Jul 29, 2017
Tom Nichols is the guest on this
week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a
professor of national security affairs at United States Naval War
College and also teaches at the Harvard Extension School. His new
book is “The
Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and
Why It Matters.”
During this episode of The
Chauncey DeVega Show, Tom and Chauncey discuss the ways that
anti-intellectualism, greed, and societal affluence led to the
victory of Donald Trump, the American public's increasing disdain
towards experts and the very idea of expert knowledge, the role of
the internet and social media in the country's broken public
discourse and politics, and how the importance of reading and
literacy has become increasingly suspect in the United
States.
Historian John
Broich also stops by the podcast to discuss his
great essay over at Slate about the new movie Dunkirk and
what it gets right (and wrong) about that epic World War 2
battle.
In this week's episode, Chauncey
DeVega is both horrified and very entertained by Donald Trump's
very special week that involved the child-king emperor telling boy
scouts about his very rich friend's orgy on a yacht, encouraging
America's out of control police to brutalize black and brown people
(i.e. "suspects"), and sharing torture porn stories about how drug
gangs are ravaging good and innocent (white) American
women.
Chauncey also gives thanks and
honors the kind folks who donated to the June fundraiser to support
the podcast and his other work.