\s. >> good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with harvard law professor cas sunstein. the author and essayist has for some time been writing about democracy in the internet era. elgin us to talk about his latest back called lsht "#republic" divided democracy in the age of social media. we're glad you've joined us. conversation whereas katzenstein in just a moment. ♪

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> katzenstein is a harvard law professor and author and essayist. his latest text is the called #"#republic" divided democracy in the age of social media." he joins us tonight from boston. good to have you back on the program tonight. >> the nice to be here. >> before i get into the splt #"#republic" text, it's not lost on me one of your other books which i have is "the world according to star wars." this as we all know is the 40th anniversary of "star wars." i want to ask you specifically

about the travel ban that president trump reinstated today. for those following the news know that he reinstated the travel ban 2.0. he's reinstated the ban for all other refugees. whether or not there's something our government ought to learn from stars 40 years later. insulate "star wars" is a very effective warning about the risks of a leader who is authortarian maybe and who is popular because' carries a big stick. so "star wars" is an instructive parable about the importance of maintaining a system of checks and balances, maintaining separation of powers and making sure that liberty is alive and well. >> are we witnessing life imitating art or art imitating life these days? >> it's early in the trump administration so i wouldn't want to say the empire is striking back or anything like

that, but it is the case we're seeing all over the world and to some extent there are signs in the united states of this of enthusiasm for a powerful leader who is maybe not as careful about institutional safeguards as, let's say, democratic traditions standardly favor. >> and before i move onto the "#republic" text, is there a lesson or lessons for we the people to consider from "star wars" 40 years later? >> i think so. "star wars" is very clear that liberty sometimes dies to thunderous applause. that was in the much maligned but excellent prequels, excellent at least in their lessons i think about what we're now discussing. and to say if there's thunderous applause because something may involve a travel ban, something from a democratic president that is catering to public mood, maybe hold the applause and think a little bit about alexander hamilton and james madison and martin luther king and franklin delano roosevelt and ronald reagan, all

of whom were in their different ways careful about thunderous applause and insistent that we the people value liberty and its blessings and our system of separation of powers more than we value you know, catering to a mood on a thursday or a wednesday. >> powerful insights. let me go to your book #"#republic," our founding fathers created a "#republic" that was supposed to be a deliberative democracy. we have anything but these days. it's more of a direct democracy. what do you make of the shift we've made and the kind of democracy we see afoot? >> well, you're exactly right. what our constitution is supposed to do is prize two things. one is accountability, that's democracy as we now understand it and the other is kind of reflection and reason giving in trying to make sure that you have good grounds for doing something. that's the deliberative part. there is a risk these days that

we have democracy in a kind of populist sense without prizing deliberation in a kind of what are the reasons for doing something. if the issue involves terrorist threats or if it involves regulation or it involves highway safety or if it involves diseases, to try to make sure that we are appealing to, let's say, the better angels of our nature. that's from abraham lincoln, and the better angels of our nature is often thinking, well, what are we actually getting out of this? what are we losing out of that? and that often makes democracy i think its highest form, a republic which is what benjamin franklin thought the founders had given we the people if in his words we can keep it. >> is it your sense that we have a divided democracy as your subtitle says in the age of social media or has social media led to the divided democracy? >> the idea of a divided democracy that actually goes

back, of course, to the founding period where people didn't agree on everything, and that was part of the virtue of the system that we could argue with each other. but there are divisions which are kind of productive as hamilton emphasized because they can lead to sense and wisdom and judgment and they're divisions which can be either paralyzing or challenging for the very project of self-rule. paralyzing because you can't get stuff done which sometimes happened under president obama and also under president bush and worse than that actually if people start regarding their fellow citizens not as people who are good but have different views and maybe something to add but as enemies who need to be silenced or at least not listened to because what they have to say is nonsense, i think in some ways social media have intensified the worst forms of social division.

