Shows / In Reality
In Reality
“In Reality” debunks fake news and elevates the innovative researchers, entrepreneurs, journalists and policymakers who are fighting back against toxic misinformation. Co-hosts Joan Donovan, research director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media and Public Policy, and Eric Schurenberg, an award-winning journalist and former CEO of Fast Company, engage guests in enlightening conversations about solutions to this scourge and the path back to a shared reality.
Episodes
- In Reality
Is News Negativity Driving Audiences Away? The Solutions Journalism Network's David Bornstein
Journalism’s problems today are legion: Collapsing business models, attacks from political partisans, divisions in the profession over basic questions like…
- In Reality
Who Killed Trust? And What Can We Do About It? The Center for Media Engagement at UT Austin's Talia Stroud
A lot of people, Eric included, are working to figure out what exactly happened to facts, trust in institutions like science and the news, and to the shared…
- In Reality
Digital Disruption and the Myth of Mainstream Media: CEO of Fortune Media Alan Murray
In talking about the news today, it’s tempting to focus on the bad actors, the amplifiers of nonsense and the peddlers of outrage. It’s worth remembering…
- In Reality
Can You Make A Profit Fighting Misinfo? NewsGuard's Gordon Crovitz
Disinformation is good business. Spreading lies and outrage tends to be profitable, thanks to programmatic advertising, which cares only about traffic, not…
- In Reality
Polarization's Ground Zero: Author of 'Network of Lies' Brian Stelter
According to a Pew Research survey in 2021, almost three quarters of Americans consider Fox News to be part of the mainstream media, along with familiar brands…
- In Reality
How To Know If You Can Trust That Story: The Trust Project's Sally Lehrman
The information environment today has two broad problems: a supply side problem and a demand side problem. On the supply side, it is ridiculously easy for…
- In Reality
How Fake History Ignites the Fake Present: Britain's Author of 'Fake History' and 'Fake Heroes' Otto English
Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media. I’m Eric Schurenberg, a long time journalist and media executive, now the…
- In Reality
Why Don't The Advocates of Truth Work Together?
A lot of academic researchers, journalists, NGOs, even a few tech firms--are working on the issue of disinformation. Some people are opposed to this work…
- In Reality
How To Make Advertising An Ally For Truth
One reason that falsehoods flourish online is that major advertisers fund them—but usually unwittingly. The opaque nature of automated online ad delivery means…
- In Reality
Tech Led Us Into The Misinfo Mess. Can It Lead Us Out?
You can blame today’s chaotic information environment on many factors: digital inequality and the rise of populism, attention hijacking by social media, and…
- In Reality
What We Really Look For When We Say We're Looking For Truth
Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media. I’m Eric Schurenberg, a longtime journalist, now executive director of the…
- In Reality
Atlantic CEO Nick Thompson: What To Believe (or not) in the News
When I talk to people about the mission of In Reality, I frequently am told, “Media is so corrupt. Why do you bother.” In some circles, it seems that hating…
- In Reality
How to Get People to Believe in Science Again
In politics, you can understand why some voters align themselves with claims that don’t bear up under scrutiny. In politics, there are other forces at work…
- In Reality
How to Build Immunity to Viral Misinformation
We in the media tend to be pretty good at admiring the problem of disinformation, not so good at countering it. So a plan for countering falsehoods in the…
- In Reality
Dublin Tech Summit 2023 | What Does Generative AI Mean For The Information Landscape?
In this special episode, recorded at this years Dublin Tech Summit, Eric is joined by Sean O hEigeartaigh, acting director of the Centre for the study of…
- In Reality
What’s Really Behind the Collapse of Trust in the Media
When too many people believe in things that aren’t true, democracy suffers. Democracy also suffers when people refuse to believe what is true, just because it…
- In Reality
Why Are Some Beliefs so Maddeningly Resistant to Evidence?
You don’t have to go too deep on the topic of disinformation before you stumble into a question that philosophers have wrestled with for centuries: How do we…
- In Reality
What if AI Could Literally Read Your Mind?
