S02 Trailer: Reflections on Season 1, What's coming, What we hope to explore

SYNOPSIS

Dan and Rachel kick off Season 2 of Unchecked by looking back at what season one taught them and what's ahead. We reflect on the toll of researching disinformation. They also preview season two's research directions, including Rachel's interest in the everyday myths people unconsciously rely on and Dan's theory that there's a "big lie" at the center of every domain, plus topics they're eager to dig into next.

Edited by Jared Landis <https://www.landispodcastediting.com/>

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Personnel

• Dan Brown, Host
• Rachel Price, Host

Music

• Turtle Up Fool, by Elliot

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Unchecked is a production of Curious Squid

Curious Squid is a digital design consulting firm specializing in information architecture, user experience, and product design

Transcript

Dan 0:00

At the center of every domain seems to be a big lie.

Rachel 0:03

Yes.

Dan 0:04

And that a lot of the other misunderstandings, misbeliefs that we have about a domain can often come back to that central big lie.

Sarah 0:15

You're listening to Unchecked, the podcast about the architecture of disinformation with Dan Brown and Rachel Price.

Dan 0:28

We're here to kick off season two. Yeah. Why did we take a break, Rachel?

Rachel 0:33

Ennui. That's my answer.

Dan 0:37

I'm serious. It was it was a thing.

Rachel 0:39

There was a little bit, quite a bit of enui. Thinking about misinformation in the way we have can have its upsides, but can also have its downsides. It gets really heavy.

Dan 0:47

Yeah. I think in one of these episodes, I said we have to go where the misinformation is. And the misinformation is in everywhere. It's everywhere, but it's most apparent in the yuckiest of places.

Rachel 0:59

Yeah.

Dan 1:00

I think we can't avoid that. But you and I don't, for our day jobs, for our regular lives, are very fortunate that we don't have to spend a lot of time in those yucky places.

Rachel 1:11

No, I'm just kidding.

Dan 1:13

So I do feel like it took a lot out of us.

Rachel 1:16

Yeah. Challenge can cause growth, which it did. I feel like I grew a lot, but it's also really exhausting. And we're humans with lives and families and jobs. And the battery needs recharging sometimes.

Dan 1:31

The battery needs recharging. That's a very loaded question. Do you feel like you were starting to feel hopeless?

Rachel 1:36

Yes. That's not a loaded question.

Dan 1:38

I think it's pretty straightforward. Pretty straightforward. Well, I mean, part of that is the fact that we're trying to create a framework to address the issue.

Rachel 1:49

Yeah.

Dan 1:50

And at the same time acknowledging that the issue is so big, so pervasive, so inherent in the system that we're really just scratching at the surface, if at all.

Rachel 2:03

Yeah. And I this is not a very hopeful take. I don't hope to solve misinformation. That's not an option. Right. And so it kind of feels akin to like spending a lot of time sitting and thinking about death. Yes, I can develop frameworks for thinking about it and lenses for considering it. I'm not going to solve it. Like it's still, it's it's there. Death you can come to peace with. Misinformation, I don't know. Like, do we come to uh terms with it? Like, is that also the goal? I don't know. It's very confusing.

Dan 2:34

Right. We don't have an answer to that question of if it's not solvable, what is our attitude towards the phone?

Rachel 2:39

Oh, was I not? Was that a spoiler that I don't think it's solvable?

Dan 2:44

Well, I think it's an important reminder for us as we go into the next season. And maybe I did start to feel like can we chip away at this at all?

Rachel 2:52

Yes.

Dan 2:53

And the problem is too big for any one designer to solve.

Rachel 2:58

Yes.

Dan 2:59

I do think we need to add to our repertoire methods, techniques, approaches, attitudes that allow us to see the problems more clearly, at the very least.

Rachel 3:11

Yes. I'm being a little bit cheeky when I say it's not solvable. We're not going to completely solve it. We're not going to eradicate misinformation from the human existence. I do think that I've learned a lot about the different angles you can approach it with. And I've seen new sides of misinformation problems that, you know, when you get a different vantage point, you suddenly see a thread you can pull on to start undoing some knots. And so that has happened for me. And I hope it's happened for some of our listeners. I might go so far as to say it might have happened for some of our guests. But that's a bold claim. We've gotten some good feedback. That's all I'm gonna say.

