In Reality (New Thinking)
Explore every episode of In Reality
| Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 05 Apr 2022 | The reboot that can save social media with Rob Reich | 00:58:04 | |
In the first episode of In Reality, co-hosts Eric Schurenberg and Joan Donovan are joined by Rob Reich, Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Stanford University and Author of System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot. At its birth, social media promised to be a tool to promote democracy. Instead, it has become the accelerant to a firestorm of lies and, far from democratizing power has concentrated it among a few social media giants. “Mark Zuckerberg is now the unelected mayor of three billion people,” says Rob Reich. “That is unacceptable.” How did things go so wrong? Reich blames, what he calls, the “engineering mindset” of social media’s inventors and the financial ecosystem that supports them. Along with co-authors Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein, Reich teaches a class on technology and ethics at Stanford University, the high temple of the engineering mindset. He knows what he is talking about! Engineers seek to “optimize” for a specific, measurable outcome without regard to social ramifications. Thus, for example, algorithms designed to give social media users engaging content to wind uploading news feeds or search results with content that triggers outrage, hatred or fear. Engagement—measured by clicks or time spent on the site climbs exponentially as a result--but at an enormous social cost. Reich believes that the solutions lie in tempering the optimization mindset with regulations that weigh a technology’s social costs against its effectiveness, much as stop signs moderate optimal traffic flow in the interests of safety. Listen and judge for yourself. His ideas require political resolve to execute, to be sure. But the need is urgent. Democracy is at stake. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 19 Apr 2022 | From optimism to doubt (and back) at Facebook with Joaquin Quiñonero Candela | 01:01:52 | |
In this episode of In Reality, co-hosts Eric Schurenberg and Joan Donovan sit down with Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, technical fellow for AI at LinkedIn and a former distinguished technical lead for responsible AI at Facebook. Before this, Joaquin led the Applied Machine Learning team at Facebook, creating the algorithms that made Facebook advertising so effective. It’s safe to say Facebook would not be the profit behemoth it is today without the innovations he introduced. 2011 saw the broad public adoption of social media and the democratization of public voice that it enabled. The benefits for democracy were immediately apparent in movements like the Arab Spring, which held special meaning for Joaquin as a native of Morocco. After the 2016 election in the US and the 2018 Cambridge Analytica data scandal, however, Joaquin realized that the tools he helped create could be misused and began to devote himself to AI ethics and responsible use of the technology at Facebook, a mission that he carries on at LinkedIn. You could say that the arc of Joaquin’s career parallels that of society’s evolving relationship to social media. The optimism that defined social media’s early adoption has been replaced by an alarmed awareness that its obvious benefits come with consequences–a polluted information stream, political polarization and erosion of the institutions needed to uphold democracy. Joaquin is now deeply involved in leading efforts to minimize the harms that social media can unleash. “We’ve come to realize that anything open will be exploited,” sums up In Reality co-host Joan Donovan, “and it is time for us to take the measure of that”. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 03 May 2022 | A new definition of making America great again with Kathleen Belew | 00:41:15 | |
In this episode of In Reality, Kathleen Belew, University of Chicago historian and author of ‘Bring The War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America’, joins co-hosts Eric Schurenberg and Joan Donovan. In a fascinating conversation, Belew outlines how social media and the tactics of disinformation energized the white power movement that reached a watershed moment in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Belew traces the current white supremacist surge to a movement that took root among veterans returning from the Vietnam war. The movement is made up of a number of loosely affiliated groups, whose ideology and goals changed little over the past 45 years. Indeed, the storming of the U.S. Capitol eerily recalled a similar event in the 1978 neo-Nazi handbook ‘The Turner Diaries’. Belew explains how these groups opportunistically latched on to the economic and racial resentments that brought Donald Trump to power and then used social media to communicate, organize and radicalize members. Belew explains that white power movements have no intention of “making America great again” and instead agitate for the overthrow of democracy. To really make America great, she concludes, Americans need a better understanding of our government and our imperfect history. We can then address questions of what has made America great in the past and what remains to be done to make it great again. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 18 May 2022 | How We Know What’s True with Jonathan Rauch | 01:02:41 | |
Truth–and the institutions that defend it–are under attack. What can the rest of us do? In this episode of In Reality, co-hosts Eric Schurenberg and Joan Donovan are joined by Jonathan Rauch, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of ‘The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth’. In this captivating discussion, Jonathan unpacks what is best described as a crisis of knowledge in Western culture, the result of a multi-front challenge to citizens’ ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood. What has always bound Western societies together in a shared sense of reality, Rauch explains, is a commitment–not to a set of pre-ordained beliefs but rather to a process of constantly testing claims against objective experience to determine which claims are true. Rauch calls this process ‘The Constitution of Knowledge’ because, like the US Constitution, it relies on a system of checks and balances to prevent the truth from being defined only by those in power. Up to this point, we have implicitly trusted institutions like science, medicine, government and media–what Rauch calls “the reality-based community”--to safeguard the process. Social media, however, has short-circuited all of this. Social media makes no attempt to test the claims that appear in its content, and instead revels in broadcasting claims to millions online at Internet speed, without regard to whether they are true or not. Social media exalts popularity over expertise, speed over reflection and division over consensus. It’s no surprise that trust in the reality-based community is crumbling, and many citizens are no longer sure where to turn for truth. By the interview’s end, though, Rauch expresses cautious optimism. At the moment, fake news, misinformation and extremist propaganda (from both sides) seem to have the upper hand. But truth has a singular advantage: It describes the world as it really is. It works–while falsehoods inevitably collide with reality and fail. The reality-based community–and reasonable citizens outside those institutions–have their work cut out for them, Rauch says. But in the end, they will win. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 31 May 2022 | Truth and Trade-offs amid a Polarized Pandemic with Dr Leana Wen | 00:53:27 | |
