The motto of Dialogues with Richard Reeves is "thinking together in relationship". This podcast features in-depth, lively conversations with leading thinkers on the big questions facing modern societies. dialoguespod@gmail.com @richardvreeves
Episodes
Friday Jun 04, 2021
Friday Jun 04, 2021
Facebook just imposed a two-year ban on Donald Trump for inciting the Jan 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. I talked to Nick Clegg, VP for Global Affairs and Communications at Facebook, about the decision - and how the company will handle public figures on the platform from now on. We also discuss the challenges of striking a balance between free speech and protection from harm; the mistake I think the company made in banning some content about the possible origins of COVID-19; how “frothy techno-utopianism” has curdled into a form of “techno-pessimism”; the choice between open and closed politics; the paternalism implicit in many critiques of social media; the urgent need for government regulation; how the company’s Oversight Board could be an embryonic regulator for the industry as whole; how JS Mill got it right about when to curb speech that could lead to violence; elitism in politics; why he’s really not an aristocrat; the pros and cons of life in California; and much more.
Nick Clegg
Nick has been Vice‑President for Global Affairs and Communications at Facebook since 2018, having previously served as Deputy Prime Minister of the UK from 2010 to 2015, as Leader of the Liberal Democrat party from 2007 to 2015, as Member of Parliament (MP) for Sheffield Hallam from 2005 to 2017, and as a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2004. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor 2018 for political and public service. Fun fact: he used to fact-check Christopher Hitchens at The Nation.
More Clegg
- Read his important Medium piece from March 31st: You and the Algorithm: It Takes Two to Tango
- Here’s an opinion piece in which he calls for more regulation: Facebook’s Nick Clegg calls for bipartisan approach to break the deadlock on internet regulation
- A good interview here with the Decoder podcast, Facebook's VP of Global Affairs doesn’t think the platform is polarizing
- In October 2017, Nick wrote How To Stop Brexit (And Make Britain Great Again)
Also mentioned
- This line was published in the New York Post: “What was the point of the American Revolution if some aristocratic British nerd can decide which Americans get to speak?”
- Nick referred to Facebook’s Community Standards (just updated), which define hate speech and other rules of content on the platform.
- We talked a lot about Facebook’s Oversight Board. In its Charter, the purpose of the board is described as being “to protect free expression by making principled, independent decisions about important pieces of content and by issuing policy advisory opinions on Facebook’s content policies.”
- After Facebook banned Trump indefinitely, the Oversight Board was critical: here is the case report in which they wrote, “In applying a vague, standardless penalty and then referring this case to the Board to resolve, Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities. The Board declines Facebook’s request and insists that Facebook apply and justify a defined penalty.” Nick released a statement in response to this news.
- I referred to the UK’s Social Mobility Commission
- More details on the recent reversal of the decision to ban content suggesting that Covid could be man-made
- Mark Zuckerburg said in a speech at Georgetown in 2019: “I’m proud that our values at Facebook are inspired by the American tradition, which is more supportive of free expression than anywhere else.” Additionally, in May 2020, he said Facebook should not act as an “arbiter of truth”
- I referenced this passage from On Liberty (Ch III): “An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard.”
The Dialogues Team
Creator: Richard Reeves
Research: Ashleigh Maciolek
Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas
Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves
Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)
Monday May 31, 2021
Monday May 31, 2021
If bail decisions were made by an Artificial Intelligence instead of judges, repeat crime rates among applicants could be cut by 25%. That is because an AI is consistent in its judgements: human judges are not.
This variation in in bail decisions, as well as in sentencing, and many medical diagnoses and underwriting decisions are all examples of what Cass Sunstein calls "Noise" - unwanted variation in professional judgement, which is the theme of his new book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement, co authored with Danny Kahneman and Olivier Sibony. Professional judgement and discretion sound great in theory - especially to the professionals themselves - but in practice they end up creating a lottery in some high-stakes situations.
He tells me why there should be statues of the legal reformer Marvin Frankel all across the land; how we can reduce the "creep factor" of AI decision-making; how early movers influence opinion especially through social media, and much more.
Cass Sunstein
Cass Sunstein is a professor at Harvard Law School, as well as the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. He has written hundreds of articles and numerous books, ranging from constitutional law to Star Wars. He has also served in several government positions, formerly in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in Obama’s first administration and currently in the Department of Homeland Security to shape immigration laws. Sunstein’s influence is wide-reaching, most notably from his work on advancing the field of behavioral economics, making him one of the most frequently cited scholars. He is also a recipient of the Holberg Prize and has several appointments in global organizations, including the World Health Organization.