>> it's hard to talk about this and not talk about president trump given that he is not just the commander in chief but the tweeter in chief. so let's just take the most recent example of his tweets this weekend suggesting that president obama was behind the wiretapping of his office in trump tower. just give me your sense of how the president using social media in that way is advancing the notion of deliberative democracy? >> well, that's a very serious accusation for one leader to make about a predecessor. and probably the best way to explore a concern of that kind is not through a tweet, which can create enmities and hostilities and maybe cries of "lock him up," to use words like bad or sick to describe your predecessor, that's not standard in the united states. that, of course, in campaign season you can be very tough. but once you're in office, you treat your predecessor with

respect. if there is a basis for an allegation and so far as i'm aware there is actually no basis for that allegation, it's fair to try to engineer some process to get behind it. but tweeting on something like that, that's really not consistent with our traditions and i got to work for president reagan as well as president obama. and let's go back to president reagan because maybe the fact that it was awhile ago makes it less inflamed. whether you're republican or democrat, that's really not the reagan style. the reagan white house was much more evidence-based, at least by and large, not all the time. so the tweeting about accusations like that, that's not what we the people most need. >> one of the ways that you suggest and i want to get into other ways, one of the ways that you suggest that we can lessen and we can do better around this notion of divided democracy in the age of social media is to get outside of our own bubbles if i can put it that way, our

own worlds and read the tweets of others, read the social media postings of others. if i'm reading the social media posts of others and they're saying the kinds of things that trump is sayinging whether breitbart or other outlets are saying, how is that helping me decrease the divisiveness in our democracy just by reading the social media posts of others? >> it is true, if you are for example, a democrat and you read something from republicans that strikes you as baseless or crazy, it's not exactly going to help you think of people disagree with you respectfully. it might just intensify your thinking, oh, my gosh, who are these people? but social media, one of the good things is there's a ton of stuff out there. and if a democrat doesn't have anything to learn from a republican, that be democrat had better start thinking a little more carefully because republicans, whether they are supporters of president trump or

supporters of senator cruz, they're going to have some ideas that will teach you two things. first, that some of your own judgments might be wrong, not on the wild stuff but on policy issues. and they'll teach you something about what some of your fellow citizens who are thoughtful and good people, what they think. and that's instructive even if on reflection you conclude that they're wrong. so suppose the issue is what to do about highway safety or what to do about the environment. republicans and democrats have a lot to learn from each other. democrats can learn from republicans about the importance of proceeding in a way that is consistent with economic growth and doesn't crush small business, for example. and republicans can learn from democrats and i'm speaking with a broad brush here, but about, you want to protect kids from asthma, you want to prevent older people from going to the hospital, then you want to reduce air pollution. once we start talking about these different sensible concerns, we can make start figuring out a path to something

other than paralysis and maybe we can both save lives and promote economic growth. >> i can hear my grandfather saying to me as he said so many times that numbers don't lie but people do. the numbers are the numbers. but people can manipulate those numbers and lie about them. i raise that because where social media is concerned, the statement you've made now makes sense so long as one assumes that social media isn't being used in a plan plative way that it's being used for a sincere exchange. i'm not sure i buy that. >> you're completely right that some people just state numbers because they are inflammatory or some people state numbers because they read it somewhere even though it has no basis. but you know, we're all sizs and strum supreme court justice brandeis described that as the highest office in the land. if you're a citizen you won't

necessarily just believe some number out there. you'll look a little bit to see if it has credibility. i'll give you a number that does have credibility. over 40,000 americans died on the roads in 2016. that's the latest figure from the department of transportation. 40,000 is a number. that doesn't lie. maybe it will be adjusted a little bit, but each one of those people is or was someone who had loved ones and who died under generally quite tragic circumstances. and that's something that we ought to be focusing on. how do we get that number down. so the numbers on social media are frequently not reliable, but at least they can start a conversation. >> yeah. i take your point. my point was not so much about the numbers but about whether or not or put another way, how it is that we engage in a democratic exchange that is fair and that is free when the people

