WhoWhatWhy's Podcasts

We have seen endless stories about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. We have endured two days of Mark Zuckerberg explaining the Facebook business model. Social media and its role in politics is on everyone's mind. However, none of the current clamor speaks to the broader impact of the internet, or of big tech in general.

In this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast, Jamie Bartlett, director of the Center for Analysis of Social Media, reminds Jeff Schechtman that the internet was supposed to be a democratizing force. The widespread availability of digital technology was to allow freedom of information and communication on a scale never thought possible before.

The reality, Bartlett argues, is that every aspect of the internet and its culture is feeding the worst of humanity's tribal instincts.

It's becoming clear, says Bartlett, that internet technology is simply antithetical to democracy. Perhaps it's no coincidence that, as the internet grows, authoritarian regimes proliferate. As tech companies get bigger, the institutions of democracy come under greater pressure.

Bartlett talks about how monopolistic practices are built into the DNA of tech companies, and reveals the intended and unintended consequences of maintaining those monopolies. How hyper-targeted internet advertising is merely the most recent iteration in a long history of efforts to manipulate our decision-making. As those efforts advance in sophistication, the ability of a small minority to distract and ultimately control a technically naive majority poses a grave threat to the fundamental exercise of free choice.

This week's podcast is a sobering look behind the headlines and noise about tech.

Jamie Bartlett is the author of The People Vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It) (Ebury Digital, April 5, 2018).

We have seen endless stories about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. We have endured two days of Mark Zuckerberg explaining the Facebook business model. Social media and its role in politics is on everyone's mind. However, none of the current clamor speaks to the broader impact of the internet, or of big tech in general.

In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, Jamie Bartlett, director of the Center for Analysis of Social Media, reminds Jeff Schechtman that the internet was supposed to be a democratizing force. The widespread availability of digital technology was to allow freedom of information and communication on a scale never thought possible before.

The reality, Bartlett argues, is that every aspect of the internet and its culture is feeding the worst of humanity’s tribal instincts.

It’s becoming clear, says Bartlett, that internet technology is simply antithetical to democracy. Perhaps it's no coincidence that, as the internet grows, authoritarian regimes proliferate. As tech companies get bigger, the institutions of democracy come under greater pressure.  

Bartlett talks about how monopolistic practices are built into the DNA of tech companies, and reveals the intended and unintended consequences of maintaining those monopolies. How hyper-targeted internet advertising is merely the most recent iteration in a long history of efforts to manipulate our decision-making. As those efforts advance in sophistication, the ability of a small minority to distract and ultimately control a technically naive majority poses a grave threat to the fundamental exercise of free choice.

This week’s podcast is a sobering look behind the headlines and noise about tech. 

Jamie Bartlett is the author of The People Vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It) (Ebury Digital, April 5, 2018).

We are facing planet-wide extinction, a climate emergency — and our current course is suicidal.

That is the underlying belief of author and scientist Richard Smith, who is Jeff Schechtman's guest on this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast.

Smith believes that our current model of capitalism, with virtually unlimited growth and consumption, cannot sustain a planetary population of nine billion people. He tells Schechtman that we do not need most of what we consume, and that our current behavior must stop. But Smith's Jeremiad goes even further.

He talks about the need to stop building planes and cars, to ration air travel and fishing, to nationalize and take public control of the fossil fuel industry, to close down oil companies and many manufacturers of disposable consumer goods, and to make less stuff. He understands that this may mean putting whole industries out of business and people out of work, but he thinks it's the only way to keep the planet habitable for humans.

As just one solution, Smith talks about the need for global agreements on everything. That nation-states should no longer make many of the decisions they do now. That we need global plebiscites, a contraction or elimination of capitalism, and more global equality. Anything short of this, he argues, will bring the collapse of civilization.

It's a radical set of views, but powerful food for thought.

Smith is the author of Green Capitalism: The God That Failed (College Publications, 2016).

We are facing planet-wide extinction, a climate emergency — and our current course is suicidal.

That is the underlying belief of author and scientist Richard Smith, who is Jeff Schechtman’s guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast.

Smith believes that our current model of capitalism, with virtually unlimited growth and consumption, cannot sustain a planetary population of nine billion people. He tells Schechtman that we do not need most of what we consume, and that our current behavior must stop. But Smith’s Jeremiad goes even further.

