David Goodhart divides human aptitudes into three: Head (cognitive), Hand (manual and craft), and Heart (caring, emotional). It's common sense that a good society needs to recognize the value of all three. The coronavirus pandemic taught us something we ought already to have known: that care workers, supermarket shelf-stackers, delivery drivers, and cleaners are doing essential work that keeps us all alive, fed, and cared for. Until recently much of this work was regarded as menial by the same society that now lauds them as 'key workers'. Why are they so undervalued? And have smart people become too powerful? In this episode of .think Atlantic, IRI’s Thibault Muzergues and his guest David Goodhart debate all these questions - and many more.


David is a British journalist, think-tanker, author, and the head of the Demography, Immigration and Integration Unit at the London-based think-tank Policy Exchange. He worked for the Financial Times for twelve years before founding Prospect magazine in 1995. He is most famous for his book “The Road to Somewhere,” which was a Sunday Times best-seller and lays out a compelling framework for understanding the new political cleavages that we are seeing in politics today. 


Find David Goodhart on Twitter at @David_Goodhart

Find Thibault Muzergues on Twitter at @tmuzergues


Further reading:


Head Hand Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century by David Goodhart (https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/313/313407/head-hand-heart/9780141990415.html)


Visit IRI’s website at www.iri.org