More from Cass Sunstein
- Read “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement” co-authored with Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony
- Read his widely influential 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” co-authored with Richard Thaler, as well as his later book “Why Nudge? The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism”
- Dig into his work on “norm cascades”, as well as how group polarization works in jury pools
- Check out his previous work on jury behavior with Kahneman including “Assessing Punitive Damages” or “Are Juries Less Erratic than Individuals?”
Also mentioned
- Cass mentioned the 2007 asylum study by Schoenholtz, et al. titled “Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication”
- I referred to this NBER paper by Eren & Mocan showing that the behavior of judges can be influenced by arbitrary factors, including by the outcome of local sports games.
- Cass brought up the work of Sendhil Mullainathan, which includes a study on “Human Decisions and Machine Predictions” and another on “Who Is Tested for Heart Attack and Who Should Be”
- We discussed the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 which imposed guidelines for criminal sentencing but was essentially dismantled in a 2004 Supreme Court ruling
- Learn more about the APGAR infant score
- Jim Surowiecki, the author of “The Wisdom of Crowds,” discusses the weight of the cow parable on an episode of Planet Money
- Yet the wisdom of crowds phenomenon is often diminished when the group discusses their judgements and are exposed to social influence, as demonstrated by the study: “How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect”
- In 2006, Duncan Watts, along with two co-authors, explored how early downloads were instrumental in predicting popularity in their article “Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market”
- I quoted John Stuart Mill in Utilitarianism, “Men often, from infirmity of character, make their election for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less valuable”
- Cass referred to Mill’s harm principle, something he expands upon here.
- We also discussed Patrick Deneen’s book “Why Liberalism Failed”
The Dialogues Team
Creator: Richard Reeves
Research: Ashleigh Maciolek
Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas
Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves
Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)
Monday May 24, 2021
Monday May 24, 2021
Is Islam compatible with liberal values, like human rights and gender equality? Mustafa Akyol, my guest today, believes so: but only if Islam itself becomes more liberal. In other words, there is a theological argument to win first. I think Mustafa is one of the most important Islamic intellectuals at work today. In our conversation, we focus on his brand-new book, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance.
We talk about the "road not taken" towards Islamic Enlightenment after the “Islamic golden age”, marked by a strong sense of cosmopolitanism and Greek philosophy; meet some some of the key liberal figures from liberal Islamic history, especially Ibn Rushd, the man who introduced Aristotle to the West; and discuss how to interpret the three key strands of Islamic teachings, namely the Qurʼān, the hadiths (sayings attributed to the Prophet Mohammed) and Sharia Law.
But we start with how Mustafa's work has impacted him personally, including in his home country of Turkey, and how after giving a speech in Malaysia arguing that you can't police religion, he was arrested and jailed: by the Religion Police. This led to what he says was the worst night of his life.
Mustafa Akyol
Mustafa Akyol is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and a contributing writer to the New York Times. Previously, he was a Senior Visiting Fellow at Wellesley College’s Freedom Project and has written three books exploring the intersection of Islam and modernity. Originally from Turkey, Akyol spent many years as a journalist for two popular newspapers.
More Mustafa
- Read his new book Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance
- Check out his Freedom in the Muslim World report from Cato
- Explore his opinion column at the New York Times
- Watch his Ted Talk on Islamic faith and tradition
- See more on his website
Also Mentioned
- Our joint article in Foreign Policy on the Hagia Sophia, which we also did a podcast on
- Watch the talk he gave in Malaysia on the topic of apostasy, after which he was arrested by the Malay religious police.
- Learn more about Ibn Rushd and his contribution to Islamic jurisprudence
- Raphael’s famous fresco The School of Athens
- I mentioned Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence, in which he wrote “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable”
- The Romans 2:15 passage that God’s law is “written in their hearts”
- In 1947, President Muhammad Ali Jinnah spoke to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan and said, “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”
The Dialogues Team
Creator: Richard Reeves
Research: Ashleigh Maciolek
Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas
Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves
Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)
Monday May 17, 2021
Monday May 17, 2021
My guest on this episode is an intellectual giant, the philosopher and legal scholar Martha Nussbaum. Her work has been kaleidoscopic in scope, covering Greek and Roman philosophy, especially Aristotle, as well as liberalism, feminism, human rights, forgiveness, justice, the arts, the role of emotions and much, much more.
