady walks us through the centuries-long debate about intellectualism, elitism, and our reverence for the common man. Episode Contributors: Kai Wright Jim O'Grady Karen Frillmann Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts.

I read from an article written by Ray Williams of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY Wired for Success Anti-Intellectualism and the "Dumbing Down" of America Posted Jul 07, 2014 There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It’s the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility. Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, says in an article in the Washington Post, "Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism." There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western countries. Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science have been infused into America’s political and social fabric. Famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once said: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Mark Bauerlein, in his book, The Dumbest Generation, reveals how a whole generation of youth is being dumbed down by their aversion to reading anything of substance and their addiction to digital "crap" via social media. Journalist Charles Pierce, author of Idiot America, adds another perspective: “The rise of idiot America today represents--for profit mainly, but also and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power--the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they are talking about. In the new media age, everybody is an expert.” “There’s a pervasive suspicion of rights, privileges, knowledge and specialization,” says Catherine Liu, the author of American Idyll: Academic Antielitism as Cultural Critique and a film and media studies professor at University of California. The very mission of universities has changed, argues Liu. “We don’t educate people anymore. We train them to get jobs.” Part of the reason for the rising anti-intellectualism can be found in the declining state of education in the U.S. compared to other advanced countries: After leading the world for decades in 25-34 year olds with university degrees, the U.S. is now in 12th place. The World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. at 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly 50% of all graduate students in the sciences in the U.S. are foreigners, most of whom are returning to their home countries; The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs commissioned a civic education poll among public school students. A surprising 77% didn't know that George Washington was the first President; couldn't name Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence; and only 2.8% of the students actually passed the citizenship test. Along similar lines, the Goldwater Institute of Phoenix did the same survey and only 3.5% of students passed the civics test; According to the National Research Council report, only 28% of high school science teachers consistently follow the National Research Council guidelines on teaching evolution, and 13% of those teachers explicitly advocate creationism or "intelligent design;" 18% of Americans still believe that the sun revolves around the earth, according to a Gallup poll; The American Association of State Colleges and Universities report on education shows that the U.S. ranks second among all nations in the proportion of the population aged 35-64 with a college degree, but 19th in the percentage of those aged 25-34 with an associate or high school diploma, which means that for the first time, the educational attainment of young people will be lower than their parents; 74% of Republicans in the U.S. Senate and 53% in the House of Representatives deny the validity of climate change despite the findings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and every other significant scientific organization in the world; According to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 68% of public school children in the U.S. do not read proficiently by the time they finish third grade. And the U.S. News & World reported that barely 50% of students are ready for college level reading when they graduate; According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important;" According to the National Endowment for the Arts report in 1982, 82% of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later only 67% did. And more than 40% of Americans under 44 did not read a single book--fiction or nonfiction--over the course of a year. The proportion of 17 year olds who read nothing (unless required by school ) has doubled between 1984-2004; Gallup released a poll indicating 42 percent of Americans still believe God created human beings in their present form less than 10,000 years ago; A 2008 University of Texas study found that 25 percent of public school biology teachers believe that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth simultaneously. In American schools, the culture exalts the athlete and good-looking cheerleader. Well-educated and intellectual students are commonly referred to in public schools and the media as "nerds," "dweebs," "dorks," and "geeks," and are relentlessly harassed and even assaulted by the more popular "jocks" for openly displaying any intellect.  These anti-intellectual attitudes are not reflected in students in most European or Asian countries, whose educational levels have now equaled and and will surpass that of the U.S.  And most TV shows or movies such as The Big Bang Theory depict intellectuals as being geeks if not effeminate. John W. Traphagan ,Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Texas, argues the problem is that Asian countries have core cultural values that are more akin to a cult of intelligence and education than a cult of ignorance and anti-intellectualism. In Japan, for example, teachers are held in high esteem and normally viewed as among the most important members of a community. There is suspicion and even disdain for the work of teachers that occurs in the U.S. Teachers in Japan typically are paid significantly more than their peers in the U.S. The profession of teaching is one that is seen as being of central value in Japanese society and those who choose that profession are well compensated in terms of salary, pension, and respect for their knowledge and their efforts on behalf of children. In addition, we do not see in Japan significant numbers of the types of religious schools that are designed to shield children from knowledge about basic tenets of science and accepted understandings of history--such as evolutionary theory or the religious views of the Founding Fathers, who were largely deists--which are essential to having a fundamental understanding of the world, Traphagan contends. The reason for this is because in general Japanese value education, value the work of intellectuals, and see a well-educated public with a basic common knowledge in areas of scientific fact, math, history, literature, etc. as being an essential foundation to a successful democracy. We’re creating a world of dummies. Angry dummies who feel they have the right, the authority and the need not only to comment on everything, but to make sure their voice is heard above the rest, and to drag down any opposing views through personal attacks, loud repetition and confrontation. Bill Keller, writing in the New York Times argues that the anti-intellectual elitism is not an elitism of wisdom, education, experience or knowledge. The new elite are the angry social media posters, those who can shout loudest and more often, a clique of bullies and malcontents baying together like dogs cornering a fox. Too often it’s a combined elite of the anti-intellectuals and the conspiracy followers – not those who can voice the most cogent, most coherent response. Together they forment a rabid culture of anti-rationalism where every fact is suspect; every shadow holds a secret conspiracy. Rational thought is the enemy. Critical thinking is the devil’s tool. Keller also notes that the herd mentality takes over online; the anti-intellectuals become the metaphorical equivalent of an angry lynch mob when anyone either challenges one of the mob beliefs or posts anything outside the mob’s self-limiting set of values. Keller blames this in part to the online universe that “skews young, educated and attentive to fashions.” Fashion, entertainment, spectacle, voyeurism – we’re directed towards trivia, towards the inconsequential, towards unquestioning and blatant consumerism. This results in intellectual complacency. People accept without questioning, believe without weighing the choices, join the pack because in a culture where convenience rules, real individualism is too hard work. Thinking takes too much time: it gets in the way of the immediacy of the online experience. Reality TV and pop culture presented in magazines and online sites claim to provide useful information about the importance of The Housewives of [you name the city] that can somehow enrich our lives. After all, how else can one explain the insipid and pointless stories that tout divorces, cheating and weight gain? How else can we explain how the Kardashians,or Paris Hilton are known for being famous for being famous without actually contributing anything worth discussion? The artificial events of their lives become the mainstay of populist media to distract people from the real issues and concerns facing us. The current trend of increasing anti-intellectualism now establishing itself in politics and business leadership, and supported by a declining education system should be a cause for concern for leaders and the general population,one that needs to be addressed now.

