Podcasts by Your Undivided Attention

From Russia with Likes (Part 2) — with Renée DiResta from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.335424

In the second part of our interview with Renée DiResta, disinformation expert, Mozilla fellow, and co-author of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Rus...

The Dictator's Playbook — with Maria Ressa from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.295520

Maria Ressa is arguably one of the bravest journalists working in the Philippines today. As co-founder and CEO of the m...

Rock the Voter — with Brittany Kaiser from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.292054

Brittany Kaiser, a former Listen

The Spin Doctors Are In — with Renée DiResta from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.278451

How does disinformation spread in the age of COVID-19? It takes an expert like Renée DiResta to trace conspiracy theories back to their...

The Fake News of Your Own Mind — with Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.271395

When you’re gripped by anxiety, fear, grief or dread, how do you escape? It can happen in the span of a few breaths, according to meditation experts Listen

The World According to Q — with Travis View from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.264259

What would inspire someone to singlehandedly initiate an armed standoff on the Hoover Dam, or lead the police on a 100-mile-an-hour car chase while calling for help from an anonymous internet so...

When Media Was for You and Me — with Fred Turner from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.257040

In 1940, a group of 60 American intellectuals formed the Committee for National Morale. “They’ve largely been forgotten,” says Fred Tur...

Facebook Goes'2Africa'— with Julie Owono from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.253568

This summer, Facebook unveiled “2Africa,” a subsea cable project that will encircle nearly the entire continent of Africa — much to the surprise of Listen

Spotlight: The Social Dilemma from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.250258

A new documentary called The Social Dilemma comes out on Netflix<...

Your Nation's Attention for the Price of a Used Car — with Zahed Amanullah from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.246854

Today’s extremists don’t need highly produced videos like ISIS. They don’t need deep pockets like Russia. With the right message, a fringe organization can reach the majority of a nation’s Faceb...

The Courage to Connect — with Ciaran O’Connor and John Wood, Jr. from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.212682

It’s no revelation that Americans aren’t getting along. But it’s easier to diagnose the problem than come up with solutions. The organization Braver Angels Listen

Come Together Right Now — with Shamil Idriss from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.201352

How many technologists have traveled to Niger, or the Balkans, or Rwanda, to learn the lessons of peacebuilding? Technology and social media are creating patterns and pathways of conflict that f...

Spotlight — Coded Bias from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.198892

The film Coded Bias follows MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini through her investigation of algorithmic d...

A Facebook Whistleblower — with Sophie Zhang from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.185910

In September of 2020, on her last day at Facebook, data scientist Sophie Zhang posted a 7,900-word memo to the company's internal site. In it, she des...

The Power of Solutions Journalism — with Tina Rosenberg and Hélène Biandudi Hofer from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.178935

What is the goal of our digital information environment? Is it simply to inform us, or also to empower us to act? 

The Soluti...

Spotlight — A Whirlwind Week of Whistleblowing from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.171163

In seven years of working on the problems of runaway technology, we’ve never experienced a week like this! In this bonus episode of Your Undivided Attention, we recap this whirlwind of a week — ...

Here’s Our Plan And We Don’t Know — with Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin and Stephanie Lepp from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.155351

Renowned quantum physicist Richard Feynman once wrote, "It is our capacity to doubt that will determine the future of civilization." 

In that spirit, this episode is a little different – b...

Spotlight — What Is Humane Technology? from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.141989

“The fundamental problem of humanity is that we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and God-like technology.” — E. O. Wilson.

More than ever, we need the wisdom to match the ...

How To Free Our Minds — with Cult Deprogramming Expert Dr. Steven Hassan from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.132707

How would you know if you were in a cult? 

If not a cult, then at least under undue influence?

The truth is: we're all under some form of undue influence. The question is: to what de...

How Political Language Is Engineered — with Drew Westen and Frank Luntz from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.126520

Democracy depends on our ability to choose our political views. But the language we use to talk about political issues is deliberately designed to be divisive, and can produce up to a 15-point d...

The Invisible Cyber-War from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.117673

When you hear the word cyber-attack, what comes to mind? Someone hacking into your email, or stealing your Facebook password?

As it turns out, our most critical infrastructure can b...

Spotlight — Addressing the TikTok Threat from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.111272

Imagine it's the Cold War. Imagine that the Soviet Union puts itself in a position to influence the television programming of the entire Western world — more than a billion viewers. 

While...

