The Dangers to Democracy In A Digital World w/ Jon Stewart, Ezra Klein, & Tristan Harris

JON STEWART: Oh, my god. And I've got it on my phone. I've got software on my phone. It's going to eat my children. [MUSIC PLAYING]. Hey, everybody. Welcome once again to an edition. of The Weekly Show Podcast with me there, Jon Stewart. We are coming to you. It's probably-- this is probably. coming to you Thursday. But I'm talking to myself right now. on a Wednesday following a Tuesday night. of a debate between your--. what do you call it there? JD Vance, who did a great job, I.

think, last night of not being JD Vance, and Tim Walz, who was very Walz-ish. And it was, I thought, certainly a bit more. substantive, even though it was quite. riddled with, what I would consider, abject falsehoods. But CBS had decided, we're not going to interrupt to say. that's complete nonsense. We're just going to let this whole thing play out. And as long as it's nonsense stated reasonably, well,

who's to say. But the one thing I will say is I. am really tired of articles this morning saying, here's. what's wrong with the debate. Yes, it was substantive but boring. And you're like, what the f--. like, we're in a no win. Like, nobody hit anybody. Nobody blanked out. I expect now for these things to be catastrophic for one. or the other candidates. And even if it's a vice presidential debate,

I expect action. Bloodshed! I expect-- we shouldn't even do debates. We should just do those slap contests that they--. let's just reduce them to where you stand on it. And you slap as hard, and whoever goes down goes down. And that's the end of it. Maybe that's how we should choose our presidents, for god's sakes. But do have-- man, do we have a good pod for you today. Lauren Walker, of course, and Brittany Mehmedovic, our fabulous producers. They'll be joining us at the end. But first, we are going to talk about the nature of the threats.

to our fine government. And I hope everybody enjoyed the debate last night. And I hope you've made your choice about who you're going. to vote for vice president. And then later on, maybe you can make your choice about who. you'll vote for president. But let's move on. Let's get to our guest today. [MUSIC PLAYING]. Folks, powerhouse program today. Our guests, we're delighted to have them. Ezra Klein, you know him. He's the opinion columnist for The New.

York Times, host of The Ezra Klein Show Podcast. You've seen it. It charts, baby. And he's the author of Why we're Polarized. Tristan Harris, co-founder of Center for Humane Technology, which boy, wouldn't that be nice. He is also the co-host of your Undivided Attention Podcast. Guys, thank you both so much for joining us. I wanted to talk to you guys today about this idea. So I don't know if you guys are aware.

There is an election. In, it's got to be like a month, in America, our country. And one of the candidates is viewed as an enormous threat. to democracy. His name is Donald Aloysius Trump. So we can view him as he's got autocratic tendencies. Maybe he's an authoritarian. Maybe he's just used to running the country like an episode. of The Apprentice where he just has that one dude, George, and his daughter, Ivanka. And they just go, like, great job, boss.

But I want to look at from a different perspective today. and where your guys' expertise, I think, would be incredibly valuable. Rather than looking at it as an individual who. is a threat to a Democratic system, what if we look at what. are the shortcomings, discomforts. of that Democratic system that seed. the ground for populist movements--. demagogues, authoritarians, whether from the left.

or from the right. And can we view those fragilities. within the Democratic system as a way to protect ourselves, not from one person, but from these movements that. tend to really polarize the country. and swing the pendulum so far back and forth. Ezra Klein, we're going to start with you. EZRA KLEIN: Nice, modest, easy question here. JON STEWART: We got an hour! EZRA KLEIN: So the question is, what are.

the fragilities in the system? JON STEWART: Well, it's--. my experience with-- democracy is an analog system. And we live in a digital world. So it appears even slower in comparison to the way. that the world is moving right now. Let's shorten the question. Citizens United, the amount of money. that flows into the system. At this point, if you want any say in the system, and studies have shown this, if you've got money, legislation often reflects your desires.

If you do not have money, if you are outside the system, legislation mostly does not reflect your need. Isn't that a fragility in our democratic system that. opens the door for the kind of authoritarian, anti-democratic. type leaders? EZRA KLEIN: Yeah, it sure as hell doesn't help. So solved. JON STEWART: Done. EZRA KLEIN: So let me do one more twist. on the question, which is what used. to keep people like this out? There's a book called How Democracies.

Die, written by two professors, Ziblatt and Levitsky I think. They make a point that has always stuck with me, which. is that we've always had Donald Trump like figures. in American politics. You can think of Father John Coughlin. during the New Deal Era. You can think of Henry Ford, who. was, like, spitting anti-Semitic filth. in the Dearborn Independent. Lindbergh, right? Huey Long, Pat Buchanan in '88. And then '92, who's, I think, a really important. forerunner to Donald Trump.

What kept them out? Because they often were able to get. what Donald Trump got in 2016, which. is 30% of one of the parties. Two things, one was that parties had gatekeeping power. We used to run this at conventions. Primaries only became a thing in American politics. that actually decided who won the nomination after '68. JON STEWART: We have to become more undemocratic to. save democracy. EZRA KLEIN: Yeah, well, gatekeepers have a role. I'm not saying we're going to go back to it. But if you ask in another era, Donald Trump never.

wins a Republican convention. He's going nowhere. But the other piece is media. There was a lot more gatekeeping control. in other eras of media. And in both of these cases, you can say this. also keeps good things out--. the party elders, the media bosses, the funders. Donald Trump is not the best funded candidate in 2016. But he did have a lot of small donor donations. So he wasn't able to get the institutional money, the big businesses as much. That was going to people like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. But he was able to raise money in ways. you couldn't have done that effectively 60, 70 years ago.

So we've made it much easier for new entrants to come in. That gets you somebody like Barack Obama on one level, makes it possible to have Bernie. Sanders run a competitive candidacy in 2016. And it also opens a door to figures like Donald Trump. And so you do have this constant tension in democracy, which you can read about it in the Federalist. Papers between how open you want it to be. and what kind of checks you want it to have. if some kind of populist demagogue rises,

as they have endlessly, repetitively. through all of human history. JON STEWART: It's an interesting--. I'll tell you, I hadn't thought about it that way. It's an uncomfortable conversation. because at the heart of it is this idea. that democratizing the process has opened us up to demagogues. And, Tristan, let's talk to you about that. He's referring to Henry Ford and Lindbergh. And, this is also Father Coughlin, the advent of radio, is the introduction of new forms. of communication and media.