Today most Americans have never heard of Robert Green Ingersoll but in the 19th century he was considered one of the greatest orators of his age. Known as "the Great Agnostic", Ingersoll criticized religion and championed progressive political causes with great ferocity, wit and humor. Though his writings are controversial even by today's standards his personal charm was so disarming that people would travel miles for a chance to hear him speak. Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers and the Age of American Unreason joins us to talk about her new biography of Ingersoll and to illuminate how his courage and integrity continues to inspire to this day. Also on this episode: Unlike Ingersoll, Pope Francis seems to have more charm than courage and the doubtcasters enjoy a hearty "I told you so" moment thanks to a new study on the impact of free will/ determinism belief on ones larger worldview.

Host: Chris Mooney Our guest this week is Susan Jacoby. She's the bestselling author of a number of books about secularism and American culture, including Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism and The Age of American Unreason. Jacoby started her career at the Washington Post, and her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Newsday, Harper's, The Nation, Vogue, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the AARP Magazine, among other publications. Her latest book, just published and the subject of our interview, is The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought.

In general, the U. S. Today does not challenge its citizens including athletes to truly learn how to think rationally, critically and inquire. This impacts growth & performance in sports at all levels. What can be done? Guest Susan Jacoby, author of nine books on American culture-most recent, The Age of American Unreason-shares her ideas […] The post Championship Thinking in Sports – Sports Not Immune to Dumbed-Down Culture appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.

