In 1988, Bernie Sanders outlined the key problem with news media today
"The function of private media is to make money for the people who own the media. It is a business," Sanders said.
18 December, 2020
Mother Jones via YouTube
- Over his four-decade political career, Senator Bernie Sanders has been an outspoken critic of mass news media.
- In a 1988 speech, Sanders described how it's virtually impossible to meaningfully discuss substantial political issues in 30-second sound bites, and how the consolidation of news outlets makes it harder for alternative views to reach the public.
- Surveys show that America's trust in mass media has been declining for years.
<p>No matter your stance on the Vermont senator, it's hard to deny that Bernie Sanders has rightfully earned a reputation for not changing his politics over his four-decade career. In speeches and interviews, Sanders reliably returns to mantras about the one percent, voter turnout, and affordable healthcare and education, to name a few. These views have long been divisive, and it's up for debate whether his unwavering politics is <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-07-25/2020-bernie-sanders-democrat-president" target="_blank">indeed a virtue</a>.<br></p><p>But one of Sanders' long-held views seems uniquely uncontroversial: that the structure of news media makes it hard, if not impossible, to discuss important political topics in a meaningful way. Speaking in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aXF-b9gKs4" target="_blank">1988 at an event honoring the Vermont Vanguard</a>, an independent newspaper, Sanders spoke about how hard it is to cram coherent ideas into TV-news soundbites. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"If you are a serious public official, how do you deal with the complex issues that your city faces or your state faces?" Sanders said. "And you look at that camera and you say, 'Oh god, I got 30 seconds to do it.' And then you understand why politicians become morons. It's not necessarily their fault. You try it sometime. Try to deal about a complex and serious issue, and get it into the 24 seconds that you need to get it into to get it onto the tube. It drives you a little bit crazy."</p><p>Echoing this idea in a 2019 interview with <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/bernie-sanders-corporate-media/" target="_blank">The Nation</a>, Sanders said:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"This country faces enormous crises, and you can't do it in 45 seconds or a minute. That's just the simple reality. And I understand the problem of how many candidates are running. But we need a political structure in this country which allows serious debate about serious issues, and the structure of those debates makes it impossible I think for any candidate to do more than shout out a sound bite."</p>
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="499d98e92df8f0bacc75736488066028"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2aXF-b9gKs4?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>This "politics by soundbite" nature of TV news has changed not only the media, but also the way politicians think, Sanders said in 1988.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"You have politicians who then think in 30-second tidbits, which leads you to Ronald Reagan," he said. "The deep issues, the hard issues, are not as exciting as simplistic stuff."</p><p>Sanders' critiques of TV and corporate media extend further back than this speech. In a 1979 op-ed titled <a href="https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/social-control-and-the-tube/Content?oid=2434173" target="_blank">"Social Control and the Tube,"</a> Sanders said control of TV should be considered a political issue, and that public ownership would enable "serious writers" and "people with all kinds of views" to produce better work for the public.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"What the owners of the TV industry want to do, and are doing, in my opinion, is use that medium to intentionally brainwash people into submission and helplessness," Sanders wrote. "With considerable forethought they are attempting to create a nation of morons who will faithfully go out and buy this or that product, vote for this or that candidate, and faithfully work for their employers for as low a wage as possible."</p><p>Still, in his 1988 speech, Sanders said he doesn't support government control of the media, but that "corporate control over the media is equally dangerous, and that's very clearly the trend to which we're moving today."</p>
Media consolidation
<p>Three decades later, Sanders said: "In 1983, the largest 50 corporations controlled 90 percent of the media. Today, as a result of massive mergers and takeovers, six corporations control 90 percent of what we see, hear, and read [...] These powerful corporations also have an agenda, and it would be naive not to believe that their views and needs impact coverage of issues important to them."</p><p>The consolidation of media companies was accelerated by changes to the Federal Communications Commission, with two major deregulatory shifts that occurred under Reagan and then Clinton, whose administration passed the 1996 <a href="http://www.commoncause.org/research-reports/National_050905_Fallout_From_The_Telecommunications_Act_2.pdf" target="_blank">Telecommunications Act</a>. That law raised the cap on the number of local news stations and newspapers media corporations could buy.</p>Fewer Americans trust mass media
<p>What also adds to the homogeneity of news media is shrinking revenues and a trend toward click-bait content. Big Think's Reuben Jackson <a href="https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/news-media-consolidation" target="_blank">recently noted</a>:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"One effect of the contraction of the news industry is that journalists are networking with fewer peers and sources. In one <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305120926639" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">recently published study</a>, "Sharing Knowledge and 'Microbubbles': Epistemic Communities and Insularity in US Political Journalism," researchers from the University of Illinois explore the extent to which groupthink bias is increasingly being built into the content we consume."</p><p>These factors may help explain why Americans' trust in news media is declining. A <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/321116/americans-remain-distrustful-mass-media.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2020 Gallup</a> survey found that six in 10 Americans have "not very much" trust (27 percent) or "none at all" (33 percent) trust in mass media. It's not a new trend: Gallup notes that trust in mass media hovered just above the majority level until 2005, and since it hasn't risen above 47 percent.</p>
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How has technology changed — and changed us — in the past 20 years?
