In this episode of Misguided: The Podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Jared Stacy, a theologian and former pastor who studies how conspiracy theories take root within evangelical communities. Jared completed his PhD in ethics at the University of Aberdeen and is the author of the new book Reality in Ruins, which examines how disinformation becomes uniquely resistant to correction when it gets woven into religious belief.

We start by talking about Jared’s concept of holy paranoia: the idea that conspiracy theory isn’t a bug in American evangelicalism but a feature. The core argument is that once conspiratorial thinking gets absorbed into a religious story, fact-checking alone can’t dislodge it. It’s not that people lack access to good information; it’s that the conspiracy has already been integrated into something that feels coherent, total, and true.

From there, we dig into the media ecosystems that make this possible — the radio networks, podcasts, and influencers that create a seamlessly reinforcing reality for many evangelical Christians, one where conservative political content and worship music flow together without friction or distinction.

We close by discussing what science communicators and public health professionals get wrong when trying to reach faith communities, and why Jared believes the most effective interventions will require theologians and scientists working together rather than talking past each other.

You can listen to the full episode here or via the links below. As always, if you find my podcast useful or interesting, feel free to share it with someone who might also enjoy it.

Buy Jared’s book: Reality In Ruins

Jared’s website

Follow Jared on Threads and Instagram

Keywords: Jared Stacy, disinformation, conspiracy theories, religion, Evangelicalism, media, science communication

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In this episode of Misguided: The Podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Cecilie Steenbuch-Traberg, a professor at the Copenhagen Business School who studies how social context shapes our susceptibility to misinformation, and what interventions actually work to counter it. Cecilie’s path into the field took a detour through marketing before she found her true passion: not trying to persuade people, but protecting them from being persuaded.

We start by talking about how the classic pre-bunking games (like Bad News and Harmony Square) hold up when you test them in more realistic social conditions. The short answer is that they mostly work, but people are still vulnerable to the surrounding social cues: who’s sharing something, how many likes it has, whether the source feels politically similar to you. Even a handful of comments can make a fringe belief feel like consensus. That gap between individual-level learning and real-world social context is where Cecilie sees the biggest unmet need.

From there, we dig into her new project, Solomon’s Secret: a murder mystery game designed to teach social influence literacy without ever announcing that it’s a misinformation game. The goal is to reach people who would never seek out a media literacy tool, by making the learning feel incidental to the fun. We also connect this to some of my own research comparing pre-bunking games across cultural contexts.

We close by discussing how AI is reshaping both the threat and the opportunity. AI can certainly be used as a tool for scaling manipulation, but it can also help personalize interventions in ways that weren’t previously possible.

You can listen to the full episode here or via the links below. As always, if you find it useful, feel free to share it with someone who might benefit from the conversation.

Follow Cecilie on LinkedIn

Cecilie’s website

Cecilie’s Google Scholar

Solomon’s Secret

Keywords: Cecilie Steenbuch Traberg, prebunking, media literacy, AI, social influence, psychological inoculation, social media, psychology

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Here is my live video chat with Mike Nellis as a bonus podcast episode. I really enjoyed our conversation about the social psychology of why we believe false information, and how we can strengthen our media literacy through strategies like critical ignoring. We also discussed the broader structural and platform-level challenges that make today’s information environment so difficult to navigate.

In this episode of Misguided: The Podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Steve Rathje, who is a social psychology postdoc at NYU, and a soon-to-be assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Steve’s work sits at the intersection of psychology, social media, and artificial intelligence. Steve studies how platform design, attention, and emerging technologies shape political polarization, belief formation, and online behavior.

We begin by talking about Steve’s non-traditional path into psychology, which started in theater before turning into a research career focused on how people think, feel, and behave online. From there, we dig into some of his most influential work on social media, including why posts that target political outgroups are often the most likely to go viral, and what that reveals about algorithms that reward outrage, mockery, and conflict.

We then explore more hopeful findings from Steve’s research on unfollowing hyper-partisan influencers, showing how small, targeted changes to people’s information diets can reduce out-party hostility over time without requiring users to leave social media altogether.

Finally, we turn to AI chatbots and Steve’s recent experiments on “sycophancy”—when AI systems become overly agreeable. We discuss how affirming chatbots can quietly increase belief certainty and extremity while still being perceived as warm, competent, and unbiased, and what this means for confirmation bias, persuasion, and the future design of AI systems.

You can listen to the full episode here or using the links below. As always, if you find it useful, feel free to share it with someone who might benefit from the conversation.

Follow Sander on TikTok, Instagram, Bluesky or LinkedIn

Steve’s website with links to his research papers

Keywords: Steve Rathje, virality, AI chatbots, polarization, social media, psychology, science communication, TikTok

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In this episode of Misguided: The Podcast, I’m joined by Sander van der Linden, who is a professor of social psychology at the University of Cambridge and one of the leading researchers studying misinformation, propaganda, and how people can build resistance to manipulation. If you’re familiar with the idea of “prebunking,” or psychological inoculation (training people to recognize misinformation before they encounter it), much of that work traces back to Sander’s research.

We begin by talking about his non-traditional path into psychology, from leaving a banking job to discovering research as a career, and how early experiences with being misled sparked a deeper interest in influence and propaganda. From there, we dig into what psychological inoculation actually is, why simply giving people facts often isn’t enough, and how tools like the Bad News game help people recognize manipulation techniques across political and cultural contexts.

We then zoom out to the broader information ecosystem, including the economics of fake social media accounts and how cheap it has become to spread inauthentic activity at scale, especially in an age of AI. Finally, we discuss what effective responses might look like, from education and platform responsibility to why Sander remains cautiously optimistic despite the very real challenges ahead.

You can listen to the full episode here or the links below. As always, if you find it useful, feel free to share it with someone who might benefit from the conversation.