Dan 3:50

Yeah. I do feel like, and this is not me trying to pat ourselves on the back, but the purpose of talking to these folks is because we are asking them to look at their own work through a different lens as well.

Rachel 4:01

Yeah.

Dan 4:02

So I think we get some unique perspectives by talking to them about this stuff. I do come out of season one feeling like this is a real project. There's real stuff to be learned here. There's real stuff to explore here.

Rachel 4:14

Yes. Okay. Think back to episode zero, the pilot. Do you remember how young we were? I know. Sweet summer children. Do you remember your frame of mind back then? And if you can take yourself back to that place, like what has changed between then and now for you?

Dan 4:33

I would say, and this really has only happened to me just in the last few interviews. But I'm really forcing myself to look at information ecosystems. So it's a it's a technical change. I don't know if you were looking for some kind of other emotional change or a sense of maturity, but there's a I would never expect that from you. Thank you. You know me so well. There's sort of this technical angle. And part of this is frustrating because I feel like my job, Low these decades, have been to look at information ecosystems and really try and understand them. But we've had the benefit of those ecosystems being fairly narrow, and we've had the benefit of those ecosystems really trying to serve a single purpose and not having the distraction of misinformation or manipulation through disinformation. So now I'm trying to look and understand the system that's going on behind the dynamics that the person that we're talking to is talking about. So they may be talking about kind of the media environment around gun violence, but we're trying to look below that and trying to understand the systemic elements at work there. I feel like that's some nuance that has changed since that pilot. Does that make sense?

Rachel 5:51

Yes. But I mean, we we kick the pilot off talking about ecosystems.

Dan 5:56

Right.

Rachel 5:57

So help me understand is it your intentions that changed or just like the the altitude?

Dan 6:04

I think the sensitivity. We talked about it because it was a good metaphor, but now I'm trying to understand what that really means. Yeah. And sometimes just in life, I have trouble seeing the forest for the trees. So this is not to pick up on the ecosystem metaphor, but just to sort of understand how all the parts move together. I was just listening to our last episode of season one, and we really did get into the nitty-gritty of what is the system of data and how does it move through? And we've already taped some interviews for season two. And I feel like some of those questions that we got to ask of those guests were really about the systems in which they were operating.

Rachel 6:45

Yeah.

Dan 6:45

Rather than about the nature of the information itself or things like that.

Rachel 6:49

Oh, I see. I understand that difference now. And I think this rings true to me because I was I'm looking at our notes from episode zero. And we've kind of mentioned this in a couple of episodes where we think it's so cute now looking back that we were trying to define the types of misinformation and disinformation and kind of treat it like this entity, this noun or something. And I think for me, my beliefs about what misinformation is have really shifted to accept kind of a lot more ambiguity or fuzzy boundaries around what misinformation is. So I'm looking at our notes and we made this note like, okay, what's out of bounds? Like, what are we not going to try to cover? And we said there are lots of things that people use in the same way they use disinformation. Here's a list: propaganda, conspiracy theories, theatrics, and trolling. And I would say the only one we really have actually done a good job of avoiding is conspiracy theories. Right. I'm laughing at the propaganda one because I have since come to terms with the fact that propaganda is just a formalized mechanism for distributing misinformation. Right. And so what's changed for me is when I started, I look, I kind of thought of misinformation as this bounded object. And through all the conversations we've had, I've I now understand it more as a hyper object. It's a really much more amorphous entity than I had really understood before. And I think you see it being the systems that distribute and hold up this entity are almost easier to explore because they're somehow a little bit more finite and a little bit more concrete.

Dan 8:27

Right. What research question are you taking with you into season two, based on that? Now that you've got this foundation, we've done misinformation 101. We're in now an upper level class, presumably. What's your research question?

Rachel 8:42

Uh misinformation 102 is actually called mythology.

Dan 8:47

Okay.

