Your Undivided Attention

The Spin Doctors Are In — with Renée DiResta

<p>How does disinformation spread in the age of COVID-19? It takes an expert like <a href="http://www.reneediresta.com/" target="_blank">Renée DiResta</a> to trace conspiracy theories back to their source. She’s already exposed how Russian state actors manipulated the 2016 election, but that was just a prelude to what she’s seeing online today: a convergence of state actors and lone individuals, anti-vaxxers and NRA supporters, scam artists and preachers and the occasional fan of cuddly pandas. What ties all of these disparate actors together is an information ecosystem that’s breaking down before our eyes. We explore what’s going wrong and what we must do to fix it in this interview with Renée DiResta, Research Manager at the <a href="https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/io" target="_blank">Stanford Internet Observatory</a>.</p>

In our podcast, Your Undivided Attention, co-hosts Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin and Daniel Barcay 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 Editor Sasha Fegan and Senior Producer Julia Scott. Our Researcher/Producer is Joshua Lash. We are a top tech podcast worldwide with more than 20 million downloads and a member of the TED Audio Collective.