Episode 16 - Partisan Pizza

Jeff and Darron explore the nature of conservatism and progressivism by looking at pizza and other food preferences. They talk about the nature of category designations, what it means to call something by a specific name, and why this can sometimes feel so important to us. They look at their own preferences and inclinations towards conservative or progressive thinking, examine where they might come from, and how they are often dependent on context. They touch on the benefits of honing an existing process versus trying new techniques and methods, the importance and drawbacks of categories and categorization, and finally how we might use an examination of our personal preferences about food to better understand the larger sociopolitical and cultural context in which we find ourselves.

Notes:

• 2:12 - The “Big Mac” pizza is one of of many “Gourmet Pizzas” served at Illiano’s Pizza & Italian Cuisine in Middletown, CT

• 3:45 - See “The Definitive Guide to New Haven Pizza”, the “New Haven-style pizza” Wikipedia entry, and the website for Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria Napoletana

• 4:05 - I’m currently using Andrew Janigan’s updated version for NYC Thin-Crust Pizza Dough, which is terrific, and for more detail about the process check out his three part series on dough and baking pizzas

• 5:21 - See “The History of Pizza” (CNN Travel, 2021)

• 5:29 - - According to the 2021 CNN Travel article “How Italians Made Tomatoes Their Essential Ingredient”, tomatoes were first “Brought to Europe by the Spanish when they colonized the Americas -- it's an Aztec plant, as we can tell by its original name, "tomatl" -- by the mid-1500s, it had made its way to Italy. Nobody quite knows how -- some think the Sephardic Jews, expelled from Spain in 1492, could have brought it with them. Or maybe it made its way over with Eleanor of Toledo, who came to Florence when she married the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I de' Medici, in 1539. Either way, by 1548, the tomato was to be found in Cosimo's botanical gardens in Pisa. But it wasn't yet on tables...The earliest recipe for tomato sauce was published in 1694, by Neapolitan chef Antonio Latini in his book "Lo Scalco alla Moderna" -- "The Modern Steward." "It mentions that if you mix onions, tomatoes and some herbs you get a very interesting sauce that can be used in all sorts of things on meat, especially boiled meat -- and things that aren't so tasty become more interesting with the acidity of the tomato," See “How Italians Made Tomatoes Their Essential Ingredient” (CNN Travel, 2021) 

• 6:48 - See the “Neopolitan pizza” Wikipedia entry and the website of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, an association set up in 1984 to preserve the Neapolitan pizza tradition

• 8:04 - Plato’s Theory of Forms (Wikipedia) - “...the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas. According to this theory, ideas in this sense, often capitalized and translated as "Ideas" or "Forms", are the non-physical essences of all things, of which objects and matter in the physical world are merely imitations.”

• 8:15 - For more on pizza styles see “Do You Know These Regional Pizza Styles?” (Serious Eats, 2018)

• 8:40 - See Adam Kuban’s current site, Famous Original Slice, and this profile from Serious Eats where he mentions, among other things, his pizza cognition theory

• 9:20 - Sergio’s Pizza and Restaurant in Hamden, CT

• 10:00 - See “Chefs Weigh In: Is Chicago Deep Dish Pizza Really Pizza?” (Eater, 2014), “Why Deep Dish Can't Be Considered Pizza in a Court of Law” (Thrillist, 2016), and the Wikipedia entry on Chicago-Style Pizza

• 11:50 - I now bake pizza on a baking steel that sits on top of a fibrament baking stone - the stone absorbs and retains a ton of heat and the steel is highly conductive so it transfers that heat into the bottom of the crust very efficiently making for a nicely crisp and browned bottom crust

• 12:10 - See “What Is a Controlled Experiment?” (ThoughtCo, 2019)

• 17:19 - Released in 1998, the dramatic war film The Thin Red Line is an adaptation of James Jones' autobiographical 1962 novel, focusing on the conflict at Guadalcanal during the second World War

• 17:53 - The Yale repertory Theatre

• 18:10 - Guinness Beer

• 18:50 - Daniel Kahneman

• 18:54 - See “How the Difference Between Your Experiencing Self and Your Remembering Self Shapes Your Happiness” (Brainpickings, 2011) and watch “Daniel Kahneman: The Riddle of Experience Vs. Memory” (TED, 2010)

• 19:02 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 14 - Talkin' Baseball Stories & Beautiful Illusions from May 2021

• 23:22 - See “Why do fatty foods taste so good?” (EarthSky, 2017) and “Human Perceptions and Preferences for Fat-Rich Foods” (Chapter 11 of Fat Detection, Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2010)

