This First Friday Lecture examined the problem of the “big lie,” the idea that a falsehood repeated at large enough scale can reshape how an entire population sees reality. The lecture argued that propaganda is not just something enemies and authoritarian regimes produce, but a regular feature of democratic political life as well, one that works especially well in democracies because citizens tend to trust their own leaders and lower their guard. Drawing on Machiavelli, George Orwell, and examples from contemporary politics, it showed how this manufacturing of consent operates and why most people do not realize when it has captured them. The lecture then turned to the question of what can be done about it, arguing that what a democracy needs is not a philosopher king but philosopher citizens, people trained in independent critical thinking. It concluded that reading and discussing great books together is one of the most effective ways to build that capacity, because it exposes the blind spots each of us have, forces us to seriously engage perspectives we would otherwise dismiss, and practice the kind of open inquiry that clear thinking requires.
Historians Made Elsewhere Than at Rome: Polybius and Josephus on the Roman Empire
This lecture examines how historians from conquered societies wrote about the Roman Empire.
