Dr. Jack Goldstone

We have this unprecedented accomplishment of a week with no murders, you know.

Well, it's not unprecedented.

It's not a big deal.

But if everybody repeats the lie and every time it's told with more and more enthusiasm, you start to say, you know, is there really any point anymore in trying to fight for the facts and winnow the truth?

That's the most vexing thing for me is people are so easily swayed and people who should know better repeat the lies and they repeat them with enthusiasm.

This atmosphere of lie after lie and people piling on the lies, people who should know better, not just people who are misinformed but well-meaning, but really people who should know better, who are telling lies to get ahead

telling lies to enhance their position and damage that of their opponents.

We used to be ashamed to tell lies for those purposes.

And that shame is gone and the lies are spreading.

And myself as kind of a poor toiler in the fields of truth and understanding, you start to feel the world closing in.

So if you want to know what's most vexing for me, there it is.

It's a biggie.

Yeah.

Whatever my politics is,

I'm professionally committed to finding and telling the truth.

That's the most important thing for me.

But as you say, people who do that now get it from all sides.

Well, I was getting pretty depressed.

But last fall, when I wrote this book I have coming out next year that I mentioned, the 10 billion, how population will change the world, I got excited in the act of writing because

I was telling stories, stories of people, stories of people who are over 100 who are breaking athletic records, immigrants who have come and built great businesses, students in Mississippi who broke all the records for fourth grade achievement because they adopted a different way of teaching and learning.