The covid pandemic has created the kind of situation in which misinformation thrives. Public health authorities met surging demand for knowledge about how to protect against covid with inconsistent or inadequate guidance. Misinformation rushed in to fill the gap. In this episode of In Reality, Dr Leana Wen, emergency physician & public health professor at George Washington University, joins co-hosts Eric Schurenberg and Joan Donovan to discuss how health misinformation spreads and how public health institutions can regain trust. Dr Wen explains that much of the mistrust of public health agencies during the pandemic arose because the agencies continually changed guidance. This is a normal, even desirable reaction to new research and evolving risk assessments, but many in the public regarded the shifting guidance as a sign that authorities didn’t really know the truth or had a hidden agenda. Dr Wen distributes blame for health misinformation liberally. She explains how the major news media covering the baby formula shortage encouraged frightened parents to hoard formula, depleting stocks of the product in stores and worsening the situation. As trust in public health authorities shrinks, Dr Wen explains, people are more likely to absorb information from sources like their neighbors, rather than from qualified agencies such as pediatricians and public health organizations. This is understandable–but potentially dangerous. To combat mistrust, Dr Wen says, public health authorities must not be afraid to give nuanced advice. Authorities should be willing to admit that they don’t always have the answers and that guidance will inevitably change as new information comes to light. It’s also essential to meet people “where they are”--meaning that authorities should default to the information platforms (including social media) that audiences consume and to local (as opposed to national) authorities that they are more likely to trust. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 14 Jun 2022 | How to Build True Public Spaces Online with Eli Pariser | 00:57:10 | |
In this episode of In Reality, co-hosts Eric Schurenberg and Joan Donovan are joined by Eli Pariser, co-director of New Public and former president of MoveOn.org. Pariser is a long-time advocate for creating healthy communities online, and he now advocates for reimagining the Internet as a trustworthy public space analogous to local parks or public libraries. It’s an appealing analogy. Pariser notes that public spaces are critical for holding democratic societies together, spaces where people come together and work through conflict, raise concerns and demands, and share experiences. A key element of physical public spaces is that they are local in scale. Some digital spaces share some of that “local” flavor. Reddit, for example, fosters local discussions and debates through multiple domains and communities that have their own moderation. That stands in contrast to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where there is no visible moderation and information is global in nature, making it hard to develop a sense of community. Moderation alone isn’t quite enough, though. Another key element of healthy public spaces is self-governance because it depends on collaboration. Wikipedia is an example of a digital space that offers contributors power checked by governing principles and steered by collaborative norms. Digital “parks” and “libraries” are a distant cry from the barely controlled chaos that has characterized digital spaces to date. But as our civic lives increasingly move online, the need for them is clear. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 30 Jun 2022 | On the front lines of the disinformation fight with Áine Kerr | 00:39:55 | |
In the fight against disinformation, the last line of defense between audiences and malicious falsehoods are the “trust and safety” teams, also known as content moderators. Some of them are employed by social media platforms like Facebook and Spotify, but increasingly the platforms outsource the work of identifying and countering dangerous lies to fact-checking organizations like the fast-growing Irish company, Kinzen. In this episode of In Reality, host Eric Schurenberg sits down with Áine Kerr, co-Founder, and COO of Kinzen. Áine is a serial risk-taker with extensive experience in the intersection of journalism and technology, most recently as the global head of journalism partnerships at Facebook. Kinzen helps platforms, policymakers, and other defenders “get ahead and stay ahead” of false and hateful content in video, podcast, and text platforms. The company uses artificial intelligence to sniff out objectionable content and then when needed, invites human readers to judge for context and nuance. What Kinzen calls “human in the loop technology” minimizes errors while still allowing for fact-checking at social media scale. In the recent Brazilian elections, for example, Áine explains that disinformation actors came to realize that phrases like “election fraud” and “rigged election” were alerting content moderators who could take down their false claims. So, the actors began substituting seemingly innocuous phrases like “we are campaigning for clean elections.” Kinzen’s human moderators spotted the changes and helped authorities intercept the false messages. Áine and Eric also dive into the many reasons that someone may participate in sharing harmful content online, ranging from sheer amoral greed to ideological commitment. She ends with a warning that the spreaders of disinformation currently have the upper hand. It is always easier to spread lies than to counteract them. The allies of truth–researchers, social media platforms, entrepreneurs, and fact-checking organizations like hers–need to get better at coordinating their efforts to fight back, or democracy will remain an existential risk around the world. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 20 Jul 2022 | The elite’s blind spots and the illusion of truth with Gillian Tett | 00:39:28 | |