He talks about the need to stop building planes and cars, to ration air travel and fishing, to nationalize and take public control of the fossil fuel industry, to close down oil companies and many manufacturers of disposable consumer goods, and to make less stuff. He understands that this may mean putting whole industries out of business and people out of work, but he thinks it’s the only way to keep the planet habitable for humans.

As just one solution, Smith talks about the need for global agreements on everything. That nation-states should no longer make many of the decisions they do now. That we need global plebiscites, a contraction or elimination of capitalism, and more global equality. Anything short of this, he argues, will bring the collapse of civilization.

It’s a radical set of views, but powerful food for thought.

Smith is the author of Green Capitalism: The God That Failed (College Publications, 2016).

The evidence that James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King is overwhelming. As the Washington Post recently pointed out, famed attorney William Pepper stands astride all of the information and work that has uncovered the truth.

Pepper was a friend of King in the last years of his life. Some years after King's death, Pepper went on to represent James Earl Ray in his guilty plea and subsequent conviction. But Pepper believes that Ray was framed by the FBI, the CIA, the military, the Memphis police, and organized crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis.

In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, William Pepper talks to Jeff Schechtman about the totality of the case. He tells of his initial interview with Ray, 40 years ago, and why it became clear to him right away that Ray was innocent. Pepper explains that Ray had no motive for the shooting, that he acted at the direction of his handler, a man named "Raoul," with clear ties to Hoover and the FBI.

Pepper explains how, over the years, the evidence has mounted about Hoover's hatred of King, which lay behind the FBI's unending surveillance of King and the entire civil rights movement, and why Hoover sent his number two man, Clyde Tolson, to Memphis to help oversee the assassination of King and to help set up Ray as the patsy.

It's a story that actually begins a half century ago today, in a hospital emergency room in Memphis. Pepper thinks it's possible that King did not die from the gunshot wound — but that he was actually murdered in that emergency room.

William F. Pepper is the author of The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Skyhorse Publishing, January 16, 2018).

RELATED: Classic Who: Martin Luther King Also Had a Nightmare

The evidence that James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King is overwhelming. As the Washington Post recently pointed out, famed attorney William Pepper stands astride all of the information and work that has uncovered the truth.

Pepper was a friend of King in the last years of his life. Some years after King's death, Pepper went on to represent James Earl Ray in his guilty plea and subsequent conviction. But Pepper believes that Ray was framed by the FBI, the CIA, the military, the Memphis police, and organized crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis.

In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, William Pepper talks to Jeff Schechtman about the totality of the case. He tells of his initial interview with Ray, 40 years ago, and why it became clear to him right away that Ray was innocent. Pepper explains that Ray had no motive for the shooting, that he acted at the direction of his handler, a man named “Raoul,” with clear ties to Hoover and the FBI.

Pepper explains how, over the years, the evidence has mounted about Hoover’s hatred of King, which lay behind the FBI’s unending surveillance of King and the entire civil rights movement, and why Hoover sent his number two man, Clyde Tolson, to Memphis to help oversee the assassination of King and to help set up Ray as the patsy.

It’s a story that actually begins a half century ago today, in a hospital emergency room in Memphis. Pepper thinks it's possible that King did not die from the gunshot wound — but that he was actually murdered in that emergency room.

William F. Pepper is the author of The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Skyhorse Publishing,  January 16, 2018).

RELATED: Classic Who: Martin Luther King Also Had a Nightmare

Longtime Memphis journalist Marc Perrusquia spent years investigating the story of how a famous African American photographer, with remarkable access, played a key role in the civil rights movement, all while being an informant for the FBI.

Ernest Withers's photography captured some of the most stunning moments of the civil rights era: including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. riding one of the first integrated buses in Montgomery, AL, and the blood flowing into King's room from the balcony at the Lorraine Motel, where he was assassinated. Withers had a front row seat to history, as a man trusted and beloved by the movement's inner circle. All the while he was reporting back to the FBI.

On this 50th anniversary of King's assassination, Perrusquia talks to WhoWhatWhy's Jeff Schechtman about Withers and the impact that his information had on both the civil rights movement and the Bureau.

Perrusquia speculates that Withers, who was also a disgraced cop, may have actually been a double agent, informing both the FBI and some of the people he trusted in the movement about what he believed was a noble effort that had gone too far. Withers's conservative views made him critical of King's anti-war stance and of the dangers that he saw posed by radicals inside the movement.

