“And it’s so aggressive. It’s so effective at bullying people into feeling like they’re either morally bad or stupid like that. They don’t get it. They don’t understand. You know, these scholars have come up with all this great theory and you don’t even understand all of its details. That it gets people who are otherwise smart and good to go along with it.”
Why are mathematicians saying 2+2 doesn’t necessarily equal 4? Why are protestors toppling statues of not only slave owners but also abolitionists? Why were executives at a leading nuclear research lab in America sent to mandatory training that described “focus on hard work” and “striving toward success” as problematic aspects of white male culture?
In this episode, James Lindsay joins us for a deep dive into what’s going on in our culture today. With Helen Pluckrose, he co-wrote “Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody.”
