Politics Edition: Handling The Other Side | Ep 791

Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett’s long-time partner at Berkshire Hathaway. Content to being the lesser known of the two, Munger is no less impressive. Bill Gates says that Charlie Munger “is truly the broadest thinker I have ever encountered,” and Buffett calls him the ideal partner who is “both smarter and wiser.”

Poor Charlie’s Almanack is a collection of Charlie Munger’s best advice given over 30 years, in the form of 11 speeches given as commencement addresses and roundtable talks. He covers a wide range of topics, including rationality and decision making, investing, and how to live a good life. You’ll learn why Charlie considers multidisciplinary learning vital to success, his checklist for investment criteria, and how to build a trillion dollar company from scratch.

Making mistakes and believing things that aren’t true are unavoidable parts of human nature, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, it’s our beliefs, right or wrong, that let us function in our daily lives, and it’s only through mistakes that we can learn and grow. In Being Wrong, journalist Kathryn Schulz argues that we shouldn’t try to avoid mistakes completely. Instead, we should change how we view our mistakes—and maybe even laugh at ourselves once in a while.

In this guide, we’ll explain how mistakes enrich our lives, why our senses and beliefs often fool us, and how to deal with making mistakes without falling victim to shame and denial. We’ll also draw on the wider world of psychology and science to explore the reasons behind human error, how to accept it in a healthy way, and how we can dodge mistakes or use them to our advantage.

This book answers the simple but essential question: Why can’t we all get along?

Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains why people around the world, including liberals and conservatives in the United States, have different moral frameworks. He argues that moral judgments are emotional, not logical—they are based on stories rather than reason. Consequently, liberals and conservatives lack a common language, and reason-based arguments about morality are ineffective. This leads to political polarization.

The Righteous Mind explores how our divergent moralities evolved, why morality is about more than just fairness, and how we can counter our natural self-righteousness to decrease political divides.

This book answers the simple but essential question: Why can’t we all get along?

Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains why people around the world, including liberals and conservatives in the United States, have different moral frameworks. He argues that moral judgments are emotional, not logical—they are based on stories rather than reason. Consequently, liberals and conservatives lack a common language, and reason-based arguments about morality are ineffective. This leads to political polarization.

The Righteous Mind explores how our divergent moralities evolved, why morality is about more than just fairness, and how we can counter our natural self-righteousness to decrease political divides.

In Why We’re Polarized, American progressive journalist, political commentator, and podcaster Ezra Klein argues that Americans are divided into two sharply contrasting groups rooted in partisan identities.

He writes that the clustering of nearly the entire electorate into the Democratic and Republican camps is a story about identity. Specifically, our partisan political identities have become overarching super-identities that encompass and activate our most deeply felt personal, religious, linguistic, socioeconomic, and ethnic/racial identities. In today’s America, these underlying lines of division all come together in one main division—between Democrats and Republicans—that makes bipartisan cooperation increasingly difficult.

In this guide, we explore the origins of modern political polarization and its differing impact on the two major political parties, how polarization has made American politics a winner-take-all struggle, and ideas for how we might depolarize our politics. We also supplement Klein’s ideas and analysis with commentary from other political scholars and analysts and explore additional perspectives that both support and challenge Klein.

Why and how do people justify their questionable actions and big mistakes? In Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson argue that we self-justify to relieve cognitive dissonance: discomfort triggered when we do things that don’t align with our other beliefs, actions, and values. They examine several unconscious processes we use to reduce the discomfort of cognitive dissonance, including self-justification, confirmation bias, and memory distortion. By learning about these psychological processes, you can unlock awareness of them in your own life and begin taking accountability for your actions.

In this guide, you’ll learn how contradictory thoughts and behaviors create painful dissonance. We’ll also discuss how self-justification, confirmation bias, and memory distortion help us relieve dissonance. Finally, we’ll discuss how the authors suggest we can break the cycle of self-justification and hold ourselves accountable for our uncomfortable actions. In our commentary, we’ll discuss healthier strategies you can use to deal with dissonance and explore some of the neurological processes that drive self-justifying behavior.

This book answers the simple but essential question: Why can’t we all get along?

Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains why people around the world, including liberals and conservatives in the United States, have different moral frameworks. He argues that moral judgments are emotional, not logical—they are based on stories rather than reason. Consequently, liberals and conservatives lack a common language, and reason-based arguments about morality are ineffective. This leads to political polarization.

The Righteous Mind explores how our divergent moralities evolved, why morality is about more than just fairness, and how we can counter our natural self-righteousness to decrease political divides.

In Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, sociologist Arlie Hochschild seeks to understand the social, cultural, and emotional forces driving right-wing politics, in an effort to move past the partisan divide and approach American politics from a position of empathy for those on the right. By breaking down this empathy wall, we can come to truly inhabit the emotional world of the right, giving us insight into why these voters believe what they believe—and why those beliefs might make sense given these voters’ experiences.

What are the greatest threats to democracy today? How do healthy democratic states descend into illiberalism and authoritarian rule—and how can defenders and proponents of democracy prevent this from happening?

In Shortform’s Master Guide to Threats to Democracy, we’ve synthesized the ideas and recommendations of some of the world’s leading political scientists from across the ideological spectrum to bring insight to this important—and timely—question. We’ll explore forces like polarization, the decline of democratic norms, and extreme wealth inequality that combine to weaken and undermine democratic institutions.

We’ll also examine some of the ways proponents of democracy can promote stronger and healthier democratic institutions through specific institutional reforms, new economic policies to combat inequality, and actions at the individual and grassroots levels to overcome the social divisions that corrode democracy.

This book answers the simple but essential question: Why can’t we all get along?

Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains why people around the world, including liberals and conservatives in the United States, have different moral frameworks. He argues that moral judgments are emotional, not logical—they are based on stories rather than reason. Consequently, liberals and conservatives lack a common language, and reason-based arguments about morality are ineffective. This leads to political polarization.

The Righteous Mind explores how our divergent moralities evolved, why morality is about more than just fairness, and how we can counter our natural self-righteousness to decrease political divides.

In Why We’re Polarized, American progressive journalist, political commentator, and podcaster Ezra Klein argues that Americans are divided into two sharply contrasting groups rooted in partisan identities.

He writes that the clustering of nearly the entire electorate into the Democratic and Republican camps is a story about identity. Specifically, our partisan political identities have become overarching super-identities that encompass and activate our most deeply felt personal, religious, linguistic, socioeconomic, and ethnic/racial identities. In today’s America, these underlying lines of division all come together in one main division—between Democrats and Republicans—that makes bipartisan cooperation increasingly difficult.

In this guide, we explore the origins of modern political polarization and its differing impact on the two major political parties, how polarization has made American politics a winner-take-all struggle, and ideas for how we might depolarize our politics. We also supplement Klein’s ideas and analysis with commentary from other political scholars and analysts and explore additional perspectives that both support and challenge Klein.

In Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, sociologist Arlie Hochschild seeks to understand the social, cultural, and emotional forces driving right-wing politics, in an effort to move past the partisan divide and approach American politics from a position of empathy for those on the right. By breaking down this empathy wall, we can come to truly inhabit the emotional world of the right, giving us insight into why these voters believe what they believe—and why those beliefs might make sense given these voters’ experiences.