Rachel 8:48

No, I'm really interested in the human component of misinformation. So it's funny that you're like, oh, I'm thinking about systems differently. And I think that's awesome. And humans also form systems. The parts of conversations I've been really drawn to and wanted to spend more time on is thinking about the myths that we tell ourselves. And that's often misinformation. Right. But it's uh got a different flavor to it. And I'm really, really interested because I think they can feel so benign and yet they are so prevalent and have such intense influence on how we operate every day. That's not a thesis, but it is an area of focus.

Dan 9:24

Aaron Powell These myths are embedded in different domains, like we've been talking to folks about. Okay.

Rachel 9:30

Yeah. So I'm thinking about the myth of calories in, calories out. Right. We haven't talked about this. This is one I want to explore. We've talked to a couple. Cowboys. Yeah, the the myth of the American cowboy. Yeah. A lot of myths around immigration in an upcoming episode. So it's almost like when you talk about misinformation as a thing that happens on social media, as like published information, it almost creates some distance between my daily existence and like that article going viral. But when you talk about the role of misinformation in myth making, then you suddenly see how much bullshit is woven into your life.

Dan 10:12

Right. And how much you rely on those myths, whether you intend to or not, to just sort of make sense of the world. And even if they didn't start out as misinformation, maybe they started out as well understood to be stories or narratives that provide a life lesson or whatever. They've since become so embedded that people will justify their beliefs, say about guns by relying on a myth that we've all come to understand and believe in so much in our bones that we assume that that is sufficient foundation for the truth.

Rachel 10:45

Yes.

Dan 10:46

I like where that's going.

Rachel 10:47

So next season.

Dan 10:48

Myths.

Rachel 10:49

Everyone's gonna get tired of hearing me bring everything back to myths.

Dan 10:54

I kind of want to take a little bit of a detour because of what you just said. I feel like Rachel's thing in season one was framing. Oh, yeah. We talked so much about framing, which was good and appropriate. And did you get tired of that talk?

Rachel 11:09

I did not get tired of it, but I assumed you were tired of it.

Dan 11:13

Rachel, I could never get tired of anything you want to talk about.

Rachel 11:16

It almost became this thing that I think framing is so ubiquitous, I had to just stop naming it for a little bit.

Dan 11:22

Right. There was another concept that came up that I feel is like is very similar, and that is friction. Friction came up quite a bit. We talked about, you know, it's sort of a property of an information ecosystem of how much friction is in there to maybe prevent lies from getting out, or that make it difficult for us to counterbalance a lie with the truth. And I think both of these things, framing and friction, and a number of other things that we have been talking about, there's an opportunity for us to dig in further and identify maybe a taxonomy of the types of friction, the types of framing that are present. Are you laughing?

Rachel 12:02

I should not be surprised that you want to create a taxonomy out of it.

Dan 12:06

You should not.

Rachel 12:07

Oh, we're de we're very different, IAs, Dan.

Dan 12:11

That's what makes it work. You know, we throw these big ideas around, but I think there's value in doing some analysis to try and understand when we talk about friction, is it all friction the same? Are there different ways in which friction can be applied in an ecosystem? Do some types of friction work better with some kinds of information? I think all of these are really interesting for me to pursue and maybe for you to do that.

Rachel 12:31

No, I'm just kidding.

Dan 12:32

You got this, Brown.

Rachel 12:32

No, I got this. Can you give me, do you have any examples top of mind for like what are different kinds of friction that we've talked about?

Dan 12:39

Not off the top of my head, but let me see if I can make one up real fast. So when people say introduce friction into a user experience, it's always some kind of like dialogue box that pops up. Are you sure you want to do this? Yeah. That kind of thing. So there's that sort of basic friction. And maybe we can call that the personal experience of friction. But I'm wondering, is there a way to socialize that a little bit more? Like your post needs to be reviewed by a couple of peers before it gets posted, right?

Rachel 13:11

Or so another example of friction, I think you could one could argue that like the stepwise wizard pattern is a form of friction. I think there's a strong relationship between like scaffolding and friction. Yep. That's interesting.

Dan 13:24

Aaron Powell Where the friction is not so much barriers, but instead sort of additional requests for information. Yes. You want to post this, you must add tags, you must do this, you must do that before you can put out some information into the world. I think there's some interesting potential patterns there. The one that I think cuts closer to your question about mythology is, and maybe this is just the other side of the coin, is I became really excited and interested in at the center of every domain seems to be a big lie.