Does that disruption also lend itself to demagogues. kind of rising up these sort of, now it's social media, and AI, and those kinds of things? TRISTAN HARRIS: I think you were saying earlier, Jon, that I was cluing into is the idea. of an analog democracy. And now, our democracy seems to be. running on the digital world. And Marc Andreessen, is many places I disagree with him, but the co-founder of Netscape, said. software is eating the world. And I think that is very accurate.

That software is eating media. It is eating elections. It is eating children's development. What we're seeing with social media. is it is eating the sort of life support systems. JON STEWART: Oh, my god! And I've got it on my phone! Tristan, what am I--. I've got software on my phone! It's going to eat my children. In what way-- go back and talk about what. that means because that's a very interesting description. TRISTAN HARRIS: Well, I think this is kind how. much is tech running society? So people know culture is upstream from politics.

But now tech is constituting culture. So how much of people's news consumption. now is coming from social media. It's the vast majority. And on the one hand, you have President Biden. saying we need to ban TikTok because let's. say it's a threat from the Chinese Communist Party. On the other hand, he just joined TikTok a few weeks. after that because you can't win. an election today without actually being on TikTok. The same is true for the Republicans. who also want to ban TikTok. They have to be on TikTok to win the next election. I think what that speaks to is the entrenchment and lock-in.

of if you can't win your next election except by joining. the platform, it shows how important and significant. that platform is at constituting, again, our cultural environment. We obviously wake up and spend most of our time in our lives. looking at these devices. And what people need to know about that, as we said. in the Netflix film, The Social Dilemma, is it's not about technology being neutral. It's that this entire complex that we are immersed. in for hours per day is about these design.

choices that were not aligned with what. makes democracy stronger. They were only aligned with an incentive. that what maximizes engagement and attention. And we've sent society through 15 years of this sort. of washing machine of spinning us out. into a more addicted, distracted, polarized, sexualized society where those features are actually rewarded. by that business model. We always refer to Charlie Munger, who said, Warren Buffett's business partner, if you show me the incentive, I will show you the outcome. And that's how we saw in 2013 that that's.

where this sort of social media wave would take us. Not to say that it's all new, as Ezra would say, we've had polarization and distrust. in politics and all this for much. more preceding social media. But social media is sort of like a jet. fuel on that process. EZRA KLEIN: So this is one of my points of optimism. And I'm so rarely optimistic anywhere in the media. I think there's a good argument that what you have. when new waves of media emerge and new platforms. emerge is periods of destabilization. before our societies just build up a little bit of immunity.

So radio had this. It was very immediate. It was very intimate in the way people. always talk about podcasting being intimate. And it led to both great things, right? FDR's fireside chats, and Hitler, right? The Nazis were geniuses at radio. And you could go through this that when new mediums and ways. of communicating arise, for a while, the system, the society doesn't really know what to do with it. It doesn't know what the tricks are. It doesn't know how to control it.

You have first adopters who end up in a weird place. Donald Trump in 2016, to me, is a sort. of golem grown in some mixture of Twitter and cable news. That's what he is. He's like Twitter, like, created a golem of itself. trained on cable news. JON STEWART: So it's a Dr. Frankenstein. kind of a situation here? All right. EZRA KLEIN: And I mean, I'd be curious for your perspective. on this, Jon. But compared to 2016, even now, I. feel like the media has, not a sane,

but a saner relationship to what is happening across things. like, I guess now we call it X, Facebook, Instagram, even TikTok than it did before. Things rise. But the sense that everybody's there. Like, Donald Trump can just decide. what the conversation is going to be. about at any given minute. Things fractured. He's over on Truth Social a lot of the time. It's not a perfect system by any means. But by 2020, you sort of had Joe Biden. That was a move back towards people wanting normalcy.

that's sort of the opposite of Donald Trump. If we had somebody who in 2016 dominated media by outrage. and being in a negative way, extremely interesting, Joe Biden sort of ran a consciously. boring campaign in 2020. That was strategic. It was smart. JON STEWART: In a pandemic as well. EZRA KLEIN: In a pandemic too. And then here, it's a bit more mixed. And you had this sort of like the vibes. rise immediately with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. But things have settled. Again, Donald Trump is, himself, nuts. You have a lot of nutty things happening in the election.

But as somebody who is in the media during all these periods, I just think society has built up a little more. immunity than it had then. It doesn't think every viral tweet needs. to be reported on as news. It doesn't-- things feel to me like they have, not settled, because the actual changes he has brought to the Republican. Party are real. And you have to cover them as real. But the derangement, and even just. how the thing like feels viscerally, actually has a quite different texture.

JON STEWART: You talked a little bit earlier. about the thing that prevented these demagogues. in the past, the Lindberghs, and Ford, and these types of people were certain guardrails. And Tristan, you're talking a little bit again. about the guardrails and gatekeeping that occurred. within the media. And so are we, in some measure, focusing too closely. on the media environment and the communication environment. and not enough on the legislative environment.

for which this occurs? So I could make the argument, for instance, in like the 1930s. So you see disruption around the world. after World War I. You see the rise of Bolshevism, socialism, these revolutions that occur. Workers of the world unite. It takes hold in the United States, anarchists, all kinds of other, the Wobblies. There's all kinds of violence and things. that are occurring within the United States. and destabilizing the government.