using that particular mooemd medium are using it to in fact plan play the the audience rather than to have a sincere exchange. i'm taupe using social media, but if what i'm reading is being put forth too manipulate me, if donald trump as he did over the weekend suggests that barack obama wiretapped trump tower and before we can even get to a real conversation people are taking sides already on whether he did or whether he didn't, now donald trump after he makes the statement asks congress to look into it, that's like the tail wagging the dog here. in the midst of all that how do you have a legitimate exchange in social media. >> you're right. the best moment in the history of the american presidency was not president trump's tweet about being wiretapped by his predecessor. that was not a very good moment for our system. but you can see tweets from quite sensible and interested

people that involve not accusations about people who disagree with them, but concerns. so you might see a tweet that says, you know, gosh, if we increase the minimum wage by a very high amount, we're going to freeze people out of the employment market and then a link to some study that suggests that. for those who like the minimum wage, that's an informative thing to think about, or you can see someone tweeting there's a level of let's say police misconduct in some part of the united states which has actually put people at risk. their liberty and in some cases their safety at risk. and then it will link to something that actually shows that. and whether you're democrat or republican, that's something that's really important, and it might be true. so the sheer diversity of things on twitter and facebook is both a problem for the reason you give, that there is manipulation out there, but it's also potentially a source of

something that hamilton could never have dreamed of and i refer to hamilton because he was the great thinker about the virtue of a lot of diversity out there, a lot jarring of parties was his idea, the jarring of parties would promote deliberation. it won't if there's manipulation and falsehood. but it can and every day for all the awfulness of let's say the rage and fake news, there's stuff that that is actually informing people and getting localities, whether it's in oklahoma or connecticut or nevada to people who are involved in running those low cas thinking hey, we've got a problem here. what are we going do about it. >> when hamilton uttered pose powerful words that there were at least two things he could never imagine, one he would be the subject of a hit play on broadway and that in the era of social media people could say whatever they want with

unanimity and hide their hand. i come back to this notion of how we have conversations ha are meaningful, how we have a less divided democracy when the citizenry and you were right when the justice brandeis when you quoted him being a citizen is the highest office in the land but too many of us by the millions who hold that highest office go on social media, do it anonymously, we throw rocks and hide our hands. i don't know how that advances democracy. >> it's not a great thing. and i just add a little point that fortifies your concern which is if you get people who are anonymous and let's say full of rage and manipulating or trying to push something and they end up creating a little information ca cocoon or maybe it's a huge was cocoon in which hundreds or thousands in some cases millions of people are basically looking in the mirror at each other, like minded types, that can be extremely destructive. i think we are witnessing that where some people let's say who

are on the right are just talking to people who think like them and thinking, for example, that the idea of combating racially motivated police misconduct is horrible rather than part of you know, making our system better and you can see it on the left too where people are just talking to one another on certain issues and increasingly seeing people who are conservative not as people with different views but as people who are on martinez or something. and from hamilton's point of view that really is a nightmare. we can even give it a name. hamilton's nightmare is what hamilton thought was if you get the jarring of parties, his term, you can promote circumspection and reflection and if you have these echo chambers and information ca koonz you're not going to get that. for every day we very something horrible along those lines happening, on that very day something beautiful is happening

where people are learning from one another or seeing oh, my gosh, there's a problem in the united states i hadn't been aware of it. what ax i going to do to fix it. i think the imperative for the next year and years is to reduce the extent to wit social media themselves and i'm including facebook and twitter here are using their own platforms to create echo chambers and division. and also for each of us who aren't running the platform but using the platforms to think, you know, if i'm living in an echo chamber, i'm getting furious at someone, i might be wrong. the spirit of liberty is another american judge learned hand says the spirit of liberty is that spirit which is not too sure that it is right. >> if i said to you all things considered is, social media is not good for democracy, how would you disabuse me of that notion? >> i guess i'd say that that