• 23:54 - See the Jimi Hendrix Wikipedia entry, bio from JimiHendrix.com, “Jimi Hendrix’ use of distortion to extend the performance vocabulary of the electric guitar” (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1998), “100 Greatest Guitarist lists” from Rolling Stone (Hendrix comes in at #1) and Guitar World (Hendrix comes in at #2), and watch his legendary Woodstock performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” (YouTube)

• 25:21 - Watch Jimi Hendrix play acoustically and listen to an acoustic jam session from 1968

• 25:42 - See “Why You Shouldn't Use Effects When You Practice” (Guitar World, 2018)

• 25:53 - See the “Learning curve” Wikipedia entry

• 26:33 - Jimi Hendrix spent a number of years honing his skills as a professional musician backing up a number of US acts on the Chitlin Circuit during the early 60’s, but he eventually chafed at having to play the same sets every night and the many other musical restrictions associated with being a sideman. By 1966 he had moved into New York’s vibrant Greenwich Village music scene, however he did not have much initial success attempting to go his own way, and did not see any real recognition until arriving in London in the back half of 1966. Notably it was another guitarist, Keith Richards, who saw his early brilliance and eventually connected him with the London scene. Once there it was notables such as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Pete Townshend, many of whom were guitar masters themselves, that were among the first to truly recognize the nature of Hendrix’s innovations on the guitar, how he blended virtuosic playing with diverse styles and experimental tones, and they almost immediately recognized the impact it would have on themselves and the burgeoning rock scene of the mid to late sixties.

• 28:42 - Molecular gastronomy

• 28:53 - See “French Cooking: How and Why French Cooking Came to Rule the World” (Escoffier, 2021) and the “French Cuisine” Wikipedia entry

• 29:05 - See “Modern Art: History and Concepts” (The Art Story) and the “Modern Art” Wikipedia entry

• 29:40 - See “Pumpkin Spice Is Overrated and We Need to Talk About It” (Eating Well, 2019) and the “Pumpkin Pie Spice” Wikipedia entry

• 29:58 - See “Why do so many people find pineapple on pizza offensive?” (GoodFood, 2019) and the “Hawaiian Pizza” Wikipedia entry

• 32:29 - J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (official site) and bio from Serious Eats

• 33:06 - See “Hydration” (CraftyBaking) and “Pizza Dough Hydration Explained” (NA-Pizza)

• 36:50 - See “The Happiness Benefits of Trying New Things” (The Atlantic, 2021)

• 36:58 - See “Neophilia vs Neophobia - What's the difference?” (WikiDiff)

• 37:43 - See “Emotion Theory and Research: Highlights, Unanswered Questions, and Emerging Issues” (Annual Review of Psychology, 2009) by Caroll Izzard 

• 38:40 - The Big Five Personality Traits

• 40:37 - The Epic of Gilgamesh

• 40:48 - For more on the long history of bread see “14,000-Year-Old Piece Of Bread Rewrites The History Of Baking And Farming” (NPR, 2018), “Who Invented Bread?” (LiveScience, 2018), the “History of Bread” Wikipedia entry, “Why San Francisco does sourdough best” (BBC Travel, 2020), and “What Makes San Francisco Sourdough Unique?” (KQED, 2017)

• 42:50 - See “What is Challah?” (My Jewish Learning) and the “Rye Bread” Wikipedia entry

• 43:00 - Mastery Learning

• 43:09 - Zen

• 43:16 - Watch Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s TED Talk “Flow, The Secret To Happiness”

• 46:18 - See “Stream Jimmy Montague’s horn-fueled, ’70s-inspired new album ‘Casual Use’” (Brooklyn Vegan, 2021) and visit the album’s Bandcamp page

• 47:50 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 02 - Our Back Pages from September 2020 where Jeff and Darron discuss their long-standing obsession with Bob Dylan

• 48:10 - See the “Electric Dylan Controversy” Wikipedia entry, “The Night Bob Dylan Went Electric” (History), “Dylan goes electric at The Newport Folk Festival” (History), “July 25, 1965: Dylan Goes Electric at The Newport Folk Festival” (Smithsonian), and “Revisit Bob Dylan’s electric performance at Newport Folk Festival 50 years later” (Consequence of Sound)

• 51:50 - See “Category Learning in the Brain” (Annual Review of Neuroscience, 2010) and “How the brain forms categories” (ScienceDaily, 2012)

• 52:35 - Postmodernism

• 54:25 - See the “Food and Drink Prohibitions” Wikipedia entry

• 54:35 - The new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009 and “our version” of Yankee Stadium was actually the renovated version of the original stadium built in 1923

