If you’ve ever been on a jury, you might have noticed that a funny thing happens the minute you get behind closed doors. Everybody starts talking about themselves. They say what they would have done if they had been the plaintiff or the defendant. Being on a jury reminds me why I can’t tolerate talk radio. We Americans seem to have lost the ability to talk about anything but our own experiences. We can’t seem to generalize without stereotyping or to consider evidence that goes against our own experience. I heard a doctor on a radio show talking about a study that found that exercise reduces the incidence of Alzheimer’s. And caller after caller couldn’t wait to make essentially the opposite point: “Well, my grandmother never exercised and she lived to 95.” We are in an age summed up by the saying: “I experience, therefore I’m right.” Historically, the hallmarks of an uneducated person were the lack of ability to think critically, to use deductive reasoning to distinguish the personal from the universal. Now that seems an apt description of many Americans.