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The episode today is kind of a weird one.
What I really want to do is talk about why tolerance was so important to Voltaire and the Enlightenment thinkers and hopefully in that process we'll understand a little bit more about ourselves and why we treat people the way that we do.
I want to start by asking questions as usual.
What comes to your mind when I say the word tolerance?
What comes to your mind when you think about how tolerant you are towards the beliefs of other people and what you are personally willing to do in the name of ending intolerance in the world around you?
What are you willing to do?
Now keep these questions in mind.
I'm about to read you a story and the only thing I ask you to do when you're listening to this story is to make a mental note of how you feel about the actions of the woman in question.
Remember how you feel in your stomach
because after I tell you the story we're going to look at tolerance from multiple different angles and at the end of the show I'm going to ask you what you think about this woman again.
Try to note any sort of changes that occur in the way that you feel towards the actions of this woman.
Okay and if at the end of the show there's absolutely zero change made then there's two options.
You're either a super genius one or my show is absolutely terrible and I think we're both very aware of which one's more likely out of those two.
So anyway I want to tell you a story about a bus driver.
Okay let me take you back in time for a second.
The year is 2008.