You add radio into that and Father Coughlin. And let's get the Irish and Italians and all that. And there's all this mix. But at its heart, it was the Great Depression hit. And Roosevelt came up with a program that directly addressed. the needs of the people. And without that, I don't think any of those guardrails. would have meant anything. I think this country would have been in a much less stable.

position based on the government's ability to show. the people that we see them. Now, admittedly, it's a catastrophe. The Depression is a catastrophe. And it shouldn't take that kind of cataclysm. to spur direct action. If you were to look at what people needed in their lives, and I'm talking about the majority of people, and you look at how responsive the government is. to those needs after 50 years of supply-side economics.

and a whole lot of Citizens United and big money, couldn't you make the case that the government is almost. at odds with its population? EZRA KLEIN: I want this argument to be true. [LAUGHTER]. It is the way I want policy to work. It is the way I want to be able to respond. to the threat of populism. JON STEWART: Yes. EZRA KLEIN: We have a lot of evidence. from Europe on right-wing populism. because we've seen it rise a lot. And I'd say the difference between our systems, to go back to guardrails for a second,

is because Europe has a lot of multi-party systems. It's easier for intense groups to rise pretty quickly. Right? In America, if you can't capture. one of the two major political parties, you're nowhere. Right? So on the one hand, it's pretty hard. to capture one of those parties, or traditionally it has been. But if you do, then you have, like, half the system. to yourself basically. But in Europe, it wasn't that way. So we actually have a lot to run the regression analysis on. And the state of the economy, and how people are doing, and what they tell you about their finances, and how they're feeling about the world, it doesn't track the way you would think it would.

It doesn't mean it's meaningless. And it definitely doesn't mean that immiseration. or catastrophe or failure doesn't. create a breeding ground for these kinds of strong men. Like, I believe that Donald Trump. is functionally a creation of George W. Bush's wars. I mean, I already said he's a Twitter golem. So I have lots of theories for Donald Trump. [LAUGHTER]. But I believe he's functionally creation of George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party's. credibility between the wars and the financial crisis. Barack Obama represented a changing and rapidly changing.

demographic country in terms of race, immigration was changing in that period. Religion to some degree, we're secularizing pretty quickly. And he sort of response to that. But in terms of the, like, this is a kind of--. I would call this like the policy feedback argument. You can pass good policy. You pass something like Medicare or Medicaid. What do we get after we pass Medicare and Medicaid? We get Nixon, who is a more Trumpian. figure in many ways than a lot of other figures. in American history. JON STEWART: Although, would be considered probably.

a liberal Democrat at this point. EZRA KLEIN: Yeah, so they're not--. I would say not in the way he wrote. But yes, in terms of policy. The thing that seems to correlate. is rapid social change, when people feel power is shifting. and particularly when immigration is going up a lot. And since 1970, the percentage of foreign-born residents. of the country has gone from about 4%-ish. percent to around 15% now. It's a very, very rapid rise historically. We're secularizing, becoming majority-minority. It's not the only things going on. The economic pieces of this are very real.

But it doesn't seem that sort of running an economy well. or sort of passing bigger social programs. will end the threat of right-wing populism. or you wouldn't have it rising in the way it is in some. of these European countries where they've. passed a bunch of the policies we all want--. or not we all want. But I think you and I and probably Tristan want, to see passed in America. JON STEWART: But then how do you explain Britain and France? As these social media programs are incentivized to conflict.

and outrage and fear and anger, doesn't the distance. between what the population is experiencing as reality. and the analog nature of government. begin to grow to the point where these are giant pendulum. swings, sometimes to the right, as it was with Maloney. and a lot of the other things. And in Germany, obviously, they're. fending off these really right-wing parties.

But in Britain, we just saw it swing in a huge way. back to Labor. And in France, I mean, they were. in many ways saved from the party of Le Pen. by the far-left of France. So is that explained more by the way. that voters experience the world in social media? TRISTAN HARRIS: Obviously, there's. so many different factors that are driving. the political environment, including climate change,

migration, economic factors. What I can speak to-- the thing I have expertise. in is how is the social media machine driving. certain kind of weird distortions in. our psychological environment? JON STEWART: That's it. That's what I'm talking about. TRISTAN HARRIS: Yeah. And what we know from people who use Twitter a lot, for example, is the more you use Twitter, you would think that the more you use social media, the more informed you should be about what. other people believe. It turns out that the opposite is true, that the longer you.

are on social media, the worse you are at predicting what. other people in your society, other tribes, other political tribes, if you're a Democrat, how good. are you at predicting what Republicans would say. into the statement that racism is still. a problem in the US today. The longer you social media, the worse Democrats. are at understanding or predicting. what Republicans believe about that and vice versa. JON STEWART: Tristan, can I ask you a question about that? Is there any correlation to the longer you're on social media, the less you know the reality?

Like, and I take like the transgender sports conflict. as this part. So if you're on social media, do. you suddenly have the feeling that, like, oh, my god. There are no girls sports left in high school. They are being utterly dominated. And as somebody who has kids in high school--. TRISTAN HARRIS: Yeah. JON STEWART: Like, does it also warp, not just what you think. other people would say, but your own reality of. what's happening? TRISTAN HARRIS: What's something that's. so obvious but also so subtle is the way that these news.

feeds are personalized. So whatever is the bogeyman that gets you up at night. or freaks you out or makes you angry, it will keep showing you a personalized feed. and infinite evidence of that boogeyman taking over society. So if that boogeyman is the transgender sports movement, and that's something that you click on a couple of times, how does the algorithm work? It says there's these keywords in these tweets. that this person keeps clicking on. And it includes the word transgender and sports. And so it just gives you way more things like that. And so you end up thinking that this massive issue.

It's taking over the world. It's the most important thing going on in the world. And for every issue, it's doing that for everybody. but into a different Truman Show, into a different bespoke reality. And it's so obvious. We all know that. But it's so subtle, I think, in the way. that that fragments our shared ability to have conversations. Because when I talk to someone who's been living inside. of that reality, they'll give me millions of facts or data. points or news articles about things that have. been happening in that world. And I might say, I've never even heard of that. I'm not even--. I don't know what's going on in that world. JON STEWART: Wow, and it really does shape it.

But then, getting back to you, Ezra. If you're living in that reality, then no matter what governments do, that's not going to change unless it's. directly addressing that, as Tristan said, your personal boogeyman. But Ezra, the thing that, when you were talking about, it's the way you wish it would work. Boy, that puts us in a really difficult position. Because for someone who still believes government has a role.

to play in the improvement of people's lives, or as just a kind of a check against corporate interests, or other things that are too large for the individual. or the locality to deal with, then it's. all just kind of spitting in the ocean. because it won't have any real effect in the world on opinion, if that makes sense. And I'm not sure I can go there. I don't know if I can go there. I think--.

