Post-Truth: Peak Bullshit - and What We Can Do About It

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'A Malcolm Gladwell-style social psychology/behavioural economics primer' Evening Standard

Low-level dishonesty is rife everywhere, in the form of exaggeration, selective use of facts, economy with the truth, careful drafting - from Trump and the Brexit debate to companies that tell us 'your call is important to us'. How did we get to a place where bullshit is not just rife but apparently so effective that it's become the communications strategy of our times

This brilliantly insightful book steps inside the panoply of deception employed in all walks of life and assesses how it has come to this. It sets out the surprising logic which explains why bullshit is both pervasive and persistent. Why are company annual reports often nonsense Why should you not trust estate agents And above all, why has political campaigning become the art of stretching the truth Drawing on behavioural science, economics, psychology and of course his knowledge of the media, Evan ends by providing readers with a tool-kit to handle the kinds of deceptions we encounter every day, and charts a route through the muddy waters of the post-truth age.

Reviews

A Malcolm Gladwell-style social psychology/behavioural economics primer - Evening Standard

Subtle and wide-ranging, written with the generous intelligence and wry humour that admirers of his broadcasting will recognise - New Statesman

His care and his determination to make complicated ideas accessible show, above all, why he is such a good broadcaster - Observer

Davis's journey through the bullshit swamplands makes fascinating reading for anybody involved in communication - Sunday Times

Author Bio

Evan Davis is a presenter of the BBC2 current affairs programme Newsnight, a role he began in September 2014. From April 2008 up to then he was a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also well-known as the presenter of the BBC2 business reality show Dragons Den. And on Radio 4, he hosts a weekly business discussion programme The Bottom Line. Prior to the Today programme he was the Economics Editor of the BBC, the most senior economics reporter in the corporation. Evan Davis was the Political Studies Association broadcaster of the Year; he won a bronze Sony award as Speech Broadcaster of the Year and the Made in Britain programme won the Harold Wincott Foundation Business Television Programme of the Year award.