Apple sold its first iPod in 2001, and six years later it introduced the iPhone, which ushered in a new era of personal technology.
30 November, 2020
PEDRO UGARTE/AFP via Getty Images
Just over 20 years ago, the dotcom bubble burst, causing the stocks of many tech firms to tumble.
<p> Some companies, like Amazon, <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0711/5-successful-companies-that-survived-the-dotcom-bubble.aspx" target="_blank">quickly recovered</a> their value – but many others were left in ruins. In the two decades since this crash, technology has advanced in many ways.
</p><p>
Many more people are online today than they were at the start of the millennium. Looking at broadband access, in 2000, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/entertainment/tech-generations/" target="_blank">just half</a> of Americans had broadband access at home. Today, that number sits at <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">more than 90%</a>.
</p><p><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-internet-users-by-country" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img alt="More than half the world's population has internet access today" src="https://assets.weforum.org/editor/RFvQOMpk00odIJmWpcD0jq4mOqzV4qEEoVnrFXhDuxA.png"></a>More than half the world's population has internet access today (Image: Our World in Data)</p>
<p>This broadband expansion was certainly not just an American phenomenon. Similar growth can be seen on a global scale; while <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/internet" target="_blank">less than 7%</a> of the world was online in 2000, today <a href="https://www.axios.com/more-than-half-of-world-population-on-the-internet-mary-meeker-c4d623d6-32c1-47c0-b30e-5f934af88744.html" target="_blank">over half the global population</a> has access to the internet.</p><p>Similar trends can be seen in cellphone use. At the start of the 2000s, there were <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/262950/global-mobile-subscriptions-since-1993/" target="_blank">740 million</a> cell phone subscriptions worldwide. Two decades later, that number has surpassed 8 billion, meaning there are now <a href="https://qz.com/1608103/there-are-now-more-cellphones-than-people-in-the-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">more cellphones</a> in the world than people</p><p>At the same time, technology was also becoming more personal and portable. Apple sold its first iPod in 2001, and six years later it introduced the iPhone, which ushered in a new era of personal technology. These changes led to a world in which technology touches nearly everything we do.</p><p>Technology has changed major sectors over the past 20 years, including media, climate action and healthcare. The World Economic Forum's <a href="https://www.weforum.org/communities/technology-pioneers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Technology Pioneers</a>, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary, gives us insight how emerging tech leaders have influenced and responded to these changes.</p>
<h2>Media and media consumption</h2><p>The past 20 years have greatly shaped how and where we consume media. In the early 2000s, many tech firms were still focused on expanding communication for work through advanced bandwidth for video streaming and other media consumption that is common today.</p><p>Others followed the path of expanding media options beyond traditional outlets. Early Tech Pioneers such as PlanetOut did this by providing an outlet and alternative media source for LGBTQIA communities as more people got online.</p><p>Following on from these first new media options, new communities and alternative media came the massive growth of social media. In 2004<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">, fewer than 1 million</a> people were on Myspace; Facebook had not even launched. By 2018, Facebook had more 2.26 billion users with other sites also growing to hundreds of millions of users.</p><p><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img alt="The precipitous rise of social media over the past 15 years" src="https://assets.weforum.org/editor/ryXIj-cPbpKTUKzmi9Jtd5bkN-A7E2GnZX-xEWlQnq4.png"></a>The precipitous rise of social media over the past 15 years (Image: Our World in Data)</p><p>While these new online communities and communication channels have offered great spaces for alternative voices, their increased use has also brought issues of increased disinformation and polarization.</p><p>Today, many tech start-ups are focused on preserving these online media spaces while also mitigating the <a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/2020/03/10-european-startups-fighting-fake-news-and-disinformation/" target="_blank">disinformation</a> which can come with them. Recently, some Tech Pioneers have also approached this issue, including <a href="https://truepic.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">TruePic</a> – which focuses on photo identification – and <a href="https://www.twohat.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Two Hat</a>, which is developing AI-powered content moderation for social media.</p>
