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Podcast: A defense of truth with Jonathan Rauch

Podcast: A defense of truth with Jonathan Rauch

Online trolls and political disinformation. Cancel culture and Twitter pile-ons. We're living in a time when truth itself is under perpetual assault by growing numbers of our fellow citizens (and more than a few Russian bots) who simply don't want to believe anything that they — well — didn't already want to believe. This rising tide of illiberalism from across the political spectrum has many of us yammering on until we turn blue about respectful disagreement and the marketplace of ideas. But what if defenders of truth are missing the most fundamental conceptual revolution at the very core of this American experiment and the enlightenment — of western civilization itself? Jonathan Rauch connects our past to our present challenge as he introduces us to "The Constitution of Knowledge" — the extraordinary system of how we flawed humans gain knowledge that scales and endures. Rauch argues we must know the constitution of knowledge exists if we are to have any hope of defending it.

This frame-shifting conversation is offered in partnership with Florida Humanities as a part of a multi-year series "Unum: Democracy Reignited," exploring the past, present and future of the American idea — as it exists on paper, in the hearts of our people, and as it manifests in our lives.


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One of the two Palm Beach, Florida, homes that Donald Trump signed a mortgage for in the mid-1990s. The Mar-a-Lago tower appears behind the house.

Melanie Bell/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal

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(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

President’s Use of Force in the Caribbean Is Another Test for Congress and the Constitutional System

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People draped in an American flag and a Ukrainian flag join a march toward the United Nations.
Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

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U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a cabinet meeting hosted by President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025.

(Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images/TNS)

You can’t hide from war crimes by calling them ‘fake news’

Since September of this year, the United States military has been blowing up boats allegedly trafficking drugs in the Caribbean.

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