Social media platforms know a ton about who you are from your online behavior, but there’s one thing they can’t yet know: what you’re thinking at any given…
- In Reality
Why Good People Share Fake News — And How To Make Them Stop
It’s received wisdom today that tribalism, confirmation bias and other mental errors are deeply embedded in human nature. And once social media began…
- In Reality
Why Polarization Turns Toxic - And How To Stop It
The first casualty of polarization is not truth, perhaps, but rather empathy. Your opponent is not just wrong, but contemptible, their behavior not just…
- In Reality
The Lonely Pursuit of Facts in a Post-Truth World
At one point in the post-truth era, fact-checking seemed like the way back to a shared reality. Just get evidence-based truth out there, and disinformation…
- In Reality
Truth Decay: The Cause and The Treatment
Outside the friendly confines of this podcast, it’s hard to talk about truth and media without the discussion turning emotional. These are incendiary topics…
- In Reality
Why News Stopped Being “Just The Facts” (And Why That’s Good)
You can’t get more than a few minutes into any conversation about trust in media today before Walter Cronkite makes an appearance. People say they long for…
- In Reality
The Week the Trolls Stormed Homeland Security
One of the goals of In Reality is to introduce our listeners to people who are on the front lines of the battle against disinformation. But battles have…
- In Reality
Have We Been Wrong about What the Other Side Thinks?
Polarization has reached such a fever pitch in the United States that each side of the political divide sees the other as an existential threat to democracy…
- In Reality
The Real Reason Social Media Grabs Us
If social media platforms don’t directly cause polarization, they do, at least, give oxygen to smoldering divisions that can erupt into tragedies like the…
- In Reality
Defending Factuality in a World of Alternate Realities
At some point in conversations about the media, somebody inevitably says, “I just want a single source of true, instantaneous, and uplifting information so…
- In Reality
How to Market Chaos
A lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots. Everyone has heard that chestnut, but Sinan Aral has actually proved it…
- In Reality
The Hidden World of Political Cults
It’s a feature of our polarized world today that each side of the political spectrum refers to the extremists on the other side as members of a cult. Those are…
- In Reality
What if Polarization is Actually an Illusion?
If you are a Democrat, have you ever espoused the slogan “Defund the Police?” If you’re a Republican, do you agree with politicians who claim that 2020…
- In Reality
Dismantling the Disinformation Economy
Check My Ads Institute is an organization that is taking aim at purveyors of conspiracy theories, hate speech and disinformation. The Institute describes…
- In Reality
How Cambridge Analytica Opened the Pandora’s Box of Disinformation
In this episode of In Reality, Eric Schurenberg hosts Brittany Kaiser, best known as one of the whistleblowers at Cambridge Analytica, the British political…
- In Reality
Combatting Domestic Terrorism with Melanie Smith
In this episode of In Reality, recorded at the Collision conference in Toronto, host Eric Schurenberg joins Melanie Smith, Head of the Digital Analysis Unit at…
- In Reality
The elite’s blind spots and the illusion of truth with Gillian Tett
In this episode of In Reality, host Eric Schurenberg sits down with Gillian Tett, Chair of the Editorial Board and Editor-at-Large for the Financial Times, US…
- In Reality
On the front lines of the disinformation fight with Áine Kerr
In the fight against disinformation, the last line of defense between audiences and malicious falsehoods are the “trust and safety” teams, also known as…
- In Reality
How to Build True Public Spaces Online with Eli Pariser
In this episode of In Reality, co-hosts Eric Schurenberg and Joan Donovan are joined by Eli Pariser, co-director of New Public and former president of…
- In Reality
Truth and Trade-offs amid a Polarized Pandemic with Dr Leana Wen
The covid pandemic has created the kind of situation in which misinformation thrives. Public health authorities met surging demand for knowledge about how to…
- In Reality
How We Know What’s True with Jonathan Rauch
Truth–and the institutions that defend it–are under attack. What can the rest of us do? In this episode of In Reality, co-hosts Eric Schurenberg and Joan…
- In Reality
A new definition of making America great again with Kathleen Belew
In this episode of In Reality, Kathleen Belew, University of Chicago historian and author of ‘Bring The War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary…
- In Reality
From optimism to doubt (and back) at Facebook with Joaquin Quiñonero Candela
In this episode of In Reality, co-hosts Eric Schurenberg and Joan Donovan sit down with Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, technical fellow for AI at LinkedIn and a…
- In Reality
The reboot that can save social media with Rob Reich
In the first episode of In Reality, co-hosts Eric Schurenberg and Joan Donovan are joined by Rob Reich, Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at…