The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast
The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, where we take a deep dive into geek culture, tech evolution, and the impact of the past on today’s digital world.
The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast
S2E6 - Who Controls the News?
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In this episode of The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, S2E6 – Who Controls the News?, Renee and Marc examine the machinery behind the headlines.
There was a time when the news arrived at a predictable hour, delivered by a familiar face, framed by a studio camera and a glowing red light. It felt intentional and limited. Today, information moves constantly, personalised, accelerated, filtered, and optimised.
So what changed?
It wasn’t simply ideology or journalistic standards. It was infrastructure.
Printing presses, telegraph lines, broadcast towers, cable networks, search engines, and algorithmic feeds each reshaped who gets to decide what spreads, and how fast. Speed altered incentives. Incentives altered behaviour. Over time, the systems themselves began shaping what counts as news.
We explore how broadcast studios once acted as gates, how 24-hour cable blurred urgency into permanence, how the internet turned publishing into software, and how social platforms made engagement the dominant currency. When distribution changes, power changes. When power shifts, public trust shifts with it.
The anxious question is now, "Who controls the mechanisms that determine what reaches us?"
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Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential.
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There we go. We're recording.
Renee:Let's start with saying just a moment of silence for Dan Rather, because I feel like he got fired for no good reason. And to each of you, courage. Dan Rather reporting. Good night.
Marc:So first shout out is to is to phil i won't give phil's name even though it's on linkedin so you'd probably figure it out anyways phil is definitely a loyal listener because he sent me multiple notes about different episodes and things like that and so last episode we talked about batteries and we talked about smoke detectors and the nine volt batteries so so phil was like you know you guys are amateurs you didn't even figure this out so there's they basically put like 10 year lifetime batteries in those things and you can't like you can't pull them out or replace them or anything like that so you just got to get a new smoke.
Renee:Detector my carbon monoxide stuff is like that like they're you just throw it away they send you another one with plutonium in it i guess
Marc:Yeah i think it's got cesium in it or something but okay yeah i forgot to look that up but anyways thank you phil for you know giving us a little bit of info on smoke detectors which have non-replaceable batteries, but they have super dense power and long lasting. It's like literally like 10 year plus, which is pretty cool.
Renee:I met so many nice people looking for a 9-volt battery though. So I feel like I engaged the world, had some nostalgia. I'd do it again with no regrets. But thanks, Phil.
Marc:So I definitely have some 9-volt batteries kicking around somewhere. Okay. So let's look at some locations. So, you know, it's still pretty evenly split between U.S. and U.K., rest of the world. But we have a new winner in our third place country, and it's Australia. What? I know. Australia has been sort of slowly creeping up. And Singapore has dropped to the one, two, three, four, fifth spot after Ireland now. Wow. Yeah, I know. So we had Singapore like in a third spot, and Finland has dropped a little bit. But we still have U.S., U.K., Australia, Ireland, Singapore. Finland is a big one. Thanks, Finland. I know. We've got new listeners in India, Pakistan, and the Netherlands. That was a new one we hadn't had before. So very good.
Renee:Can I just tell you, I once wrote when health care reform was happening in the United States, and it was a 1,200-page bill. I thought it has to be simplified, so I invented health care reform sock puppet theater. because I thought the best way to explain this all was through sock puppets. And I put it up on Facebook. And a Pakistan... This is why I'm telling it. There's a Pakistani puppeteer company who like... Joined right away. And I thought, oh my gosh, like number one, they're from Pakistan and number two, they're puppeteers. So welcome, Pakistan.
Marc:Thanks for listening. So the other thing I thought was interesting looking at the stats, so I can see kind of our all-time trend. Now, our September month was our lowest, but I think because we recorded and released and then we didn't, you know, it was kind of a dip. So August and then September is lower than august of last year but not by much but every month since then has been bigger than the previous month and they've been growing by you know a few percentage points so so january was our biggest month even though even though we only released like was it like the second week of january or something because we were off vacation vacation time so so i think that's pretty cool you know So hopefully we can, February may be a short month, but we're already on a good track for February. So, yeah, it's good. Over 1,200 downloads for our lifetime, which, you know, that's pretty decent.
Renee:Yeah, for a couple of nobodies who started a podcast because we wanted to chat every week.
Marc:Yeah, with no advertising, no SEO. Yeah, nothing.
Renee:We don't do it. We just do this. We make zero effort to get listeners. And look, we get them. Yay!
Marc:I like a once a week LinkedIn post, you know, although, although I will say that this last post that I did on LinkedIn.
Renee:You got a lot, like 160 people.
Marc:Yeah, no, it's, it's got over 300 likes now. What? Yeah, 293 now.
Renee:And you didn't boost it or anything like that? It's just.
Marc:I don't think I, I don't think I boosted that one. So yeah.
Renee:Wow.
Marc:Yeah, pretty cool. Pretty cool.
Renee:Well, thanks everybody for listening. I think we would do this either way, but it's so fun when you guys listen and when I see you out in public and you're like, oh, my God, Renee, this is my favorite episode. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I really do appreciate it. We really love doing it.
Marc:Yeah, love doing it. All right. So thank you, everybody, for listening. And ask whether it improved society or simply gave us faster ways to panic. Today, we're talking about the tech of news, not just journalism, not just media bias, but the deeper machinery, the infrastructure, incentives, transmission systems, and economic models that decide what spreads, what sticks, what earns trust, and what gets ignored. Every major shift in news has been driven not by moral awakenings, but by technological change. New tools reshape speed, speed reshapes incentives, incentives reshape behavior, and over time, behavior reshapes what society thinks truth even means.
Renee:What I love about this story is how familiar it is. Every generation thinks their media environment is uniquely broken. Printing press caused panics. Newspapers caused panics. Radio caused panics. Television caused a panic. And the internet, not so much panic as much as existential dread. Social media sent us into a full-blown epistemic crisis. But the real story isn't people got worse. It's that the systems got better at rewarding emotional reactions instead of understanding. Technology doesn't just deliver that news. It rewrites the rules for what news becomes. So be honest. Do you think people in the 1800s were saying, like, media is ruining society? Or is that is it just our generation's emotional support hobby? Like, is it just what we do? Or do you think in the 1800s are like, oh, it's so terrible?
Marc:Oh, no, definitely, definitely. Historically, things like newspapers were looked at as corrupt. And, you know, you've got a whole trend around muckraking and political cartoons and influence. And, you know, it wasn't in the 1800s, but yellow journalism, right? You know, people pointed at media and, you know, they probably didn't say it as media is running society or ruining society. But they did say this is biased or this is wrong or... Pick your favorite.
Renee:You're all out to get me because i'm the one you're talking about yeah
Marc:Well and you look at some of the big you know like william randolph hearst right you know these publications were they were weapons in some in some ways so yeah.
Renee:Well it's and he consolidated right and so it was like he consolidated he gave it a point of view and then yes it became a weapon and i think i think the hearst model is used all the time now like they I learned that lesson for sure.
Marc:Yeah, that was a pattern that kept repeating and probably not a pattern that should be repeated, but whatever. Before mass media, news wasn't really an industry. It was a social process. Information moved through town criers, handwritten letters, royal messengers, religious sermons, you know, the theses on the door, right? Merchants, word of mouth. News traveled at the speed of feet, horses, and ships, which meant it was slow, localized, and shaped heavily by whoever held authority. Truth wasn't neutral. It flowed through power structures, the monarchy, the church, local elites. Information served hierarchy, legitimacy, and control.
Renee:And what's fascinating is that this slowness act as a natural break. Misinformation existed, but it spread slowly. Panic took time to build. Rumors had time to be challenged or forgotten. You couldn't refresh your feet every five seconds. You had to physically walk to your anxiety, right? News was embedded in community. It came with social context, not just reach. There was friction, and that friction limited the emotional velocity of it all. So, Mark, was slower news, healthier for society, or did it just give powerful people more time to rewrite the reality before anybody could actually challenge it?
