logo
episode-header-image
Dec 2023
2h 21m

A Trial by Media Ended Caylan Ford’s Car...

MICHAEL SHERMER
About this episode

Caylan Ford is a documentary filmmaker, charter school founder, and a former political candidate. She holds a Bachelor’s degree (Hons.) in Chinese history from the University of Calgary, a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a Master’s in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford.

She spent many years in the international human rights field, including by increasing access to anti-surveillance and censorship tools in Iran, China, and Myanmar; working with civil rights lawyers representing political dissidents; supporting refugee and asylum claimants; and conducting and publishing original research on the repression of religious minorities in China.

She has written and co-produced two feature documentary films on the themes of religious and political persecution, censorship, forced labor, scapegoating, and mass persuasion under totalitarian regimes.

Her new documentary film, When the Mob Came, focuses on her experience of cancel culture following a catastrophic bid for political office.

Shermer and Ford discuss: • education reform • public vs. private vs. charter schools • the blank slate • Thomas Sowell’s Constrained Vision vs. Unconstrained Vision • French Revolution vs. American Revolution • truth, justice, and reality • what promotes humanity and what degrades it • transhumanism • political correctness • identity politics • cancel culture • totalitarianism • preference falsification • free speech • hate speech • how to stand up to cancel culture.

Up next
Aug 26
Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion
Because brainwashing affects both the world and our observation of the world, we often don’t recognize it while it’s happening―unless we know where to look. As Rebecca Lemov writes in her new book The Instability of Truth, “Brainwashing erases itself.” What we call brainwashing i ... Show More
1h 24m
Aug 18
Can We Prevent Aging? Eric Topol on Genes, Lifestyle, and AI in Healthcare
In this conversation, Michael Shermer and Dr. Eric Topol discuss the realties of aging, with particular focus on the role of AI in enhancing patient care and disease prevention, the importance of lifestyle factors, and the limitations of genetic testing in predicting health outco ... Show More
1h 17m
Aug 12
Is Nuclear Energy Our Best Shot at Saving the Planet?
Isabelle Boemeke explains how nuclear energy is our best option for ensuring the future of the planet—it can power cities, desalinate water, create carbon-free fertilizer, and heat homes, all with the smallest environmental footprint of any energy source. She also discusses commo ... Show More
1h 14m
Recommended Episodes
Apr 2023
Elizabeth S. Hurd and Winnifred F. Sullivan, "At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion" (Columbia UP, 2021)
From right to left, notions of religion and religious freedom are fundamental to how many Americans have understood their country and themselves. Ideas of religion, politics, and the interplay between them are no less crucial to how the United States has engaged with the world be ... Show More
44m 7s
Feb 2023
Elora Halim Chowdhury, "Ethical Encounters: Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh" (Temple UP, 2022)
An exploration of the intersection of feminism, human rights, and memory, Ethical Encounters: Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh (Temple University Press, 2022) examines contemporary, woman-centered Muktijuddho cinema--features and documentaries th ... Show More
54 m
Aug 2023
Travis Holloway, "How to Live at the End of the World: Theory, Art, and Politics for the Anthropocene" (Stanford UP, 2022)
the near universal disappearance of shared social enterprise: the ruling class builds walls and lunar shuttles, while the rest of us contend with the atrophy of institutional integrity and the utter abdication of providing even minimal shelter from looming disaster.The irony of t ... Show More
51m 14s
May 2023
Eva Haifa Giraud, "What Comes After Entanglement?: Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion" (Duke UP, 2019)
By foregrounding the ways that human existence is bound together with the lives of other entities, contemporary cultural theorists have sought to move beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Yet as Eva Haifa Giraud contends in What Comes After Entanglement?: Activism, Anthropocentri ... Show More
38m 22s
May 2023
Eva Haifa Giraud, "What Comes After Entanglement?: Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion" (Duke UP, 2019)
By foregrounding the ways that human existence is bound together with the lives of other entities, contemporary cultural theorists have sought to move beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Yet as Eva Haifa Giraud contends in What Comes After Entanglement?: Activism, Anthropocentri ... Show More
38m 22s
Feb 2024
James L. Gibson and Michael J. Nelson, "Judging Inequality: State Supreme Courts and the Inequality Crisis" (Russell Sage, 2021)
Soaring levels of political, legal, economic, and social inequality have been documented by social scientists – but the public conversation and scholarship on inequality has not examined the role of state law and state courts in establishing policies that significantly affect ine ... Show More
58m 58s
Jan 2024
Stephen M. Engel and Timothy S. Lyle, "Disrupting Dignity: Rethinking Power and Progress in LGBTQ Lives" (NYU Press, 2021)
Scholars Stephen Engel and Timothy Lyle have a new book that dives into the thinking around power, political and cultural progress, and the LGBTQ+ communities in the United States. This book is fascinating and important in examining not only policy developments around rights and ... Show More
58m 56s
Feb 2022
Elizabeth Anderson, "Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) (Princeton UP, 2019)
One in four American workers says their workplace is a "dictatorship." Yet that number almost certainly would be higher if we recognized employers for what they are-private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives. Many employers minutely regulate workers' spe ... Show More
53m 1s