In this episode of In Reality, host Eric Schurenberg sits down with Gillian Tett, Chair of the Editorial Board and Editor-at-Large for the Financial Times, US. Gillian is also trained as an anthropologist, which gives her a unique perspective on the tribal divides within American society. If you believe that your grasp of reality is the only legitimate one, prepare to be challenged. Anthropologists, Gillian explains, view sub-cultures as self-contained. The belief in conspiracies may seem incomprehensible to most In Reality listeners, but it makes sense to groups who feel abandoned and belittled by elites. All of us have trouble seeing our biases as anything other than ground truths. For example, elites in media, government, entertainment, academe, and so on, regard command of language as an indisputable sign of seriousness and status. For other tribes in America, articulateness is irrelevant. What matters instead is loyal adherence to the tribe’s fears and grievances. For members of those groups, the facts presented by institutions like the media and legal system are suspect on their face. The only information that is really trustworthy is what’s conveyed by other members of the tribe. Gillian and Eric take the anthropologist’s view of a wide range of contemporary news events: Why the best way to understand Trump supporters is to attend professional wrestling; what Trump’s use of the neologism “bigly” reveals about professional media’s blind spots; and why whistleblowers are disproportionately women. Listen, and prepare to confront your own blind spots. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 03 Aug 2022 | Combatting Domestic Terrorism with Melanie Smith | 00:26:58 | |
In this episode of In Reality, recorded at the Collision conference in Toronto, host Eric Schurenberg joins Melanie Smith, Head of the Digital Analysis Unit at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue–an independent non-profit dedicated to reversing the tide of polarization, extremism, and disinformation worldwide. The topics in this episode: how the threat of radicalized violence has shifted from foreign actors to domestic ones; why (at least before January 6th) it was so difficult to convince policymakers that domestic extremism was the more serious threat; how domestic extremists prey on the same set of human insecurities to radicalize their targets as Islamic extremists; why Instagram is a favorite tool of disinformation promoters and Pinterest isn’t; and which demographic groups are most likely to spread harmful false information unwittingly. From Smith: “I am optimistic that we can contain disinformation over a 10-year time frame, but I am concerned that things will get worse in the next five years. Elections tend to inflame disinformation, and that, in some places, can easily lead to violence. You have to realize that there are interests that want to seize the opportunity to deepen the divisions in our society.” Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 22 Aug 2022 | How Cambridge Analytica Opened the Pandora’s Box of Disinformation | 00:48:07 | |
In this episode of In Reality, Eric Schurenberg hosts Brittany Kaiser, best known as one of the whistleblowers at Cambridge Analytica, the British political consulting firm that worked on the disinformation-laden 2016 campaigns behind Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Having disavowed her former employer, she is now a much sought-after expert on data privacy, blockchain technology, and legislative reform meant to counter disinformation campaigns. Much of the conversation focuses on Brittany’s tenure as director of business development at Cambridge Analytica. Brittany describes the firm’s techniques of creating psychological profiles of voters and then micro-targeting false or misleading messages to them. She explains how her former employer’s voter suppression strategies were categorically different–morally, legally and tactically–from commercial targeted advertising campaigns. Finally, they delve into Brittany’s Own Your Data Foundation, a not-for-profit dedicated to raising the DQ (Digital Intelligence) of lawmakers, students, parents and voters and minimizing the existential risks of fake news, cyber attacks, disinformation and polarization–the demons that Cambridge Analytica helped unleash to the detriment of democracy in 2016. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 07 Sep 2022 | Dismantling the Disinformation Economy | 00:30:11 | |
Check My Ads Institute is an organization that is taking aim at purveyors of conspiracy theories, hate speech and disinformation. The Institute describes itself as “an independent watchdog” whose goal is to prevent digital advertisers from inadvertently monetizing the spread of falsehoods. In this episode of In Reality, host Eric Schurenberg sits down with the co-founder of Check My Ads Institute, Claire Atkin, to unpack how the digital advertising industry works to support disinformation and perpetuate ad fraud despite its claims to do the opposite. Claire delves into programmatic advertising and explains how third-party ad-serving companies keep brands unaware of where their digital ads are being placed, allowing propagandists to earn revenue from advertisers who would never intentionally support them. Finally, she specifies the steps that Check My Ads Institute is taking to hold the digital ad industry to account, as well as who the company is targeting next. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 27 Sep 2022 | What if Polarization is Actually an Illusion? | 00:35:56 | |
If you are a Democrat, have you ever espoused the slogan “Defund the Police?” If you’re a Republican, do you agree with politicians who claim that 2020 presidential election was stolen? If you said yes, you may well be operating under a “collective illusion,” a widespread mental phenomenon in which people take positions in public they privately don’t actually believe, because they think that everyone else in their group does believe it. The implications for the spread of disinformation these days are obvious. In this episode of In Reality, host Eric Schurenberg talks with Todd Rose, co-founder of the think tank Populace and the author of a fascinating book called ‘Collective Illusions.’ The conversation covers a mind-boggling range of common public beliefs that almost no one privately believes (who knew?). Todd also explains why it’s so important for your own mental health and the health of democracy to speak your own authentic truth – and how to do that without getting yourself shunned by your in-group. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 18 Oct 2022 | The Hidden World of Political Cults | 00:32:20 | |
It’s a feature of our polarized world today that each side of the political spectrum refers to the extremists on the other side as members of a cult. Those are fightin’ words, sure, but you can understand the feeling. People are going down rabbit holes of bizarre, sometimes apocalyptic beliefs; they are alienating themselves from family and from every source of information but other true believers. Today’s guest Steven Hassan, founder of the Freedom of Mind institute knows destructive cults when he sees them because he’s a cult survivor himself. He’s the author of several books on the topic, including his latest, called the Cult of Trump—just in case you wanted the reassurance of the relevance to today’s political scene. Dr. Hassan and I will talk about how cults recruit, why he believes Trump is an instinctive cult leader; the many sub-cults that he believes make up today’s political landscape, whether there are cults on the left as well, and how you can tell whether you are perhaps being subject to undue influence yourself. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 03 Nov 2022 | How to Market Chaos | 00:41:38 | |
A lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots. Everyone has heard that chestnut, but Sinan Aral has actually proved it. He was one of the first to warn about the corrosive effects of social media with a celebrated Science Magazine cover story, a seminal book, The Hype Machine, and a vast study showing that fake news spreads faster and farther than the truth. Sinan is a marketing, IT, and data science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, so he sees disinformation through the lens of marketing. In this episode, we will also discuss what Sinan calls “the end of reality” in political discourse, the role of professional media in its own demise, and the strategies democracies need to take to defend the truth. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 17 Nov 2022 | Defending Factuality in a World of Alternate Realities | 00:39:07 | |
At some point in conversations about the media, somebody inevitably says, “I just want a single source of true, instantaneous, and uplifting information so that I don't have to think about it.” The longing is understandable—but let's get real. In this era of unlimited and ungoverned information, you have to construct your own trusted news environment and weed out what is unreliable. Helping people do that is the mission of today’s guest, Alan Miller, the founder of The News Literacy Project. This 14-year-old non-partisan organization trains students and adults on how to tell fact from fiction in media. Together, Eric and Alan talk about standing up for factuality in a world of alternate realities, remaining non-partisan while defending truth, and how to have constructive conversations with those who disagree with you. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 01 Dec 2022 | The Real Reason Social Media Grabs Us | 00:39:48 | |
If social media platforms don’t directly cause polarization, they do, at least, give oxygen to smoldering divisions that can erupt into tragedies like the Myanmar genocide, Brexit, and January 6th. Why is social media so effective at unleashing the worst in us, and how do we break its hold? This episode’s guest, Christopher Bail, pursues those questions as the director of Duke University’s Polarization Lab. He’s also the author of Breaking the Social Media Prism, which was named one of the top five non-fiction books of 2021. Chris and host Eric Schurenberg discuss the role of status-seeking on social media, the personality types most susceptible to online radicalization, and an intriguing experimental platform his team designed that actually encouraged civil discourse. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 09 Dec 2022 | Have We Been Wrong about What the Other Side Thinks? | 00:38:27 | |
Polarization has reached such a fever pitch in the United States that each side of the political divide sees the other as an existential threat to democracy. Partisans use the same pejoratives to describe the other’s beliefs: arrogant, uninformed, incomprehensible. But what if people are wrong about what the other side thinks? What if we’ve actually got more in common? This idea has come up before on In Reality with the survey firm Populace, but its best-known support derives from work done by the global research firm, More in Common. Today, host Eric Schurenberg joins the co-founder and CEO of More in Common, Mathieu Lefevre, to discuss the gaps in perception between what people think the other side thinks and what they really do, why those gaps persist, whether More in Common is subject to its own confirmation bias, and why content moderation is a losing game. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 11 Jan 2023 | The Week the Trolls Stormed Homeland Security | 00:46:35 | |
One of the goals of In Reality is to introduce our listeners to people who are on the front lines of the battle against disinformation. But battles have casualties, and Nina Jankowicz is one of them. Nina is a highly respected expert on Russian disinformation strategies and the author of two books, How to Lose the Information War and How to Be a Woman Online. In the spring of 2022, the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of what it called the Disinformation Governance Board to coordinate the department’s defenses against networked propaganda, and named Nina as director. Disinformation forces attacked instantly. Social media was swamped by figures inside and outside of government who deliberately mischaracterized the role of the board and Nina’s qualifications to run it. After two weeks of unrelenting attacks, the D.H.S. dissolved the board, and Nina resigned. In this episode, Eric and Nina talk about how it felt to go through that, why the D.H.S. was so helpless in the face of a homegrown disinformation attack, and about the personal attacks that besiege Nina to this day. They also cover the failures of the social media giants to police their own sites, the true meaning of free speech, and what the U.S. can learn from European democracies about countering disinformation. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 31 Jan 2023 | Why News Stopped Being “Just The Facts” (And Why That’s Good) | 00:37:09 | |
You can’t get more than a few minutes into any conversation about trust in media today before Walter Cronkite makes an appearance. People say they long for those days when everyone believed TV news, their hometown daily gave facts without slant, and CBS news reader Cronkite was the most trusted person in America. Well, to paraphrase Cronkite’s signature signoff, that’s not the way it was. He was never the most trusted man, just the facts news was almost never the profession’s default setting, and when it was, it made for pretty thin journalism. This episode’s guest, Professor Michael Schudson of Columbia Journalism School, has written or co-authored 15 books about the history and sociology of the American media landscape and he brings a historical lens to the question of what news was, is, and ought to aspire to be. In this episode, Eric and Michael cover the myth of news media’s golden age, the thorny question of objectivity, journalism as a check on tyranny, and what an informed citizen in a liberal democracy really needs to know. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 23 Feb 2023 | Truth Decay: The Cause and The Treatment | 00:32:15 | |
Outside the friendly confines of this podcast, it’s hard to talk about truth and media without the discussion turning emotional. These are incendiary topics, which is why it’s especially useful to be able to draw on cool analysis. This is how many people characterize the work of this episode’s guest, Michael Rich, president emeritus of the think tank RAND Corporation and co-author of one of the seminal books on facts and media in American public discourse, written with fellow RAND analyst Jennifer Kavanaugh, Truth Decay. Truth Decay was published in 2019, and the analytical framework that it proposed still holds true four years later. In this episode, Michael and Eric discuss the four forces that he believes caused truth to decay in public life; why the current period of misinformation started much earlier than you think; and how media endured several earlier periods of mistrust and how it recovered each time. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 09 Mar 2023 | The Lonely Pursuit of Facts in a Post-Truth World | 00:43:49 | |