Marc:I think it's a great question. I think maybe there's a bit of both. And I was thinking about my own childhood and kind of the generations of news as I experienced them. And let's say the exposure to news when I was a kid was, you know, whatever, afternoon, four o'clock afternoon news or whatever. And it might roll into the national news, right? But then once it was done, that was it, right? That was all. It wasn't, you know, 24-7. It didn't happen all the time. It wasn't buzzing me on my phone, right? And I think that that dis, I don't know, that disdetachment is probably a good thing. It allows you to focus on something else, you know, focus your anger somewhere else.
Renee:And you could only get it. I mean, being a kid, you only got news on three channels in the U.S., right? You had the major networks. You didn't have CNN. Like, CNN was kind of a breakthrough at the time. But you had three places. And you're right. You had your local news at, like, six. For us, it was six. And then the national news came at 6.45. And it only went 30 minutes. And so whatever was close to you, that's what you would hear on your local news. And then whatever was a big enough dumpster fire that it would be part of the national news cycle, then that's where it would be, right? And that's how we heard about what was going on with the rest of us. So I really feel like if we could get back to that, life would be way calmer.
Marc:I think it would be calmer, but, but I think, you know, the other part of that question, like powerful, powerful people, um, You know, if you control the media outlet, and I think certainly historically, maybe not, you know, this century or the 20th century, but, you know, before that, you know, long time ago, decades, centuries, millennia ago, I think the messaging, you know, there's probably, it runs at multiple levels. But, you know, that kind of, you know, what's important is definitely controlled by the power, you know, the elite, you know, whether it's a monarchy or.
Renee:Money or whatever. Oh, yeah. I mean, like if the pope was putting out the religious edict, it was self-serving to the pope, right? So, yeah, of course, right? Like, I think that's absolutely true. But I also think if we go back a thousand years that life was scary and short and you probably looked to those institutions to make sense of it all, right? And so you would willingly take it that way because that's kind of the construct you were living in. And as much as I would like to say I'm a free-thinking person, I wish I had less to think about.
Marc:That's all. I think that slowness is a good thing. I think it's, yeah, it would be nicer to be a little slower. We talked about that on the Internet episode.
Renee:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So let's go back to the printing press, right? So this is where basically information gets scaled. So Gutenberg invents movable type. He sort of invented movable type. He wasn't exactly.
Renee:Okay, do you want to correct it?
Marc:Go ahead, correct it. That's okay. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Okay. And certainly in Western, you know, yes, okay, he does invent movable time. But suddenly information becomes replicable at scale, which is definitely the innovation here. This is one of the most important technologies in human history. It's right up there with double-entry bookkeeping. Right. It breaks.
Renee:And rubber.
Marc:And rubber. It breaks the bottleneck of handwritten copying. Ideas can now travel far beyond their origin communities. The religious movements, scientific ideas, political arguments, revolutionary manifestos, they all accelerate because print turns ideas into infrastructure.
Renee:And almost immediately people realize this power can be used for education, liberation, persuasion, propaganda, conspiracy, and chaos because we're human and that's what we like to do. The printing press fuels the Reformation, it fuels revolutions, and it fuels radicalism. It democratizes access to ideas, but it also democratizes access to manipulation. Every expansion of information access expands access to narrative warfare. So, Mark, did the printing press liberate truth, or did it just industrialize hot takes centuries before, like, Twitter? Like, was it just the Twitter of its day?
Marc:I think, I mean, you mentioned the Reformation, right? You know, the Great Enlightenment, you know, these—, Even to some extent, Industrial Revolution, these would not exist without the printing press. So perhaps, in that sense, yeah, it did liberate truth or fact, maybe. I don't know. Truth is relative. But you wouldn't have those things without the printing press. And so does the good of the printing press outweigh the weaponization that it had as well? I mean, the printing press is certainly...
Renee:It's what we say about everything that is every technology. So you could say that, you know, cars. You know how many people die in car accidents? Sure. But isn't it better that we have, you know, vehicles? Like, yeah, of course, right? And planes. Lots of people die in plane crashes. But isn't it better that we have planes? Yes, of course, right? Computers. Look how much fraud and crap comes out of the computer world. But are we better off for it all? Like, yes, and one more time, we'll be having the same conversation about AI one day. But like, I feel like, yeah, I feel like, you know, yeah, it's good. It's good. But that good always comes with bad. And I think we're bad as human beings for never actually seeing the downside when it's all brand spaken new. I think that's where we fall down as human beings every single time.
Marc:Well, and we don't necessarily recognize when those technologies are weaponized or acknowledge the fact that it can be weaponized against us. And I think even now in the social media era that people don't recognize that they're being manipulated through propaganda or bots or whatever. And they don't necessarily even acknowledge the fact that it does happen. And I think that with the printing press that's, probably something that happened as well. People saw this great invention and saw, oh, look, I can get the Bible in English, or I can see these philosophical writings, or I can read novels, right? These things are really great and important, but it can also lead to revolution in a good sense or a bad sense. And, you know, they don't necessarily recognize that thought, the words, are being weaponized against them, and the printing press gives them the scale to do that. And I think humans should acknowledge that there's a weaponization, you know, paradigm with these technology developments.
Renee:It's why we can't have nice things.
Marc:I know. I know. It's exactly why we can't have nice things.
Renee:Yeah.
Marc:Okay, so by the 17th and 18th century, we get regular newspapers, political updates, trade news, war reports, and social gossip. These papers rely on courier networks, correspondence, and shipping routes. But the real shift is economic because news becomes a business. Publishers discover that controversy, novelty, fear, and scandals sell more copies than sort of sober, boring public notices.
Renee:This is where journalism stops being purely informational and becomes competitive. Headlines get sharper. Tone gets more emotional. Framing becomes strategic. Publishers start asking not just what happened, but what will get attention? And that tension between truth and traction never goes away beyond that. Like, that's when it starts and we never give it up. So is this the exact moment... But journalism stops asking, like, what's true and starts asking what will sell. Yeah. Because I think we stick to that. I mean, we've heard it, like, growing up, we heard it, if it bleeds, it leads. Like, we've heard that, like, a million times, right? It's like, well, that's pathetic. Like, I can't believe that's who we are, right? But at the end of the day, like, that started all the way back in the 18th century. Like, we've just carried it forward all the way to today.
Marc:Yeah.
Renee:Would you say that's true?
Marc:I think it is true. But at the same time, I don't think it stayed true, right? I think there's definitely, from an ethical perspective, you could talk to a lot of journalists, whether that's today or 100 years ago, that would say that's not the way that they want to report, right? That sensationalist or... Reporting about, you know, plane crashes or, you know, people dying or whatever, something that gets, you know, that sort of emotional response. I mean, you see that, you know, reporting happens across an entire spectrum. And I think, you know, that's the way it is.
Renee:So I watched a documentary called The Vow, and it's about Keith Raniere and NXIVM and all that stuff.
Marc:Oh, yeah. Oh, my.
Renee:Right? Remember that? And so there's a girl from the, I think she's from the New York Post. Don't hold me to it. But she's talking about, she got assigned this. So she's sitting in court and she's listening to this. And every night she goes back and writes out her report for what's going to publish the next day. And she said, when I first started as a journalist here, they told me your story should have a Hey Martha, you know, thing about it. And she said, this is how they explained it to you. They said, it's the quintessential American middle-aged couple sitting at the kitchen table for breakfast. He's got the newspaper out. She's pouring coffee. And he says, hey, Martha, listen to this. And he's like, that's what the story has to have. And she's like, this story about Keith Raniere is one of those stories that has, hey, Martha, all over it. And I thought, oh, that's what we write. We write for the Hey, Martha. Right. And so, yeah, that's it. It's not much. I guess it is what's true. You can't make up a story about somebody for Hey, Martha quality, but you're writing it in a way, the headline, the actual story. You're writing it in a way so that that quintessential person with the newspaper open in front of them says, hey, Martha, listen to this. Like, that's what you're after. Yeah, I think so. bit. I mean, I took a journalism class in university. I was an editor from the LA Times that was a professor. I think, Yeah, that's certainly not the kind of approach that, you know, he taught us or, you know, that he even professed. So, I don't know. I think there's probably a mix because some, especially in the newspaper world, some newspapers don't operate that way. And then others do, right? Yeah, right. The National Enquirer.