• 55:09 - There are a few different designations for Italian food products, but the most stringent is the Denominazinone d’Origine Protetta, translated to Protected Designation of Origin, and abbreviated DOP. According to the Eataly website, “this designation guarantees that your favorite cheese, prosciutto, olive oil, etc., is produced, processed, and packaged in a specific geographical zone and according to tradition. Each step, from production to packaging, is regulated”, and this matters simply because “beyond saving ancient traditions, the product actually tastes better. It's true. There is a reason why Prosciutto Toscano DOP is made with pigs raised in the hills of a set zone and grazed on local grasses, then cured at precise temperatures with a secret recipe of local herbs: the prosciutto tastes delicious. It tasted delicious centuries ago, when the methods were defined and perfected, it tastes delicious today, and it is guaranteed to taste delicious in centuries to come.” And furthermore that “The need for guaranteed authentic products began in the mid-1900s, when Italy's food and wine producers found themselves in trouble. As "Italian cuisine" gained popularity in the U.S. and abroad, the market was flooded with low-quality, knock-off olive oil, cheese, prosciutto, and wine, all sold under the guise of the high-quality products they mimicked. To protect its culinary reputation, Italy worked with the European Union to create legal certifications that encourage food and wine producers to focus on quality, tradition, and reliability. To earn the labels, producers must adhere to a strict set of guidelines, overseen by the government.” For more see “A Guide to Italian Certifications” (Eataly) and “DOP Foods of Italy: What They Are, and How to Find Them” (Walks of Italy)

• 56:55 - See the “Neopolitan pizza” Wikipedia entry and the website of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, an association set up in 1984 to preserve the Neapolitan pizza tradition and their 14-page document outlining the requirements for certification

• 59:38 - See the “Carbonara” Wikipedia entry, “Watch Michelin-Starred Chefs Cook Carbonara” (Fine Dining Lovers, 2017), “Smoky Tomato Carbonara” (New York Times, 2021), “'Stop this madness': NYT angers Italians with 'smoky tomato carbonara' recipe” (The Guardian, 2021), “New York Times’ Tomato Carbonara Recipe (Rightly) Causes International Incident” (The Daily Beast, 2021), and predating the more recent controversy “Italian Icons: Carbonara, a Squabble Recipe” (Find Dining Lovers, 2015) and “Carbonara Purists Can’t Stop the Pasta Revolution” (The New Yorker, 2016)

• 1:01:09 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 06 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics from November 2020 and Beautiful Illusions Episode 13 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics Part 2: Just the Facts from April 2021

• 1:01:15 - James Madison: A Biography by Ralph Ketcham

• 1:01:48 - See the “David Hume” Wikipedia entry and “Hume and Madison on Faction” (The William and Mary Quarterly, 2002)

• 1:02:10 - Madison lays out his views on a large diverse republic in Federalist No. 10, see the Wikipedia entry as well 

• 1:03:00 - See “Aristotle’s Ethics: The Doctrine of the Mean” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

• 1:05:15 - Loss aversion

• 1:07:45 - See “The Jefferson Dinner” (JeffersonDinner.org)

• 1:07:50 - Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain byLisa Feldman Barrett

Episode 13 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics Part 2: Just the Facts

Jeff and Darron continue their conversation about the difficulties of having political conversations. They discuss how we determine what’s true and how our conscious perceptions might not reflect reality to the extent that we believe, how well-meaning people looking at the same evidence can come to different conclusions based on their prior life experiences, how our lived reality is socially constructed to a degree of which we are generally unaware, and how all of these factors interact in the context of our current information environment to make political discussions particularly fraught and ripe for disagreement over even our most basic assumptions about reality. Finally they discuss what we might do as individuals to try and make our own conversations less acrimonious and more productive.

Jeff and Darron continue their conversation about the difficulties of having political conversations.

Notes:

• 2:10 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 06 - “What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics”

• 3:07 - See “U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided” (Pew Research Center, 2020)

• 3:45 - See “American News Pathways Project,” “How Americans Navigated the News in 2020: A Tumultuous Year in Review,” and “Misinformation and competing views of reality abounded throughout 2020” (Pew Research Center, 2021)

• 4:45 - See “The COVID Confidence Conundrum” (Gallup, 2020), “How misinformation is distorting COVID policies and behaviors” (Brookings, 2020), and “Covid’s Partisan Errors” (New York Times, 2021)

• 10:11 - Watch “How We Figured Out That Earth Goes Around the Sun” from the SciShow Space YouTube channel

• 10:45 - See the “Copernican Revolution” entry from Britannica  

• 14:17 - The Atlantic

• 14:45 - Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

• 15:40 - Listen to You Are Not So Smart Episode 200 - “Socks and Crocs”

• 16:02 - See “The inside story of the ‘white dress, blue dress’ drama that divided a planet” (Washington Post, 2015)

• 17:00 - See “‘The dress’, 5 years on” (Pascal’s Pensees, 2020), and “Two Years Later, We Finally Know Why People Saw “The Dress” Differently” (Pascal Wallisch writing for Slate, 2017), and “Illumination assumptions account for individual differences in the perceptual interpretation of a profoundly ambiguous stimulus in the color domain: ‘The dress’” (Journal of Vision, 2017)

• 18:40 - See “Disambiguation of ambiguous figures in the brain” (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2013)

• 19:15 - The Brain Science podcast

• 19:45 - See “Liberals and Conservatives React in Wildly Different Ways to Repulsive Pictures” (The Atlantic, 2019)

• 20:00 - Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson

• 22:35 - Laplace’s demon

• 26:36 - See “Imagination inflation: Imagining a childhood event inflates confidence that it occurred” (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1996) by Elizabeth Loftus Et al. 