paints a little too broadly. so whether you're in a country that isn't democratic and is kind of trying to be or a country like ours that is though it has some challenges, you can learn in an instant from your twitter feed or your facebook page something about, let's say, food safety or something about how the senate is working this month or something about something wonderful that president obama did that you didn't know about, and so the capacity to learn things so quickly, that's a big advantage for democracy. now, i wouldn't say having said that that on balance social media is a plus for democracy. and the reason i wouldn't say fla is that that's pretty broad brush, too. it's like automobiles which is are so fantastic in many ways but in some way not so great. on balance we're better off with

automobiles. i think on balance we're bet eg off with social media. you can connect bush friends, you can learn stuff is to become oblivious to the kinds of problems we're talking about where the worst i think is people often learn very quickly what they already thought before was not just true it's fantastically truant things that they thought were not right are just not right they're horrible and kind of satanic, that's hamilton's nightmare. >> we've had this conversation, cas, for the most part centered around those of us who use social media and how it is that we can be better users of it in terms of making our democracy a little less divided. but you raised something a moment ago. you mentioned facebook and twitter specifically as i recall. i want to ask you how they, that is to say these companies, who are giving us this stuff to play with, giving us this is stuff by

which we are further dividing our government, how are they as actors, what role are they playing in either helping our democracy or hindering our democracy? >> well, facebook a little while ago published something about its news feed in which it suggested we really want you to have a personalized feed that picks out the stuff that is of special interest to you. in a way that sounds really good and is consistent with a business model that facebook has at times had but you could imagine facebook thinking and i think there's some thought from the public statements that facebook might be heading in the direction, this direction, which is our democracy doesn't mean that you get the news that you know, fits your own thought about what you'd like to see now but you get news that is educative and is going to promote learning, which you probably also care about. not by throwing in your face topics and points of view that

you despise but broadening rather than narrowing your horizon. i think with respect to facebook in particular to, rethink the news feed so that their core ideals aren't you john jones get exactly what you would like to see if you could -- but instead something like you, john jones you're an american. here's what we're going to show you, a few things. that's kind of a general direction which maybe some opposing views, maybe some topics and twitter, it's a little more complicated because twitter you've got to follow exactly things you like. but i think it would behoove facebook well to think what are we doing here exactly? how are we being a system which that is the american system which is in many ways uniquely challenged these days and the creativity and ingenuity of the technology crowd is a promise here. and we're seeing some entities

grow up interacting with facebook. which are providing people now an opportunity to see different stuff and a lot of americans actually like that. and i think we're kind of in the early adolescence of social media and as it gets older, i hope it will fulfill our democratic ideals a bit better. >> i think i'll open this as the exit question. and that is that whatever facebook does in the future i'm not certain of and we will see what becomes of what you've just laid out, but if democracy is about anything, it is about choice. it has to concern you that given the choice that we have so many of us in social media choose to listen, choose to watch, choose to follow those things that undergird that are confirm that we already believe anyway. >> completely. and we might think you know in an individual life or a city or

a neighborhood, you will see a lot of serendipity. i think we need to prize serendipity much more than we have in our thinking about social media. that is, you might on a day in a neighborhood see people who are doing completely different things from you or you go around a corner and you see an activity that will change your day and maybe your month and possibly even your life. and to think of how we can have an architecture of serendipity in our social media rather than an an architecture of complete control, i think that would serve our democracy, and for americans to think as we have in our history, you know what i choose? i choose serendipity. >> the latest text from cas r. sunstein is called #"#republic" divided democracy in the age of social media. he was a top official in the obama administration, now back at harvard when he joined us

tonight from boston. the best to you irsir. >> all the best to you. >> that's our time for a conversation with robert battle and actress michele mon nan han. that's next time. we'll see you then. ♪ >> and by contributions to your

pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ >> be more. pbs. >> be more. pbs.

. good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with violinist nicola benedetti about her north american tour with the orchestra. working with winston mar sally's and her deep passion for arts for children. a performance from nicola benedetti coming up right now.