Bad arguments are nothing new, so why does it appear as if they have become so pervasive in public discourse? 

When we watch so-called “debate” videos with titles like “Conservative professor DESTROYS woke student” or “Liberal pundit OWNS Conservative Senator,” we are seldom watching a rational debate. More often, we are watching the performance of a well-reasoned debate, absent any concern for the truth whatsoever.

The ancient Greeks had a name for this: sophistry. It originally referred to the craft of paid expert-teaching– especially training in rhetoric– for success in public life. So, how did “expertise in persuasive argument” later become something more like “specious reasoning in service of persuasion rather than truth”?

If we are actually harmed— as individuals and as a society– by bad reasoning, logical fallacies, and the generic chicanery of sophists, what can we do to restore the robust critical thinking that we need to combat them? Or should we just ignore them altogether?

Pour yourself a drink and join us for this conversation about the historical and current iterations of sophistry.

This week’s jukebox picks:

• From Leigh: “American Idiot” by Green Day
• From Jen: “Miserable” by Lit
• From Bob: “Sophistry” by The Paul Kirby Trio

In this episode, we discuss the following thinkers, ideas, texts, etc:

• The Sophists (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Plato, Gorgias
• Plato on rhetoric and poetry (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Confucius, The Analects 
• Plato, Apology
• Jeremy Lawdron, Law and Disagreement (1999)
• Turning Point USA
• “Gish gallop” fallacy
• P.T. Barnum
• Donald Trump on “the weave”
• Structuralism in philosophy
• Mad-Libs
• Charlie Kirk’s socalled “best debates”
• Jordan Klepper vs. Trump supporters
• Ad Hominem Fallacy
• Donald Trump’s “Quiet, Piggy” interview
• Charlie Kirk debates Parker
• Charlie Kirk debates Dean Withers
• Stuart A. Ross, “If War is Insanity, Shouldn’t Our Leaders be Institutionalized?” (2023)
• Mamdani / Trump meeting on November 9, 2025 (video)
• Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action (1981)
• Plato, Protagoras 
• Feminist Standpoint Theory
• Hanna Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
• Hotel Bar Sessions Episode 196 (Season 4) on “The Expertise Crisis”
• Kudzu
• hucksterism