Andy Norman on How to Avoid Bad Ideas and Transcend the Herd Mentality

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by Andy Norman, the author of "Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think", to discuss inoculating our minds against the worst forms of ideological contagion. Andy Norman teaches philosophy at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. He works on the conceptual and historical foundations of humanism and is a skilled facilitator of collaborative inquiry. He has published widely on the nature of reason and the teaching of wisdom, and written books on critical thinking and the structure of dialogue. Andy is also a serial entrepreneur: his educational software company built an early “thought processor” for strengthening reasoning skills, and he currently runs popular character education programs for children. Andy is the former Director of CMU’s Ethics, History and Public Policy program, and is interested in constructive engagement with the religious & in developing naturalistic alternatives to destructive religious mythologies. He speaks regularly on such topics as reason and faith, science and religion, the foundations of ethics, and the evolutionary, cultural, and attitudinal roots of prosocial behavior.