Something is wrong with society—we feel it before we name it. Is it the algorithms? The platforms? The culture we create in response to them?

In this episode of Into the Machine, I sit down with Tim Urban—creator of Wait But Why, TED phenomenon, and author of What’s Our Problem?—to triangulate the crisis we’re living through: a moment where technology has outpaced our culture, and tribalism is turned into profit.

We trace a long arc—from the chaos of Gutenberg’s printing press to the attention fracking of TikTok—to ask a deceptively simple question: How do we build cultural immune systems strong enough to withstand viral algorithms?

We talk through the human capacity to evolve norms—to grow up as a species—when our informational environment breaks. We explore audience capture, the seduction of virality, the dangers of algorithmically misaligned incentives, and the hopeful possibility that cultural learning can catch up.

You’ll hear Tim unpack his “ladder of thinking” model: a two-axis framework for moving beyond left vs right and toward high- vs low-rung reasoning—and we explore what happens when the primitive mind takes the wheel.

We also talk candidly about how to build a large audience on the internet, the behind-the-scenes emotional machinery of posting in a way that doesn’t sap your soul, and the quiet courage required to be yourself when everyone online is asking you to be someone else

If this episode resonates with you, please do rate us on Apple podcasts, and consider sharing it with a friend. Thank you.

Special Thanks to Tycho for our intro music.

Today I’m launching Into The Machine.

My first episode is a conversation with my colleague, social psychologist and #1 NYT bestselling author Jonathan Haidt.

Jon and I wrote a piece in The Atlantic called The Dark Psychology of Social Networks — hoping to add clarity to the debate around social media. AI has changed the conversation. We now find ourselves in a stranger moment with LLMs, asking deeper questions about what these tools are doing to our ability to think.

In this episode we discuss:

* Attention as civic infrastructure: the erosion of sustained focus undermines shared reality, and with it the preconditions for governance, compromise, and democratic legitimacy.

* Engagement algorithms as centrifuges: rather than reflecting consensus, they pull discourse toward the edges, making fringe views appear as if they represent the center.

* Democracies as uniquely fragile: unlike authoritarian systems that can integrate these technologies into centralized control, liberal democracies are structurally more vulnerable to their fragmenting effects.

* Childhood as the front line: the breakdown of “serve-and-return” interactions, compounded by algorithmic feeds, represents not just a developmental crisis but a possible precursor to broader societal instability.

* Human agency atrophied by delegation: when writing, thinking, and decision-making are outsourced to machines, individuals lose the cognitive muscle required for original judgment.

A small ask

The irony is not lost on us in trying to explain/critique the algorithms while we’re dependent upon them to reach the right audience.

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Our next guest is Tim Urban, creator of Wait But Why.

Thank you, as always, for the gift of your attention.

-Tobias

We are living in a strange moment.

AI is everything, everywhere, all at once. Democracy is very much on the ropes. We are all confused about what comes next.

Upstream of our troubles are a handful of algorithms that are legible to us for now. Yet newer systems rapidly being deployed are far more powerful, and far more influential than social media ever was.

Over the coming months I’ll be releasing conversations with some of the smartest people I know unpacking these issues, and sharing my essays in video form on my YouTube channel here. Guests like: Jonathan Haidt, Tim Urban, Esther Perel, among others.

We’re on the threshold of a very strange transfer of power — from human brains to artificial ones — that will very likely determine the quality of the rest of our lives. This is a show dedicated to uncovering what comes next.

I’d love for you to join me.

-Tobias

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