Stepping Into the Metaverse — with Dr. Courtney Cogburn and Prof. Jeremy Bailenson from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.104823

The next frontier of the internet is the metaverse. That's why Mark Zuckerberg changed the name of his company from Facebook to Meta, and just sold $10 billion in corporate bonds to raise money ...

The Race to Cooperation from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.082655

It’s easy to tell ourselves we’re living in the world we want – one where Darwinian evolution drives competing technology platforms and capitalism pushes nations to maximize GDP regardless of ex...

TikTok’s Transparency Problem from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.072919

A few months ago on Your Undivided Attention, we released a Spotlight episode on TikTok's national security risks. Since then, we've learn...

Spotlight: The Three Rules of Humane Tech from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.064747

In our previous episode, we shared a presentation Tristan and Aza recently delivered to a group of influential technologists about the race happening in AI. In that talk, they introduced the Thr...

Talking With Animals… Using AI from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.057877

Despite our serious concerns about the pace of deployment of generative artificial intelligence, we are not anti-AI. There are use...

Feed Drop: AI Doomsday with Kara Swisher from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.046227

There’s really no one better than veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher at challenging people to articulate their thinking. Tristan Harrris recently sat down with her for a wide ranging interview...

Spotlight: How Zombie Values Infect Society from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.041165

You’re likely familiar with the modern zombie trope: a zombie bites someone you care about and they’re transformed into a creature who wants your brain. Zombies are the perfect metaphor to expla...

Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.033598

In the next two episodes of Your Undivided Attention, we take a close look at two respective industries: big food and social media, which represent dangerous “races to the bottom” and hav...

Protecting Our Freedom of Thought with Nita Farahany from 2023-12-12T18:23:09.014413

We are on the cusp of an explosion of cheap,  consumer-ready neurotechnology - from earbuds that gather our behavioral data,  to sensors that can read our dreams. And it’s all going to be superc...

A First Step Toward AI Regulation with Tom Wheeler from 2023-12-12T18:23:08.998870

On Monday, Oct. 30, President Biden released a sweeping executive order that addresses many risks of artificial intelligence. Tom Wheeler, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commissio...

2023 Ask Us Anything from 2023-11-30T10:00

You asked, we answered. This has been a big year in the world of tech, with the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence, acceleration of neurotechnology, and continued ethical missteps of...

The Promise and Peril of Open Source AI with Elizabeth Seger and Jeffrey Ladish from 2023-11-21T20:00

As AI development races forward, a fierce debate has emerged over open source AI models. So what does it mean to open-source AI? Are we opening Pandora’s box of catastrophic risks? Or is open-so...

No One is Immune to AI Harms with Dr. Joy Buolamwini from 2023-10-26T09:00

In this interview, Dr. Joy Buolamwini argues that algorithmic bias in AI systems poses risks to marginalized people. She challenges the assumptions of tech leaders who advocate for AI “alignment...

Mustafa Suleyman Says We Need to Contain AI. How Do We Do It? from 2023-09-28T09:00

This is going to be the most productive decade in the history of our species, says Mustafa Suleyman, author of “The Coming Wave,” CEO of Inflection AI, and founder of Google’s DeepMind. But in o...

Inside the First AI Insight Forum in Washington from 2023-09-19T00:00

Last week, Senator Chuck Schumer brought together Congress and many of the biggest names in AI for the first closed-door AI Insight Forum in Washington, D.C. Tristan and Aza were invited speaker...

Spotlight on AI: What Would It Take For This to Go Well? from 2023-09-12T00:15

Where do the top Silicon Valley AI researchers really think  AI is headed? Do they have a plan if things go wrong?  In this episode, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin reflect on the last seve...

The AI ‘Race’: China vs. the US with Jeffrey Ding and Karen Hao from 2023-08-31T09:00

In the debate over slowing down AI, we often hear the same argument against regulation.   “What about China? We can’t let China get ahead.” To dig into the nuances of this argument, Tristan and ...

Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy from 2023-08-17T09:00

For all the talk about AI, we rarely hear about how it will change our relationships. As we swipe to find love and consult chatbot therapists, acclaimed psychotherapist and relationship expert E...

Social Media Victims Lawyer Up with Laura Marquez-Garrett from 2023-07-21T09:00

Social media was humanity’s ‘first contact’ moment with AI. If we’re going to create laws that are strong enough to prevent AI from destroying our societies, we could benefit from taking a look ...

What Can Technologists Learn from Sesame Street? With Dr. Rosemarie Truglio from 2023-06-22T09:00

What happens when creators consider what lifelong human development looks like in terms of the tools we make? And what philosophies from Sesame Street can inform how to steward the power ...