• 27:40 - See “Three kinds of propaganda, and what to do about them” by Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing, 2017)

• 30:06 - Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway

• 30:30 - See “Merchants Of Doubt: How The Tobacco Strategy Obscures the Realities of Global Warming” (Farnam Street, 2016)

• 32:48 - For more on the concept of “negative partisanship” and it’s role in our politics see “‘Negative Partisanship’ Explains Everything” (Politico Magazine, 2017), the research the article is based on, “The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of U.S. elections in the 21st century” (Electoral Studies, 2015), and “How Hatred Came To Dominate American Politics” (FiveThirtyEight, 2020)

• 34:59 - See “Confirmation bias”, and the “Cognitive bias cheat sheet” and “What Can We Do About Our Bias?” by Buster Benson writing for Better Humans

• 35:14 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - “A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism”

• 35:40 - See “You Think You Want Media Literacy… Do You?” (or watch the video) by Danah Boyd (Data & Society, 2018)

• 37:13 - Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

• 38:38 - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass

• 38:48 - “Phrenology” and “Scientific racism”

• 40:09 - Social reality

• 40:30 - See “Trust and Distrust in America” and “Key findings about Americans’ declining trust in government and each other”, and “Trust and Mistrust in Americans’ Views of Scientific Experts” (Pew Research Center, 2019)

• 40:05 - See “Why Chimpanzees Don’t Hold Elections: The Power of Social Reality” (Undark, 2021) excerpted from Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

• 43:12 - Watch Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson describe “The Pyramid of Choice” and how it leads to justification of actions and leads to further action and self justification

• 45:10 - See “Our Consensus Reality Has Shattered” (The Atlantic, 2020)

• 46:19 - Anthony Giddens

• 49:32 - Tyler Cowen 

• 50:07 - Listen to Episode 116 of the Mindscape Podcast - “Teresa Bejan on Free Speech, Civility, and Toleration”) - an interview with Teresa Bejan, political scientist and author of Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration

• 51:09 - Naive realism

• 53:14 - See “Truth Decay” - a 2018 report from the RAND Corporation

• 57:35 - See “Bad science in the headlines. Who takes responsibility when science is distorted in the mass media?” (EMBO Reports, 2006), “Opinion: The media is ruining science” (Washington Post, 2016), “How the media warp science: the case of the sensationalised satnav” (The Guardian, 2017), “Fake science: Who's to blame when the media gets research wrong?” (National Post, 2018), or “Hyped-up science erodes trust. Here’s how researchers can fight back.” (Vox, 2019)

• 58:38 - See “Op-Ed: I called Arizona for Biden on Fox News. Here's what I learned” by Chris Stirewalt

• 1:00:43 - As Jeff will note in a minute, this is false, for more see “Shattering the infertility myth: What we know about Covid-19 vaccines and pregnancy” by reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist, Dr. Eve Feinberg, who is also an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. For an extremely reasonable and respectful take on vaccine hesitancy and talking with people who may be expressing reservations about vaccination, I recommend listening to a recent episode of The Dispatch Podcast from March 26 which features an excellent interview with former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden

• 1:01:17 - Listen to “Coronavirus, Variants, and Vaccination” (The Dispatch Podcast, 2021)

• 1:03:19 - Another thing to be aware of when conducting online information searches is the potentially pernicious filter bubble effect, which was first identified by activist Eli Pariser and described in his 2011 book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You. According to Wikipedia, a filter bubble is the result from personalized searches when a website algorithm (like Google’s, YouTube’s, or Facebook’s, for example) selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click-behavior and search history. One outcome of this effect is that how we search and what we click affects what we see in future searches, so that unless we are actively trying to counter the effect through various technological and personal search habit countermeasures, we see a flood of articles, posts, and videos that support our current opinions and perspectives to ensure that we enjoy what we see, which captures our attention and keeps us clicking. Eventually, due to the human tendency to believe that what we see is all there is, combined with a general lack of awareness that what we are seeing online is being filtered, we end up in personally tailored echo chambers, where we might begin to believe that everyone thinks like us, and we forget that other perspectives exist. In this example, a person who has previously searched for, or clicked on, information about why vaccines are bad will see very different results from someone who has previously searched for or clicked on information of why vaccines are safe and efficacious. 

