Your Undivided Attention
Join us every other Thursday to understand how new technologies are shaping the way we live, work, and think.
Your Undivided Attention is produced by Senior Producer Julia Scott and Researcher/Producer is Joshua Lash. Sasha Fegan is our Executive Producer. We are a member of the TED Audio Collective.
- Update frequency
- every 12 days
- Average duration
- 43 minutes
- Episodes
- 143
- Years Active
- 2019 - 2025
[Unedited] A Problem Well-Stated is Half-Solved — with Daniel Schmachtenberger
We’ve explored many different problems on Your Undivided Attention — addiction, disinformation, polarization, climate change, and more. But what if many of these problems are actually symptoms of the…
A Problem Well-Stated is Half-Solved — with Daniel Schmachtenberger
We’ve explored many different problems on Your Undivided Attention — addiction, disinformation, polarization, climate change, and more. But what if many of these problems are actually symptoms of the…
Mr. Harris Zooms to Washington
Back in January 2020, Tristan Harris went to Washington, D.C. to testify before the U.S. Congress on the harms of social media. A few weeks ago, he returned — virtually — for another hearing, Algorit…
Can Your Reality Turn on a Word? — with Anthony Jacquin
Can hypnosis be a tool to help us see how our minds are being shaped and manipulated more than we realize? Guest Anthony Jacquin is a hypnotist and hypnotherapist of over 20 years, author of Reality …
The Stubborn Optimist's Guide Revisited — with Christiana Figueres (Rerun)
[This episode originally aired May 21, 2020] Internationally-recognized global leader on climate change Christiana Figueres argues that the battle against global threats like climate change begins in…
Mind the (Perception) Gap — with Dan Vallone
What do you think the other side thinks? Guest Dan Vallone is the Director of More in Common U.S.A., an organization that’s been asking Democrats and Republicans that critical question. Their work ha…
Spotlight — Coded Bias
The film Coded Bias follows MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini through her investigation of algorithmic discrimination, after she accidentally discovers that facial recognition technologies do n…
Come Together Right Now — with Shamil Idriss
How many technologists have traveled to Niger, or the Balkans, or Rwanda, to learn the lessons of peacebuilding? Technology and social media are creating patterns and pathways of conflict that few pe…
Disinformation Then and Now — with Camille François
Disinformation researchers have been fighting two battles over the last decade: one to combat and contain harmful information, and one to convince the world that these manipulations have an offline i…
The Courage to Connect — with Ciaran O’Connor and John Wood, Jr.
It’s no revelation that Americans aren’t getting along. But it’s easier to diagnose the problem than come up with solutions. The organization Braver Angels runs workshops that convince Republicans an…
A Renegade Solution to Extractive Economics — with Kate Raworth
When Kate Raworth began studying economics, she was disappointed that the mainstream version of the discipline didn’t fully address many of the world issues that she wanted to tackle, such as human r…
Two Million Years in Two Hours: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Noah Harari is one of the rare historians who can give us a two-million-year perspective on today’s headlines. In this wide-ranging conversation, Yuval explains how technology and democracy hav…
Won't You Be My Neighbor? A Civic Vision for the Internet — with Eli Pariser
You’ve heard us talk before on this podcast about the pitfalls of trying to moderate a “global public square.” Our guest today, Eli Pariser, co-director of Civic Signals, co-founder of Avaaz, and aut…
Are the Kids Alright? — with Jonathan Haidt
We are in the midst of a teen mental health crisis. Since 2011, the rate of U.S. hospitalizations for preteen girls who have self-harmed is up 189 percent, and with older teen girls, it’s up 62 perce…
Your Nation's Attention for the Price of a Used Car — with Zahed Amanullah
Today’s extremists don’t need highly produced videos like ISIS. They don’t need deep pockets like Russia. With the right message, a fringe organization can reach the majority of a nation’s Facebook u…
Spotlight: The Social Dilemma
A new documentary called The Social Dilemma comes out on Netflix today, September 9, 2020. We hope that this film, full of interviews with tech insiders, will be a catalyst and tool for exposing how …
Facebook Goes '2Africa' — with Julie Owono
This summer, Facebook unveiled “2Africa,” a subsea cable project that will encircle nearly the entire continent of Africa — much to the surprise of Julie Owono. As Executive Director of Internet With…
When Media Was for You and Me — with Fred Turner
In 1940, a group of 60 American intellectuals formed the Committee for National Morale. “They’ve largely been forgotten,” says Fred Turner, a professor of communications at Stanford University, but t…
Digital Democracy Is Within Reach — with Audrey Tang
Imagine a world where every country has a digital minister and technologically-enabled legislative bodies. Votes are completely transparent and audio and video of all conversations between lawmakers …
Spotlight — Beyond the Boycott
#StopHateforProfit is an important first step, but we need to go much further.