EZRA KLEIN: When you stare into the abyss, it stares back into you. JON STEWART: I don't want it staring back at me! I want the abyss to go, I'm sorry! EZRA KLEIN: I wouldn't frame it as quite. as politically pessimistic or nihilistic. as maybe that or I made it sound. I don't think-- here's one of the ones that. breaks my heart a little bit. JON STEWART: OK. EZRA KLEIN: Joe Biden, my favorite--. maybe not my favorite. But one of my three favorite policies, as a person who would have a list of that in the Biden. administration, was the expanded child. tax credit that they did in the American Rescue Plan following.

JON STEWART: Yes! EZRA KLEIN: It was this sort of post-pandemic bill. They did it for a year. They should have done it for longer. But the reason they did it for a year. is that this was the clearest, the best tax policy. Just if you got a kid, you get a check. And if you turned on TikTok, a whole new genre. arose of people doing dances set to music when they. got their child tax credit. Like people saw it. They felt it. And the theory was that this would be such a potent policy,

Republicans are always setting popular tax credits to expire. And Democrats always like blanch at the last minute. and extend most of them. That no way the Republicans would let anybody get rid of it. the next year. They wouldn't want to lose the midterms. But they did get rid of it. And the fact that it had been there. didn't seem to help Joe Biden. JON STEWART: Well, I think the midterms, though, you could make the case that the midterms really turned. out surprisingly well for the Democrats, given the conditions. EZRA KLEIN: Yeah, I mean, it just. doesn't seem to have come from that. because we sort of watched the polling.

And I talked to so many people who studied this policy. Now, look, if you had done that policy for five years, it might have been different. And so this is where I'd be more optimistic. So we watched the vice presidential debate last night. I don't know when this will air. But in my timeline, it was last night. JON STEWART: Yes. EZRA KLEIN: And watching JD Vance, like, lying, but lying in this particular way. where he's like, Donald Trump heroically. created bipartisan action to stabilize and improve the ACA. He did-- like very few people on Earth.

have written as many words about the Affordable Care Act. as I have. Like, Donald Trump did everything humanly possible. to destroy that bill. JON STEWART: Sure. EZRA KLEIN: He supported bill after bill to repeal it. He signed on to a Supreme Court case. to try to get it named unconstitutional. He cut the money for the navigators. to actually, like go out and tell people to sign up. Everything he could have possibly. done to destroy, weaken, erode, sabotage, the Affordable Care. Act he did. And now, they're out there saying, you know why you should vote for Donald Trump? Because he worked so hard to make Obamacare better.

So over time, this stuff works. Donald Trump is out there saying don't touch. Medicare and Social Security. So the policies themselves can become popular. And they can become useful. But it's over long time periods. And of course, it's hard to get them passed in the first place. Because the ACA was a disaster for Democrats in 2010. It took time for it to become something that was. politically useful for them. So it's not that policy doesn't matter. It just it needs time. And elections don't always align with that.

JON STEWART: When we talk about policy, again, like, if you really break it down, the ACA is kind of a gift to insurance companies. And what it's done is it's kind of allowed millions more people. access into a broken system. And so kind of getting back to-- and, Tristan, maybe. this is something. But this algorithm that creates these incentives, it's customized to your life. So if in your life, your real pressures. are much more direct than that, like policy is kind of diffuse.

So you might look at it like, my kids. are going to college while my parents are now elderly. And I've been working and playing by the rules. And emotionally, my feed is just coming in. with all the money that it could be used by the government. to help me directly is going to Haitian cat recipes. so that they can eat more. And that's the thing that you're believing. Isn't there some way that we can tickle that reptilian.

brain in reverse? And I don't think government does a great job of this, being responsive to that squeeze--. elder care, child care, all that, other than maybe. the child tax credit and things like that. But is there a way to--. I don't want to say reverse engineer because it. all sounds so Machiavellian. But how do you unravel that pathway? How do you rewire the vagus nerve to not feel this thing.

that's not happening? TRISTAN HARRIS: Yeah. Well, there's these we call perverse asymmetries. Once someone believes a conspiracy theory--. the best predictor of whether someone believes. in a conspiracy theory is whether they already believe. in a conspiracy theory. It's once you break shared reality, it's much harder to put it back together again. And so we should be trying to protect the breaking of shared. reality rather than the amount of effort and work and labor. it would take to sew it back together again.

I think there are, though, ways-- in our work, we think about, if you were to change. the algorithm in the design, what would you be sorting for? And of course, you run into this free speech. versus censorship issue. And by the way, the tech platforms, in order to avoid regulation, have. tried to frame the issue with everything we're talking. about as a free speech issue. When they do that, it means that you will never. get regulated because that debate never converges. on what we should actually do. But it's not about free speech. It's about free reach and amplification. Amplification is not the thing that we're all entitled to.

And free speech specifically in a gladiator stadium, which is the way that social media organizes. our public debate environment, that's. not functional for democracy. JON STEWART: Also, gladiator stadiums did not. have blue checks and did not have algorithms where they'd. be like, if you're interested in eviscerating slaves, you'll really like this. Like, that's the other thing. Social media is not a town square. Incentivizing speech for outrage or conflict or hate. or any of those things is the opposite of a town square,

which is just a vessel. It's just a box. TRISTAN HARRIS: Yeah. Well, and the better-- the current incentives. in social media is the better you are at identifying. a new cultural fault line and adding inflammation. to that cultural fault line, you. will be paid handsomely in likes, rewards, followers, retweets, and visibility. And your content will be routed directly. to the people who will be most angered or enraged. or activated by that. So it's a gladiator stadium. It's sort of a sci-fi-AI gladiator stadium where. when one guy sort of raises up his sword and slays.

