Episode
Episode 117: Jonathan Rauch
- Podcast
- The Theory of Anything
- Published
- Sep 30, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 6751
- Processing state
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Summary
This week we had the absolute honor of interviewing Jonathan Rauch. Rauch is an extremely influential public intellectual (journalist and author) who is also a Popperian. His 1993 book, Kindly Inquisitors , makes the epistemic case for free speech. It is a stone cold classic that will be with us for a long time. In his 2021 sequel, The Constitution of Knowledge , he considers how society collectively produces knowledge and the dangers of misinformation. He has also written a book that provided the “intellectual framework” for the case for same sex marriage. ( link ) And though he says he's a Jewish atheist, his latest book, Cross Purposes , is a critical, yet reverential, book on Christianity making the case that our society needs more and not less Christianity. Follow Jonathan Rauch on X . Support us on Patreon