Post-Election Culture Wars

This podcast is an interview with me about the culture wars effects of the 2016 election.

Talking to Strangers Fosters Happiness - and Social Trust

When we start conversations with strangers, we usually have a pleasant experience - and so do they.

This is the upshot of experiments conducted by social psychologist Nick Epley.  He asked commuters on buses and trains to initiate conversations with strangers.  They asked both the initiator and the other person how they felt afterwards.  The main effect was that it made them both happy.

We typically do not initiate conversations with strangers because we are anxious about possible negative reactions.  This anxiety is of a piece with the normal human tendency to overestimate costs and underestimate benefits of action. That anxiety, taken to the next level, fills us with fear, which is the greatest enemy of happiness.

What sociology can add to this picture is that most of the strangers we encounter will have quite a bit in common with us, precisely because they have chosen to be in the same social setting we have chosen to be in.  The strangers we run across are not a random assortment of humanity, but are likely to be much more like us than not.

The First Step in Fighting Fascists Is Not to Be One

This is a moment in which fear entrepreneurs are fanning the flames of tribalism all around the world.

The first thing we need to do in the coming fight with fascism is not to become tribalists ourselves.

The great principles of democracy, pluralism, and America are enough to make a decent and happy society with.

These principles are also our greatest weapons against a narrowing and fearful xenophobia.