Here’s a quick fol­low up to our post on Susan Jacoby’s new book, The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son.  Since the orig­i­nal post, we have pulled togeth­er some media fea­tur­ing Jaco­by and her views on Amer­i­ca’s drift toward anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism.

First, you can watch her recent inter­view with Bill Moy­ers: Video — Mp3 — iTunes — Feed.

Next, lis­ten to this radio pro­gram — “Anti-Intel­lec­tu­al­ism in the US” — that fea­tures Jaco­by and a pan­el of thinkers: Mp3 — iTunes — Feed — Web site.

There is a lot of pub­lic­i­ty this week around Susan Jacoby’s new book, The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son. The new work fits into the tra­di­tion of Richard Hof­s­tadter’s 1963 clas­sic, Anti-Intel­lec­tu­al­ism in Amer­i­can Life. And it seem­ing­ly moves in the same orbit as Al Gore’s The Assault on Rea­son (2007). The upshot of Jacoby’s argu­ment is that “Amer­i­cans are in seri­ous intel­lec­tu­al trou­ble — in dan­ger of los­ing our hard-won cul­tur­al cap­i­tal to a vir­u­lent mix­ture of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, anti-ratio­nal­ism and low expec­ta­tions.” As she goes on to say in this op-ed appear­ing in The Wash­ing­ton Post, we’re now liv­ing in a moment when Amer­i­cans are read­ing few­er books than ever, and they know stag­ger­ing­ly lit­tle about the world: Only 23 per­cent of Amer­i­cans with some col­lege edu­ca­tion can iden­ti­fy Iraq, Iran, Sau­di Ara­bia and Israel on a map, even though the US has a tremen­dous amount at stake there. (Source: NY Times book review.) And one fifth of Amer­i­can adults think that the sun revolves around the Earth. This is all pret­ty bad. But what makes mat­ters worse is the “alarm­ing num­ber of Amer­i­cans who have smug­ly con­clud­ed that they do not need to know such things in the first place.” Igno­rance has some­how strange­ly gone from vice to virtue.

What are the solu­tions? I guess you’ll have to get the book, or get mil­lions of your friends to read Open Cul­ture (wink).

UPDATE: You can catch Bill Moy­ers’ inter­view with Susan Jaco­by here: video — mp3 — iTunes — feed. This will let you take a clos­er look at Jacoby’s argu­ment. Thanks Muriel for the tip!

Relat­ed Piece:

Amer­i­ca’s Philoso­pher Pres­i­dent

Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

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We cov­ered the Sec­ond Amend­ment a cou­ple of weeks ago. (Does it con­fer the right to bear arms?) So why not touch on the First Amend­ment this week and point you to an engag­ing inter­view (MP3 — iTunes — Feed) with the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author Antho­ny Lewis, who has just released the new book: Free­dom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biog­ra­phy of the First Amend­ment.

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On the lighter side .…

Yes­ter­day, I got a chance to attend Lar­ry Lessig’s last lec­ture ever on “Free Cul­ture.” (More on Lessig here.) It was a pre­sen­ta­tion wor­thy of Steve Jobs, and I’ll have more to say about it lat­er.

For now, I’ll leave you with an exam­ple of cre­ative “remix­ing” cit­ed dur­ing his talk. It’s polit­i­cal satire. Not the kind that your father grew up with. But the kind that’s grown out of the new dig­i­tal land­scape.

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The Nature Con­ser­van­cy asked its staff and lead­ing envi­ron­ment blog­gers how you can make “per­son­al, sci­ence-based choic­es to help save the plan­et.” Here are their 14 sug­ges­tions.

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