Marc:That's got a ton of Hey Martha in it. weekly world news is nothing but oh my god
Renee:That's not hey martha that's like you know hey martian right yeah so the 19th century industrial revolution accelerates everything steam-powered presses cheaper paper railroads and along with railroads do we get telegraph lines you know we we haven't talked about telegraph did we talk about oh we.
Marc:Talked about it in passing when we talked about railroads and stuff. So I'll add that to our list.
Renee:Yeah, we got to talk about, we got to talk about like raw communication paths or something.
Marc:Yeah, okay.
Renee:Anyways, telegraph lines and urbanization create mass circulation newspapers. Millions of people now consume news daily. But have you ever seen those like, you know, those political cartoons or even pictures of the time when it's just rows of people like in the subway in New York and they all have the newspaper up.
Marc:Yeah, it's the iPhone of the day.
Renee:That's right. Exactly. The era gives us investigative journalism and public accountability, but also yellow journalism, sensationalism, political manipulation, and media empires built on outrage.
Marc:And that's what's wild about all this, that people back then were already complaining that the media was corrupt, biased, emotionally manipulative, and driven by profit. Every era believes it invented the media crisis, but we're mostly remixing the same incentives with new machines. So do mass audiences, do they inevitably drag media towards spectacle? Is it like gravity for drama? Like, is that why we do it? Is that why we read the news? We're just interested in the drama of it all?
Renee:I don't, I mean, it's, no, I don't think so. Maybe, maybe to some extent. You know, living, and I thought about this this morning, living in the UK versus living in the US, right? This is, we have state-run news, the BBC, right? And I would definitely not call the BBC sensationalist, right?
Marc:Right, no, I wouldn't either.
Renee:You know, when you compare it to Fox, you know, or one of the others. I wouldn't even call Fox news.
Marc:I'm just going to put that out there.
Renee:Yeah, well, I mean, whatever. I mean, mass audiences drag media towards spectacle. Maybe depending upon the incentive scenario, right? I don't think it always has to be that way, but it tends to be that way in Western media, I suppose.
Marc:Well, and I think it goes back to the idea that newsrooms are incentivized to make money and people don't want to read about a cat stuck in a tree. There's no drama there. They'll rescue the cat and everybody's fine,
Renee:Right? Yeah, exactly. And that is an interesting sort of difference between state-run media and private media, right, or publicly traded or whatever. The BBC is run by tax money, right? You know, the incentive, there's, it's not a for-profit business.
Marc:I feel like it changes everything. Like once you say it's a for-profit business, now it's like, am I driving readership? And then I'm catering to the readership I'm driving. And so it points the publisher to want to constantly refine to the, and then you're just spoon feeding people who like what they're reading over and over and over again to maintain your subscription base. And I think that's the end of it at that point. Like, you're like, you gave up. Like, you gave up. You wanted no, you know, you weren't looking at both sides. If anything, the opinion part of the newspaper was kind of where you heard both sides. People would complain about your coverage. So, yeah. Yeah, I think it is like a gravity for drama. I do think it is. I think we, in the United States, like, you wouldn't read it. You wouldn't hate Martha that if it were good news.
Renee:Yeah. Well, and using the BBC as a sort of counterexample is fine. But even in Britain, there's all sorts of sensationalist media, right? The tabloids in Britain are way worse than they are in the States. You know, you've got all sorts of just rags that that's all that they do is report.
Marc:Yeah, I only know anything about that because of Meghan Markle. Like, I wouldn't know anything about it if it weren't for the fact that...
Renee:Like, I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm sort of neutral on the royal family and, you know, all of that stuff with Meghan Markle and Harry and all, like, I don't pay much attention to it. But if you look at the vitriol that that woman gets in comparison to Prince Andrew and, like, what kind of person he is, that just tells you something about, you know, the people that are writing the news about Meghan Markle. That's just my two cents.
Marc:Yeah, I'm going to support that. I support that point of view, for sure. I mean, I'm not a fan. I mean, her jam is ridiculous. I don't understand any as ever, but I'm not sure how they're flooring that house. But I will say that I think she gets her unfair share of, you know, terrible, terrible coverage.
Renee:There was even like a piece about, you know, comparing coverage of Kate Middleton versus Meghan Markle. And it was like, you know, the stupid one I remember is the avocado. And, you know, there was... Prince William gave Kate an avocado as a gift for something. Is that a thing? I don't know. I don't know. But it was because she likes avocados. Okay. I don't know. There was something about it, right? And everybody thought, oh, how cute. William's giving her an avocado. And then, you know, and then Meghan Markle says something about avocados in a completely unrelated sense.
Marc:Oh, she's famous for her avocado toast. And she really was among the cast of Suits. It's like that's not it's a known thing here.
Renee:Yeah. Right. And it was like, oh, my gosh, avocados are so bad for the environment. They waste a ton of water. And you're like, OK, that's media bias right there. When you can look at two people in the royal family, right, and two similar situations there have an attachment to avocados. and all of a sudden one is treated like, oh, how cute. And the other one is a demon, you know, because of the environmental impact of the entire avocado industry.
Marc:Industry, yeah.
Renee:What kind of crap is that?
Marc:And that's the weaponization of information. I think that's what it comes down to for sure, right?
Renee:Anyways, okay. So we talk about newspapers, Industrial Revolution. Let's talk about the telegraph here, because that kind of takes the Industrial Revolution and it ticks it up a notch. So the telegraph is this massive shift. For the first time, information travels faster than humans at approximately 0.6 of the speed of light. News. Okay. Do you know, did you ever read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
Marc:I never did. I'll admit that.
Renee:There is one funny thing about the Hitchhiker's. Well, it's very many funny things. But one thing that I always remember is that, Douglas Adams is writing, you know, as the narrator, and there's this one part where he's talking about the speed of these spaceships, you know, this one, you know, travels on this kind of whatever faster than light drive, and this one does this. But he says that, you know, the one that traveled the fastest ever was the faster than light engine that was powered by bad news. But nobody liked it because whenever it arrived, it was always, you know, bad news. Bad news. Yeah. So thinking about how fast, you know, news travels, right, through telegraph, through copper wires, it's approximately 0.6 of the speed of light. Information travels faster than humans, though. That's the point. News from wars, elections, disasters, they can move across continents in minutes instead of weeks. This reshapes journalism itself. Messages must be short. Writing becomes compressed. The inverted pyramid structure emerges. Speed becomes competitive advantage. Like if you could get it out there and scoop somebody, you know, that's really important.
Marc:It's a scoop, yeah. Technology doesn't just move news faster. It changes how news is written, prioritized, and valued. When speed becomes the edge, nuance becomes expensive, right? Because I would have to keep telegraphing it. Reflection becomes optional. Being first starts to matter more than being right. Oh, I feel like that's exactly where they are. So is the telegraph the exact moment humanity decided that speed matters more than thinking? Is that it? Is that where it starts? Because I feel like we're living in it today. Is that where it started?
Renee:I don't know if it started there, but I think that probably made, you know, a big cultural impact there. Being first, being first matters more.
Marc:Yeah. You know what? I think I always, you say telegraph and it goes right to Titanic. It just pops right in my head. Like, oh, telegraph all the way down. But, but it was the fastest way to get help. Right. Like, like they found people, they were just too far away. Right. Like, so yeah, I think, but the idea that speed matters and it has to be short. Like that that's just so because the context of it all is gone the the ability to explain it at length is gone and And I think the ability to weaponize it, does it get stronger or is it less strong? Oh, yeah. I can hide a whole lot in that conversation if it's only two lines, right?
Renee:Yeah, yeah. Well, how much vitriol can be squeezed into 140 characters?
Marc:Lately, a lot. But yes, you're right. Right.