At one point in the post-truth era, fact-checking seemed like the way back to a shared reality. Just get evidence-based truth out there, and disinformation would slink away in disgrace. Snopes, Kinzen, Meedan and others are built on that belief. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. Falsehood still seems to have the drop on truth. So, today’s guest joins me to help us understand why. Angie Drobnic Holan is a journalist and long-time editor-in-chief of Poltifact, one of the world’s premier fact-checkers. She was also recently named a Nieman Fellow at Harvard to examine the role of journalism in democracy. Angie and I will cover the role of fact-checking in social media today; the case for and limits of objective truth; and the practice of fact-checking when evidence is evolving, as in the case of the origins of Covid-19. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 22 Mar 2023 | Why Polarization Turns Toxic - And How To Stop It | 00:46:02 | |
The first casualty of polarization is not truth, perhaps, but rather empathy. Your opponent is not just wrong, but contemptible, their behavior not just troubling to you but beyond comprehension. These are earmarks of what today’s guest calls high conflict, and it characterizes much public discourse today. Amanda Ripley is a journalist who has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic, among other places, and is the author of the book High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Can Get Out. She’s also the co-founder of Good Conflict, a non-profit that trains organizations to keep normal disagreement from turning toxic. Amanda and I talk about the difference between good conflict and high conflict, why anger is fine but contempt is not, why the apparent cause of high conflict is rarely the real story, and why journalists need help not just covering conflict but managing it in their own newsrooms. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 04 Apr 2023 | Why Good People Share Fake News — And How To Make Them Stop | 00:53:04 | |
It’s received wisdom today that tribalism, confirmation bias and other mental Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 25 Apr 2023 | What if AI Could Literally Read Your Mind? | 00:42:06 | |
Social media platforms know a ton about who you are from your online behavior, but there’s one thing they can’t yet know: what you’re thinking at any given moment. That is the last stronghold of privacy in the digital age, except our next guest believes that could be about to fall, too. Nita Farahany is a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University and a leading scholar on the social implications of new technologies. Her new book, The Battle for Your Brain, discusses rapid advances in neurotechnology, the marriage of brain science and AI and what it means for us all. In our conversation, Nita and I cover what exactly science can infer about your thoughts from brain data, about the risk that poses to mental privacy, and how we can avoid with this new technology the kinds of errors we made with social media. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 16 May 2023 | Why Are Some Beliefs so Maddeningly Resistant to Evidence? | 00:38:48 | |
You don’t have to go too deep on the topic of disinformation before you stumble into a question that philosophers have wrestled with for centuries: How do we know what we know? That’s when it’s good to have a philosopher in the room, and we are lucky today to welcome Åsa Wikforss, a professor of theoretical philosophy at Stockholm University and the leader of a multi-pronged international research effort called the Knowledge Resistance project. Åsa will be speaking in Washington from May 24th through to the 26th at a conference called Truth, Trust and Hope, put on by the Nobel Prize Summit series. It’ll be live-streamed, so check it out in the link below. Nobel Prize Summit 2023: Truth, Trust and Hope
Follow on Twitter: @notyourusualDr Created & produced by Podcast Partners: www.podcastpartners.com Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 06 Jun 2023 | What’s Really Behind the Collapse of Trust in the Media | 00:39:34 | |
When too many people believe in things that aren’t true, democracy suffers. Democracy also suffers when people refuse to believe what is true, just because it appeared in the mainstream media. For all its failings—the unacknowledged biases, the inevitable errors, the pandering—professional journalism serves a key role in a democracy, and so the reflexive mistrust in the fourth estate is worrisome. Getting at the root cause of that mistrust has occupied today’s guest, Benjamin Toff, for the better part of the past three years. Ben heads up the Trust in News Project, a global research effort funded by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. The project’s reports have examined the issue from many different angles, most recently delving into the highly fragile relationship that marginalized communities around the world have with mainstream media. It is, let’s just say, a complicated problem, but we unpack for you in this conversation. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 29 Jun 2023 | Dublin Tech Summit 2023 | What Does Generative AI Mean For The Information Landscape? | 00:38:16 | |
In this special episode, recorded at this years Dublin Tech Summit, Eric is joined by Sean O hEigeartaigh, acting director of the Centre for the study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University. For a dozen years, his research has focused on AI and other emerging technologies. Sean and Eric discuss what generative AI means for the information landscape; how to react to the deep reservations that AI developers have expressed; the lessons we should take from the debacle of social media; and what life will be like in a future of ever more capable AI. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 01 Aug 2023 | How to Build Immunity to Viral Misinformation | 01:00:26 | |
We in the media tend to be pretty good at admiring the problem of disinformation, not so good at countering it. So a plan for countering falsehoods in the public sphere is one of the things that makes today’s guest, Sander van der Linden, so intriguing. Van der Linden is a professor of Social Psychology in Society at the University of Cambridge and the author of Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects our Minds and How to Build Immunity. The analogy of infection and its remedy through immunity recurs a lot in his research, and more important, it points a way towards making you and me and audiences resistant to manipulation. Sander and I talk about deconstructing conspiracy thinking; about recognizing the tools of information manipulation; about the power of pre-bunking vs. debunking; about how to talk with people of different political beliefs, and much more. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 16 Aug 2023 | How to Get People to Believe in Science Again | 00:36:44 | |
In politics, you can understand why some voters align themselves with claims that don’t bear up under scrutiny. In politics, there are other forces at work than factuality, like tribal identity and moral narratives. But science is different—or ought to be. And yet trust in science has stumbled, along with media and government. So… why? And what’s the fix? Today, I’ll take that up with two eminent advocates of scientific truth: Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Vidar Helgesen, Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation. We cover the role of anti-vax dogma and climate denialism; whether science has oversold its ability to deliver answers; the fraught relationship between scientists and journalists; why Europeans trust science more than Americans do; and the reasons for hope. We spoke on the eve of a Nobel Summit on Truth, Trust and Hope, and I hope you’ll enjoy it. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 29 Aug 2023 | Atlantic CEO Nick Thompson: What To Believe (or not) in the News | 00:49:20 | |