• 1:04:54 - Watch Eli Pariser’s 2011 TED Talk “Beware Online ‘Filter Bubbles’”, and see “How Filter Bubbles Distort Reality: Everything You Need to Know” (Farnam Street, 2017)

• 1:05:48 - See “Facebook Built the Perfect Platform for Covid Vaccine Conspiracies” (Bloomberg Businessweek, 2021)

• 1:07:14 - Difficult Conversations by by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen

• 1:10:48 - See “Social media and the challenge of managing disagreement positively” (Pascal’s Pensees, 2017) - click here for diagram image

• 1:13:23 - See the “How To Understand Your Enemy” episode of The Good Fight podcast, which features an interview with political science professor Dr. John Hibbing

• 1:13:37 - Austin Bradford Hill

Episode 07 - Boxing Aristotle

Jeff and Darron discuss two titans of the ancient world, Plato and Aristotle - they discuss reading, and grapple with some of the difficulties of interpreting ancient texts. Jeff tries his best to overcome the intuitive responses of his mind as they try to parse the nuance of a regressive framing that offends our modern sensibilities, and they both attempt to relate to Plato and Aristotle from the novice’s point of view, gleaning what wisdom they can in their attempt to make sense of some of the great thinking that has led us to today.

Notes:

• 2:00 - See the Ten Year Reading Plan from The Great Conversation Reading Group

• 3:07 - A Game of Thrones Novel & HBO TV Series 

• 4:34 - Bo Knows Bo, No Direction Home, On The Road

• 5:58 - The Op-Ed “Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on

• society is profound.” by Maryanne Wolf was published by The Guardian in 2018 and posits that “Research surfacing in many parts of the world...cautions that...essential “deep reading” processes may be under threat as we move into digital-based modes of reading.” and furthermore that “a series of studies...indicate that the “new norm” in reading is skimming,” - For a counterpoint see “Is Skim Reading the New Normal?” by Yellowlees Douglas Ph.D. on Psychology Today who points out other studies that indicate technology does not change how we engage with reading - that “It's not the medium but the content and context that determine how we engage with a text. Close reading may be a habit most people leave behind with their education, not an inevitable development of reading a physical page.” 

• 7:55 - See The Republic by Plato, Ethics by Aristotle, and Politics by Aristotle

• 8:41 - See System I & System II and Thinking Fast & Slow

• 9:16 - ~2350 years ago

• 10:13 - “According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Aristotle’s writings tend to present formidable difficulties to his novice readers. To begin, he makes heavy use of unexplained technical terminology and his sentence structure can at times prove frustrating. This helps explain why students who turn to Aristotle after first being exposed to the supple and mellifluous prose on display in Plato’s dialogues often find the experience frustrating.

• 11:26 - Dunning-Kruger Effect

• 12:23 - See BI Episode 05 - “It’s Alive!” 

• 13:00 - “The pressing, human questions we have about our lives depend directly on our attitudes toward the universe at a deeper level. For many people, those attitudes are adopted rather informally from the surrounding culture, rather than arising out of rigorous personal reflection. Each new generation of people doesn’t invent the rules of living from scratch; we inherit ideas and values that have evolved over vast stretches of time. At the moment, the dominant image of the world remains one in which human life is cosmically special and significant, something more than mere matter in motion. We need to do better at reconciling how we talk about life’s meaning with what we know about the scientific image of our universe.” -  Sean Carroll, from The Big Picture

• 14:02 - While there’s a lot of fun speculation about who was the last “know it all,” the tales all end up being a bit apocryphal in nature, yet there’s know doubt that Aristotle is good a candidate as any. As prolific a polymath as ever lived, he literally founded many fields of study as well as a school dedicated to their pursuit, inscribed over 200 works, studied physical sciences such as anatomy, astronomy, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and zoology, Wrote philosophy on aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, economics, psychology, rhetoric and theology, and still managed to find time for education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. For more see “Aristotle The Philosopher Who Knew It All” from Classical Wisdom Weekly 

• 17:21 - The “polis”

• 17:33 - See “Philosophers Justifying Slavery” from BBC Ethics Guide 

• 20:02 - See The Declaration of Independence - “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

• 20:17 - In ancient Athens, slaves were not citizens, and they considerably outnumbered male citizens. Greeks sometimes enslaved other Greeks in wars, but most slaves in Athens were foreigners. Slavery was hereditary, and freeing one’s slaves was rare.This extensive slave underclass gave the citizen elite time for leisure and contemplation, which was important for political participation in the Athenian democracy. For more on Aristotle’s views on slavery and why it was natural and necessary for the good of the state, see the links in the show notes. From today’s vantage point we can firmly say that there’s no such thing as a natural slave, and no morally acceptable justification for slavery, so I guess that sense Aristotle clearly didn’t know it all - a humble reminder to us mere mortals that even the smartest people can be badly misguided and fail to critically examine their own beliefs and society’s customs, and that future generations are likely to be horrified at some of the views we hold and justify today. - For more see “Aristotle’s Defense of Slavery” from 1000-Word Philosophy 

