-Why “common knowledge” is much stranger than it sounds
-The social machinery behind weddings, money, and power
-How a norm starts to die once someone breaks it and gets rewarded
-Trump as the great destroyer of polite restraints
-The institutions that lost the authority to enforce trust
-How new taboos appear without anyone admitting who created them
-The spiral of silence reaches Harvard
-Pinker tries to fix academic freedom from inside the building
-The Trump administration turns a real university problem into a power grab
-Why dictatorships keep lying after everyone knows the truth
-The subversive power of a blank protest sign
-Ceaușescu discovered that crowds are not always props
-The right decides cancel culture is useful after all
-Pinker revisits the case for progress, with several ugly caveats
-Why stories can change moral imagination
-Postmodernism gets a second life in Trumpworld
-Silicon Valley goes looking for kings
-Harvard’s antisemitism debate gets very uncomfortable
-The blank slate takes another beating
-The Monty Hall problem breaks the room
Read When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows… by Steven Pinker
Prefer to watch & chat live with other members of the Fifdom? This episode premieres over on our YouTube channel at 12PM EST.
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We’re pleased to announce that when we’re in DC next week at the Miracle Theater, we’ll be joined by the fabulous Lulu Garcia Navarro of the New York Times.
There are still a few “Premier” tickets available, which include an after-show meet & greet with Kmele, Michael, and Matt, and the general admission seats are moving pretty briskly, so if you’re thinking about coming out… stop thinking and pull the trigger!
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