Our conversation is mostly about her new book Citadels of Pride, which tackles the issues of sexual assault and harassment and how to create systems for what she calls forward-looking justice, rather than backward-looking revenge. It is a timely book, covering the controversial issue of Title IX which governs the treatment of assault and harassment claims on college campuses, as well as the strengths and limits of the #MeToo movement.
We also talk about the corruption of Division 1 college sports; the problems caused by the legal drinking age; why public shaming is a bad idea (and one that feminists especially should be especially wary of); and how the sin of pride lies at the heart of sexist views of women.
We discuss Martha's own experience of being assaulted in 1968 by Ralph Waite, the actor made famous for his role as the father in the The Waltons, her guilt at not naming him earlier, and how much progress has been made in law in the decades since. We also touch on her forthcoming work on animal rights.
Martha Nussbaum
Martha Nussbaum is a Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago working across the Law School, the Philosophy Department, the Classics Department, the Political Science Department, the Divinity School, as a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and as a Board Member of the Human Rights Program. She has numerous appointments and honorary degrees around the globe and is renowned for her work in Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy (especially Aristotle), feminist philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of the arts, and animal rights. Most recently Martha was awarded the Holberg Prize which recognizes scholars for their work in the arts, humanities, social sciences, law, and/or theology.
More Nussbaum
- Read her new book “Citadels of Pride: Sexual Assault, Accountability, and Reconciliation” and her piece “Why Some Men Are Above the Law” in which she first draws attention to her own personal experience.
- Watch her Holberg Lecture “Justice for Animals: Practical Progress through Philosophical Theory” on June 8, 2021.
- Read Martha’s animal rights pieces, “Legal Protection for Whales” and “The Legal Status of Whales and Dolphins”, both co-authored with her daughter Rachel.
Also mentioned
- Check out Jake Heggie’s opera “Dead Man Walking”, based on Sister Helen’s book of the same name
- Read more about pride as a vice in Dante’s Purgatorio and the story of Emperor Trajan
- In 1955, Mamie Till-Mobley told her son Emmett to not “look the white folks in the eye” before he travelled to Mississippi
- Martha referenced Ishmael Reed’s book “Reckless Eyeballing”
- Read more about
- Read Dan Harmon’s public apology to his coworker Megan Ganz
- Martha referenced St. Paul in Romans 12:20 in which he said "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head"
- Read the Parable of the Prodigal Son
- Check out this data sheet on D1 Football Sexual Assault Events
- Read Obama’s “Dear Colleague” Letter and the changes that Secretary DeVos made
- Visit the Friends of Animals website, where Martha’s daughter Rachel worked
The Dialogues Team
Creator: Richard Reeves
Research: Ashleigh Maciolek
Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas
Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves
Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)
Monday May 10, 2021
Monday May 10, 2021
Chris Mason is a Professor of Genomics, Physiology, and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine, and works with NASA on the impact of space travel on the human genome. Chris is a really big and really interesting thinker and has a book out, The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds, in which he argues that humans have a moral duty to escape not only planet earth, but ultimately the solar system in order to save our species. He also suggests that genetic engineering will be needed in order to give us what he calls "armor on the inside" in order to survive on different planets.
It's a good time to dive into these questions, given that we're in a new era in space travel, with helicopters flying around Mars and missions to both the moon and Mars being planned. We discuss the why, when and how of his 500-year plan to save humanity, which starts with establishing settlements on Mars. We also talk about his unusual twin study, examining the genetic impact of astronaut Scott Kelly's year in space by way of comparison to his now earthbound identical twin brother Mark Kelly, who is a former astronaut and now of course a Senator for the State of Arizona. We also debate the ethics of genetic research here on earth right now, and the risks that it will worsen social inequalities. And obviously we talk about the sci-fi TV series The Expanse - what it got right as well as what it got wrong. It's a wide-ranging conversation - I hope you enjoy it.
More from Chris Mason
- Read his new book “The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds” (2021) and his op-ed “On Exploring Mars and Saving Endangered Species.”
- For more, see his ten phase plan of achieving life on Mars and check out the work that his laboratory - The Mason Lab - does.
- Follow him on twitter: @mason_lab
Also mentioned
- In his book, A Tract on Monetary Reform, Keynes wrote “In the long run, we’re all dead” (p.80).
- In his speech, Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre claimed that “existence precedes essence.”
- Read The NASA Twins Study by Mason and Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery (2017) by Scott Kelly
- Klara and the Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958) by Michael Young
- The Fall of Meritocracy (2015) by Toby Young
- Watch The Expanse
The Dialogues Team
Creator: Richard Reeves
Research: Ashleigh Maciolek
Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas
Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves
Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)
Monday May 03, 2021
Monday May 03, 2021
The federal death penalty returned with a vengeance at the end of Donald Trump's term, with 13 of the 17 executions of the last 60 years taking place in 2020. The New York Times opinion writer Liz Bruenig has been reporting and reflecting on this shift in policy. Here she shares her experience of witnessing the execution of Alfred Bourgeois in December 2020. We also talk about the politics and policy of the death penalty, the moral and theological arguments against it (St Augustine and Pope Francis feature here), and what the future holds for the death penalty in the U.S. Liz also describes how a murder of a close family member influenced her work in this area.
Elizabeth Bruenig:
Twitter @ebruenig
Elizabeth Bruenig is an opinion writer for the New York Times, with previous positions at the Washington Post and the New Republic. She writes at the intersection of theology, ethics, and politics and in 2019, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her piece “What Do We Owe Her Now.” Bruenig co-hosts a podcast with her husband, Matt, called The Bruenigs, where they discuss family, politics, and current events.
Check out her opinion columns at the New York Times, including her emotional compelling piece “The Man I Saw Them Kill” discussed in this episode.
Also mentioned:
Liz quoted this famous monologue from Hamlet: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals.”
Here’s the St. Augustine’s Sermon on the Mount (paragraph 64): “But great and holy men… punished some sins with death, both because the living were struck with a salutary fear, and because it was not death itself that would injure those who were being punished with death, but sin, which might be increased if they continued to live.”
Pope Francis’ statement against LWOP
The Reuters piece uncovering the identities of the pharmaceutical companies that produced pentobarbital for the federal government.
We also made references to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act (1986) and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1996)
The National Registry of Exonerations keeps track of exonerations on the basis of false confessions; showing that 70% of those with a reported mental illness or intellectual disability falsely confessed.
Liz also referred to some prior litigation which focuses on the change in procedure from the use of the three-drug cocktail to the use of a single drug (pentobarbital) in lethal injections.
And I mentioned the Ta-Nehisi Coates piece: “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration”
The Dialogues Team
Creator: Richard Reeves
Research: Ashleigh Maciolek
Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas
Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves
Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)
Tuesday Apr 20, 2021
Tuesday Apr 20, 2021
My very first guest is NYU Professor and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, best known for his books The Righteous Mind in 2012 and The Coddling of the American Mind with Greg Luckianoff, in 2018.
Jon and I talk about what has been described as a crisis of epistemology - in the very ways in which we discover and generate knowledge and truth. Why has this epistemic crisis hit so many liberal democracies? What lies behind it, and more importantly, what we can do about it? We discuss why Jon hates twitter; how combining the insights of the 18th century philosopher David Hume and the 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill can give you "social superpowers"; the way Gen-Z has driven a change in the culture of college campuses and subsequently the corporate world; why kids born in 1996 had such "fundamentally different childhoods" to those born in 1990; and what he sees as a "gravitational change" in the information ecosystem from around 2009.
+
Here is our Mill for the modern age: All Minus One (2021)
+
Some of Haidt’s related work:
Although Jon doesn’t much like Twitter you should still follow him here.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012)
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, with Greg Lukianoff (2018)
(Or you can read the Atlantic essay here.)
The Dark Psychology of Social Networks, with Tobias Rose-Stockwell, The Atlantic, December 2019
Here’s his 2016 Duke lecture on the "Two incompatible sacred values in American universities" (i.e Truth U versus Social Justice U).
Also check out Heterodox Academy
+
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life by Annette Lareau (2011)
Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by Robert Putnam (2015)
Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud (1930)
Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives by Theodore Zeldin (2000)
“The Market for Goods and the Market for Ideas” by Ronald Coase (1974)
The Dialogues Team
Creator: Richard Reeves
Research: Ashleigh Maciolek
Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas
Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves
Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)