The Tech We Need for 21st Century Democracy with Divya Siddarth from 2023-05-25T09:00

Democracy in action has looked the same for generations. Constituents might go to a library or school every one or two years and cast their vote for people who don't actually represent everythin...

Spotlight: AI Myths and Misconceptions from 2023-05-11T09:00

A few episodes back, we presented Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin’s talk The AI Dilemma. People inside the companies that are buildi...

Can We Govern AI? from 2023-04-21T09:00

When it comes to AI, what kind of regulations might we need to address this rapidly developing new class of technologies? What makes regulating AI and runaway tech in general different from regu...

The AI Dilemma from 2023-03-24T09:00

You may have heard about the arrival of GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest large language model (LLM) release. GPT-4 surpasses its predecessor in terms of reliability, creativity, and ability to process int...

Synthetic Humanity: AI&What’s At Stake from 2023-02-16T10:00

It may seem like the rise of artificial intelligence, and increasingly powerful large language models you may have heard of, is moving really fast… and it IS. 

But what’s coming next is wh...

Ask Us Anything: You Asked, We Answered from 2022-12-29T10:00

Welcome to our first-ever Ask Us Anything episode. Recently we put out a call for questions… and, wow, did you come through! We got more than 100 responses from listeners to this podcast from al...

Can Psychedelic Therapy Reset Our Social Media Brains? from 2022-12-15T10:00

When you look at the world, it can feel like we're in a precarious moment. If you’ve listened to past episodes, you know we call this the meta-crisis — an era of overlapping and interconnected c...

Real Social Media Solutions, Now — with Frances Haugen from 2022-11-23T10:00

When it comes to social media risk, there is reason to hope for consensus. Center for Humane Technology co-founder Tristan Harris recently helped launch a new initiative called the Council for R...

Spotlight — Humane Technology on'60 Minutes' from 2022-11-10T22:53:59

The weekly American news show 60 Minutes invited Center for Humane Technology co-founder Tristan Harris back recently to discuss political polarization and the anger and incivility that g...

Spotlight — Elon, Twitter and the Gladiator Arena from 2022-10-27T18:21:55

Since it’s looking more and more like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, will probably soon have ownership of Twitter, we wanted to do a special episode about what this could mean for Twitter u...

They Don’t Represent Us — with Larry Lessig from 2022-10-20T09:00

We often talk about the need to protect American democracy. But perhaps those of us in the United States don't currently live in a democracy.

As research shows, there's pretty much no corr...

Fighting With Mirages of Each Other — with Adam Mastroianni from 2022-09-22T09:00

Have you ever lost a friend to misperception? Have you lost a friend or a family member to the idea that your views got so different, that it was time to end the relationship — perhaps by unfrie...

Spotlight — How might a long-term stock market transform tech? from 2022-08-25T09:00

At Center for Humane Technology, we often talk about multipolar traps — which arise when individuals have an incentive to act in ways that are beneficial to them in the short term, but de...

An Alternative to Silicon Valley Unicorns from 2022-06-30T09:00

Why isn't Twitter doing more to get bots off their platform? Why isn’t Uber taking better care of its drivers? 

What if...they can't?

Venture-capital backed companies like Twitter an...

Spotlight — Conversations With People Who Hate Me with Dylan Marron from 2022-06-16T09:00

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we’re doing something different: we’re airing an episode of another podcast that’s also part of the TED Audio Collective.

Backing up for a moment: we...

Transcending the Internet Hate Game — with Dylan Marron from 2022-05-19T09:00

The game that social media sets us up to play is a game that rewards outrage. It's a game that we win by being better than other players at dunking on each other, straw-manning each other, and a...

Spotlight — A Bigger Picture on Elon&Twitter from 2022-04-26T00:30:52

If Elon Musk owns Twitter, what are the risks and what are the opportunities? In order for Twitter to support democracy — and Musk’s goal of becoming a multi-planetary civilization — we need a r...

What Is Civil War in the Digital Age? — with Barbara F. Walter from 2022-04-21T08:00

Civil war might be the most likely escalation pathway towards disaster for our country. On the flip side, learning how to avoid civil conflict — and more ambitiously, repair our civic fabric — m...

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang (Rerun) from 2022-03-24T08:00

[This episode originally aired on July 23rd, 2020.] Imagine a world where every country has a digital minister and technologically-enabled legislative bodies. Votes are completely transpa...