Grant Steves interviews Jack Caravela about the book by Susan Jacoby, Age of American Unreason.

Grant Steves interviews Jack Caravela about the book by Susan Jacoby, Age of American Unreason.

Susan Jacoby is the author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. A prominent public intellectual, she frequently appears in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Free Inquiry. Her latest best selling book is The Age of American Unreason. In this conversation with D.J. Grothe, Susan Jacoby explores recent trends that she argues have led to the "Age of American Unreason," including religious fundamentalism, mass media consumption and "video culture," and multiculturalism. She addresses how fundamentalism feeds anti-intellectualism in America, and how not only fundamentalism can be blamed for it. She details both the upside and the downside of the internet, the perils of too much TV viewing, and the effect of such over-consumtion on the cultural literacy of average Americans. She addresses criticism that she is merely "elitist" or a "luddite," and ends with specifics on how people can work to challenge the Age of American Unreason.

An interview with Susan Jacoby author of "The Age of American Unreason." Jacoby paints a disturbing portrait of a mutant strain of public ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism that has developed over the past four decades and now threatens the future of American democracy. Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, she dissects a culture at odds with America's heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern knowledge and science. Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness has been defined downward throughout American society-on the political right and the left. America's endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by a popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic. Jacoby is the author of eight books. She is also program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, a rationalist think tank with offices in Lower Manhattan.

American Unreason, Instant Income, Graduation Jitters Susan Jacoby discusses the forces of ignorance with The Age of American Unreason. Janet Switzer boosts revenues swiftly with Instant Income. Heather Brittany and Cynthia Brian offer ways to calm the Graduation Jitters in T42.

How is it, that in an age of unprecedented access to information, ignorance and anti-reason could be so widespread in American society? Susan Jacoby author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism joins us to discuss her latest book, the Age of American Unreason. During the "golden age of American freethought" the great agnostic Robert Ingersoll could argue for religious skepticism before huge and ideologically diverse audiences. But in a world where video culture has replaced print culture, where sound-bytes and 24 hour infotainment have replaced thoughtful dialogue, Americans are able to isolate themselves from other viewpoints that might challenge their own. Can freethinkers learn anything from their own intellectual heritage, that will aid them in combating unreason today? Also: Buddhist violence, another installment of God Thinks Like You, listener e-mails and a totally psychedelic Stranger Than Fiction. Check out the Reasonable Doubts Podcast group on Facebook.com or myspace.com/doubtcast for a full length "spring break" bonus episode of Reasonable Doubts including SKEPTICS GONE WILD: uncensored outtakes and bloopers from previous episodes. Reasonable Doubts: Your skeptical guide to religion offering news and commentary of interest to skeptics, atheists, humanists, apologists looking for a challenge and freethinkers of all persuasions.

Journalist and freethinker Susan Jacoby, author of the new book, The Age of American Unreason, who also wrote Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, is interviewed on this weekend's show.

From the author of Freethinkers, a dazzlingly insightful-and occasionally hilarious-analysis of the anti-rationalism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-scientism that increasingly characterizes the cultural and intellectual life of this country.

Mike talks with Susan Jacoby, an independent scholar specializing in the history of reason, atheism, secularism, and religious liberty. She's the bestselling author of 12 books, including '[Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism](http://amzn.to/2FnHx9T)' and 'The Age of American Unreason', which just came out in a new, updated edition titled ['The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies](http://amzn.to/2Foubdk)'. They discuss American anti-intellectualism, the meaning of unreason, if unreason has become a bigger problem in recent years, whether this is a bipartisan phenomenon, if Donald Trump is an aberration or a sign of things to come, and lots more. [Susan Jacoby's Website](http://www.susanjacoby.co/) **Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible.** If you're interested in supporting the show, go to [politicsguys.com](http://www.politicsguys.com) and click on the Patreon or PayPal link. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-politics-guys/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy