In this episode, we discuss Fake News. What is it? Is it something new? Can we do something about it? Or do we have to accept it as a necessary evil, and can we then perhaps learn how to deal with it? We have a conversation with Steven Rathje, a young psychologist who recently joined New York University after graduate work at Cambridge, and who is studying the emergence of fake news and the psychology of social media.
We are speaking with Joshua Tucker, a professor of political science at New York University. Dr. Tucker has studied comparative politics with an emphasis on mass politics, including elections and voting, the development of partisan attachment, public opinion formation, and political protest, as well as how social media usage affects all of these types of political behavior. Arguably the scope of Dr. Tucker's research has never been more relevant than it is today, We have two worlds with their own media, their own set of beliefs, their own geographical environment. Are people embroiled in debates over gun rights, abortion rights, and taxes ... or is there a deeper fundamental divide within our country?
We have become politically more divided than we have been in a long time. Why is this? What’s happening to us? Why do we argue so much with each other about racism, constitutional rights, border security, about freedom? What is it that we get so upset about? Why are we so tribal? And what conditions make us so divided now – what is it in the current era of human history that makes us so upset with each other? Every week, we invite a thinker who will shine a light on the question: why are we so angry?