• 21:40 - “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand” from the The Times They Are A-Changin’ by Bob Dylan

• 22:05 - See “The Work Required To Have An Opinion” from the Farnam Street Blog

• 22:44 - I think Yo-Yo Ma is a pretty damn good cellist even if I don’t know exactly why (other than it sounds absolutely perfect and beautiful to my ears) - If you want some Yo-Yo Ma base level knowledge I highly recommend checking out this video featuring a beautiful rendition of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, Prélude

• 23:13 - Anchoring (cognitive bias)

• 25:00 - Based on criteria he lays out, Aristotle first rules out some other options as the supreme end, such as a pleasure or honor, before settling on eudaimonia, or happiness. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Scholars in fact dispute whether eudaimonia is best rendered as ‘happiness’ or ‘flourishing’ or ‘living well’ ...eudaimonia is achieved, according to Aristotle, by fully realizing our natures, by actualizing to the highest degree our human capacities, and neither our nature nor our endowment of human capacities is a matter of choice for us. Still, as Aristotle frankly acknowledges, people will consent without hesitation to the suggestion that happiness is our best good—even while differing materially about how they understand what happiness is. So, while seeming to agree, people in fact disagree about the human good. Consequently, it is necessary to reflect on the nature of happiness. Regardless, it seems clear that Aristotle was looking at a concept more akin to Maslow’s self-actualization over a lifetime than to the state of mind associated with moments of happiness experienced throughout our days, or happiness as we commonly understand it today. For more see Aristotle - Happiness and Political Association

• 25:55 - Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• 27:57 - In his Metaphysics, Aristotle states that  “Human beings began to do philosophy... as they do now, because of wonder, at first because they wondered about the strange things right in front of them, and then later, advancing little by little, because they came to find greater things puzzling” Human beings philosophize because they find aspects of their experience puzzling. The sorts of puzzles, or aporiai, we encounter in thinking about the universe and our place within it tax our understanding and induce us to philosophize. When encountered with puzzles, such as the ones that typically exist at the end of many of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, Aristotle’s pragmatic method was to begin philosophizing by trusting in his well-trained perceptual and cognitive faculties, looking out at the world, and laying out the the phainomena, or, the things appearing to be the case, and then also collecting the endoxa, or the most credible opinions handed down regarding the specific puzzles that he was investigating. Then he would explore the multiple opinions and see what wisdom could be gleaned, often seeking the middle ground between extreme positions. By employing this method Aristotle was practicing a sort of empirical philosophy, almost scientific in approach, as opposed to purely relying on his own theorizing or logic. For more see Phainomena and the Endoxic Method 

• 29:15 - The History of Political Science

• 30:20 - See Sam Harris and The Moral Landscape - Harris is a somewhat controversial figure nowadays. He lays out his vision in his 2010 book The Moral Landscape, which among other things argues that science can contribute to our understanding of morality, which has traditionally been the realm of philosophy, and in doing so challenging philosopher David Hume’s conception that it is not possible to derive what “ought” to be simply by describing what “is” as science does. Whether you agree or disagree, like Aristotle, Harris is undoubtedly trying to apply rational and reasoned thinking, and is quite articulate in doing so. Certainly this is an extremely complex topic that merits much deeper conversation.

• 31:46- See “The Sophists” from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or “Nature of Sophistic Thought” from Encyclopedia Brittanica 

• 32:15 - Thrasymachus and justice as the “advantage of the stronger”

• 33:21 - See BI Episode 03 - “The Examined Life”

• 35:51 - According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the difficulty of his task helps to explain why Socrates takes the curious route through the discussion of civic justice and civic happiness. Socrates can assume that a just city is always more successful or happy than an unjust city, furthermore, If Socrates can then explain how a just city is always more successful and happy than an unjust city, by giving an account of civic justice and civic happiness, he will have a model to propose for the relation between personal justice and flourishing. Socrates’ strategy depends on an analogy between a city and a person. There must be some intelligible relation between what makes a city successful and what makes a person successful. For more see “Socrates’ Adopted Strategy” 

• 37:29 - Nature vs Nurture

• 39:17 - See BI Episode 4 - “Too Cultured”

• 39:33 - See Key Terms: Auxiliaries, Guardians, Producers - Plato divides his just society into three classes: the producers, the auxiliaries, and the guardians. The auxiliaries are the warriors, responsible for defending the city from invaders, and for keeping the peace at home.They must enforce the convictions of the guardians, and ensure that the producers obey. The guardians are responsible for ruling the city. They are chosen from among the ranks of the auxiliaries, and are also known as philosopher-kings. The producing class is the largest class of society; it is a catch-all group that includes all professions other than warrior and ruler. Farmers and craftsmen are producers, as are merchants, doctors, artists, actors, lawyers, judges, and so forth.

