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 correlation between the percentage of the population that supports a policy and its likelihood of being enacted. The strongest determinant of whether a policy gets enacted is how much money is behind it.

So, how might we not just protect, but better yet revive our democracy? How might we revive  the relationship between the will of the people and the actions of our government?

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're doing something special. As we near the election, and representation is on our minds, we're airing a talk by Harvard Law professor and Creative Commons co-founder Larry Lessig. It's a 2019 talk he gave at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, DC about his book, They Don't Represent Us.

The book title has two meanings: first, they — as in our elected representatives — don't represent us. And second, we — as in the people — don't represent ourselves. And this is where social media comes in: we don't represent ourselves because the more we use social media, the more we see extreme versions of the other side, and the more extreme, outraged, and polarized we ourselves become.

Last note: Lessig's talk is highly visual. We edited it lightly for clarity, and jump in periodically to narrate things you can’t see. But if you prefer to watch his talk, you can find the link below in Recommended Media.
 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Video: They Don't Represent Us

The 2019 talk Larry Lessig gave at Politics and Prose in Washington, DC about his book of the same name

Book: They Don't Represent Us

Larry Lessig’s 2019 book that elaborates the ways in which democratic representation is in peril, and proposes a number of solutions to revive our democracy -- from ranked-choice voting to non-partisan open primaries

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens 

Princeton's Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page study measuring the correlation between the preferences of different groups and the decisions of our government
 

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/23-digital-democracy-is-within-reach

How Political Language Is Engineered with Drew Westen and Frank Luntz

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/53-how-political-language-is-engineered

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 for metaverse-related projects.

How might we learn from our experience with social media, and anticipate the harms of the metaverse before they arise? What would it look like to design a humane metaverse — that respects our attention, improves our well-being, and strengthens our democracy?

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we talk with two pioneers who are thinking critically about the development of the metaverse. Professor Jeremy Bailenson is the Founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, where he studies how virtual experiences lead to changes in perceptions of self and others. Dr. Courtney Cogburn is an Associate Professor at Columbia's School of Social Work, where she examines associations between racism and stress-related disease. Jeremy and Courtney collaborated on 1000 Cut Journey, a virtual reality experience about systemic racism.

CORRECTIONS: 

1. In the episode, Courtney says that the average US adult consumes 9 hours of media per day, but the actual number in 2022 is closer to 13 hours.
2. Finally, Aza mentions the "pockets of 4.6 billion people" — implying that there are 4.6 billion smartphone users. The global number of social media users is 4.7 billion, and the number of smartphone users is actually 6.6 billion.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA: 

Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do

https://www.amazon.com/Experience-Demand-Virtual-Reality-Works/dp/0393253694
Jeremy Bailenson's 2018 book exploring how virtual reality can be harnessed to improve our everyday lives

Experiencing Racism in VR

https://www.ted.com/talks/courtney_cogburn_experiencing_racism_in_vr_courtney_d_cogburn_phd_tedxrva
Courtney Cogburn's 2017 TEDx talk about how using virtual reality to help people experience the complexities of racism

Do Artifacts Have Politics?

https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf   
Technology philosopher Langdon Winner’s seminal 1980 article, in which he writes, "by far the greatest latitude of choice exists the very first time a particular instrument, system, or technique is introduced."

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES: 

Do You Want To Become A Vampire? with LA Paul

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/39-do-you-want-to-become-a-vampire

Pardon the Interruptions with Gloria Mark

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/7-pardon-the-interruptions

Bonus - What Is Humane Technology?

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/bonus-what-is-humane-technology

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 unfriending each other on Facebook?

As it turns out, we often think our ideological differences are far greater than they actually are. Which means: we’re losing relationships and getting mired in polarization based on warped visions of each other. 

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're talking with Adam Mastroianni, a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School who studies how we perceive and misperceive our social worlds. Together with Adam, we're going to explore how accurate — and inaccurate — our views of each other are. As you listen to our conversation, keep in mind that relationship you might have lost to misperception, and that you might be able to revive as a result of what you hear.

CORRECTIONS: In the episode, Adam says in 1978, 85% of people said they'd vote for a Black president, but the actual percentage is 80.4%. Tristan says that Republicans estimate that more than a third of Democrats are LGBTQ, but the actual percentage is 32%. Finally, Tristan refers to Anil Seth's notion of cognitive impenetrability, but that term was actually coined by the Canadian cognitive scientist and philosopher Zenon W. Pylyshyn.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Widespread Misperceptions of Long-term Attitude Change
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2107260119   
Adam Mastroianni's research paper showing how stereotypes of the past lead people to misperceive attitude change, and how these misperceptions can lend legitimacy to policies that people may not actually prefer

Experimental History
https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/  
Adam's blog, where he shares original data and thinks through ideas

Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32412-y
Academic study showing that Americans are living in what researchers called a “false social reality” with respect to misperceptions about climate views

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

Mind the (Perception) Gap with Dan Vallone

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/33-mind-the-perception-gap

The Courage to Connect. Guests: Ciaran O’Connor and John Wood, Jr.