Renee:Yeah. I guess it's 280 now, right, isn't it? Isn't it?
Marc:Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Renee:But I mean, do you think about that, like how that kind of reflects to modern society? You know, Jack Dorsey comes up with this idea for Twitter, which is not really a new idea at all. It's like the digitization of the telegraph and and with with sort of mass, you know, mass adoption. And if you see these other messaging systems, there's one called telegraph now, although don't use it. It's like a, yeah, it's not good. And, you know, yeah, bad news.
Marc:I don't use any of them, to be honest.
Renee:No, no, no. It's really, yeah. I don't know. I think that speed and brevity have their merits, right? But, yeah, is that the exact moment? Maybe not the exact moment, but it's definitely the one that gets, like, really broad adoption. Let's talk about the radio. Radio transforms news yet again. into a shared auditory experience. News becomes live. It becomes emotional, intimate. Millions hear the same voice at the same time, right? The fireside chats from the presidents, right? Tone, urgency, and empathy become part of the message. Radio builds collective national moments. Fireside chats, war bulletins, emergency alerts, creating a shared sense of reality.
Marc:But voice also creates trust. Tone creates authority. Emotion creates persuasion. Radio strengthens social connection, and it amplifies influence. News becomes psychological as much as it is informational. So I guess the question is, did radio make news more human, or did it just make propaganda sound warm and trustworthy? Before you answer, like whenever, like in my mind, anytime somebody talks about the radio, It's like I see a family sitting around a wooden cabinet staring at something with knobs on it. Like that's the thing that pops into my head. But then the other thing that pops into my head is what are they listening to? And I think that it's the – I listened – so on Holocaust Memorial, like Remembrance Day, I always try to like find something I didn't know, right? Like scour the internet looking for something I didn't know. And it was the when Dachau was liberated, someone went there, a radio reporter was there when it happened. And I listened to his report and I thought as much as I've seen because I watched all the liberation of the camps and all that stuff. And I've never watched it and wept, but listening to him and listening to how his voice was shaking and listening to how this man was sounded truly, truly traumatized by this whole thing. Like, I just thought it was, I'm getting goosebumps now. I thought this is the most emotional and serious words ever spoken in news. I just thought it was unbelievable. So I feel like radio did make news more human. What do you think?
Renee:Yeah, I think totally. I remember, okay, so I have two sort of listening to the radio news stories or memories. So the first is driving in the car with my dad. When my dad was, you know, driving, you know, and I was always into Los Angeles, he was going to work or, you know, coming out or whatever. And, you know, when I was in the car with him, he always listened to AM radio because that's what you did. And, you know, to listen to the news and it was like KFWB or something like that, AM640. And, you know, you'd get like, gosh, what was the, Paul Harvey, right?
Marc:Paul Harvey.
Renee:Paul Harvey, you know, the other side of the news or the other, I can't remember his little tagline, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Renee:You know, but you would get this kind of slower paced, you know, not long form, but a little bit slower paced news process. And I remember that as a kid. And then the second, also driving in Los Angeles, especially when I was working in the field, in the car and listening to NPR. Because I had to listen to NPR because, you know, that was one of my university classes said you had to listen to NPR. So listen to NPR. And, you know, that was a completely different form where you had to, you know, it was a 30-minute program or something like that. And it was maybe one or two topics. And that sort of human approach, that slower approach, yeah, it just was different than the news, you know, on the TV or in the newspaper. A very different sort of experience for that.
Marc:So I remember my grandmother could never sleep at night without noise in the house. I don't My crazy Italian grandmother.
Renee:Oh, I was going to say, which one?
Marc:Yeah, my crazy Italian grandmother. And I spent a lot of time with her as a kid. So I would fall asleep listening to KDKA. And all it is is like a call-in show. It's kind of like the social media of the day. They would pick a topic. People would call in and say what they thought about it. And the other reason she would have the radio on in the house all day was she loved baseball. And so baseball games would be on constantly. And I kind of miss it. I have satellite radio now, so there's no commercials or anything. But I miss the emergency broadcast system, the test. This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. All the broadcasters in your area in voluntary cooperation with the FCC and other authorities have conducted this test of the emergency broadcast system. Had this been an actual test, you would have been informed where to go in your neighborhood for news and official information. This concludes the test of the emergency broadcast system. And then the radio would come back on. You heard it so much as a kid that I literally still remember it. Like that, like I, like radio for me is, it really is nostalgic and it, it makes me miss grandma Annie a lot.
Renee:Yeah. Well, that's a, I have a lot of love for radio because I drove around in Los Angeles for a long time and that's what you do. You know, that's how you, you know, you can't read the newspaper while you're in the car. You can't watch the TV when you're in the car, you know, so, and it's, you know, I spent a lot of time in cars in los.
Marc:Angeles well you can't help it you're just sitting in traffic for hours exactly traffic so here's what i'll say to the to the young people listening i mean if you want to like know in the heyday how fun that stuff was yeah go watch wkrp in cincinnati like it's a great tv show that made fun of what it meant to be a dj in a radio station and it i think it sums it up pretty well like what that world was like Yeah. I, you know, and it was, I don't know, it was fun. And podcasts took it over, right? There is no more talk radio. Podcasts took it over. So, and social media kind of makes up the whole, we have a community and we yell at each other. Like, that's kind of where we do that now. We just don't, we don't do it on radio anymore. But we got good at it there. And PR does.
Renee:So let's talk about television because that's sort of this natural progression. It goes over the airwaves, radio, and now television. Television adds the visuals. And visuals change. They change everything, right? Seeing becomes believing. War footage, civil rights protests, political speeches. These images shape the perception in very visceral ways. Anchors become cultural authorities. We were talking about Dan Rather, right? We were. Before we started. I was always a Peter Jennings kind of guy, not a Dan Rather.
Marc:Well, we were, Dan Rather's, we're a little young for that, right? Like Dan Rather would have been my parents' generation with Walter Cronkite and those guys. Yeah, Cronkite. So, yeah, I would say Peter Jennings was our generation for sure. And I would say that. And Tom Brokaw. Like I saw a lot of Tom Brokaw.
Renee:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anchors, as these cultural authorities, you know, have a lot of, you know, they have this sort of veritas, you know, this authority position. The politics of the day, though, become performance in the television arena.
Marc:Television turns news into a narrative theater. What looks compelling often outranks what matters most. Drama becomes a selection filter. Spectacle becomes a competitive edge. And when I think back to, like, where did television make its mark? It's the Vietnam War. I mean, it's the first war that's televised, right? Right. And so for the first time, because they have the equipment's portable, it's not stuck in a studio somewhere. You can actually take a camera with you. And they were embedded with the troops and they would bring out stuff, edit it, and it would show up on news. Not that night because it wasn't that fast. But the next night or the night after, you might have been a couple of days behind. It probably wasn't live. But I mean, that was the stuff where I thought like that made a huge difference. That turned the corner for what people were willing to tolerate when it came to war, when those soldiers came back. And, you know, it was no different. That war was no different than the Korean War, which was no different than World War II. Like, none of them were any different. It's just regular people got to see what was being done in their name, and they weren't having it, right? And I think that's the thing where I think two things were learned. Be careful what you tell the public, if you're the government, for sure, right? Be careful what you tell them. It might not always go your way. And that with that visual comes... Comes the emotional awareness to make change. And I think that's why the 60s are so volatile for the country. It's just like we had a whole new way of taking all of that in. And it really did change everything. So is TV the moment news stopped being about facts and started being about vibes with a teleprompter? Like, is the TV kind of, kind of, I don't think that's true. I feel like we weren't, I don't, I thought maybe television was like the first time we confronted it a lot of truth. Like that was the first time, because it's just right in your face. There's nothing you can do to turn a blind eye to it. It's in your face.
Renee:I think though there's something to be said about vibes. If you think about the use case or example I think about is the first Nixon and Kennedy debates, because Kennedy and Nixon, you know, are, you know, vying for your presidency. And, you know, if you look, if you watch, if you listen to it, you know, Nixon has, Nixon has credibility. Nixon has experience. Nixon's, you know, kind of, he's, he's, he's got it in the bag. But if you watch it, it's Kennedy.