<h2>Climate change and green tech</h2><p>Many scientists today are <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/climate-solutions-technologies-to-slow-climate-change/a-51660909" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">looking to technology</a> to lead us towards a carbon-neutral world. Though renewed attention is being given to climate change today, these efforts to find a solution through technology is not new. In 2001, green tech offered a new investment opportunity for tech investors after the crash, leading to a boom of investing in renewable energy start-ups <a href="https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/2001-when-green-tech-was-born" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">including Bloom Energy</a>, a Technology Pioneer in 2010.</p><p>In the past two decades, tech start-ups have only expanded their climate focus. Many today are focuses on initiatives far beyond clean energy to slow the impact of climate change.</p><p>Different start-ups, including Carbon Engineering and Climeworks from this year's Technology Pioneers, have started to roll out <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/news/first-commercial-co2-capture-plant-live-21494" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">carbon capture</a> technology. These technologies remove CO2 from the air directly, enabling scientists to alleviate some of the damage from fossil fuels which have already been burned.</p><p>Another expanding area for young tech firms today is food systems innovation. Many firms, like Aleph Farms and Air Protein, are creating innovative meat and dairy alternatives that are much greener than their traditional counterparts.</p>
<h2>Biotech and healthcare</h2><p>The early 2000s also saw the culmination of a <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2000/02/22/companies/biotech/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">biotech boom</a> that had started in the mid-1990s. Many firms focused on advancing biotechnologies through enhanced tech research.</p><p>An early Technology Pioneer,<a href="https://www.actelion.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Actelion Pharmaceuticals</a> was one of these companies. Actelion's tech researched the single layer of cells separating every blood vessel from the blood stream. Like many other biotech firms at the time, their focus was on precise disease and treatment research.</p><p>While many tech firms today still focus on disease and treatment research, many others have been focusing on healthcare delivery. Telehealth has been on the rise in<a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/digital/telehealth-53-growing-faster-any-other-place-care" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> recent years</a>, with many young tech expanding virtual healthcare options. New technologies such as virtual visits, chatbots are being used to delivery healthcare to individuals, especially during Covid-19.</p><p>Many companies are also focusing their healthcare tech on patients, rather than doctors. For example Ada, a symptom checker app, used to be designed for doctor's use but has now shifted its language and interface to prioritize giving patients information on their symptoms. Other companies, like 7 cups, are focused are offering mental healthcare support directly to their users without through their app instead of going through existing offices.</p><p>The past two decades have seen healthcare tech get much more personal and use tech for care delivery, not just advancing medical research.</p>
<p>In the early 2000s, many companies were at the start of their recovery from the bursting dotcom bubble. Since then, we've seen a large expansion in the way tech innovators approach areas such as new media, climate change, healthcare delivery and more.</p><p>At the same time, we have also seen tech companies rise to the occasion of trying to combat issues which arose from the first group such as internet content moderation, expanding climate change solutions.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/technology-pioneers-2020/" target="_blank">Technology Pioneers' 2020 cohort</a> marks the 20th anniversary of this community - and looking at the latest awardees can give us a snapshot of where the next two decades of tech may be heading.</p><p>Reprinted with permission of the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.weforum.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer">World Economic Forum</a>. Read the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/heres-how-technology-has-changed-and-changed-us-over-the-past-20-years/" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
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Will America’s disregard for science be the end of its reign?
Confirmation bias is baked into the DNA of America, but it may soon be the nation's undoing.
03 October, 2020
- From America's inception, there has always been a rebellious, anti-establishment mentality. That way of thinking has become more reckless now that the entire world is interconnected and there are added layers of verification (or repudiation) of facts.
- As the great minds in this video can attest, there are systems and mechanisms in place to discern between opinion and truth. By making conscious efforts to undermine and ignore those systems at every turn (climate change, conspiracy theories, coronavirus, politics, etc.), America has compromised its position of power and effectively stunted its own growth.