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/30-the-courage-to-connect

Transcending the Internet Hate Game with Dylan Marron

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/52-transcending-the-internet-hate-game

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 this might sound like science fiction, it’s representative of the world we're living in, with TikTok being influenced by the Chinese Communist Party.

TikTok, the flagship app of the Chinese company Bytedance, recently surpassed Google and Facebook as the most popular site on the internet in 2021, and is expected to reach more than 1.8 billion users by the end of 2022. The Chinese government doesn't control TikTok, but has influence over it. What are the implications of this influence, given that China is the main geopolitical rival of the United States?

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we bring you a bonus episode about TikTok. Co-hosts Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore the nature of the TikTok threat, and how we might address it.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Pew Research Center's "Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022"

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/

Pew's recent study on how TikTok has established itself as one of the top online platforms for U.S. teens

Axios' "Washington turns up the heat on TikTok"

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/07/congress-tiktok-china-privacy-data?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Article on recent Congressional responses to the threat of TikTok

Felix Krause on TikTok's keystroke tracking

https://twitter.com/KrauseFx/status/1560372509639311366

A revelation that TikTok has code to observe keypad input and all taps

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

A Fresh Take on Tech in China with Rui Ma and Duncan Clark

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/44-a-fresh-take-on-tech-in-china

A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/42-a-conversation-with-facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen

From Russia with Likes (Part 1). Guest: Renée DiResta

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/5-from-russia-with-likes-part-1

From Russia with Likes (Part 2). Guest: Renée DiResta

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/6-from-russia-with-likes-part-2
 

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 detrimental to the group in the long term. Think of social media companies that compete for our attention, so that when TikTok introduces an even-more addictive feature, Facebook and Twitter have to mimic it in order to keep up, sending us all on a race to the bottom of our brainstems.

Intervening at the level of multipolar traps has extraordinary leverage. One such intervention is the Long Term Stock Exchange — a U.S. national securities exchange serving companies and investors who share a long-term vision. Instead of asking public companies to pollute less or be less addictive while holding them accountable to short-term shareholder value, the Long-Term Stock Exchange creates a new playing field, which incentivizes the creation of long-term stakeholder value.

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we’re airing an episode of a podcast called ZigZag — a fellow member of the TED Audio Collective. In an exploration of how technology companies might transcend multipolar traps, we're sharing with you ZigZag’s conversation with Long Term Stock Exchange founder Eric Ries.

CORRECTION: In the episode, we say that TikTok has outcompeted Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. In fact, TikTok has outcompeted Facebook, but not yet YouTube or Instagram — TikTok has 1 billion monthly users, while YouTube has 2.6 billion and Instagram has 2 billion. However, we can say that TikTok is on a path toward outcompeting YouTube and Instagram.

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

An Alternative to Silicon Valley Unicorns with Mara Zepeda & Kate “Sassy” Sassoon: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/54-an-alternative-to-silicon-valley-unicorns

A Problem Well-Stated Is Half-Solved with Daniel Schmachtenberger: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/a-problem-well-stated-is-half-solved

Here’s Our Plan And We Don’t Know with Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin, and Stephanie Lepp: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/46-heres-our-plan-and-we-dont-know

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 be hacked. Our banks, water treatment facilities, and nuclear power plants can be deactivated and even controlled simply by finding bugs in the software used to operate them. Suddenly, cyber-attack takes on a different meaning.

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're talking with cyber-security expert Nicole Perlroth. Nicole spent a decade as the lead cyber-security reporter at The New York Times, and is now a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity Advisory Committee. She recently published “This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends” — an in-depth exploration of the global cyber arms race.

CORRECTIONS: In the episode, Nicole says that "the United States could have only afforded 2 to 3 more days of Colonial Pipeline being down before it ground the country — our economy — to a halt." The correct number is actually 3 to 5 days. She also refers to a 2015 study researching why some countries have significantly fewer successful cyber-attacks relative to cyber-attack attempts. That study was actually published in 2016.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends

Nicole Perlroth’s 2021 book investigating the global cyber-weapons arms race

Reporter Page at the New York Times

Nicole’s articles while the lead cyber-security reporter at the New York Times

The Global Cyber-Vulnerability Report (in brief)

Brief of a 2015 study by the Center for Digital International Government, Virginia Tech, and the University of Maryland that researched why some countries have significantly fewer successful cyber-attacks relative to cyber-attack attempts

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

The Dark Side Of Decentralization with Audrey Kurth Cronin: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/49-the-dark-side-of-decentralization

Is World War III Already Here? Guest: Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/45-is-world-war-iii-already-here

A Problem Well-Stated Is Half-Solved with Daniel Schmachtenberger: 

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/a-problem-well-stated-is-half-solved

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 and Uber are held accountable to maximizing returns to investors. If and when they become public companies, they become accountable to maximizing returns to shareholders. They’ve promised Wall Street outsized returns — which means Twitter can't lose bots if it would significantly lower their user count and in turn lower advertising revenue, and Uber can’t treat their drivers like employees if it competes with profits.

But what's the alternative? What might it look like to design an ownership and governance model that incentivizes a technology company to serve all of its stakeholders over the long term – and primarily, the stakeholders who create value?