someone exactly who would be most activated by that. gets to see. So he gets this sort of bespoke crowd. that is most activated by that. So if you want to change this, obviously you. have to fundamentally change the engagement-driven business. model of social media. You can't simultaneously have a fiduciary duty. to maximize shareholder value in the form of maximizing. attention and also end up with a healthy. democratic environment. But one thing in our work that we've found. is, for example, you could change.

the algorithm to sort for minimizing perception gaps. So, for example, what are the sources of content that. tend to, over time, help people accurately estimate. what the other tribes believe? And you can measure that. Because what's hard is you can't measure what's true. That's very hard to do objectively. What you can do is say, what are the sources of content. that help people better estimate. how big a deal the Haitian immigrant dogs thing. actually is? And you can sort of say, what are the content sources. that do that over time? And then, what you're doing is you're sorting.

for more shared common ground. That's what we really need is systems that are designed. to find common ground. JON STEWART: It's a great idea, Tristan. Because I would say that free speech. suffers also through the hoarding of outrage and anger. Because if I'll go on my feed, it doesn't matter what I tweet. The third response is always, why. did you change your name, Jew? Like, that to me is actually suppression. Like you don't want to engage when the toxicity is like that.

Is there a model--. and, Ezra, I'll put this to you--. that can be created to do what Tristan. said as a public utility? A process by which you can kind of--. it's a gauge, a check, a balance, a guard rail. on the type of incentivized outrage and all. that that we know is coming from companies. that are for profit. In the same way that food companies exploit--. they've got guys in lab coats trying to create chips that.

will sneak past the thing in your brain. that says you should stop eating. You're not hungry. Like, that's what I mean by government as a check. and being responsive to the needs of the people. EZRA KLEIN: The way I've come to think about this, which is--. I know that I like where it takes me. But I'll be honest about where I've ended up. A good capsule history of the media is that we used to sort--. I mean, long ago we sorted by literacy.

But in most of American history, we sorted by geography. What media you had access to and the way it differed. was primarily geographic. Newspapers were bound by space. You could subscribe to some magazines. Eventually, there's some radio. But at the beginning, there's not that much radio. So everybody's listening to more or less. the same things on the radio. Then, there's three network television stations. And they play I Love Lucy. But there's also at 6:00 or 8:00 PM the news.

We have a lot of evidence on this period. It creates much more consensus reality. Now, that reality might differ if you were reading a newspaper. during the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. and you're reading one in New York. You were getting very different visions of reality. But that reality was reshaped by geography and. local community tendencies. What sort of changes--. cable news is like the first very big change. But the internet supercharges it. Is we now have media, and I guess.

reality, sorted by interest. So one of the fascinating, to me, questions that gets asked in media studies. is we used to think people couldn't. know that much because the amount of information. they had was bound, right? There just wasn't that much. When I was growing up, the sum total of political opinion. I had access to as a teenager in Southern California. was the LA Times opinion page. It just was not that much political opinion. Maybe there was some conservative talk radio. But I didn't listen to that. JON STEWART: And all the information in the world. was just one Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z.

EZRA KLEIN: Now, you can have anything. But on average, people didn't get more informed. Why? Well, they did a bunch of studies. And basically, what they found, and in pretty cool studies. about when cable news rolled out to a place, and then when the internet rolled out to a place, is after it rolls out, you actually do have a big change. in who is informed. It's just not the average level. On average, it's not that people are more informed. But what happens is that everybody. used to be kind of informed. And now, you have the obsessives. who know are listening to the Jon Stewart.

podcast, or the Ezra Klein Show Podcast or the Undivided. Attention Podcast, or Pod Save America, or Ben Shapiro, or whatever it might be. And you have the people who just. want no fucking part of this. Right? They want sports. They want video games. They want cooking. They want anything but listening to us. talk about dynamics of politics and media. Because honest to God, who is here at this point in this? And so the problem now with--. like, I love all the public utility. for communications ideas.

But the problem is people have to choose to use it. And what gets people using a lot of these systems. and why most people are on them is not that there. are good information. If you want good information, you can get it. The New York Times is not perfect. But it's pretty good. And the LA Times is good. The Washington-- we all sort of know where to go if we want, like, pretty good information. JON STEWART: But it's still-- it's still analog. EZRA KLEIN: But the problem with trying to replace. engagement-driven social media with a more. virtuous-form of social media is people. are not there for virtue.

They choose it because it is grabby. Instagram and TikTok and all these things, what makes them powerful is not the person. seeking out good information. It's a person who actually doesn't want. that much information at all, particularly. not political information. They're there for other reasons. And they get some on the side. Or they start clicking on things. about Gaza, or the election, or vaccinations, or whatever. And those are the people on whom elections turn. So what you need, if you're thinking. about this public utility model,

in a world where people are choosing. and they have these other options, if you're not going. to shut everything else down, which we're not, is how do you make that public utility grabby such. that the mass numbers of people are there who. want to-- there's a reason YouTube. headlines are all very loud. JON STEWART: Yes, that's the point is--. and I don't know about grabby. But I take your point. And I think that's a really good point. And maybe, Tristan, that's what I mean. is I'm saying everyone's on heroin. What's our methadone? What's our public utility that can do that?

Now, for me, I think it takes tenacity. As Maria Ressa says, a lie travels eight. times faster than the truth. Well, then the truth has to work fucking. 10 times harder than a lie. And to do that, you need the resources. And I think that's where 24-hour media, I think, drops the ball completely, where they've still adopted. the circadian rhythms of social media and, you know--. and whatever else is coming without kind of battling. it in that tenacious way. EZRA KLEIN: And they're pushed to do that because as--.

