Jonathan Haidt Returns (on the Anxious Generation)
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Who is Jonathan Haidt and why is he on the podcast?
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Mrs. Mouse. Hi. Today we have Jonathan Haidt returning. I don't know if you guys would remember. I want to say that's like first year.
It was early.
It was early. Yep. And this one was really fun. I don't know about you. Were you nervous the first time we had him?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, because we had first heard him on Sam Harris's podcast.
He was our introduction to podcasts. Jedediah Jenkins recommended I listen to the Jonathan Haidt.
Wow.
Sam Harris episode. And I was so stimulated intellectually.
Uh-huh.
I'm like, oh my God, these two people know so much more about the world than I do.
Yeah.
It's like intimidating.
Really?
So when we talked to him, I was scared the first time. This time was much more chill.
Yeah, it was fun.
Jonathan, I'm sure you've seen, he's been on an incredible- press tour for his current book, The Anxious Generation. But you would have probably become aware of him with The Coddling of the American Mind or The Righteous Mind or The Happiness Hypothesis. He is a New York NYU professor, social psychologist, and best-selling author. And this is a barn burner.
Yeah, it's fun.
I love this one.
Yeah, and The Anxious Generation is on, like, everybody's book list. It's a very hot topic. So it was cool that he got to come in and tell us about it.
I enjoyed it immensely. Please enjoy Jonathan Haidt.
It's been many, many years since we first had you on.
It was 2018 after my previous book, The Calling of the American Mind.
Yes. New days for us then.
Yes, seven years ago.
We started in 2018.
Hopefully we've gotten 4% better. You can score us afterwards. 4% per year compounded. That's okay. If you have forgotten, I'll give you the same compliments that we probably did the first time, which is I think we were exposed to you first on Sam Harris 11 years ago, maybe 10 years ago.
Yeah.
In fact, that's the introductory episode I used to send people when I used to encourage people to listen to that show. It was such an invigorating debate.
Yeah, it was one of my best conversations ever because we're sort of similar to each other in a lot of ways. But then we had this like fight and then we buried the hatchet.
Yes. If you're ever going to model great discourse, it's really encouraging to hear two smart people argue, not have the same opinion, represent themselves well. Yeah, I was just kind of enamored with your intellect and your ability to communicate what you think. It's pretty unique. And then over the years, I doubt this would get to you, but Monica and I bring up your moral thought experiments.
A lot.
So much.
They're so tasty.
What are they called?
Moral dumbfounding. Dumbfounding. That's the word. They're fun. They're good party tricks. Yeah. Do you have a favorite? Because we have a favorite. So there's the brother-sister incest story. Yeah, we love that. It's solid. Yeah. And then there's the eating your pet dog story. Those are really the two that are... Tell us that one. Oh, okay. So the background here is that I was studying moral psychology as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. And the big debate was, is moral judgment driven by gut feelings? Which the philosopher David Hume had said, in which I was leaning towards, or is it driven more by reasoning about the facts of the matter, especially about harm, as Lawrence Kohlberg was the dominant researcher at the time. And since I'd been studying how morality varies across cultures, it just seemed like morality is about the body. And I ended up doing some research in India and reading a lot about Hinduism.
I'd always been interested in Hinduism. I'd always been interested in travel. And it just seemed like American or Western morality was just much more cerebral and divorced from the body. I wanted to make up a bunch of stories that would hit you in the gut immediately. And then you'd reach for evidence of harm and it's not there. What do you do? Yeah.
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