Your Undivided Attention

In our podcast, Your Undivided Attention, co-hosts Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore the incredible power that technology has over our lives — and how we can use it to catalyze a humane future.

Join us every other Thursday as we confront challenges and explore solutions with a wide-range of thought leaders and change-makers — like Kate Raworth on renegade economics, Audrey Tang on digital democracy, Daniel Schmachtenberger on global coordination, and Yuval Noah Harari on the co-evolution of technology and democracy.

Your Undivided Attention is produced by Executive Producer Stephanie Lepp and Senior Producer Julia Scott. We are honored to be part of the TED Audio Collective.

Recent Episodes

Rerun

The Dictator's Playbook Revisited with Maria Ressa

Maria Ressa is arguably one of the bravest journalists working in the Philippines today. As co-founder and CEO of the media site Rappler, she has withstood death threats, multiple arrests and a rising tide of populist fury that she first saw on Facebook, in the form of a strange and jarring personal attack.

June 16, 2020

Episode 19

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

Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman have helped thousands of people find their way out of a mental loop, by moving deeper into it. It’s a journey inward that reveals an important lesson for the architects of the attention economy.

June 2, 2020

Episode 18

The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to Saving the Planet with Christiana Figueres

Christiana Figueres, one of the main architects of the Paris Agreement, is intimately familiar with the high stakes of climate change negotiation. We explore how a shift in Silicon Valley’s vision could lead 3 billion people to take action.

May 21, 2020

Episode 17

The Spin Doctors Are In. Guest: Renée DiResta

Renée DiResta traces conspiracy theories back to their source, showing how disinformation spreads in the age of COVID-19.

May 7, 2020

Episode 16

When Attention Went on Sale. Guest: Tim Wu

Tim Wu, Columbia law professor, author of The Attention Merchants and The Curse of Bigness, takes us through the birth of the eyeball-centric news model and ensuing boom of yellow journalism, to the backlash that rallied journalists and citizens around creating industry ethics and standards.

April 28, 2020

Episode 15

Changing our Climate of Denial with Anthony Leiserowitz

Anthony Leiserowitz, Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, talks us through his approach to shifting public opinion on climate change.

April 22, 2020

Episode 14

Stranger than Fiction with Claire Wardle

Claire Wardle, co-founder and executive director of First Draft, studies the gray zones of information warfare, where bad actors mix facts with falsehoods, news with gossip, and sincerity with satire.

March 30, 2020

Episode 13

Mr. Harris Goes to Washington

Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin take us behind the scenes of Center for Humane Technology's January 8th testimony to the Energy and Commerce Committee on disinformation in the digital age.

January 30, 2020

Episode 12

Trust Falls with Rachel Botsman

Rachel Botsman, Trust Fellow at Oxford University, guides us through a global trust crisis—speaking directly to technology leaders about fostering communities and creating products the public is willing to put faith in.

January 14, 2020

Episode 11

The Cure for Hate. Guest: Tony McAleer

Tony McAleer was introduced to Neo-Nazi ideology through the U.K. punk scene in the 1980s. But after his daughter was born, he embarked on a decades-long journey from hate to compassion.

December 19, 2019

Episode 10

Rock the Voter. Guest: Brittany Kaiser

Brittany Kaiser, a former Cambridge Analytica insider, witnessed a two-day presentation at the company that shocked her and her co-workers.

December 5, 2019

Episode 9

The Dictator’s Playbook with Maria Ressa

Maria Ressa is arguably one of the bravest journalists working in the Philippines today. As co-founder and CEO of the media site Rappler, she has withstood death threats, multiple arrests and a rising tide of populist fury that she first saw on Facebook, in the form of a strange and jarring personal attack.

November 4, 2019

Episode 8

The Opposite of Addiction. Guest: Johann Hari

Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream, traveled some 30,000 miles in search of an answer to what causes addiction and depression.

October 22, 2019

Episode 7

Pardon the Interruptions. Guest: Gloria Mark

Gloria Mark, a professor in the Department of Informatics at University of California, Irvine, started measuring the attention spans of office workers with scientific precision. What she has discovered is not simply an explosion of disruptive communications, but a pandemic of stress that has followed workers from their offices to their homes.

August 14, 2019

Episode 6

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

Renée DiResta, disinformation expert, Mozilla fellow, and co-author of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation, explains how social media platforms use your sense of identity and personal relationships to keep you glued to their sites longer, and how those design choices have political consequences.

August 1, 2019

Episode 5

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

Renée DiResta, disinformation expert, explains how social media platforms’ algorithms and business models allow foreign agents to game the system, and what these messages reveal to us about ourselves.

July 24, 2019

Episode 4

Down the Rabbit Hole by Design. Guest: Guillaume Chaslot

Guillaume Chaslot, AI expert, helped write YouTube’s recommendation engine and reveals how those priorities spin up outrage, conspiracy theories and extremism.

July 10, 2019

Episode 3

With Great Power Comes… No Responsibility? with Yaёl Eisenstat

Yaёl Eisenstat, a former CIA officer and a former advisor at the White House, shares what she learned advising technology companies in the U.S., and her perspective on government's role in regulating tech.

June 25, 2019

Episode 2

2 – Should’ve Stayed in Vegas with Natasha Dow Schüll

Natasha Dow Schüll, cultural anthropologist and author of Addiction by Design, tells us what gamblers are really after a lot of the time—it’s not money.

June 19, 2019

Episode 1

1 – What Happened in Vegas with Natasha Dow Schüll

Natasha Dow Schüll, author of Addiction by Design, has spent years studying how slot machines hold gamblers, spellbound, in an endless loop of play. She never imagined the addictive designs which she had first witnessed in Las Vegas would go bounding into Silicon Valley and reappear on virtually every smartphone screen worldwide.

June 10, 2019