Your Undivided Attention

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In our podcast, Your Undivided Attention, co-hosts Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore the unprecedented power of emerging technologies: how they fit into our lives, and how they fit into 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 Audrey Tang on digital democracy, neurotechnology with Nita Farahany, getting beyond dystopia with Yuval Noah Harari, and Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy: the other AI.

Your Undivided Attention is produced by Executive Producer Sasha Fegan and Senior Producer Julia Scott. Our Researcher/Producer is Josh Lash.

The views expressed by guests appearing on Center for Humane Technology’s podcast, Your Undivided Attention, are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CHT. CHT does not support or oppose any candidate or party for election to public office.

Do you have a question for Tristan and Aza to answer on the podcast? Click here to fill out this form.

RECENT EPISODES

Episode 33

Mind the (Perception) Gap with Dan Vallone

What do you think the other side thinks? Guest Dan Vallone is the Director of More in Common U.S.A., an organization that’s been asking Democrats and Republicans that critical question. Their work has uncovered countless “perception gaps” in our understanding of each other.

April 15, 2021

Spotlight

Coded Bias with Shalini Kantayya

The film Coded Bias follows MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini through her investigation of algorithmic discrimination after she accidentally discovers that facial recognition technologies do not detect darker-skinned faces. Joy is joined on screen by experts in the field, researchers, activists, and involuntary victims of algorithmic injustice.

April 8, 2021

Episode 32

Come Together Right Now. Guest: Shamil Idriss

Shamil Idriss, CEO of the organization Search for Common Ground, shares the lessons of peacebuilding from his work in Niger, the Balkans, and Rwanda. Technology and social media are creating patterns and pathways of conflict that few people anticipated or even imagined just a decade ago. And we need to act quickly to contain the effects, but we don't have to reinvent the wheel.

April 1, 2021

Episode 31

Disinformation Then and Now. Guest: Camille François

Camille François, Chief Information Officer at the cybersecurity company Graphika and an affiliate of the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and other disinformation researchers have been fighting two battles over the last decade: one to combat and contain harmful information, and one to convince the world that these manipulations have an offline impact that requires complex, nuanced solutions.

March 18, 2021

Episode 30

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

It’s no revelation that Americans aren’t getting along. But Braver Angels is working to address this problem. The organization brings Americans together to bridge the partisan divide, offering tools and running workshops that convince Republicans and Democrats to meet but not necessarily in the middle.

March 4, 2021

Episode 29

A Renegade Solution to Extractive Economics with Kate Raworth

Kate Raworth, the “renegade economist” and creator of Doughnut Economics, explores how we can transform the world by changing the models for how we value it. Check out our conversation.

February 11, 2021

Episode 28

Two Million Years in Two Hours: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari is one of the rare historians who can give us a two-million-year perspective on today’s headlines. In this wide-ranging conversation, Yuval explains how technology and democracy have evolved together over the course of human history, before exploring nearly unimaginable possibilities for where we might go from here.

January 15, 2021

Episode 27

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? A Civic Vision for the Internet with Eli Pariser

Eli Pariser, co-director of Civic Signals, co-founder of Avaaz, and author of "The Filter Bubble," has been thinking for years about how to create more functional online spaces and is bringing people together to solve that problem.

December 23, 2020

Episode 26

Are the Kids Alright? Guest: Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt, NYU social psychologist, has spent the last few years trying to figure out why we are in the midst of a teen mental health crisis. He believes social media is to blame.

October 27, 2020

Episode 25

Your Nation’s Attention for the Price of a Used Car. Guest: Zahed Amanullah

Zahed Amanullah, counter-terrorism expert at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, explains how the very tools that extremists use to broadcast messages of hate can also be used to stop them in their tracks.

October 6, 2020

Spotlight

The Social Dilemma

A new documentary, The Social Dilemma comes out on Netflix today, September 9, 2020.

September 9, 2020

Episode 24

Facebook Goes ‘2Africa.’ Guest: Julie Owono

Julie Owono, Executive Director of Internet Without Borders, discusses Facebook’s “2Africa” subsea cable project and the risks of tech companies leading us into an age of “digital colonialism.”

September 2, 2020

Episode 23

When Media Was for You and Me with Fred Turner

Fred Turner, a professor of communications at Stanford University, discusses how media can make us feel more reflective, more patient, and more tolerant.

August 5, 2020

Episode 22

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang

Audrey Tang, Taiwan's Digital Minister, helps us imagine a world where every country has a digital minister and technologically-enabled legislative bodies.

July 23, 2020

Spotlight

Beyond the Boycott

The #StopHateforProfit campaign is an important first step.

July 10, 2020

Episode 21

The World According to Q. Guest: Travis View

Travis View studies the cryptic appeal and cult-like dynamics of QAnon and what happens as Q followers leave their screens behind, arm themselves, and take their extremism into the real world.

July 8, 2020

Episode 20

The Bully’s Pulpit. Guest: Fadi Quran

Fadi Quran and his team at Avaaz go to great lengths to figure out exactly how social media is being weaponized against vulnerable communities, including those who have no voice online at all.

June 22, 2020

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

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

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