• 39:40 - See Key Terms: Tripartite Soul, Appetite, Spirit, Reason  - According to Plato, the human soul has three parts corresponding to the three classes of society in a just city. Reason lusts after truth and is the source of all of our philosophic desires. In the just man, the entire soul is ruled by reason, and strives to fulfill reason’s desires. Appetite is the largest aspect of our tripartite soul. It is the seat of all our various desires for food, drink, sexual gratification, and other such pleasures. It contains both necessary desires, which should be indulged (such as the desire to eat enough to stay alive), unnecessary desires, which should be limited (such as the desire to eat a ten pound sirloin steak at every meal), and unlawful desires, which should be suppressed at all costs (such as the desire to eat one’s children). Spirit is the source of our honor-loving and victory-loving desires. Spirit is responsible for our feelings of anger and indignation. In a just soul, spirit acts as henchman to reason, ensuring that appetite adheres to reason’s commands. 

• 39:42 - Plato divides his just society into three classes: the producers, the auxiliaries, and the guardians, which he then analogizes to the tripartite soul which comprises the appetite, the spirit, and the reason. 

• 43:49 - See “Freud: Id, Ego, and Superego” at Simply Psychology

• 44:28 - In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, psychologist Jonathan Haidt characterizes the human mind as a partnership between separate but connected entities using the metaphor of the rider and the elephant - the rider represents all that is conscious and is the director of actions and executor of thought and long term goals, while the elephant represents all that is automatic, and often acts independently of conscious thought. According to Haidt, our problem is that we overemphasize the power and importance of our conscious verbal thinking and neglect the other components of our mind. In his book, he argues that we must improve our understanding of these divisions and learn to let them operate in harmony, not compete for control. For more see Jonathan Haidt: The Contributions of a Moral Psychologist and The Happiness Hypothesis

Jeff and Darron discuss two Titans of the ancient world: Plato and Aristotle - they discuss reading, and grapple with some of the difficulties of interpreting ancient texts.

Episode 06 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics

Jeff and Darron discuss how difficult it is to discuss politics and political issues, particularly with our friends and loved ones who might have views different than our own. Jeff relays a story of a recent conversation among friends gone awry, and they consider the role that emotions, identity, and cognitive biases play in our political conversations. Lastly they consider some ways in which we might have more productive conversations that help build understanding and hopefully don’t harm our relationships. This conversation was recorded a few days before the 2020 presidential election.

Notes:

• 5:01 - See “What Happens to Your Body During the Fight or Flight Response?”

• 5:53 - See “This is why you get worked up about politics, according to science” (CNN, 2017)

• 7:35 - Emotional Hijacking

• 7:58 - Difficult Conversations by by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen

• 10:03 - Confirmation bias

• 10:44 - Motivated reasoning

• 11:04 - “According to Peter Ditto, a psychology professor and researcher who studies motivated reasoning and what he refers to as “hot cognition” - the interface between passion and reason,“People think that they think like scientists, But really they think like lawyers. Scientists don't care what the answer is: they look at the data and draw a conclusion, Lawyers know the conclusion they want to reach, then they harness a bunch of facts to support that conclusion.” And this is how we construct our political facts, whether we realize we’re doing it or not.” - For more on this, confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and other cognitive biases see “When It Comes to Politics You’re Not As Rational As You Think” (University of California News, 2016) and “Cognitive Biases Cheat Sheet” from writer Buster Benson, author of Why Are We Yelling? The Art of Productive Disagreement

• 12:02 - Loss aversion

• 12:54 - See effects of stress on memory and  “Your Brain on Stress Fails to Learn Properly” (Psychology Today, 2018)

• 13:46 - Illusion of validity 

• 14:42 - See “This Article Won’t Change Your Mind” (The Atlantic, 2019) or “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds” (James Clear)

• 15:25 - See “Why Won’t They Listen?” (New York Times, 2012) and Jonathan Haidt interview with Tamler Sommers 

• 17:12 - See A Theory of Justice (John Rawls) and the “Original Position” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

• 17:49 - See “The Psychology Behind Why Politics Can Get So Heated — and How to Show Up Differently” (Healthline)