When I talk to people about the mission of In Reality, I frequently am told, “Media is so corrupt. Why do you bother.” In some circles, it seems that hating professional media is just a reflex, like saying “Bless you” when someone sneezes. Nothing personal. Today’s guest is one of the best living rebuttals I can think of to this kind of blanket condemnation of the media. He is Nick Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic and one of journalism’s most distinguished practitioners. Before The Atlantic, he was the editor-in-chief of Wired, a writer and editor at The New Yorker, and co-founder of The Atavist, a digital magazine that told long-form stories in graphic formats. Publications under his leadership have won numerous National Magazine Awards and Pulitzer Prizes, and one Wired story that he edited was the basis for the movie Argo, which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2012. Nick is now co-founder of a Saas company, Speakeasy AI, formerly Narwhal, a software platform designed to foster constructive online conversations about the world’s most pressing problems. Nick and I talk about truth and objectivity as a journalistic goal, about the gulf in background and worldview between journalists and some audiences, about how The Atlantic does its best to make sure its stories are fair, and about how Nick curates his own news feed and his own writing to minimize bias. And now, here’s Nick Thompson Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 12 Sep 2023 | What We Really Look For When We Say We're Looking For Truth | 00:42:42 | |
Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media. I’m Eric Schurenberg, a longtime journalist, now executive director of the Alliance for Trust in Media. One of my long-held assumptions is that everyone seeks the truth. They may be derailed in that quest by false information, but the ultimate goal is factuality. Today’s guest begs to differ. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young is Professor of Communication and Political Science at the University of Delaware, a frequent voice in the poplar press, the author of scores of academic articles and two books, most recently Wrong: How Media, Politics and Identity Drive our Appetite for Misinformation, available for pre-order on Amazon. Professor Young, who also goes by Danna, argues that people’s goal in consuming media isn’t understanding exactly, rather, it’s feeling like we understand feeling like we are part of a like-minded community. We’ll discuss that distinction, along with why our political and media institutions highlight outrage and division, about why Republicans are more susceptible to empirically inaccurate information, about the virtue of intellectual honesty, the role of trust, and what media and everyone else should do differently to get along in a diverse democracy.
This episode was produced by Tom Platts Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 26 Sep 2023 | Tech Led Us Into The Misinfo Mess. Can It Lead Us Out? | 00:34:22 | |
You can blame today’s chaotic information environment on many factors: digital inequality and the rise of populism, attention hijacking by social media, and the collapse of mainstream media business models. Wherever you point the finger, digital technology was either the root cause or an accelerant. Which is why today’s guest is particularly worth listening to. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 10 Oct 2023 | How To Make Advertising An Ally For Truth | 00:47:34 | |
One reason that falsehoods flourish online is that major advertisers fund them—but usually unwittingly. The opaque nature of automated online ad delivery means that advertisers don’t actually know where most of their digital ads appear. On a high-quality news site? Maybe. On a trashy clickbait farm? The ad-tech doesn’t care. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 27 Oct 2023 | Why Don't The Advocates of Truth Work Together? | 00:42:53 | |
A lot of academic researchers, journalists, NGOs, even a few tech firms--are working on the issue of disinformation. Some people are opposed to this work, especially on the political right, and have given this disparate group the ominous collective nickname of disinformation industrial complex, as if it were a monolith devoted single-mindedly to censoring unpopular voices. The fact is, this is no monolith. The fragmented nature of the fight against disinformation weakens the effort, and that's what Phil Howard and Sheldon Himelfarb want to solve. Phil and Sheldon are the co-founders of the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE), which was born to bring together the world’s best scientific minds on the topic of information integrity and democracy. Phil is a professor at the University of Oxford, a global authority on technology and public policy, and author of 10 books and over 100 papers. Sheldon, in addition to being the IPIE’s executive director, is also the CEO of PeaceTech Lab, which has won global praise for equipping peacemakers with tech and data tools. Sheldon, Phil and I discuss why citizens need to upskill their news literacy; whether social media or governments are the most toxic players in the ecosystem; the scarcity of data on disinformation solutions; where the trends are pointing and what it would take to turn them around. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 08 Nov 2023 | How Fake History Ignites the Fake Present: Britain's Author of 'Fake History' and 'Fake Heroes' Otto English | 00:35:29 | |
Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media. I’m Eric Schurenberg, a long time journalist and media executive, now the executive director of the Alliance for Trust in Media. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 22 Nov 2023 | How To Know If You Can Trust That Story: The Trust Project's Sally Lehrman | 00:47:20 | |
The information environment today has two broad problems: a supply side problem and a demand side problem. On the supply side, it is ridiculously easy for anyone to spread propaganda or outrage or lies online, and on the demand side, it is hard for audiences to distinguish manipulation from fact-based news. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 05 Dec 2023 | Polarization's Ground Zero: Author of 'Network of Lies' Brian Stelter | 00:44:18 | |
According to a Pew Research survey in 2021, almost three quarters of Americans consider Fox News to be part of the mainstream media, along with familiar brands like ABC News and the Wall Street Journal. That’s interesting because Fox is different in many ways. It’s not only easily the most profitable cable news network and the only one trusted by most conservatives; it is also the only one whose leaders admitted, under oath, that the newsroom deliberately promoted a theory they knew to be false, namely that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 18 Dec 2023 | Can You Make A Profit Fighting Misinfo? NewsGuard's Gordon Crovitz | 00:44:50 | |
