David Moscrop on how to make wise voting decisions during political elections

Canada is in the midst of another federal election. A good time, I figure, to re-up this Biblio File podcast episode from August, 2019:

David Moscrop is a political theorist and SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of Ottawa. He studies democratic deliberation, political decision-making, and digital media, and is a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, and a writer for Maclean's Magazine He also provides regular political commentary for television and radio. His first book Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones was published by Goose Lane Editions in March 2019.

We met at the University of Ottawa to discuss his book, just in time for Canada's 2019 Federal election. We talk about the story behind the book, making smart voting decisions, Twitter, literary agent Chris Bucci, the CBC’s Ideas radio program; good, rational, autonomous thinking; diverse, trusted news sources; emotional biases, negative political advertising, threats to democracy; partisanship; SNC Lavalin; Jody Wilson Raybould; the importance of investing time in order to understanding politics; bots; good citizenship; voting on principle versus strategically; party discipline; and adopting proportional representation.

For those of you who, like me, share a distaste for politicians and politics: please believe me, the conversation is a lot more interesting than the paragraph above makes it sound.