How to Think Clearly About a World in Crisis: Iran, China, Russia, and the West's Economic Pessimism

All right, everybody, it's Michael Shermer, it's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer Show in person. Here we are in Wales at the How the Light Gets In Festival. My guest here is Dr. Marlene Larrell. She's a historian, sociologist, and political scientist at Lewis University in Rome. Just before that, well, this was just a few months ago, right? She was research professor at international affairs and political science at George Washington University, where she was director of the Institute for European Russian and and Eurasian studies and the ill liberalism Studies program. Did you know there's an illiberalism studies program? I know there's liberal programs, but illiberal program Her work focuses on ideology, nationalism, and the rise of populist and illiberal movements, with particular attention to Russia, Europe, and the post Soviet space. She's author edited more than twenty books, including Is Russia Fascist?

Unraveling propaganda east and west and the Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism. Research is widely used in academic and policy debates on democracy, political ideology, and contemporary global politics. There's much to discuss. Oh my God. You must be so busy these days. I am, I am. What is liberalism? Yeah, yeah, that's of course the key question because the term has so many ways of being interpreted, two hundred of histories. When you say liberal in the US it means something totally different that when you say liberal in a European context. So I think when we use liberalism we should be Very clearly saying do we discuss the kind of the abstract political philosophy of liberalism, which is about, you know, individual rights.

Against tyranny or are we talking about the liberal democratic framework in which we are living? And I think the gap is huge and that's one of the problems that are we talking about the reality of a liberal democratic system and how it function or doesn't function, or are we talking about the political philosophy as an abstraction? And the gap piece of the problem or part of the problem. Yeah, indeed. Well, so in science, you know, we have this idea in social science of operational definition. What exactly it is you're talking about and measuring by the pole, by the you know, the skinner box rat pet whatever it is. we could count it and number it and say, you know, sixty seven percent believe this or whatever based on this poll um you know okay. So is it something like that where like you like in psychology

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