An interview with Susan Jacoby author of "The Age of American Unreason."

Jacoby paints a disturbing portrait of a mutant strain of public ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism that has developed over the past four decades and now threatens the future of American democracy. Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, she dissects a culture at odds with America's heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern knowledge and science. Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness has been defined downward throughout American society-on the political right and the left. America's endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by a popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic.

Jacoby is the author of eight books. She is also program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, a rationalist think tank with offices in Lower Manhattan.