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're talking with two experts on creating the conditions for humane business, and in turn, for humane technology: Mara Zepeda and Kate “Sassy” Sassoon of Zebras Unite Co-Op. Zebras Unite is a member-owned co-operative that’s creating the capital, culture, and community to power a more just and inclusive economy. The Zebras Unite Coop serves a community of over 6,000 members, in about 30 chapters, over 6 continents. Mara is their Managing Director, and Kate is their Director of Cooperative Membership.

Two corrections:

• The episode says that the failure rate of startups is 99%. The actual rate is closer to 90%.
• The episode says that in 2017, Twitter reported 350 million users on its platform. The actual number reported was 319 million users.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break

A seminal 2017 article by Zebras Unite co-founders, which kicked off the movement and distinguished between zebras and unicorns — per the table below.

Meetup to the People 

Zebras Unite’s 2019 thought experiment of exiting Meetup to community

Zebras Unite Crowdcast Channel

Where you can find upcoming online events, as well as recordings of previous events.

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

A Renegade Solution to Extractive Economics with Kate Raworth: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/29-a-renegade-solution-to-extractive-economics

Bonus — A Bigger Picture on Elon & Twitter: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/bigger-picture-elon-twitter  

Here’s Our Plan And We Don’t Know with Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin, and Stephanie Lepp: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/46-heres-our-plan-and-we-dont-know

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 recently aired an episode with Dylan Marron — creator and host of the podcast, Conversations With People Who Hate Me. On his show, Dylan calls up the people behind negative comments on the internet, and asks them: why did you write that?

In our conversation with Dylan, we played a clip from episode 2 of Conversations With People Who Hate Me. In that episode, Dylan talks with a high school student named Josh, who’d sent him homophobic messages online. This week, we're airing that full episode — the full conversation between Dylan Marron and Josh.

If you didn’t hear our episode with Dylan, do give it a listen. Then, enjoy this second episode of Conversations With People Who Hate Me.

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

Transcending the Internet Hate Game with Dylan Marron: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/52-transcending-the-internet-hate-game

A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/42-a-conversation-with-facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen

The Cure for Hate. Guest: Tony McAleer: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/11-the-cure-for-hate

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 difference in what we think about those issues. As a result, are we choosing our views, or is our language choosing them for us?

This week,Your Undivided Attention welcomes two Jedi Masters of political communication. Drew Westen is a political psychologist and messaging consultant based at Emory university, who has advised the Democratic Party. Frank Luntz is a political and communications consultant, pollster, and pundit, who has advised the Republican Party. In the past, our guests have used their messaging expertise in ways that increased partisanship. For example, Luntz advocated for the use of the term “death tax” instead of “estate tax,” and “climate change” instead of “global warming.” Still, Luntz and Westen are uniquely positioned to help us decode the divisive power of language — and explore how we might design language that unifies.

CORRECTIONS: in the episode, Tristan refers to a panel Drew Westen and Frank Luntz were on at the New York Public Library. He says the panel was “about 10 years ago,” but it was actually 15 years ago in 2007. Also, Westen refers to a news anchor who moderated a debate between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis in 1988. Drew mistakenly names the anchor as Bernard Kalb, when it was actually Bernard Shaw.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation

Drew Westen's 2008 book about role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation, which influenced campaigns and elections around the world

Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear

Frank Luntz's 2008 book, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the tactical use of words and phrases affects what we buy, who we vote for, and even what we believe in

New York Public Library's Panel on Political Language 

A 2007 panel between multiple 'Jedi Masters' of political communication along the political spectrum, including Frank Luntz, Drew Westen, and George Lakoff
 

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

The Invisible Influence of Language with Lera Boroditsky: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/48-the-invisible-influence-of-language

How To Free Our Minds with Cult Deprogramming Expert Dr. Steven Hassan: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/51-how-to-free-our-minds

Mind the (Perception) Gap with Dan Vallone: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/33-mind-the-perception-gap

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 assuming the worst in each other. The game itself must be transformed.

And, we can also decide to step out of the game, and do something different. 

On this week’s episode of Your Undivided Attention, we welcome Dylan Marron — who has been called by Jason Sudeikis "a modern Mr. Rogers for the digital age." Dylan is the creator and host of the podcast Conversations With People Who Hate Me. 

On the show, he calls up the people behind negative comments on the internet, and asks them a simple question: why did you write that? He just published a book by the same name, where he elaborates 12 lessons learned from talking with internet strangers. Together with Dylan, we explore how transforming the game and transforming ourselves can go hand-in-hand.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Conversations With People Who Hate Me (podcast)

Dylan Marron’s podcast where he calls up the people behind negative comments on the internet, and talks to them. In this episode, we heard a clip of Episode 2: Hurt People Hurt People.

Conversations With People Who Hate Me (book)

Dylan’s book where he elaborates 12 lessons learned from talking with internet strangers.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor

Feature documentary chronicling the work and legacy of Fred Rogers.

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/42-a-conversation-with-facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen

The Cure for Hate. Guest: Tony McAleer: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/11-the-cure-for-hate

The Fake News of Your Own Mind with Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman: 

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/19-the-fake-news-of-your-own-mind

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.