Marc:He wasn't good on TV.
Renee:No, Nixon was not good on TV. You know, he had like a five o'clock shadow. And because of the technology of the time, you know, he just looks kind of, you know, like dirty and scrubby and stuff. And, you know, and Kennedy's cute and he's got young. And so, yeah, it's you know, that's a turning point where the politics of the day changed from. You know, kind of one sense that, you know, Eisenhower and Nixon and, you know, the previous generation of, you know, kind of, you know, crusty dudes to, you know, hair and makeup. And, you know, it's a different, it's a different, you know, it's a different feel.
Marc:Well, and I think that, and we definitely carried that forward, right? Yeah. And it brought, yeah, and you had to be good at that, right? It wasn't good enough to be good policy and to, you know, have the relationships to actually write the legislation. Like, that didn't matter anymore. It's like, you know, did I want to watch you? Are you handsome? Like, that's, it really is, you're right. It really did change everything. And then everything after that kind of was, how do you look on TV? And if you didn't look good on TV or you couldn't handle yourself on TV, you know, that was it. Right down the, I always think about what's his name when he was in arizona and he was like you know yeah and it was all crazy and it was like okay you know yeah howard was that howard
Renee:What's his yeah what was i guess howard something.
Marc:Um yeah yeah that kind of stuff like you know it's so cool it could just kill your presidency you're right away ross perot you people yeah yeah people didn't you people i think i would enjoy him i I would enjoy him more now, I think. But yeah. Yeah. But I mean, that's true, right?
Renee:Look at how much makeup the president wears now.
Marc:I mean, just a blending brush or a sponge. I mean, either one would be an excellent thing to add to his, you know.
Renee:Yeah. I, you know, there's, but, but, you know, we don't need to go into the sort of, you know, the whole Trump whatever. But you can't deny that, you know, he had, you know, certainly in the past, kind of a charisma that comes through on the television. And... And I think that, you know, that sort of, you know, that charisma, that comfort that he has, that arrogance that comes through, you know, it's gotten him where he's at today.
Marc:Well, and he had years and years and years to cultivate it. He did not one, not two, but three television shows, right? Exactly. So he had a long time to cultivate that skill, which makes you—and that sends me to Zelensky, right? Like, if you look at Zelensky, you'd say, well, he really didn't have—he was a comedian. Yeah, exactly. And now he's running Ukraine, right? And then you think about it and you'd say, well, except that he was a beloved comedian and people thought, you know what? You care. You're a good looking guy. You're young. You make me laugh. I'm going to give you a shot at this. Like that to me, like I wonder if that's where we're at. We're at the point now where we care more about what you look like than the substance of you. And luckily for Ukraine, they found a guy who they loved and they loved the way he looked. And he turned out to be a man of substance like they lucked out.
Renee:It's about is about the vibe. It's about the vibe.
Marc:About the vibe.
Renee:Yeah. So the next big advancement, though, in television is the emergence of this 24-hour cycle, right? Cable news didn't just add more channels. It fundamentally changed the time horizon of news. Before cable news had natural pauses, we talked about this. You know, you got your afternoon local, and then you got, you know, Brokaw or whatever for 30 minutes or an hour. And then, you know, late night, Johnny Carson, and, you know, that's it. Morning paper, evening broadcast, in the sense that the day had a beginning, a middle, and an end. But the rise of the 24-hour cable networks in the late 70s and 80s, especially with CNN's launch in 1980, becomes continuous, ambient, unyielding, unending. Suddenly, the constraint wasn't what's important today. It was how do we fill every minute of every hour with something that feels urgent? The technology created a new requirement that news must never stop. And, you know, some of the innovations that you see from CNN, right, the banners, you know, and the graphics and all that stuff flying around on the screen, right, that wasn't like, yeah, sure, news had it before that, but not to that extent. Not to that extent. The technology created this, you know, you know, this new new channel. And if reality didn't produce enough breaking events, commentary, speculation, panel debates, right. Talking heads.
Marc:Oh, my God. Yeah.
Renee:You know, dramatic framing would fill the gap. You know, how many how many winter storms have made like it's just huge news. Right.
Marc:Snowmageddon. Snowmageddon comes every year now.
Renee:Exactly. Exactly. I think, you know, one of these big changing seminal moments in cable news is the Gulf War in 91. Live war coverage, real-time military updates. We still know the names of all these people, right? Wolf Blitzer, Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, right? Yeah. Constant on-screen graphics turned conflict into a 24-hour spectacle. News wasn't just reporting history anymore. It was performing it in real time.
Marc:This is where news starts to feel less like a record of reality and more like a perpetual emotional climate. The goal quietly shifts from helping people understand the world to keeping them emotionally engaged with it at all times. Outrage becomes a renewable energy source. Fear becomes a retention strategy. And urgency becomes the brand. And over time, the the economics of cable news sharpen this dynamic ratings reward conflict over clarity, speed and depth and opinion over investigation. I think this is the part that always gets me right. Like it's it's hard for people to figure out the difference. Sean Hannity is giving you his opinion. He's not telling you the news. Like, I need, like, people just don't understand that. They can't figure out how to separate the two. Panels replace reporting. Hot takes replace analysis. Stories become serialized dramas complete with villains and heroes and cliffhangers and recurring plot lines. And this is also when political identity and news consumption starts to fuse more tightly. Networks start to realize loyalty is more profitable than neutrality and audiences increasingly choose channels that reinforce their world for you rather than challenging it news becomes not just information but identity affirmation that's why in america you've got conservative news and liberal news why why why it makes no and we're getting more and more to the point where you can't find neutral unless you go to BBC. I mean, honestly, that's the news I watch now. At least it's state-run by someone else, right? So did 24-hour news actually make us more informed or did it just invent a business model built on keeping us emotionally hydrated and constantly anxiety-ridden and professionally produced panic? I mean, do you think this was all worth it? Did we need this ever? I don't feel like we needed it ever.
Renee:I agree. I don't think we need it all the time. I wonder if anybody's looked at this. What's the percentage? If you take Fox or CNN or MSNBC or whatever, it doesn't matter. If you take them and then you look at the percentage of political news versus... Events, you know.
Marc:Oh, I think MS, I think they're called MS Now now, but I think they will tell you they're a political news source. Like, I don't, they don't talk about anything else. I think you might, you might have a couple hours really early in the morning where someone's talking about, Morning Joe is nothing but politics. You know, there's a couple of shows in between that, and then you start hitting the opinion crap again, and it's nothing but, they don't even talk about anything other than politics, right?
Renee:But you think about, yeah, but think about, does 24 hours news actually make us more informed okay how much of my life my percentage of my life sure politics has a lot of impact no no question and it's hard to separate economics from politics but whether sports fine you know personal interest you know things that are happening You know, crime, not crime, right? The opposite of crime, good news stories. Like, you know, it's skewed. It's skewed so that, you know, you get this engagement, you know, and this, as you said, this outrage, the outrage cycle, you know, keeps you engaged and then you engage more. And I think, you know, what I've noticed or what I've seen is that particularly in the States that CNN or MSNBC or Fox or whatever, they don't report the news. they cultivate an audience. And cultivating the audience means that they report the information from that perspective that will have resonance with that audience, right? It's not so much that they're reporting about this bill passed or that bill passed or these economic numbers or whatever. It's about the impact to that particular audience, viewpoint, right? That particular audience, right? And that's...
Marc:I kind of feel like they're no different than the newspapers that were looking to make sure they sold enough of their subscription base and would write to their subscription base. The cable news stations are doing the exact same thing.
Renee:Exactly. Exactly.
Marc:Yeah. Again, we're no different. It's just the technology changed.
Renee:Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, speaking of no different, just the technology changed, The internet didn't just accelerate news. It removed the economic and physical barriers that once controlled who could publish. Yeah. Oh, boy. In the 1990s, publishing became software. Anyone with a keyboard can report, comment, remix, amplify, blog, right? The blog. Blog and then vlog. The distribution. Yeah, did people even know that that started out as web log that then become blog? Like, I don't know if any people, like, realize that that's what that word is.