JON STEWART: Yes. EZRA KLEIN: --social media creates a 24/7 news cycle. that's even more hyper-real, and hyper. up to the instant than before, then cable media has to follow. And I think that's one of the perverse effects. of social media. It's actually pulled the incentives. of all other forms of media. So everyone is dancing for the algorithm. How much of a cable news clip gets its visibility. on news channels versus later on the--. when it trickles through social media. and it gets a lot of visibility there, that's another point. But you know, one of the things you're making me think of,

Jon is the work of digital minister Audrey Tang of Taiwan. And she uses a database called Kofax. So she basically says, fact checking. is hard, to your point. There's many more things running through the system. than we can possibly fact check. So they have a crowdsourced fact. checking system called Kofax. And people contribute. And then what happens is, to your point. that Maria Ressa made, that a lie spreads eight times faster. than a truth, she actually wrote an AI. so that when there are trending topics about something that.

is actually already in the Kofax database, it adds this context in real time. One of the things we used to say in our work. is if you can make it trend, you can make it true. That the liar's dividend. If you just make something more salient and visible, it lands in people's brain. It's there. They've heard about it before. They don't remember where they heard it or whether it's true. It's just that it's visible. And if you want to catch it in real time, one of the ways we could be using AI. is actually by adding more context and synthesis.

of multiple perspectives that are grounded in fact, and adding that in real time to the information. that we're seeing. JON STEWART: An adjunct, a kind of-- something that. runs kind of hand in hand--. EZRA KLEIN: Yes. JON STEWART: --with your social media. So it's almost like a tool, an overlay--. EZRA KLEIN: Yes. JON STEWART: --that you can place on there. I think that's a brilliant idea. In some ways, it's what, I think Elon, for whatever else. he's doing, I think he was trying to get. at with Community Notes. Now, those things can be weaponized, and--. EZRA KLEIN: They can be. JON STEWART: --manipulated in different ways,

but I think that's a really interesting idea. Now, Ezra, to your point, because the funny thing is. So it starts out as a conversation of how. does government become more responsive to the needs. of its people with all this money, and all this communications, and AI, and all that. And what we end up with is AI, social media, social media, social media. EZRA KLEIN: Oh, I don't think this will make government. any more responsive. [LAUGHTER]. I have a different answer to that question, if we want to do that, that I would love to give. you my actual answer to. JON STEWART: Bring it. Bring it. EZRA KLEIN: You cut-- you cut the process, it makes government unresponsive.

Here's how I think democracy should work. JON STEWART: Yeah. EZRA KLEIN: People vote for a candidate. The candidate who wins the most votes wins power. The candidate and coalition that wins power--. I know this is getting weird already--. they do some rough approximation of the thing. they said they would do. Then people decide if they liked that, and then. they either kick them out or vote. them back in the next time. JON STEWART: Go on. EZRA KLEIN: The way we actually do. it is we vote for a candidate. The candidate that wins the most votes. may or may not win power. It's exciting. We see what happens at the electoral college, including this year.

Then when they get in, because we have staggered elections. and the Senate filibuster, they can either do none of or 10%. to 20% of what they promised. And then, people pissed off that government isn't working. that well and everybody's just fighting all the time, dissatisfaction builds up, and they usually get kicked out, or people sort of turn off, or-- so look, like, my program for making government more responsive. is to accept the bad and the good in this because it can go. the other way, as can making a social media. utility that Donald Trump might one day run, or JD Vance might one day run-- but is.

get rid of the filibuster in a bunch of different places. You need to actually empower the people. we elect to do things. Liberals have a really big problem with this, liberal proceduralism. We've made the government incredibly easy to sue. We've created huge amounts of process. between getting anything done. The regulatory state--. JON STEWART: Yes. EZRA KLEIN: --is unbelievably complicated to go through. JON STEWART: Yes! EZRA KLEIN: So people don't get the policies they voted for, and then we wonder why they're pissed off. JON STEWART: Here's where we go. Now we're going to tie it all together. Come on, Ezra. Here we go.

EZRA KLEIN: Love it. JON STEWART: Tristan, jump in with me. Here's how we tie it all together. An AI overlay that is also like a moonshot. for bureaucratic excess that we create. Rather than going to the moon, like, fuck all these other planets that we're going to. We've got this one right here, and it has water and air. And we create a bureaucratic moonshot using these tools. See, right now, these tools are being. absolutely dominated by profit margin and incentive.

There has to be a more robust public utility. usage for these kinds of things, creating the thing that Ezra is talking about. Government is wildly inefficient with that. Here's the other thing I would do to that, Ezra, and you tell me what you think. This permanent campaign turns a mild disagreement. into an argument, into a feud, into two. sides that don't have anything to do with each other. We're never going to get the money out of it, but let's shorten the electoral system as well. EZRA KLEIN: This 100 day campaign. we've been in, I think has been pretty.

good from that perspective. JON STEWART: Fine. Let's just leave it at that. EZRA KLEIN: The sort of thing where we did like, a reset, and then it was a new race, and there's only 100 days in it. JON STEWART: 100 days. EZRA KLEIN: We could have had some more debates, in my view. But I think this is actually-- it's how other countries do it. It was healthier. JON STEWART: Much healthier. That, plus Tristan, what do you think of those public. utility usages? Maybe they don't replace the social media, but they are tools that we can use to bring forth some. of the things even Ezra is talking. about, about better government regulation that is not so--. you can't have a homeless problem and then decide that.

and everything has to be net zero. You can't do everything. It was like sort of like in Shapiro in Pennsylvania. The highway goes bust and he's like, oh, that's an emergency. We're going to throw out all the regulations. and actually fix it in two weeks. TRISTAN HARRIS: Well, I think the thing. that you were pointing to here and. throughout this conversation is the complexity gap, that there's more and more issues to respond. to than are bureaucratic institutions. have an ability to respond to. As climate change-- JON STEWART: Yes. TRISTAN HARRIS: --and climate events go up, that's going to keep going up.

As the outrage machine keeps spinning up more things. to be upset about and for governments to respond to, that goes up. And you're talking about that people lose faith. in their institutions when they're not responding. at the speed and clip that the issues. and crises are hitting us. In our work, we often reference this just totally fundamental. quote by E.O. Wilson, the father of sociobiology, who. said, the fundamental problem of humanity. is we have Paleolithic brains, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. And so that is the alignment problem that we have to align,

and that's-- to weave it all through, you were saying earlier, how do we weave our reptile brains, match how they work, how the dopamine cycles. that Ezra was talking about. We need some kind of engaging media. that is keeping our attention at some baseline. But then have it be aligned with not medieval institutions, but 21st century institutions that are maximally using. technology, not in some kind of naive, techno-optimist, technology is going. to solve our problems way. JON STEWART: Wow. TRISTAN HARRIS: But we should be. certainly instrumenting our institutions with technology.