• 18:29 - “Due to this overlapping of identities, political identity is now sometimes referred to as a mega identity. According to political psychologist and author Liliana Mason, people have a huge number of different group identities, any of which might seem the most salient at any given time. In general, the identity at the top of your mind at any given moment most likely will be the identity facing the most pressing threat. But over the past few decades, the parties have become increasingly aligned with other social identities including race, religion, and rural or urban location. And when these links start connecting our parties and other parts of our social identities, then all of this gets drawn into that one particular political competition. once these mega-identities get formed, we start to think of out-group partisans as quite different from us — not just in terms of their political views, but also racially, religiously, and with any number of overlapping categories. We feel ever more socially distant from these out-group members, which makes it easier to dehumanize them, to think about them with less generosity.” - See “As the Rhetoric Escalates: Talking with Liliana Mason” an interview with Lilliana Mason, political psychologist and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity

• 22:40 - The exact lyric is “Scotty liked all of the books that I recommended even if he didn't I wouldn't be offended........” in the song “Tire Swing” by Kimya Dawson, which appears on the Juno movie soundtrack 

• 20:54 - Social Identity Theory

• 23:03 - See “Nirvana Vs. Pearl Jam” (Noisecreep, 2013) 

• 23:52 - “For people who pay attention to such things, New Haven is widely regarded as a pizza mecca, and is home to a few locations, most notably Pepe’s and Sally’s, that frequently appear on best pizza lists. Locals not only identify as being defenders of New Haven pizza, or more appropriately “apizza,” against other cities such as New York and Chicago, but also within New Haven everyone has a particular place that they argue is the best. For what it’s worth, and although I’ve certainly softened in my stance, I still happen to be a Pepe’s partisan, and won’t really argue unless you try to tell me that Modern is better.” For more on the New Haven pizza scene see Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria Napoletana, and “The Definitive Guide to New Haven Pizza” (Eater, 2014)

• 25:08 - See Negative Partisanship, “Negative Partisanship Explains Everything” (Politico, 2017), “How Hatred Came to Dominate American Politics” (FiveThirtyEight, 2020), and “The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of U.S. elections in the 21st century” (Electoral Studies, 2016)

• 27:35 - “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (YouTube video) by Nirvana

• 28:55 - See Dehumanization, “What Is Dehumanization Anyway?” (Psychology Today, 2018), “The 5 Steps of Dehumanization” (Psychology Today, 2018) and “Dehumanizing Always Starts With Language” (Brene Brown, 2018)

• 30:33 - Tribalism

• 30:48 - See “The Age of “Mega-Identity” Politics” (The Ezra Klein Show) - an interview with Lilliana Mason, political psychologist and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity

• 30:52 - Minimal Group Paradigm 

• 30:57 - See “Robbers Cave Experiment” (Simply Psychology) and “Revisiting Robbers Cave: The easy spontaneity of intergroup conflict” (Scientific American, 2012)

• 35:02 - See “How Filter Bubbles Distort Reality: Everything You Need to Know” (Farnam Street Blog, 2017)

• 40:55 - “I’m trying to make a nuanced point here about how we conduct our group politics versus how we discuss politics with people in our lives - and it is not to say that people in a democracy bear no responsibility for the actions of elected leaders. Nor is it to excuse hateful, derogatory, or dehumanizing rhetoric. As it is famously stated in the Declaration of Independence, “...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” politics and elections absolutely do have consequences, and plans, policies, and legislation implemented or not implemented do have impacts in the world, as do the words and ideas expressed by elected leaders. That being said, people’s identities are complex, and their perception of the world and how they see things in any given situation equally so, and I do not believe there is a 1:1 correlation between individuals and the governance of a particular politician or party. If we disagree then it is our job to continually do the work, as hard as it is, to understand multiple perspectives, even if they seem inimical to our own, and we must never forget our shared humanity. As the philosopher John Stuart Mill said “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”

• 43:08 - “Six of One - Obamacare vs. The Affordable Care Act” (2013  video clip from Jimmy Kimmel Live)

• 44:00 - See “Party Over Policy: The Dominating Impact of Group Influence on Political Beliefs” by Jeffrey Cohen (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003)

• 49:06 - The Beatles vs. The Stones (Ultimate Classic Rock)

• 51:48 - “Don’t put too many onions in the sauce” (video clip from Goodfellas)

• 54:52 - See “Masks Work. Really. We’ll Show You How.” (New York Times, 2020)

• 55:52 - See “Teresa Bejan on Free Speech, Civility, and Toleration” (Episode 116 of the Mindscape Podcast) - an interview with Teresa Bejan, political scientist and author of Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration 

• 56:45 - See “Managing Conversations When You Disagree Politically” (American Psychological Association)

Jeff and Darron discuss how difficult it is to discuss politics and political issues, particularly with our friends and loved ones who might have views different than our own. Jeff relays a story of a recent conversation among friends gone awry, and they consider the role that emotions, identity, and cognitive biases play in our political conversations.