Rachel 13:56

Yes.

Dan 13:56

And that a lot of the other misunderstandings, misbeliefs that we have about a domain can often come back to that central big lie. So that's one of my research questions for this next season is does everyone have the same understanding of what that big lie is at the center of their domain? And is it in fact true that every domain has a big lie?

Rachel 14:18

Aaron Powell Any good conspiracy theorist would tell you, yes.

Dan 14:22

Yes.

Rachel 14:22

There's absolutely a big lie.

Dan 14:25

And does that big lie change over time? I think it does out of necessity, but yeah, that's really interesting.

Rachel 14:30

No, I was going to crack a joke about how if we go chasing down the big lie in every domain, then we might become conspiracy theorists.

Dan 14:37

Right.

Rachel 14:38

And honestly, is that so bad?

Dan 14:41

I mean, that wouldn't be too far to fly.

Rachel 14:42

They seem pretty happy.

Dan 14:44

They have an explanation for everything, which is more than I can say for myself right now.

Rachel 14:49

Oh my God. Yeah. Okay. So I was going to scan and look at at all the topics we covered in this first season, just to name a few. We talked about gun culture a couple different times. We talked about abortion. We talked about nutrition. We talked about climate change a couple times. We talked about federal information spaces, vaccines, civic tech. Okay. I don't want to make you pick favorites, but does any one of those topics like haunt you? I'm framing it as being haunted rather than uh it being your favorite.

Dan 15:22

Haunt me.

Rachel 15:23

Yeah.

Dan 15:24

I mean, all of them do, to some greater or lesser extent.

Rachel 15:27

Aaron Powell But which one's the big gloss ghost?

Dan 15:30

Well, let me start with the one that I came away feeling much more hopeful about gun culture than I thought I would.

Rachel 15:37

Aaron Powell After talking to JJ?

Dan 15:39

Yeah, after talking to JJ. And also dovetailing that interview with talking to Brandon Schauer about their work on climate, there seems to be that they've internalized this idea that you can't fight a lie with the truth. And so that they are finding other ways to move the needle on culture to not to brainwash people, but just to make sure that there's an understanding that there are other ways of handling gun safety, for example. And that made me far more hopeful than I anticipated about gun violence.

Rachel 16:14

Were there any of these domains we explored that has like stuck with you for some reason? Which I think you answered with the gun culture one?

Dan 16:21

Yeah. I just have personal interest in reproductive rights. And it's, you know, been a cause that I've been passionate about for a long time. And I was so happy with that interview. It was gratifying to me, as someone who feels very passionate about that issue, to hear a scientist talk about it in very even and direct terms. And if we were to compare, there's no way to compare apples to apples, but I do feel like the reproductive rights conversation, just based on what I've seen and what we talked about, is not as far along, shall we say, as the gun safety conversation. And this is just from the few interconversations that we've had, but I could see continuing the conversation in reproductive rights, because I'm genuinely curious to see what other efforts are being made that might be similar or adjacent to the work of media influence in the gun safety culture.

Rachel 17:18

Yeah, I love that. The topic of misinformation around abortion and misinformation around nutrition, I agree with you. They're like less far along in their journey. And so I care about maybe this is naive or egotistical of me. I care about lending a helping hand to developing those conversations. Sure. And I, you know, I don't delude myself. I don't think this podcast is gonna change the world.

Dan 17:42

Not moving the needle on anything.

Rachel 17:44

I can't even say it with a straight face. Um, I'm having a great time. I hope you all are too. But I learn from these guests. I learn new things and I learn ways to think about. And we get to meet these people and we get to hear who they're working with and start to follow those people and meet those people. And that, just on a very personal level, is really one thing that does give me a great amount of hope. I think at the end of the day, even when I'm feeling hopeless about some of these topics, all of these topics, connecting with other people is the thing that kind of brings you back down to earth.

Dan 18:15

Right. We have talked to people who are, I think you pointed this out in that conversation with JJ. Like you're talking to people who are like genuinely working on these things.

Rachel 18:24

Yeah.

Dan 18:24

And it can be very easy when you don't have conversations with those kinds of folks day in and day out. It can be very easy to think nothing is moving, nothing is changing, no one's working on this, no one's thinking about this. So at the very least, we've had that.