- A part of the problem, according to writer and radio host Kurt Andersen, is a new media infrastructure that allows for false opinions to persist and spread to others. Is it the beginning of the end of the American empire?
‘Global democratic recession’ has been eroding freedoms since 2006, says study
The 20th century was marked by waves of pro-democracy revolutions. Now, the future of democracy looks uncertain.
25 September, 2020
(Photo by Jessica Hromas/Getty Images)
- A recent paper examined the status of democracy among the world's countries.
- The paper outlines three key indicators showing that democracy is generally declining worldwide, and it lists several potential reasons for the decline.
- Surveys indicate that nearly half of U.S. citizens are dissatisfied with how democracy is playing out on the national level.
<p>The end of the 20th century was the high-water mark for global democracy. The Soviet Union had collapsed. Nearly all of Latin America, along with many Asian nations, had moved away from dictatorships and conflict during the <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/article/latin-america-shows-democratization-possible-anywhere" target="_blank">"third wave"</a> of democratization. And the U.S. — the world's chief pusher of democracy — was a virtually unchallenged superpower.</p><p>By 2000, a majority of countries were democratic — something which would've been hard to predict in the 1970s, when only <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/14/more-than-half-of-countries-are-democratic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">one-quarter of nations</a> were democratic.</p><p>But since 2006, the quality of democracies has been degrading as the world undergoes a "global democratic recession," says a new <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2020.1807517" target="_blank">paper published in the journal </a><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2020.1807517">Democratization</a>.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Not only have average levels of freedom (or democratic quality) been declining globally and in most parts of the world, but the pace of democratic breakdown accelerated and the number of democratic transitions declined, particularly in the past five years," writes sociologist and study author Larry Diamond.</p><p>What are the signs that democracy has declined over the past 14 years? The paper offers three: </p><p><strong>Democracy stopped expanding:</strong> Since 2006, "the proportion of democracies in the world has gradually declined, to 55% of all states and 48% of states above one million population. And the percentage of people living in democracies has declined from 55% to 47%. The year 2019 marked the first time since the end of the Cold War that the majority of states over one million population was not democratic, and also the first time that a majority of the world's people did not live in a democracy."</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQzOTg0NC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzOTY1MjE4MX0.uWIyjMwN0UVSDPAWZXsnKe0S8UvvpHBKawyNCJK0MFU/img.png?width=980" id="2ff4a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0b5b6d961e724f628394d6c48762b508" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="" data-width="2196" data-height="1086" />
The Global Expansion of Democracy (1974-2019)
Credit: Diamond
<p><strong></strong><span style="background-color: initial;"><strong>Democratic freedoms have receded: </strong></span>Four different scales that measure levels of democracy — <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/" target="_blank">Freedom House</a>, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and V-Dem's Liberal and Electoral Democracy indices — "agree that there has been a modest negative trend for the advanced Anglophone and West European democracies, a more substantial slide for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean above one million population, and erosion – but of widely varying extent – in Sub-Saharan Africa." Meanwhile, those same scales found significant improves in freedom among South Asian and former Soviet nations.</p><p><strong>Democratic breakdown has accelerated:</strong> The past five years have seen more democracies crumble than any other five-year period since the third wave of democratization began in the mid-1970s. During that same period, the number of nations that switched to democracy was the lowest it's been in decades.</p>What explains the global democratic recession?
