On Politics: Why you can’t change someone’s mind

Something has gone wrong in the way we discuss politics. If democratic systems since the Athenian polity have been founded on debate, then what does debate do for us today, aside from making us angrier and filling billionaire-owned social media sites with monetisable content? Sarah Stein Lubrano has argued that the ‘marketplace of ideas’ is a myth and the best ideas often don’t win out. In this episode she joins James Butler to talk about the things that do and don’t change people’s minds and why meaningful change is better achieved through means other than argument, such as social ties and collective action. They also consider what technology has done to shape the political landscape and individual behaviour, and the ways in which it has been exploited most effectively by those on the right.Sarah Stein Lubrano is the author of Don’t Talk About Politics. Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠ From the LRB

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On Politics: Why you can’t change someone’s mind is an episode from The LRB Podcast by London Review of Books.

This episode is 71:38 long.

This episode was published on Mar 25, 2026.

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