Marc:Yeah, no, because you would have a web page where you would just write your manifesto to and just add to it all the time. And you had to build the page yourself in HTML, otherwise you didn't have a page.
Renee:Yeah, it was a web log. The marginal cost of news drops nearly to zero after this. Early on, this feels like a media utopia. Blogs, forums, independent journalists challenge legacy outlets. The promise is democratized truth. More voices, fewer gatekeepers, broader access to information, Rene.
Marc:Do you remember, just before we leave cable behind, do you remember cable stations used to offer public access to the cable? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They would carve out this space where any maniac with a camera, a real camera that could attach, like they could record stuff, like they could buy that space and be a maniac on cable, right? I felt like the internet just let them go like full bore, like I got a channel now, and I could be a maniac 24 hours a day, seven days a week, right? But the business model shifted. Print revenue collapsed. Subscriptions struggle. And the internet settles on attention as currency. News stops being funded by readers and starts being funded by clicks. And that's what changed everything. When engagement drives revenue, importance loses the shareability. Speed beats verification. Emotional beats nuance. Headlines sharpen. Outrage travels faster than context. And the newsroom question quietly shifts from, is this true, to will it spread? And I think with, that's, did you ever go on YouTube and just look at the headlines? No. And they're always in bright yellow, like all caps. Like, can you believe he did this, question mark? Like, my God, what did he do? And he didn't do anything That's what always gets me It's clickbait every time You'd think I'd quit clicking But that's it, right? Can I get a million clicks out of this? Right now, Midas Touch Which is one of the fastest growing podcasts out there They post probably 15 things a day You let that run for a couple of days And you'll start to see 1.6, 1.7 million views And you think to yourself That's a lot of influence For something that I don't know if it was vetted. I don't know whether they have journalistic integrity. I'm not sure about any of it, to be honest with you. And half the time, they're just taking what somebody said on MSNBC, re-saying it, and then putting their opinion right behind it. And so you're back to the idea that this is an awful lot of opinion, an awful lot. What I'll say about Midas is they're willing to tell you what Fox is talking about because I literally wouldn't hear a word of that any other way. I don't know what they're doing over there. I don't really care.
Renee:Yeah, I don't know.
Marc:If someone else can watch it for me,
Renee:All the better for it. Yeah, no thanks. So search engines and social platforms become the primary gateways to news. Algorithms start acting as editors prioritizing what keeps people scrolling reading and arguing okay so i think we said this before but advertising is the currency of the internet yes information does not spread on the internet without advertising happening with it so it this is like it's not news that you're watching you know it's advertising incentive and and i think people just don't get that it's super important to understand that information doesn't flow without advertising to happen with it.
Marc:You're being manipulated by marketing people
Renee:That's right not.
Marc:Even by like like like news people anymore it's marketing people are
Renee:Well and that and that that's that headline that that clickbait right like we even have a word for it now the headline of the feature, is the thing that will get people to click on it, right? And if you can craft the headline correctly, then people will click on it. And that means more advertising revenue, more advertising revenue, more dollars in the pot, and the engine moves around again. Editorial judgment is no longer the only filter with this. Virality, right? If it's viral, becomes a distribution strategy.
Marc:News fully enters the attention economy. It now competes with memes, influencers, entertainment, and conspiracy threads. So it adopts the same tactics, right? Emotional hooks, identity signaling, and drama. All the drama. Truth becomes one competitor in a crowded emotional marketplace and often not the most profitable one. So, all right. So is the internet the great democratization of journalism and history? Like, is this where, like, we're all citizen journalists now. Like, we all have—or is the moment of truth completely lost in its pricing power?
Renee:Man, boy. I think it's lost, man. I think—it's hard to say everything's completely lost, but it's really tough to find the truth—.
Marc:You know, I always think, like, when you've read a newspaper, and there's a whole generation that doesn't know anything about this, you youngins, are you listening to me? Because you don't know anything about this. But when you sat down and read the newspaper, which is why I think I spend so much of my time reading news than consuming it other ways. Because I just feel like I can read it and put my own emotional state on it. So I can read that and be like, I don't give a crap. Or I can read that and be like, I'm morally outraged. Or I can read that and be like, I can see why other people are morally outraged, right? Or I can read it and say, I dismiss that entirely. You're just a clown. But it's me doing all that, right? It's not someone doing it for me. It's not some influencer saying, isn't that guy a clown? Like, it's not happening. Like, I did it. I read it. I understood it. I gave it the context of my life. And I decided whether or not I wanted it to influence me. I don't think we do that anymore. Yeah.
Renee:Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it's funny. My wife, she reads the Associated Press every day. That's her news source. She won't read news from other places, you know, because she doesn't find that stuff trustworthy. I don't want to put words in her mouth because maybe, you know, that's not exactly what it is. But I think she finds that, you know, things are relevant to her and they're more, let's say, neutral than what you would see in other places. I tend to look at the BBC because I've read the BBC for a long time and the. New York Times, except the New York Times and their paywall is rough. So, you know.
Marc:Yeah, so I resubscribe. So, yeah, New York Times for me, I ignore the Wall Street Journal on any given day. And BBC, because it does world coverage, because I feel like that's what we're missing. Like, I don't get to read about what's going on in Africa. I don't get to read what's going on in the Middle East. We don't cover that here. Like, we're so busy talking about, you know, what crazy thing the White House did that we don't, we miss the rest of the world entirely. So it's good to see through the, just through the crap to get to what's really on.
Renee:Yeah, I think that's a good point. You know, where do you get, where do you get, where do you see the world perspective? perspective you know where do you find the truth around that or if the facts the truth is relative.
Marc:Right and it's not the internet it's not where i go for that
Renee:The internet i mean i guess it's maybe a bit unfair because things like the new york times that's on the internet.
Marc:Right okay fair enough like if that's where your portal is i'll go there and read it on my phone like i get that but i don't i don't go to like i don't know facebook like a lot of people get their news from facebook now like a lot yeah Speaking of which.
Renee:All right. So talking about Facebook, right? Social media doesn't just distribute news. It re-architects how people experience reality. In the early days of platforms like Facebook. So let's put some context on this. What's the first Facebook release? It's like 2008, something like that.
Marc:Yeah, something like that.
Renee:Twitter and YouTube feeds were mostly chronological. Ugh, yeah. Now it's like chaos, random chaos.
Marc:Yeah.
Renee:You saw what your friends posted, what outlets shared, and what happened recently. But over time, platforms shifted from showing what was new to showing what was most engaging. Algorithmic feeds took over, ranking stories not by importance, accuracy, or civic value, but by what would keep users scrolling, clicking, reacting, and staying on the platform longer. There's a reason why they call it doom scrolling, right? I mean, if you stay on there, it's more eyeballs on more articles on more ads. And if you're stuck on it, they just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and that's more revenue. The result is personalization at scale. Two people in the same city living in the same moment can inhabit entirely different information universes. News stops being a shared public narrative and becomes a custom-built reality stream.
Marc:Oh, it's so true. And this is where the incentive structure fundamentally changes. It's not that people suddenly became angrier or more polarized or more extreme. Is that the system learned to reward emotional intensity. Content that provokes outrage, fear, pride, humiliation, or tribal belonging tends to outperform content that encourages nuance, uncertainty, or slow thinking, or happiness. God help us. So news adapts, headlines sharpens, frames harden, stories become more moralized, more polarizing, more emotionally charged, because that's what the algorithm is. Amplifies over time we don't just consume news we're conditioned by it our attention emotions beliefs start to be shaped by feedback loops designed to maximize engagement and not understanding
Renee:That like is social media like, I just want to point out that the algorithms, right, the algorithms that create this kind of engagement process, these are very sophisticated pieces of technology, right? So, like, it feels like we're talking about, you know, politics or news or whatever, but, like, the algorithms, they learn you. They learn what engage, you know, you engage with. I have to tell you this story.