<p>The paper notes that, while military leaders and revolutions have toppled past democracies, the past decade or so "has mainly been an era of civilian assaults on democracy." In other words, it seems as if a large share of citizens in democratic nations are — wittingly or unwittingly — supporting the erosion of democracy, at least as it currently exists.</p><p>Populist candidates, Diamond suggests, have been able to rise to power by "inflaming divisions and mobilizing the good, deserving 'people' against corrupt elites – the professional or 'deep' state and their effete, educated handmaidens in the other (liberal) political parties – as well as a host of alien threats, such as international institutions, refugees and migrants, and 'undeserving' minorities who really don't 'belong' in the country."</p><p>Noting there's no "master" explanation for the democratic recession, the paper outlines several potential contributors, including:</p><p><strong>The erosion of political norms and institutions</strong>: Autocrats tend to have an easier time gaining power when political parties are weak, citizens aren't committed to democratic ideals, the rule of law is weak, and there's a lack of horizontal accountability, such as independent courts and legislatures.</p><p><strong>International context:</strong> Amid the chaos and failures of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the world began to adopt a more "pessimistic view of democracy promotion." The 2008 recession had a similar effect. Diamond wrote: "If the world's most powerful democracy could spawn a financial crisis that almost produced a global depression; if the world's largest collection of democracies (the E.U.) could not manage its borders or accommodate the rising tide of refugees and migrants due to wars and revolutions, then maybe democracy was not such a great system after all."</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQzOTg0Ni9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NjQ5MjQ5MH0.c3gkJJGhmxycEc7XEQINpuow5DCU-2BXuM2A5To9bKY/img.png?width=980" id="9dbee" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b357736fcd6c9faaf242e552ca233748" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1006" data-height="1038" />
Comparison of Democratic versus other types of governments in 1977 and 2017
Credit: Pew Research Center
<p><strong><span style="background-color: initial;">Russian rage and Chinese ambition</span></strong><strong>:</strong> Although the U.S. remains a superpower, these two "authoritarian projects" are working to undermine liberal values around the world by using "sharp power," which the paper defines as operating "in the shadows to compromise institutions," unlike soft power, which "seeks to inspire and persuade transparently though attraction and the power of example."</p><p><strong>Global socio-economic trends:</strong></p><ul><li>Social and digital media: Helpful to democratic movements in a sense, the rise of the internet also made it easier for bad-faith actors to spread disinformation and group hatred.</li><li>The economic shift from manufacturing to finance has accelerated wealth inequality, leading to class resentments and leaving nations vulnerable to populism.</li><li>The rise of China displaced workers in the U.S. and similar nations, "further aggravating social and economic insecurities and resentments."</li><li>The long-term impact of neoliberal economic policies: "In the United States, this freed up financial markets to engage in ever riskier and more speculative lending and financial transactions. The final element was the growing economic instability of this potent mixture – deregulation, digitization, financialization, globalization – resulting in the 2008 financial crash, which, since it originated in the U.S. further badly damaged the reputation of democracy, as well as the resources and political self-confidence of the United States."</li></ul><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQzOTg0My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTkwODc3MX0.ENzeA033m1jOflUslnfLLQd_GKK9WZA0Ld05cEXmMGs/img.jpg?width=980" id="32e04" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="895b52e7c698bbfb2d731371219eb7c4" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Americans voting" data-width="1024" data-height="684" />Voters In California Head To Polls To Cast Ballots In State's Primary Election
Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images
<p>Diamond concludes the paper by warning that the global community is "perilously close to and indeed have probably already entered what [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington" target="_blank">Samuel P. Huntington</a>] would have called a 'third reverse wave,' that is, a period in world history in which the number of transitions away from democracy significantly outnumber those to democracy."</p><p>According to survey results, most people seem to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/02/27/democratic-rights-popular-globally-but-commitment-to-them-not-always-strong/" target="_blank">value democratic rights</a>, yet more than half of citizens in the U.S., U.K., Japan, and France say they're dissatisfied with democracy. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean people want autocracy.</p><p>But it does beg the question: What kinds of leaders and governing styles will dissatisfied citizens be willing to entertain — or unwilling to resist — if democracy doesn't find a way to reinvent itself in the 21st century?</p>
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Malcolm Gladwell: What if presidents were chosen by lottery?
Join Radiolab's Latif Nasser at 1pm ET today as he chats with Malcolm Gladwell live on Big Think.
21 September, 2020
Can voters really predict who will be a good leader? Malcolm Gladwell joins Big Think Live to discuss this how lotteries could, in theory, distribute leadership more effectively, from government elections, college admissions, and grant applications.
<p>In this live stream, you'll learn:</p><ul class="ee-ul"></ul><ul class="ee-ul">
<li>How Malcolm Gladwell thinks through the programming for his podcast <em>Revisionist History,</em> and how the coronavirus pandemic affected the show</li>
<li>Why the premise that voters can predict who will be a good leader may be a poor one</li>
<li>How a lottery system might affect government elections, college admissions, and grant applications—in theory</li>
<li>Why the distinction between holding office and running for office is key</li>
<li>About the storytelling value that can be derived from deliberately leaving questions open ended</li>
<li>+ get Gladwell's take on fake news and discover the one book her believes every student should read</li>
</ul>
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