Who needs experts?
May 22, 2026
48 min
Full
767 of 775
May 22, 2026
Who needs experts?
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Gray Area Episodes Around May 22, 2026
Episode 767 of 775 — walk the feed in the order it was published.
48:34This episodeWho needs experts?
Summary
Almost a decade ago, Tom Nichols warned that Americans were losing respect for expertise. He didn’t expect things to get this bad.
Sean talks with Nichols about his 2017 book “The Death of Expertise” and what’s happened since: why people don’t just distrust experts but actively push back against them, how the internet turns bad ideas into communities, and why a society that can’t agree on basic facts can’t function for long. They also dig into the deeper causes: loneliness, narcissism, and the weird psychology of living in a world where everything “just works.”
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling)
Guest: Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom)
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