And then how do we then take the last part, which. is currently, we have godlike technology that is incentivized. towards the worst goals. In social media, it's incentivized to the race. to the bottom of the brain stem. And in AI, it's incentivized to the race. to take shortcuts and drive recklessness, concentration of power, huge risks in society. JON STEWART: Stock options. TRISTAN HARRIS: Stock options. So we have to realign that whole equation. And that's what we think of in our work as Humane Technology. Humane Technology is realigning our Paleolithic instincts. and our reptile brains to the sort of enlightened versions.

of ourselves, instrumenting our institutions with this kind of, how do we use AI to--. JON STEWART: To get them to be not medieval. Bring them up to the at least 16th, 17th century. TRISTAN HARRIS: At least 17th century. Imagine you go back and you say, what if we had AIs that are actually looking at all. of the laws that are no longer actually. accurate to the present times? And we're actually accelerating the process. of identifying the loopholes in previous laws, the failure. modes of previous laws, and actually updating them, and having-- accelerating the legislative process. by doing that.

And then actually getting more citizen input, and doing that with AI. JON STEWART: With efficacy ratings, like you get in a restaurant. EZRA KLEIN: No. I'm not going along with any of this. JON STEWART: No! Ezra--. EZRA KLEIN: I'm bringing in--. I'm bringing in some disagreement here. We're not all agreeing. TRISTAN HARRIS: I agree. EZRA KLEIN: We're not all going to resign-- grown. and resigned acceptance of this. JON STEWART: This is beautiful! EZRA KLEIN: No. This is like-- Tristan is, of course, right about our old--. JON STEWART: Utopian? Too utopian? EZRA KLEIN: No. This is not the problem in our policymaking, that we have complexity-- the complexity gap is. not a function of the world. It is a function of the systems we have built and layered,

and layered, and layered, and layered complexity. But the reason we cannot govern effectively, the reason. that Gavin Newsom stands--. the governor of California stands up and promises houses, but California does not build more houses is not. that at some point in human history, houses became too complex to build. It's that when you try to build a house, practically an affordable home that uses tax credits. for affordability, we have made--. and I have written a lot on this, it's partially. what my next book is about--. we have chosen to make this impossibly complicated. JON STEWART: I think that's what Tristan. is saying, though, to be fair. TRISTAN HARRIS: Exactly.

JON STEWART: I think what he's saying is, yeah, we need something to streamline that process--. TRISTAN HARRIS: Exactly. JON STEWART: --to show people that we've made it too complex. EZRA KLEIN: Yeah. But I'm just saying that like, inside the system, like, I think like, liberals-- and I'm not--. I'm not putting this on Tristan. I just-- liberals need to be in ripping parts of the system. they built out. TRISTAN HARRIS: And that's what I'm saying. I'm agreeing with that. I'm saying AI could be used to help rip out the right parts. of the system. JON STEWART: That's right. TRISTAN HARRIS: Because so much of the system is broken, is too out of date. Yeah. EZRA KLEIN: But I think where I am disagreeing is that I don't. want to frame this as complexity, because these.

are all decisions. Right? OK. Like, Kamala Harris's housing plan. When you look at that, it is a series of tax credits, each one of them micro-targeted so you. get a tax credit for building affordable homes. for first-time home. Every time you layer one of these things on, you have made it more complex. Or the $25,000 home buyer tax credit, which is not for buying, but it's not for building, but for buying, that tax credit is actually for people who have. never owned a home, have had two years. of rental payments, and whose parents. have never owned a home. And you can keep going down the line like this.

JON STEWART: [LAUGHS]. EZRA KLEIN: We-- we are making the complexity. We might all be on the same boat, but we can't solve that with AI, particularly liberals--. well, them not only, but in this case, I think it's liberals who share these goals--. have to decide to do government differently--. JON STEWART: Agreed. EZRA KLEIN: --and have to decide to have different values. in government. And they don't want to. They keep writing things this way because they. don't want to change it. JON STEWART: I honestly think we're all in agreement. EZRA KLEIN: Excellent. Tristan's right about the world, but I'm just saying, the bureaucracy, we've gotta--. JON STEWART: That we've created.

EZRA KLEIN: --we've created. We can't tell ourselves it's too complicated. We made it complicated. JON STEWART: Yes. I don't disagree with that. Tristan, I say-- here's what I said. What a wonderful conversation. And at the end of it, through all the, I don't agree with, I think we've come to a kind of a kumbaya. TRISTAN HARRIS: We might have found some common ground. We didn't need the algorithm. EZRA KLEIN: And if we can train an AI on this conversation--. JON STEWART: See? EZRA KLEIN: --and set it loose--. JON STEWART: You see how it's so--. [LAUGHS] It's really so easy. But it's fabulous, guys. I truly appreciate you enlightening me on all.

these different things and--. and having the conversation. It was wonderful. Ezra Klein, columnist at New York Times, host of The Ezra Klein Show podcast, the author. of Why We're Polarized. Tristan Harris, co-founder, Center for Humane Technology, co-host of Your Undivided Attention podcast. Thank you both so much for joining us. EZRA KLEIN: Thank you. TRISTAN HARRIS: Thanks so much, Jon. [DRUMMING]. JON STEWART: Wow. Fabulous. Those guys were fabulous. Can I tell you something? Here's what impressed me the most.

We're here with our erstwhile producers, Brittany. Mehmedovic, Lauren Walker. LAUREN WALKER: Hello. JON STEWART: Their facility in minutia, in details, in names, and the father of something biology, and the quote, and it's all in their brains. There's no-- I like to think in broad sketches, there's very little that's filled in. Those guys are just--. they're-- they're Renaissance painters. [LAUGHTER].

