Ilana Redstone: The Certainty Trap

0:00 – Intro: Ilana Redstone and The Certainty Trap
0:42 – Why Lou does the podcast
1:56 – An online fight over the Daniel Penny case
4:01 – Why the New York subway stopped feeling safe
5:34 – Challenged to a fistfight on X
8:41 – Finding the guy on LinkedIn
11:02 – Lessons from the exchange
13:32 – It just feels better to be certain
15:30 – Rushing to judgment about a friend's husband
18:46 – Kids, stress, and marriage
20:34 – Where the name Redstone comes from
21:56 – Has sociology earned its bad rap?
24:22 – Treating contested claims as certain
26:32 – Lou's sex and gender studies class at NYU
31:04 – Teaching a course on contentious topics
34:14 – Should any department be exempt from justifying itself?
37:19 – Teaching how to think, not what to think
39:18 – Why critical thinking talk falls short
42:03 – Articulating why rape is wrong
43:52 – Peter Boghossian and defending your beliefs
44:54 – Día de los Muertos at Target: a thought experiment
47:49 – Cultural appropriation and buying sombreros
49:14 – Thriller and who really makes the music
52:06 – Michael Jackson and Duran Duran posters
52:46 – When cultural borrowing is a real problem
54:21 – Is there such a thing as white culture?
55:29 – Is there an uncertainty trap?
56:58 – Saying right and wrong without certainty
58:59 – Degrees of certainty and the flat Earth
1:01:23 – Best moment of 2024 and goals for 2025