Marc:I have to tell you this story. Go for it. And so, but like three weeks ago, four weeks ago, I don't know. I corner my husband in the kitchen and I'm almost in tears. Like I'm ready to lose it. Like I'm shaking. I'm just really upset. And he looked at me, poor Sam. He doesn't know how to navigate that stuff. Usually he's like, all right, just say it. Just say it. Just say it. And I said, I feel like I'm being manipulated by algorithms. Like I feel it. I feel it. I shouldn't be this upset about anything. There's nothing in this world that should have me this upset. I feel like I cannot escape this algorithmic world that is just trying to push my buttons every minute of every day, no matter what. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, you know, Blue Sky. It doesn't matter where you go. TikTok. It's all trying to manipulate the crap out of you. And I just, I almost, I actually sat down, opened the portal to my healthcare and went to my doctor and said, I need a therapist now. Like, I don't know how to navigate the world anymore because I feel like I'm being manipulated. And I don't know if that's paranoia, but I just feel like, no, all of a sudden for me, the algorithm became really apparent. Like all of a sudden I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, right? Like just wait a minute. I'm not going to participate in this anymore, which led to me deleting everything except LinkedIn. Like that's the only thing I'm still on a social network for is LinkedIn. Everything else is gone. I don't use it anymore. It's not good for my mental health for sure. But I also feel like the algorithms were getting so sophisticated that if I asked it who I was, it could tell me in a way that only a therapist could. And I think at that point, no one should have it. Like Mark Zuckerberg sure shouldn't have it. Larry Ellison shouldn't have it. Like no one should have it, right? No one should have it. And I guess I feel like that's it. That's where we're at right now. We're at that state. And the fact that the things that used to bind us all together must see TV. Here's a whole generation that didn't know on Thursday nights we used to all get together and watch the same thing on television and talk about it the next day, right? The whole country did it. We have nothing like that anymore we don't have these moments of you know like like national togetherness like we just don't do it because we're living in our own feedback loops of information that are being absolutely manipulated by third parties in a way that is incredibly unhealthy yeah
Renee:No that's a good point and i've so i i still have facebook i don't do twitter because you know elon musk and i'll say that you know.
Marc:Because oh yeah the second he bought it i was done.
Renee:I literally deleted my accounts. Anyways, but I've purposely curated my algorithm to do certain things for me. And so you won't find anything political on my Facebook feed. You won't find anything political on YouTube, you know, and it's all stupid, nerdy stuff like, modeling, you know, and paint chemistry.
Marc:Mine's all trail cam footage of things that might be Bigfoot.
Renee:Yeah. I mean, so I've curated my own algorithm that way. And that would be, you know, somebody like a Zuckerberg would say, well, look, you're doing the right thing. You're, you know, using the system the way it was intended, which is, you know, total bull, right? You know, that's not how the system is intended.
Marc:It shouldn't be up to me to figure out how to game the algorithm to not be outraged. It's like, it shouldn't really be my fault,
Renee:Right? Yeah. Well, I think, so, okay, so this whole process of social media, this algorithm, the algorithms transform news into something closer to emotional infrastructure, right? You're feeling anxiety. You're feeling outrage. You're feeling manipulated. And that's emotional infrastructure. And it's more of that than it is actual public information. The feeds don't just inform you. They reinforce your identity, you know, who Renee is. Just like you said, it would know you better than your therapist, right? That identity rewards alignment, it punishes dissent, and quietly trains you on what kinds of reactions are socially and algorithmically valuable. Instead of one shared reality, we get millions of parallel narratives, each optimized to keep its audience emotionally invested.
Marc:So are we still consuming news? Or are we living inside algorithmically curated emotional loops that slowly program what we believe, fear, and fight about? I think, like, for me, like, that's, honestly, that's why I was standing in the kitchen having a nervous breakdown is because I felt like I was living inside a curated emotional loop that I had nothing to do with. That it was imposed upon me by an algorithm because I stayed a little too long someplace. And now everything that came behind it. I once, so one time I'm watching Dr. Pimple Popper. And then all of a sudden, thing after thing after thing in the doom scroll was everybody with growths. So, like, I just feel like it is so manipulative and it is so, yeah, I feel like where I'm living, that's exactly what I'm living inside of. It's an emotional loop that I can't get out of. And it is changing my brain and I'm really mad about it.
Renee:I mean, I purposely don't use any of the social media mechanisms to consume news. The only one that I, you know, get any kind of news from is Reddit. And Reddit's more like, I don't know, it's not really algorithmically, it is algorithmically generated, but it's not tuned to me, you know, because I've manipulated Reddit to only do certain things. But if I go and look at the sort of the popular or the, you know, whatever, that's what kind of everybody is seeing. So, but it's, you know, it's sort of stupid stuff, you know, it's a mix of serious and not serious. And so I have to consume news and, you know, in other ways.
Marc:Yeah. Yeah.
Renee:Here we are, into the future, into the now, into the now and into the future a little bit. All right. So if the printing press mechanized writing and the internet mechanized distribution, then AI mechanizes creation itself. We've entered an era where news articles, headlines, images, video clips, voice recordings, and even entire broadcast segments can be generated instantly. Well, almost instantly, pretty close to instantly, by machines. For the first time in history, information doesn't just travel faster than humans. It can be created faster than humans. News, oh, did you see this the other day? I can't remember her name, but it was a novelist, and she said, with AI, I can generate a novel every 45 minutes. And I'm thinking, there's no need for that.
Marc:Yeah, no one needs it. No one needs that.
Renee:There's no need for that.
Marc:And that's not art. Just so we're clear, that's not art. Yeah, exactly.
Renee:You know, all that stuff can be instantly generated by machines. News no longer requires a reporter on the ground. It doesn't even require a human author.
Marc:This is the first time the technology of news stops being just a delivery system and starts being a reality generation empire. AI can write breaking news, summarize events, generate fake interviews, simulate expert commentary, and tailor narratives to specific audiences at a massive scale. Let me just say this. I'm going to say it once because I think people think this isn't possible. But a political party can go on Facebook, create five different realities, send them out to five different buckets. I'm going to send it to the Democrats. I'm going to send it to the independents. I'm going to send it to each of them. That message is geared toward them and just them in that ecosystem. That's why when a presidential candidate tells you, I'm going to do IVF and I'm going to pay for it all. I'm going to make sure that your kids can go to whatever school they want to. And I'm going to make sure that your taxes go down. And I'm going to make sure, not if it is true. They're just trying to get you to agree with them in the ecosystem that you're living with. They can do it at scale. They can do it all day long. And they can do it whenever the hell they want. Like, I need everybody to remember that, that this idea that, like, for me, 2008, if we're going to call it out for what it is, no, it was 2012. 2012, when it's the reelection for Obama, Obama goes, decides he's going to go after social media. He's going to talk about, you know, what he's going to bring the country because he thinks the young people are there. It's going to be a great conversation. They do a study. You can pull it up today. It's in nature. It's it's in the the the the scientific paper nature. They did it back in 2010, and they asked, they tried to figure out in the midterms, if they put up a vote button on your Facebook page, would that make you go vote? If it would say, today's election day, go vote, would you go vote? And what they found out was they could move the needle a little bit, but they couldn't really push it the other direction. What they figured out was if they put that button there and then all of your friends who said they voted, that was enough to get your butt out of the chair and go vote because you saw everybody else you knew voted. And it's not inconsequential. We're talking about in some geographies, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 more people went out to vote. That swings whole elections now. Right. And so this idea that social media can't change world views, can't make someone president, and the idea that, you know, foreign actors get in there with fake. Here's what I heard. Whenever 2016 came around and we were trying to figure out if the Russians were, like, really messing with the vote, I heard a bunch of people my parents' age. And you would say to them, those are fake accounts. Those aren't real people. These people who keep telling you these things and are generating all this traffic, those aren't real. That's the Russians. And I swear to God, people would say, why would they spend their time doing that? Are you kidding me? Like, are you kidding me? It's a psyops operation. You understand how the world works, right? And no, actually, we don't understand how the world works. We don't understand that half the internet is bots and it's all doing things in the political sphere that we have no control over. And I know I sound paranoid and crazy, but I really, I just need people to understand that part of it. But I need people to understand it, right? Like, this is why I always say, the Internet's not real. It's just not real. Like, stop it. Just stop it. Right. And I'm not so crazy. I feel like, you know, the Mueller report kind of explained what happened, how social media was leveraged and, you know, and, you know, outcomes are outcomes. You live with them. But I want you all to remember. Right. Internet's not real. We used to worry about media bias, but now Now we have to worry about media fabrication at industrial speed. So are we still talking about journalism? Or did we just invent a reality vending machine that runs on prompts and incentives? Like, yeah, I think that's what we did. I actually think that's what we did.