[VOCALIZING] I'm just doing the whatever they are, the Haring sketches on a subway. But those guys are-- [LAUGHS]. --I thought it was fabulous. I thought it was the most interesting disagreement. agreement I've ever seen in my life. I thought we were agreeing. I think we did agree. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: I know that you think you did, but I don't know-- [LAUGHTER]. JON STEWART: Ezra did not agree. How are you-- what else-- how are the viewers holding up? What do they got for us? Anything exciting? BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Yeah.

We got some good questions this week. The first is--. JON STEWART: About the Mets? Is it mostly about the Mets? BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: --yeah. Jon, I'm going to ask you again. JON STEWART: Yeah. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Are you hopeful at all? JON STEWART: No. [LAUGHTER]. I'm going to answer that the same way every time you ask it. No, I am not. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: OK. If Elon Musk came on the podcast--. JON STEWART: OK. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: --what would you ask him, slash want to talk to him about? JON STEWART: I would do that. I think that'd be that'd be fabulous. So that's an interesting question, because I. do know him a little bit. I don't-- we're not friends, certainly,

but I know him a little bit. And we have had conversations. And I do-- I know that this is liberal heresy. Musk! [GROANS]. Like, I do think at his heart, he is-- he does some incredible. things for society--. Starlink, and he's-- the Neuralinks that can help. somebody who is paralyzed-- but I would probably agree. in the liberal orthodoxy that the kind of middle school, edgelord shitposting has probably gone a bit far.

And normally, that would be kind of inane, but not. when you-- you run the site, and your edgelord shitposts. end up at the top of my For You page for no apparent. reason whatsoever. But if what you hold above all else is free speech, it's hard for me to understand supporting Donald Trump, who's. been pretty explicit about penalizing speech. that he disagrees with, whether it's removing a license. from ABC, or whether it's even, I'm.

going to jail Mark Zuckerberg. And people could say, well, that's for. election interference. But it's election interference as defined by Donald Trump. And we all know that he views everything. through Trump-colored glasses. So election interference is interference. that he thinks might work against him in an election. It's like, what's a fair election? It's an election I won. Oh. that's actually not the real definition of it, but fine. So that is-- I'm always struck by,

and it's sort of this broader point at the paradox of Trump. support, which is his constituency is-- boy, they. love him, but they're very draped. and kind of patriotic and Americana paraphernalia. They're all, you know, don't tread on me, we. the people with the tricorner hat, the whole thing. But I think at his heart, Donald Trump's instincts. are not respectful of constitutional checks.

and balances, whether it be judicial, congressional, and executive, just by the very nature of--. I mean, if you ask the Supreme Court to give you. complete and total immunity, well, you've just. negated the Revolutionary War. So the paradox at the heart of that movement. is the thing I have the hardest time coming to grips with. And I guess that's the thing that I would want to talk, really, to any of them. Him in particular, because I think he's. placed such a high value on--.

I mean, for God's sakes, we love the Constitution. Donald Trump literally went in front. of a bunch of, like, police organizations and like, hey, man, I wish I could give you guys just an hour. to beat the shit out of everybody who shoplifts. And you're like, doesn't the Fourth Amendment-- doesn't--. like, so how do you reconcile that with all. the we the people shit? That-- that's where I would go. LAUREN WALKER: I thought at the very beginning of that run, you were about to admit that you had a Cybertruck. [LAUGHTER]. JON STEWART: Have those made it to your neighborhood yet?

LAUREN WALKER: Yes. JON STEWART: The first time I saw one, I thought somebody had put wheels on their refrigerator. LAUREN WALKER: Apparently, raccoons. are thinking that they're dumpsters, and trying to break in. [LAUGHTER]. JON STEWART: The thing that's driven me, as I go by, it's all smudges. Like, there's one in our neighborhood. that keeps going by. And the whole time, you're just like, did someone who went. in the fridge to get jelly--. [LAUGHS]. --then go outside and try and get into the car? And it's just-- it's a series of like, moving thumbprints.

There's something fascinating. LAUREN WALKER: It's so silly looking. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: It's obnoxious. JON STEWART: And dangerous. It just looks like--. it looks like something that was rendered in Minecraft. And it's not quite--. LAUREN WALKER: Like a 13-year-old. boy built it in his mind? [LAUGHTER]. JON STEWART: Oh, great. Now he's not coming on, Lauren. Thanks. LAUREN WALKER: Sorry. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Yeah, thanks a lot. LAUREN WALKER: You actually touched on something. which one of our other listeners. commented in on, which is, what do you think of everything.

happening in Georgia with voting laws. and election security rules? Will you be talking about that on the podcast? JON STEWART: Yes. We will be talking about on the podcast, as a matter of fact. And Lauren, boy, was that--. that was a beautiful prompt and a beautiful lead, but I believe we're talking about it next week with Stacey. Abrams and Ben Ginsberg. Is that correct? LAUREN WALKER: Yes. That's correct. JON STEWART: I'll tell you, one of my biggest concerns--. and I'll lay this out with them as well--. is the security of the individuals who. are gracious enough to volunteer. for the administration of our elections,

who are doing this literally out of a sense of whatever, civic pride, civic duty. They're taking time out of their days. And they are being, I mean, threatened, and doxed, and it's awful. It's truly one of the most awful things that I think is--. is rotting away the foundation of what we're trying. to do here democratically. Brutal. LAUREN WALKER: We'll definitely be touching on that next week. JON STEWART: All right. All right. Well done, Lauren. Well, fabulous show today. Brittany, do you have the social media--. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Yeah.

JON STEWART: What are we supposed to do? BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: You can follow us. on Twitter at WeeklyShowPod. Instagram threads and TikTok, we are Weekly Show Podcast. And please like and subscribe our YouTube. channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. JON STEWART: And also, we are putting it on a satellite dish. and broadcasting it, like the SETI, out into the universe, hoping to hear back from ETs. Thanks, everybody, so much. Another fabulous program. Lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mehmedovic, video editor and engineer Rob Vitola, audio editor.

and engineer Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate. producer Gillian Spear, and our executive producers, Chris McShane, Katie Gray. Look forward to seeing everybody next week. Thanks, guys. [DRUMMING]. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. is a Comedy Central podcast that's produced by Paramount. Audio and Busboy Productions. [MUSIC PLAYING].