A friend once called me a “truth-seeking missile.” I’m still trying to live up to the compliment.

By tackling problems in how we think, I’m doing what I can to transform the way we see the world and one another—especially when it comes to heated political issues. As I see it, democracy depends on our ability to question, clarify, and challenge our thinking.

The lack of viewpoint diversity in the media and higher education, the lack of civil discourse, the rise in political polarization, the decline in social trust, and the decline in trust in institutions can largely be traced to the problem of certainty. It distorts our sense of the world and gives us permission to be sloppy in our thinking.

Fortunately, this problem is solvable.

In addition to my writing and teaching, I co-founded The Mill Institute. The Mill Institute helps educators open up conversations in classroom and community spaces.

I’m currently working on a followup book to The Certainty Trap. It is about how our use of labels—like racist, sexist, immoral, evil, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theory, far left, far right, among many others—to condemn people who disagree actively undermines democracy.