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Turns out common sense isn’t all that common

Illustration of shoelaces tied together against colored background.
Malte Mueller
/
Getty Images

President Donald Trump has been using the phrase “common sense” a lot. But it turns out that this is nothing new for politicians.

This hour, we look at how common sense is used in politics. Plus, is there really such a thing as common sense? We dig into what it means and if it’s possible to teach it to artificial intelligence.

GUESTS: 

  • Sophia Rosenfeld: Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania; she is the author of multiple books, including Common Sense: A Political History and her new book, The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life
  • Mark Whiting: Research fellow at the Computational Social Science lab at the University of Pennsylvania and chief technology officer of the startup Pareto.AI; you can find the common sense survey here 
  • Mayank Kejriwal: Research professor and principal scientist at the University of Southern California

The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode!

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Colin McEnroe, Angelica Gajewski, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.

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Lily is the senior producer for The Colin McEnroe Show. She's also a producer of the podcast 'Generation Barney.' She first worked at Connecticut Public as an intern in 2014. She has previously worked for WBUR, KUNC and as a producer for the New England News Collaborative's weekly show Next. Lily can be reached at ltyson@ctpublic.org.