The Dark Side Of Decentralization — with Audrey Kurth Cronin from 2022-03-10T09:00

Is decentralization inherently a good thing? 

These days, there's a lot of talk about decentralization. Decentralized social media platforms can allow us to own our own data. Decentralized...

The Invisible Influence of Language — with Lera Boroditsky from 2022-02-24T06:00

One of the oldest technologies we have is language. How do the words we use influence the way we think?

The media can talk about immigrants scurrying across the border, versus immig...

How Science Fiction Can Shape Our Reality — with Kim Stanley Robinson from 2022-02-10T09:00

The meta-crisis is so vast: climate change, exponential technology, addiction, polarization, and more. How do we grasp it, let alone take steps to address it? 

One of the thinking tools we...

Is World War III Already Here? — with Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster from 2022-01-13T09:00

Would you say that the US is in war-time or peace-time? How do you know?  The truth is, the nature of warfare has changed so fundamentally, that we're currently in a ... Listen A Fresh Take on Tech in China — with Rui Ma and Duncan Clark from 2021-12-10T09:00 Who do you think the Chinese government considers its biggest rival? The United States, right? Actually, the Chinese government considers its biggest rival to be its own technology companies<... Listen Behind the Curtain on The Social Dilemma — with Jeff Orlowski-Yang and Larissa Rhodes from 2021-11-11T09:00 How do you make a film that impacts more than 100 million people in 190 countries in 30 languages? This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're going behind the curtain on Listen A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen from 2021-10-18T08:00 We are now in social media's Big Tobacco moment. And that’s largely thanks to the courage of one woman: Listen Making Meaning in Challenging Times — with Jamie Wheal from 2021-09-30T08:00 What helps you make meaning in challenging times? As you confront COVID, the climate crisis, and all of the challenges we discuss on this show, what helps you avoid nihilism or fundamentalism, a... Listen Spotlight — The Facebook Files with Tristan Harris, Frank Luntz, and Daniel Schmachtenberger from 2021-09-21T08:00 On September 13th, the Wall Street Journal released The Facebook Files, an ongoing investigation of the extent to which ... Listen Do You Want to Become a Vampire? — with L.A. Paul from 2021-08-12T08:00 How do we decide whether to undergo a transformative experience when we don’t know how that experience will change us? This is the central question explored by Yale philosopher and cognitive sci... Listen You Will Never Breathe the Same Again — with James Nestor from 2021-07-23T02:57:41 When author and journalist James Nestor began researching a piece on free diving, he was stunned. He found that free divers could hold their breath for up to 8 minutes at a time, and dive to dep... Listen A Problem Well-Stated is Half-Solved — with Daniel Schmachtenberger from 2021-06-25T08:00 We’ve explored many different problems on Your Undivided Attention — addiction, disinformation, polarization, climate change, and more. But what if many of these problems are actually sym... Listen [Unedited] A Problem Well-Stated is Half-Solved — with Daniel Schmachtenberger from 2021-06-25T08:00 We’ve explored many different problems on Your Undivided Attention — addiction, disinformation, polarization, climate change, and more. But what if many of these problems are actually sym... Listen Mr. Harris Zooms to Washington from 2021-05-10T08:00 Back in January 2020, Tristan Harris went to Washington, D.C. to Listen Can Your Reality Turn on a Word? — with Anthony Jacquin from 2021-04-29T08:00 Can hypnosis be a tool to help us see how our minds are being shaped and manipulated more than we realize? Guest Anthony Jacquin is a hypnotist and h... Listen The Stubborn Optimist's Guide Revisited — with Christiana Figueres (Rerun) from 2021-04-22T08:00 [This episode originally aired May 21, 2020] Internationally-recognized global leader on climate change Christiana Figueres argues that the battle ... Listen Mind the (Perception) Gap — with Dan Vallone from 2021-04-15T08:00 What do you think the other side thinks? Guest Dan Vallone is the Director of More in Common U.S.A., an organization that’s been asking Democrats and ... Listen Disinformation Then and Now — with Camille François from 2021-03-18T08:00 Disinformation researchers have been fighting two battles over the last decade: one to combat and contain harmful information, and one to convince the world that these manipulations have an offl... Listen A Renegade Solution to Extractive Economics — with Kate Raworth from 2021-02-11T09:00 When Kate Raworth began studying economics, she was disappointed that the mainstream version of the discipline didn’t fully address man... Listen