A friend once called me a “truth-seeking missile.” I’m still trying to live up to the compliment.

By tackling problems in how we think, I’m doing what I can to transform the way we see the world and one another—especially when it comes to heated political issues. As I see it, democracy depends on our ability to question, clarify, and challenge our thinking.

The lack of viewpoint diversity in the media and higher education, the lack of civil discourse, the rise in political polarization, the decline in social trust, and the decline in trust in institutions can largely be traced to the problem of certainty. It distorts our sense of the world and gives us permission to be sloppy in our thinking.

Fortunately, this problem is solvable.

I’m currently working on another book, a sort of followup to The Certainty Trap. In that book, I consider our ideas about what good people do and don’t do, especially when it comes to sociopolitical issues. The working title is The Politics of Shame: How the Illusion of Moral Clarity Divided a Town and a Nation.