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How Social Media Rewired our Brains and our World, with Max Fisher — Intelligence Squared

Sep 2022 🇬🇧 Intelligence Squared

In this 48-minute episode of the British debate-and-ideas podcast Intelligence Squared, technology journalist Chris Stokel-Walker interviews Max Fisher about The Chaos Machine in the week of its publication. Fisher lays out how two decades of engagement-optimized design are, in his argument, associated with changes in how people communicate, get news, and form group identities — and how the same recommendation mechanics he reported on abroad are linked to societal-scale polarization. Stokel-Walker, himself an author on YouTube and TikTok, presses Fisher on the strength of the evidence and on what distinguishes documented platform effects from earlier technology scares. TechKids Foundation includes this episode as the book's principal UK launch interview, pairing Fisher with a specialist interviewer rather than a general-interest host.

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Fisher, Max, interviewed by Chris Stokel-Walker. "How Social Media Rewired our Brains and our World, with Max Fisher." Intelligence Squared podcast, September 9, 2022. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-social-media-rewired-our-brains-and-our-world-with/id708371900?i=1000578849479

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