Two Million Years in Two Hours: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari from 2021-01-15T09:00 Yuval Noah Harari is one of the rare historians who can give us a two-million-year perspective on today’s headlines. In this wide-ranging ... Listen Won't You Be My Neighbor? A Civic Vision for the Internet — with Eli Pariser from 2020-12-23T09:00 You’ve heard us talk before on this podcast about the pitfalls of trying to moderate a “global public square.” Our guest today, Eli Pariser<... Listen Are the Kids Alright? — with Jonathan Haidt from 2020-10-27T08:00 We are in the midst of a teen mental health crisis. Since 2011, the rate of U.S. hospitalizations for preteen girls who have self-harmed is up 189 percent, and with older teen girls, it’s up 62 ... Listen Digital Democracy Is Within Reach — with Audrey Tang from 2020-07-23T08:00:06 Imagine a world where every country has a digital minister and technologically-enabled legislative bodies. Votes are completely transparent and audio and video of all conversations between lawma... Listen Spotlight — Beyond the Boycott from 2020-07-10T17:30:07 #StopHateforProfit is an important first step, but we need to go much further.  Listen The Bully’s Pulpit — with Fadi Quran from 2020-06-22T08:00:06 The sound of bullies on social media can be deafening, but what about their victims? “They're just sitting there being pummeled and pummeled and pummeled,” saysListen The Dictator's Playbook Revisited — with Maria Ressa (Rerun) from 2020-06-17T00:00:13 [This episode originally aired on November 5, 2019] Maria Ressa is arguably one of the bravest journalists working in t... Listen The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to Saving the Planet — with Christiana Figueres from 2020-05-21T08:00:10 How can we feel empowered to take on global threats? The battle begins in our heads, argues Christiana Figueres. She became the Uni... Listen When Attention Went on Sale — with Tim Wu from 2020-04-28T08:00:11 An information system that relies on advertising was not born with the Internet. But social media platforms have taken it to an entirely new level, becoming a major force in how we make sense of... Listen Changing Our Climate of Denial — with Anthony Leiserowitz from 2020-04-22T08:00:10 We agree more than we think we do, but tech platforms distort our perceptions by amplifying the loudest, angriest and most dismissive voices online. In reality, they’re just a noisy faction. Thi... Listen Stranger than Fiction — with Claire Wardle from 2020-03-31T03:00:01 How can tech companies help flatten the curve? First and foremost, they must address the lethal misinformation and disinformation circulating on their platforms. The problem goes much deeper tha... Listen Mr. Harris Goes to Washington from 2020-01-30T09:00:16 What difference does a few hours of Congressional testimony make? Tristan takes us behind the scenes of his January 8th test... Listen Trust Falls — with Rachel Botsman from 2020-01-14T09:00:14 We are in the middle of a global trust crisis. Neighbors are strangers and local news sources are becoming scarcer; institutions that used to symbolize prestige, honor and a sense of societal se... Listen The Cure for Hate — with Tony McAleer from 2019-12-19T09:00:01 “You can binge watch an ideology in a weekend,” says Tony McAleer. He should know. A former white ... Listen The Opposite of Addiction — with Johann Hari from 2019-10-22T08:00:15 What causes addiction? Johann Hari, author of Listen Pardon the Interruptions — with Gloria Mark from 2019-08-14T08:00:02 Every 40 seconds, our attention breaks. It takes an act of extreme self-awareness to even notice. That’s why Glori... Listen From Russia with Likes (Part 1) — with Renée DiResta from 2019-07-24T08:30:08 Today’s online propaganda has evolved in unforeseeable and seemingly absurd ways; by laughing at or spreading a Kermit the Frog meme, you may be unwittingly advancing the Russian agenda. These c... Listen Down the Rabbit Hole by Design — with Guillaume Chaslot from 2019-07-10T08:30:04 When we press play on a YouTube video, we set in motion an algorithm that taps all available data to find the next video that keeps us glued to the screen. Because of its advertising-based busin... Listen With Great Power Comes... No Responsibility? — with Yaёl Eisenstat from 2019-06-25T08:30:06 Aza sits down with Yael Eisenstat, a former CIA officer and a former advisor at the White House. When Yael noticed that Americans wer... Listen Should've Stayed in Vegas — with Natasha Dow Schüll from 2019-06-19T09:00:16 In part two of our interview with cultural anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll, author of Listen What Happened in Vegas — with Natasha Dow Schüll from 2019-06-10T08:30:05 Natasha Dow Schüll, author of Listen Launching June 10: Your Undivided Attention from 2019-04-16T17:52:07 Technology has shredded our attention. We can do better. Listen