In addition to the story of Withers, the FBI, and the civil rights struggle, Perrusquia tells Schechtman about his own battles to get all of this information from the FBI, and how hard the Bureau fought to protect its informant.

Marc Perrusquia is the author of A Spy in Canaan: How the FBI Used a Famous Photographer to Infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement (Melville House, March 27, 2018).

Longtime Memphis journalist Marc Perrusquia spent years investigating the story of how a famous African American photographer, with remarkable access, played a key role in the civil rights movement, all while being an informant for the FBI.

Ernest Withers’s photography captured some of the most stunning moments of the civil rights era: including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. riding one of the first integrated buses in Montgomery, AL, and the blood flowing into King’s room from the balcony at the Lorraine Motel, where he was assassinated. Withers had a front row seat to history, as a man trusted and beloved by the movement’s inner circle. All the while he was reporting back to the FBI.

On this 50th anniversary of King’s assassination, Perrusquia talks to WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman about Withers and the impact that his information had on both the civil rights movement and the Bureau.

Perrusquia speculates that Withers, who was also a disgraced cop, may have actually been a double agent, informing both the FBI and some of the people he trusted in the movement about what he believed was a noble effort that had gone too far. Withers’s conservative views made him critical of King’s anti-war stance and of the dangers that he saw posed by radicals inside the movement.

In addition to the story of Withers, the FBI, and the civil rights struggle, Perrusquia tells Schechtman about his own battles to get all of this information from the FBI, and how hard the Bureau fought to protect its informant.

Marc Perrusquia is the author of A Spy in Canaan: How the FBI Used a Famous Photographer to Infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement (Melville House, March 27, 2018).

Be it privatizing the Veterans Administration, railing against "socialized medicine," gutting the Environmental Protection Agency, or trying to starve public education, the proponents of these ideas all seem to be beholden to the work of Ayn Rand.

Rand's novel, The Fountainhead, was published 75 years ago this month, after being turned down by 12 publishers. Yet for people like Paul Ryan, Stephen Miller, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Peter Thiel, it might as well have been a briefing paper published this morning.

Even though Bill Buckley kicked Rand out of the conservative movement in the late 1950s, at a 2005 gathering to honor her memory, Paul Ryan declared, "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand."

Yaron Brook, the president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, and Jeff Schechtman's guest on this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast, thinks that The Fountainhead is the classic American novel and that Rand's ideas are at the core of American and Western civilization.

Opposition to her is just as contemporary, as people like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman devote significant efforts to trying to discredit her.

In his conversation with Schechtman, Brook talks about Silicon Valley and how, in his view, it's wrong for leaders and inventors to share credit. He argues that they need not apologize or share their success, but instead bask shamelessly in their accomplishments.

He criticizes Bill Gates for focusing on philanthropy and giving his money away, when he could still be doing more to achieve greater success and make more money.

Originally published in 1943, The Fountainhead, Brook claims, was intended not as a political manifesto, but to put forward a way of seeing the world devoid of what he says is today's tribalism and groupthink.

Be it privatizing the Veterans Administration, railing against “socialized medicine,” gutting the Environmental Protection Agency, or trying to starve public education, the proponents of these ideas all seem to be beholden to the work of Ayn Rand.

Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead, was published 75 years ago this month, after being turned down by 12 publishers. Yet for people like Paul Ryan, Stephen Miller, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Peter Thiel, it might as well have been a briefing paper published this morning.

Even though Bill Buckley kicked Rand out of the conservative movement in the late 1950s, at a 2005 gathering to honor her memory, Paul Ryan declared, “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”

Yaron Brook, the president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, and Jeff Schechtman’s guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, thinks that The Fountainhead is the classic American novel and that Rand’s ideas are at the core of American and Western civilization.

Opposition to her is just as contemporary, as people like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman devote significant efforts to trying to discredit her.

In his conversation with Schechtman, Brook talks about Silicon Valley and how, in his view, it’s wrong for leaders and inventors to share credit. He argues that they need not apologize or share their success, but instead bask shamelessly in their accomplishments.

He criticizes Bill Gates for focusing on philanthropy and giving his money away, when he could still be doing more to achieve greater success and make more money.

Originally published in 1943, The Fountainhead, Brook claims, was intended not as a political manifesto, but to put forward a way of seeing the world devoid of what he says is today’s tribalism and groupthink.