In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Jay Gupta, Mark Kelly, and Tim Luke about the changing character of the public sphere. Their wide-ranging conversation covers a number of topics, including the ways that social media has fragmented the public sphere into separate echo chambers; how the internet has contributed to an insurgent populism around the world and the efforts by traditional stakeholders to shut it down; the atrophy of the value of truth and the dominance of “bullshit” in the Trump era; the extent to which moral earnestness preserves an aspiration to truthfulness; Trumpism and the critique of society as controlled by unaccountable New Class elites; the ongoing Trumpification of the Republican Party; and the conflation versus the interpenetration of elitism and expertise. Telos 195 (Summer 2021) features a forum on the public sphere with articles by Gupta, Kelly, and Luke, excerpts of which appear here. Read the full articles at the Telos Online website (subscription required). To learn how your university can subscribe to Telos, visit our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 195 are available for purchase in our online store.

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