Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

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Perhaps you’ve noticed that the thing we call “social media'' is deeply antisocial—the thing that promised to unite us has done precisely the opposite.

A lot of people have tried to explain why. They blame Mark Zuckerberg. Or Jack Dorsey. Or the attention-stealing algorithms of TikTok. Or capitalism. Or human nature.

But the best explanation I have read to date was just published in the Atlantic by my guest today Jonathan Haidt. It is a must-read essay, as are Jonathan’s books, “The Righteous Mind” and “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

Our conversation today, fitting the importance of this subject, is long and deep. It spans the advent of the like button–and how that transformed the way we use the internet–to Jon’s argument that social media is making us unfit for democracy. And that unless we change course we stand to lose everything.

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May 19, 2021

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