Renee:Boy.
Marc:I mean, just go if you go out on YouTube right now and you look for like just anything that happened in the last couple of days, I think it's always really funny. You'll see like if the point of view is, you know, the president is really upset about it, the thumbnail on it will be the president literally crying. You know, that's not what happened. You know, that's a deep fake of the president made to make you click that so you can see what made him cry. Like it didn't, none of that is real, but it's just all clickbait. I feel like, I feel like people don't get that. I feel like people don't get that.
Renee:I think, well, sure. I think we haven't come to grips with the mechanization of whether it's deepfake, which is still an emerging technology, frankly, right? Or personalized perspective, right? Which has been in use now for decades, but really mechanized and weaponized by the algorithms. And all you have to do is look at the Cambridge Analytica stuff I mean that's proof it doesn't matter if you're paranoid or not all you have to do is go find a really reliable source about Cambridge Analytica and it will show you that information was crafted, in a certain way to influence an outcome Um, and you know, that's, and I don't think people are.
Marc:You called me paranoid. You called me paranoid.
Renee:I didn't call you paranoid. I just said you sounded like you were paranoid. You know, I, I mean, I, you know, I know people that were at Cambridge Analytica, right? They were, they were in the same park as I had, you know, people working for me, um, in the same timeframe. So. That I think people just haven't come to grips with, that there's actual industries that will pay money to manipulate information for outcome influence. And I just, that certainly people haven't come to grips with. And so this new tool, right, this new set of tools around AI, it doesn't need humans to craft the message anymore. Yeah, that's the that's the trick, right? We've jumped the generation. The behaviors and weaponization is going to be the same. But the time that it takes to craft those attacks, the time that takes to craft those messages has shrunk significantly. And so now what happens every time we talk about this, right? The new technology comes out. It doesn't change behaviors. It changes scope and speed and reach. And so you're going to start seeing manipulated, you know, information in places that you didn't expect before, in places that you thought were reliable before. That's the thing that's coming in the future. And that's really freaking scary.
Marc:So just one last thing on Cambridge Analytica. When all that blew up, And everybody figured out what they were doing and how ridiculous that all was. They thought when they invented it that they were inventing, like, a multi-billion dollar industry. This place where, like, they could be this, like, professional services organization. And they would go, I got to tell you, they would go pitch it to brands. So they were going to chief marketing officers and being like, we could do this. And the brands would be like, all right, let me sum this up, what you just said to me. So what you just said is, you're going to create content that is lies about my competitors in order for me to sell more product. And they're like, yeah. And they're like, no, get out of here.
Renee:But see, that's the thing, right? Like, that would never fly in the marketing sense. Right. But that will absolutely fly in the political and news sense.
Marc:Yes. Yes, that's where we're vulnerable to it. Because it didn't. Brand managers were like, get the hell out the door. This is never going to, no, like, I'm not going to lie about my competitor that, like, that is not good for my brand. And I know that politicians don't care about that. They, you know, it's an outcome that puts them in office for six more years, but by God, I'll do it.
Renee:Yeah, exactly. You know, I think there used to be this sense that, you know, you know, if this politician wouldn't be evil, you know, therefore they're better. All of that. Well, now it's not it's not that it's that they just need to amplify amplify the voice. That sounds the most trustworthy to you right.
Marc:To me to me
Renee:And so so you know if they discredit somebody that's okay because their positive messaging is louder than the discrediting that they do you know or the lies that they spread about you know a political opponent and that's i mean that's so easy to do now with an algorithm yeah that's.
Marc:Just be careful you guys like i just feel like yeah and and you're right right like Like, we haven't changed. It's the same as it was at the printing press where, you know, it's the same as it. I mean, I'm pretty sure the Vatican was putting out stuff that says these people over here who don't believe what we believe, like, they're going straight to hell. And, like, you don't want to be with them. Like, this has been going on for millennia, to be fair, right? And we have not changed. It's just getting faster and harder to figure out how we're being manipulated, right? So don't be. Do you think, like, here's what I think. I think if we ever, we're going to eventually get to the point where how we consume news is being so manipulated and we're feeling manipulated and we feel like we don't understand it and that citizen journalism is going to fall by the wayside. I almost feel like the way we think of news on the blockchain, like if it's there, it's real. That's where we're going to end up, except that I want it to be, we're going to fire up the printing presses and just start making newspapers again. Because it because that would be that was still at the end of the day if i could pick out of all if you could pick out of all of this stuff like what would you pick and i would just pick you know the daily paper that's what i would pick i would all over again i would pick that yeah
Renee:I i think that that idea of slower more thoughtful that's it's to me that's more valuable yeah it's more valuable.
Marc:And I love technology. And I'm still saying I want a paper on my doorstep because at least like that makes sense to me. Right.
Renee:Yeah. When you combine all of these sort of behaviors, whether it's mechanization, the algorithm, clicks and advertising, all of this stuff that's just kind of get it through faster, more eyes, more clicks, whatever. Like that, that trend is, is damaging to the, you know, that kind of, have you read that book, Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow?
Marc:No, it sounds great.
Renee:You should check that out. It's a good, it's a good book, but there's no incentive to think slowly. There's no incentive to think about consequence or, you know, fact. And this idea you mentioned, you know, news on the blockchain. Well, that's actually an interesting idea, right? Because, you know, you could put something that's factual on the blockchain. You could independently verify, right? And people could say, well, I believe or don't believe based on the chain of evidence that's available on the blockchain. But it would require like this, you know, not necessarily citizen investigation, but a slow thinking, right? Right. And that's like... Man, humans are just not tuned that way. Humans love the, you know, the, what was the, it's like that Simpsons episode, right? Where Bart keeps going after the cupcake, you know, zap, zap, zap, you know, right? Because like we love, we love the instant hit of the food, right? We want the dopamine hit that we want to rush every single time. And that little, that quick, that quick hit, you know, that, ooh, that little bit of, uh, that outrage. Can you believe they did that? Oh my gosh hey martha can you yeah.
Marc:Hey martha hey martha man am i pissed like that's where we're at like like you're just yelling at martha now because you're just mad about everything like
Renee:That's i think i think we have to tune that tune that you know back quite a lot we have to tune it back quite a lot all right so this would be way heavy and serious now so from stone carvings to printing presses to radio waves to television screens to algorithmic evil algorithmic feeds news is always you know but are the algorithms to blame.
Marc:Or my tiktok is nothing but candles that look like food and sugar cookies that are over decorated so those are my two favorite things to do so like tiktok for me is like like that's all it is to me and that's all i do there and i love it i love seeing what other people do i love talking to them about it like a chinese information gathering right so they know i'm really into sugar cookies i don't know what they're going to do with that information, but they know I'm into it, right?
Renee:But the news has always been shaped by the technology that carries it.
Marc:And the real question now is whether we'll build, we'll keep building systems optimized for attention or whether we'll ever design systems optimized for truth, wisdom, public good and mental health. From printing presses to push notification to AI generated reality, the technology of news has always shaped what we believe and what we fear. Until next time This is the Nostalgic Nerds Where we honor the past, side-eye the present And remain deeply suspicious of the algorithm Because we are
Renee:Alright, thanks everybody.