Follow Sander on Bluesky or LinkedIn

Sander’s Book: Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity

Sander’s website.

Cambridge Online Trust and Safety Index

Keywords: Sander van der Linden, prebunking, media literacy, AI, fake accounts, foolproof, psychological inoculation, social media, psychology

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In this episode of Misguided, I’m joined by Renee DiResta to talk about how she went from a winding career in tech, finance, and Silicon Valley startups to becoming one of the leading analysts of online influence. Renée traces the shift back to a personal moment: after having her first child in 2013, she noticed a concerning amount of anti-vaccine content across Facebook communities. She started quietly studying those communities and doing network analysis at night, work that eventually became her full-time focus.

We spend a lot of time on a core idea from her book Invisible Rulers “bespoke realities.” Renée argues that blaming everything on “the algorithm” misses what truly pulls people into false worlds. Algorithms may guide people toward certain groups, but it’s the communities themselves—identity, belonging, alternative experts, and self-contained information loops—that keep people inside and make outside institutions seem corrupt or irrelevant.

From there, we turn to AI. Renée sees chatbots and answer engines as the next major force in shaping reality. As more people skip searching and instead ask a preferred bot for the truth, the information battle moves upstream to the training and reference layer of the internet (especially Wikipedia). Influence those sources, and you can influence what AI confidently repeats back.

Finally, we talk about why scientific and medical institutions keep losing ground online. They’re limited by incentives, risk-averse cultures, and a decade-long “network debt” compared to misinformation influencers. Renée’s conclusion is direct: if institutions want to stay relevant, they need to show up where people actually are, build genuine relationships in communities, and treat communication as central to their mission, not a side task or liability.

Follow Renee on Threads

Follow Renee on Bluesky

Renee’s Book: Invisible Rulers

Renee’s articles mentioned during this episode:

For Expertise to Matter, Nonpartisan Institutions Need New Communications Strategies

Source Wars and Bespoke Realities: Wikipedia, Grokipedia, and The Battle for Truth

Free Speech Is Not the Same As Free Reach

Keywords: Renee DiResta, social networks, vaccine attitudes, AI, misinformation, AI chatbots, bespoke realities, invisible rulers

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In this episode, I talk with philosopher and author Andy Norman, founder of the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative and author of Mental Immunity. Andy shares how a provocative 1990s essay by Richard Dawkins sparked his lifelong pursuit to understand how bad ideas spread, and how we can protect our minds from them.

We unpack what it means to build mental immunity, why sketchy ideas behave like mind-viruses, and how habits of curiosity, humility, and self-reflection strengthen our cognitive defenses. Our conversation spans from the philosophy of reasoning to practical education reform, teaching students to “debug their minds,” recognize manipulation, and build communities of inquiry that value truth over tribalism.

Together we explore how critical thinking, critical ignoring, and cognitive germ theory can help us navigate today’s polluted information ecosystem, and why thinking is not only power, but freedom.

Do Minds Have Immune Systems? (article)

Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think (book)

Andy Norman’s site

CIRCE- The Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative (Institute)

Declaration of CIRCE’s Blue-Ribbon Panel (vision statement and call to action)

The Mental Immunity Project (educational resources for strengthening mental immune systems)

Keywords: Andy Norman, cognitive immunology, critical thinking, critical ignoring, education, mind viruses, inoculation, belief

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In this episode, I talk with sociologist and author Barry Markovsky about his path into social science and his career studying science vs. pseudoscience. Barry shares lessons from his hit “Sociology of the Paranormal” class, previews his forthcoming book Everyday Extraordinary, which pairs front-stage stories with back-stage analysis, and explains how social networks and identity shape what we believe. We also talk about writing, AI’s effect on thinking, and finding a sense of wonder through science instead of the supernatural. I was fortunate to take several of Barry’s classes in graduate school, and he also served as an advisor on my master’s thesis, so it was very cool to have him on my podcast.

Barry’s forthcoming book: Everyday Extraordinary

Barry’s website

Keywords: Barry Markovsky, sociology, paranormal, critical thinking, education, pseudoscience, science, identity, belief

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In this episode, I chat with educator, political scientist, and author Tim Redmond to discuss his path from a PhD in political science to a high school teacher building a standout course on critical thinking. Tim shares how discovering psychology after academia reshaped his approach, why identity sits at the center of our information habits, and how blending psychological literacy, media literacy, and scientific literacy helps teens (and the rest of us) think better. When talking to Tim, I actually summarized his work into those three pillars of literacy as they map onto my own work as well. Maybe I’ll teach my own course focusing on those pillars!

Tim’s book: Political Tribalism in America: How Hyper-Partisanship Dumbs Down Democracy and How to Fix It

Read about Tim’s high school class on media literacy and critical thinking here

Keywords: Timothy Redmond, high school education, misinformation, critical thinking, media literacy, political science, identity.

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Physicist and author of The Irrational Ape, David Robert Grimes, joins me to explore why facts alone rarely change minds. Drawing on his background in medical physics, statistics, cancer research, and public health—as well as his work in science communication—David explains how conspiracies spread, why the “information deficit” model falls short, and what effective media literacy actually looks like.

The conversation also dives into the deeper social and structural forces that shape our health, why changing your mind should be celebrated rather than stigmatized, and how to rebuild trust in institutions without simply demanding it. Along the way, David and I reflect on the challenges of science communication in the digital age and the urgent need for critical thinking to protect our information ecosystem.

If you’re interested in critical thinking, public health, and navigating misinformation in the age of AI, this episode is for you.

Read about David’s work on his website

Follow David on Instagram

Read David’s Book: The Irrational Ape

Keywords: David Robert Grimes, misinformation, conspiracy theories, critical thinking, media literacy, public health communication, trust in institutions

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