Disinformation is good business. Spreading lies and outrage tends to be profitable, thanks to programmatic advertising, which cares only about traffic, not truth, and funding by state actors like Russia, which pour money into narratives that undermine democracies. Supporting truth is a tougher commercial prospect, but today’s guest is giving it a credible run. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 04 Jan 2024 | Digital Disruption and the Myth of Mainstream Media: CEO of Fortune Media Alan Murray | 00:59:04 | |
In talking about the news today, it’s tempting to focus on the bad actors, the amplifiers of nonsense and the peddlers of outrage. It’s worth remembering, though, they’re not the only players. There are journalists who adhere to standards and have managed to thrive despite the seismic disruption of the industry. Today’s guest is one of those. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | Who Killed Trust? And What Can We Do About It? The Center for Media Engagement at UT Austin's Talia Stroud | 00:39:27 | |
A lot of people, Eric included, are working to figure out what exactly happened to facts, trust in institutions like science and the news, and to the shared reality we used to enjoy in this country. There is no shortage of research about the depth of the problem but very little about what really might reverse it. Which is where today’s guest comes in. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 01 Feb 2024 | Is News Negativity Driving Audiences Away? The Solutions Journalism Network's David Bornstein | 00:49:54 | |
Journalism’s problems today are legion: Collapsing business models, attacks from political partisans, divisions in the profession over basic questions like objectivity. But none of these is solvable until newsrooms address their troubled relationship with audiences: Too many people don’t believe journalists work in their interest. Many avoid news because they find it too pugilistic, too downbeat. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 20 Feb 2024 | Stopping Misinformation At The Gate: News Literacy Project's Peter Adams | 00:39:36 | |
Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media with Eric Schurenberg, a long time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 12 Mar 2024 | Why We're Losing the Misinformation War: The Information Futures Lab's Claire Wardle | 00:37:39 | |
It was eight years ago, when Brexit and the US Presidential election showed how misinformation enables real-world damage. Since then, researchers, content managers, regulators, journalists and others sprang into action to counter misinformation and now misinformation pollutions is even worse. Why?
Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 26 Mar 2024 | The Saboteurs Within: University of Michigan's Barbara McQuade | 00:47:15 | |
For decades, America’s foreign adversaries have used disinformation to undermine American democracy, to sow division and create confusion about what is even true. But who needs foreign adversaries when so many Americans, for whatever reason, have embraced the same tactics and same apparent goal? Today’s guest, Barbara McQuade, is a professor at University of Michigan Law School who previously served as vice chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee and co-chaired its Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee.
Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 24 Apr 2024 | How Newsrooms Decide What's True: Former Editor of the Washington Post Martin Baron | 00:49:11 | |
To figure out what’s true and what’s not in today’s chaotic, fragmented, contradictory information environment, all of us news consumers have to think like journalists: is that story I’m seeing backed by evidence, is the headline fair, is the coverage biased? Well, we could do worse than to think like the journalist who is today’s guest. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 07 May 2024 | Destroying The Internet In Order To Save It: Project Liberty's Frank McCourt | 00:31:07 | |
The guests who come on In Reality come prepared to talk about big issues. Truth, polarization, the information ecosystem: these are not exactly niche issues. Today’s guest though, may have the biggest embrace of anyone I’ve had on the show... Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 21 May 2024 | The Logic Behind Illogical Ideologies: Pepperdine University's Jason Blakely | 00:31:49 | |
The political landscape in the US has fragmented into a handful of beliefs, the adherents to which have less and less in common, other than a profound inability to comprehend others’ beliefs. This, unfortunately, is not news. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 07 Jun 2024 | The Lost Art of Civil Discourse with Clea Conner CEO of Open to Debate | 00:45:51 | |
Any institution that aspires to get at the truth needs a process for testing what it believes to be true. Central to the judicial system, for example, are lawyers challenging their opponents’ arguments. In science, claims must be peer-reviewed, and experiments have to be replicated. But in politics and culture, any kind of rule-based, civil testing of facts is a fading art. Debates are hostile, ideologies harden, and we kick up a lot of dust, in which the pursuit of truth gets lost. But there is one place where you can test your beliefs by witnessing civil discussion of the most controversial issues of our time. It’s a program on radio and podcast called Open to Debate, and today we’re pleased to introduce its CEO, Clea Conner. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 18 Jun 2024 | The Original Fact Checker: How To Know What's True with The Post's Glenn Kessler | 00:40:05 | |
Finding your way to the truth is the informal job of the 21st-century citizen. All of us. Unless you want to be manipulated, you need some check on the claims you hear uttered by powerful people or repeated, innocently or not, by others. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 09 Jul 2024 | Using the Tools of Tech to Hold Big Tech Accountable with Pulitzer-Winner & Proof News Founder Julia Angwin | 00:40:11 | |
Misinformation, rumor, psy-ops and propaganda--whatever you want to call the four horsemen of today’s media apocalypse—have been with us as long as the media itself. But you have to admit that the arrival of digital technology, led by social media, has given all of those forces outsized power. We still haven’t quite come to terms with how tech has shattered things like a shared reality, democracy, civil discourse. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 23 Jul 2024 | Want to Understand Today’s Political Debate? Study PsyOps: Sci-fi Author & Science Journalist Annalee Newitzs | 00:41:13 | |
Find this week's episode description below... Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 08 Aug 2024 | How To Immunize Your Mind Against False Beliefs with Carnegie Mellon University's Andy Norman | 00:39:43 | |
Today's guest is Andy Norman, philosophy professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of a fascinating book, Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind Parasites and the Search for a Better way to Think.
Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 22 Aug 2024 | Is The Rise of MAGA a Failure of Journalism? The University of Texas at Austin's Tom Johnson | 00:36:13 | |
People have a lot of complaints about media in these polarized times. Take your pick: The mainstream press is biased, elitist, sensationalistic, hyper-partisan. If you’re on the right, you may believe that it deliberately enables falsehood. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 03 Sep 2024 | The Original Fact Checker: How To Know What's True with The Post's Glenn Kessler (Election Repost) | 00:39:46 | |
In Reality is taking a summer break, so this is an episode we’ve posted before, but I thought that in the middle of a US Presidential campaign, it might be a good idea to review my conversation with Glenn Kessler, editor of the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column and arguably the creator of the fact checking industry. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 19 Sep 2024 | How Free Societies Decide What's Real with Brookings Institution's Jonathan Rauch | 00:50:26 | |
The goal of modern disinformation campaigns is not necessarily to turn audiences into true believers but rather to turn them into cynics, to persuade them that you can’t trust anything said by any institution, whether media or science or government. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 03 Oct 2024 | Media Bias: Left and Right with CNN's Brian Stelter and The Dispatch's Jonah Goldberg | 00:37:12 | |
It has become general wisdom in these polarized times that all the news you consume is slanted one way or another. The New York Times is not all the news that’s fit to print and Fox News not fair and balanced, to quote mottoes those newsrooms used to use. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 17 Oct 2024 | What The Polls Are Really Telling You with Pew Research Center's Jocelyn Kiley | 00:27:43 | |
At this moment, weeks shy of the 2024 election, the polls are showing that the race between Trump and Harris is neck and neck. It’s tight nationally. It’s tight in all the swing states. If you think you know who’s going to win, you’re going on gut, not numbers. So what good are polls this year? In Eric's class at the University of Chicago, he put the question to guest speaker Jocelyn Kiley, senior associate director, US politics and public opinion at the Pew Research Center. It turns out that polls can tell you a lot, even now, if you know how to look. Jocelyn and I discuss the stability of poll results this year despite events like the assassination attempts and what that says about the information environment. We’ll discuss how to tell trustworthy polls from slapdash ones; and we’ll cover how you really should read polls, which is not to find out who’s ahead in the horse race. This interview was recorded live in my class at the University of Chicago’s Graham School on October 7th. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 24 Oct 2024 | X, Lies, and Video Fakes in the 2024 Election with Nina Jankowicz and Yoel Roth | 00:40:46 | |
We’ve seen social media disrupt elections before, but this time feels louder, angrier. Maybe it’s the retreat of content moderators, maybe the metamorphosis of Twitter into X, and maybe the growing sophistication of adversaries from Russia, China and Iran. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 04 Nov 2024 | The Most Dishonest Campaign Ever? with Politifact's Katie Sanders | 00:36:00 | |
The US election, which takes place the day after this episode releases, has been the most fact-challenged election in recent memory. Compared to, say, four years ago, truth is very much on the run. Social media platforms, most people’s source of information, have pulled back on flagging falsehoods. In the case of X, the platform’s owner actively solicits and spreads them.
Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 14 Nov 2024 | In A Less Misinformed World, Would Harris Have Won? With Top Journalists Paul Farhi, Nayeema Raza, and Isaac Saul | 00:55:04 | |
Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media, with Eric Schurenberg - the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 21 Nov 2024 | How To Stop Worrying and Love Media Bias with AllSides Co-founder John Gable | 00:37:00 | |
People say they long for that misty past when the news was just the facts, but that never was, of course. Newsrooms are human organizations and journalists are people and however they may strive for objectivity, they come with biases shaped by newsroom culture newsroom and audience expectations. The smart game isn’t to avoid all bias; it’s to recognize it and then broaden your news consumption beyond one perspective. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 05 Dec 2024 | One Way To Win An Information War with The Autocracy Expert Peter Pomerantsev | 00:51:37 | |
In our free-for-all information ecosystem, the liars have the inside track. It’s much easier to make up outrageous claims about, say, migrants than it is to send reporters into the field and check facts. The more outrage a bogus claim generates and the more often it’s repeated, the more widely it spreads. That’s human nature. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 19 Dec 2024 | Battered But Still Hopeful, The Guardians of a Civil Internet with Integrity Institute's Jeff Allen | 00:44:35 | |
Welcome to In Reality, the podcast on truth, disinformation and the media. I’m your host Eric Schurenberg, a former journalist and media exec, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. At the front lines of the battle for truth in the information ecosystem are the social media platforms’ trust and safety teams. Trust and safety teams are the data-science professionals who make sure that social media content conforms to the platforms’ standards. It’s a finger-in-the-dike kind of task, because of both the volume of content—34 million videos uploaded on TikTok every day, for one example--and the judgment needed to distinguish merely obnoxious content from the truly harmful. Today’s guest, Jeff Allen, is very much part of this world. Jeff’s a former trust and safety executive at Meta, now the founder of the Integrity Institute, which is both a community for trust and safety professionals and an advocacy group for a kinder gentler social internet. Jeff and I discuss what trust and safety professionals really think about free speech; why Instagram search tends to harm young people and Google’s does not; why Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t like trust and safety, in Zuck’s own words; and where those hoping for an internet that does better at fostering human well-being, might find reason for optimism. Website - free episode transcripts | |||
| 02 Jan 2025 | How To Judge The Truth of Any Claim in 30 Seconds with Top Critical Thinking Expert Mike Caulfield | 00:55:19 | |
Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media with your host Eric Schurenberg, a long time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. Website - free episode transcripts | |||