Rachel 18:38

Yeah. So now I want to flip this question. I asked you what topic is haunting you? Because I want to draw a line from that to what are you looking forward to? Are there any domains that you want to explore in this next season, or that maybe we've already scheduled to explore in this next season that you're particularly excited about?

Dan 18:56

We've talked about a few topics that I'm curious if there's a there there. And the reason why I'm really like, I'd want to have someone on, even if we're not convinced that there's like a real misinformation problem there, because there probably is a misinformation. Like my hypothesis is there's a misinformation problem everywhere. There's a big lie at the center of every domain, no matter how small. And I would like to test that hypothesis.

Rachel 19:21

Also, if there's a domain where you're like, I don't know if there's much there, that could be evidence that there is an excellent big lie that is working so well.

Dan 19:30

So well, right.

Rachel 19:31

That even Dan and Rachel are not aware of the two of the world's smartest people can't see it.

Dan 19:37

No. I mean, we have on our list parenting, which is a very broad topic, but I thought it was hard to parent young children in the early before the internet existed.

Rachel 19:52

It was Alta Vista. I don't know if that's really the Internet.

Dan 19:55

And it's even different between the first and the second one. And I know you are now parenting a smaller person in these weird.

Rachel 20:04

In a very healthy and thriving world.

Dan 20:07

So and part of what you are dealing with as a parent is this like enormous loud cacophony of parenting advice on parenting TikTok or whatever the hell it is. So I feel like spending some time unpacking that would be interesting.

Rachel 20:22

Yeah.

Dan 20:23

My generation is also dealing with aging parents. And it's been fascinating because anyone I talked engage one-on-one to talk about it, anyone a contemporary of mine, we're all in agreement. This sucks. It's hard. We were not expecting this. There are unexpected challenges that we're facing, but I don't see like a public dialogue about how do we deal with aging parents. I guess what I'm getting at is we haven't identified any prospective guests on this. Like I wouldn't even know where to look. But like that's personally interesting to me. And so I'm kind of curious about that.

Rachel 20:52

We can figure out where to look. There are definitely people who talk about this.

Dan 20:56

I'll say one more topic. We have not had a conversation with the sole exception of Claire Wardhole, but we didn't even go in depth with her on AI. Yeah. And I don't want to talk about AI as a misinformation machine. I want to talk about the misinformation about AI. And if there's a guest out there who would like to talk about that, please. Come find us. All right. What are topics you're excited about?

Rachel 21:20

I am very excited. We started to touch on disinformation and nutrition with Dr. Amelia Fenrey. And I'm really excited to go deeper on that. I think this is a really weird, sticky topic, especially for Americans. Yes. We're all so messed up. We're all so messed up by wellness culture and diet culture. And a lot of that is misinformation from the nutrition domain. And it affects all of our lives. I've spent a lot of time personally thinking about it. And so this is one of the topics that I'm pretty passionate about starting to explore and put on the podcast because I think this is one of those massive lies that is so effective that a lot of very smart, wonderful, well-intentioned people have no idea just how much misinformation they're consuming around this.

Dan 22:12

Right. All right. That's the that's the one.

Rachel 22:15

Yeah, that's it. Nothing else. I don't want to know. Um no, that's the big one on my mind.

Dan 22:20

That's a good one.

Rachel 22:21

Yeah.

Dan 22:21

I'm excited because I am pretty sure we've got one of those coming up.

Rachel 22:25

I'm pretty sure we do. I mean, I guess we've talked for long enough. We've probably got too much material.

Dan 22:34

Overstayed our welcome.

Rachel 22:35

We've overstayed our welcome. Nobody's here to listen to us talk. They're here to listen to our amazing guests. Right. So maybe we should just wrap this up and move on to season two.

Dan 22:53

And that was Unchecked. Thanks so much for listening. We really want to hear from you. If you've got ideas for topics or guests or stories, drop us a line at unchecked at curious-squid.com. If you made use of the lenses that we described today in your practice, we want to hear about that too. Hey, check the show notes for any of the links that we talked about today, and it would really mean a lot to us if you shared this episode with a friend and rated and reviewed us on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you.