Your Undivided Attention
Co-hosts Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore the unprecedented power of emerging technologies: how they fit into both our lives and 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.
Your Undivided Attention is produced by Executive Producer Sasha Fegan and Senior Producer Julia Scott. Our Researcher/Producer is Josh Lash.
Episode 74
Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy
AI is harming our relationships, warns acclaimed psychotherapist Esther Perel. What would it look like for technology to strengthen our social bonds, rather than depriving us of the nuance that allows us to connect?
Episode 73
Protecting Our Freedom of Thought with Nita Farahany
We’re on the cusp of an explosion of cheap, consumer-ready neurotechnology - and it’s all going to be supercharged by AI. Legal scholar Nita Farahany talks us through the current state of neurotech, and explains why we need a new legal framework around “cognitive liberty” to protect the last frontier of privacy: our thoughts.
Episode 72
Social Media Victims Lawyer Up with Laura Marquez-Garrett
Social media was humanity’s ‘first contact’ moment with AI. If we’re going to create laws that are strong enough to prevent AI from destroying our societies, we could benefit from taking a look at the major lawsuits against social media platforms that are playing out in our courts right now. Attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett is literally on the front lines of the battle to hold social media firms accountable for the harms they have created in young people’s lives. Listener warning: there are distressing details within the episode.
Episode 71
Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss
In the next two episodes of Your Undivided Attention, we take a close look at two respective industries: Big food and social media, which represent dangerous “races to the bottom” and have big parallels with AI. Our first guest in this pairing is the bestselling author Michael Moss. We discuss how we can leverage the lessons learned from Big Food’s coordination failures, and whether it’s the responsibility of the consumer, the government, or the companies to regulate.
Episode 70
What Can Technologists Learn from Sesame Street? with Dr. Rosemarie Truglio
On this episode of Your Undivided Attention, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin speak with Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, the Senior Vice President of Curriculum and Content for the Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind Sesame Street. What happens when app creators consider what lifelong human development looks like in terms of the tools we make? And what philosophies from Sesame Street can help us steward the power of AI and social media to influence minds in thoughtful, humane directions?
Spotlight
How Zombie Values Infect Society
Zombies are the perfect metaphor to explain something Tristan and Aza have been thinking about lately that they call zombie values. In this Spotlight episode, we talk through some examples of how zombie values limit our thinking around tech harms. Our hope is that by the end of this episode, you'll be able to recognize the zombie values that walk amongst us, and think through how to upgrade those values to meet the realities of our modern world.
