Polarisation is seen as a threat to democracy - and social media is seen as a cause. But what can be done? Does the blame really lie with tech alone? And what could the virtual public square look like if we dared to hit "reset" and redesigned our apps from scratch? A radical and counter-intuitive conversation between Chris Bail, head of the Polarization Lab at Duke University, and Samira Shackle, editor of New Humanist magazine, on tribalism, extremism, and not logging off. For fans of Azeem Azhar, Jonathan Haidt, Nick Srnicek and Shoshana Zuboff.
Podcast listeners can get a year's subscription to New Humanist magazine for just £13.50. Head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON
Hosts: Samira Shackle and Niki Seth-Smith
Executive producer: Alice Bloch
Sound engineer: David Crackles
Music: Danosongs
Further Reading:
"Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing" (2021) Chris Bail
www.polarizationlab.com
"Terrified: How Anti-Muslim Fringe Organizations Became Mainstream" (2014) Chris Bail
"The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" (2012), Jonathan Haidt
"The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (2018) Shoshana Zuboff
"Platform Capitalism" (2016) Nick Srnicek
"Does the Left Have a Problem with Empathy?" (2020) Nicola Cutcher, New Humanist Magazine
Inside The New Space Race, with Nicholas Schmidle
Black Resistance and Racist Policing, with Adam Elliott-Cooper
(M)otherhood and Choice, with Pragya Agarwal
Quantum Physics & Philosophy, with Carlo Rovelli
Bonus: Rutger Bregman and Philippe Sands - Are Humans Naturally Good? From How To Academy
Why our minds need the wild, with Lucy Jones
Learning from our ancestors, with Alice Roberts
Writing and Recovery, with Michael Rosen
The Cosmos & Us, with Jo Marchant
Deporting Black Britons, with Luke de Noronha
Activism and Belief, with Rosemary Hancock
Desire in the age of Consent, with Katherine Angel
Looking back in anger at 'Cool Britannia' with Jason Arday
Escaping the logic of work, with Mareile Pfannebecker
Sensuous knowledge and black feminism, with Minna Salami
The symbolic power of charity, with Jon Dean
Taking sex robots seriously, with Kate Devlin
Faith, fraternity and the Orange Order, with Joe Webster
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