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Crazy/Genius

Big questions about technology, science, and culture, hosted by The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson. On Season 3 (launching May 9): Unbreak the internet.

The Atlantic

Holy Week: The story of a revolution undone.
The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, is often recounted as a conclusion to a powerful era of civil rights in America, but how did this hero’s murder come to be the stitching used to tie together a narrative of victory? The week that followed his killing was one of the most fiery, disruptive, and revolutionary, and is nearly forgotten. Over the course of eight episodes, Holy Week brings forward the stories of the activists who turned heartbreak into action, families scorched by chaos, and politicians who worked to contain the grief. Seven days diverted the course of a social revolution and set the stage for modern clashes over voting rights, redlining, critical race theory, and the role of racial unrest in today’s post–George Floyd reckoning.
Subscribe and listen to all 8 episodes now: theatlantic.com/holyweek
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Introducing Holy Week

On The Review, The Atlantic's writers and guests discuss how we entertain ourselves and how that shapes the way we understand the world. Subscribe and enjoy!
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Presenting: The Review, a new podcast from The Atlantic

Hello Crazy/Genius listeners. We'd like to introduce you to a new show! 
In this series, host Arthur Brooks digs into research and offers tools to help you live more joyfully. Join us for deep conversations with psychologists, experts, and friends of The Atlantic's Chief Happiness Correspondent. For more info, visit www.theatlantic.com/happy, or search for How to Build a Happy Life on your podcast app.
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How To Build A Happy Life: A new podcast from The Atlantic

A new podcast from The Atlantic and WNYC Studios, The Experiment, tells stories from our unfinished country. On the first episode, host Julia Longoria tells the story of the “zone of death,” where a legal glitch could short-circuit the Constitution—a place where, technically, you could get away with murder. At a time when we’re surrounded by preventable deaths, we document one journey to avert disaster.
Listen and subscribe to The Experiment: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts
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Introducing: The Experiment

The Atlantic has launched three new podcasts this year: Social Distance, Floodlines, and The Ticket. Subscribe to keep up with Atlantic journalism.

Subscribe to Social Distance: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pocket Casts
Subscribe to Floodlines: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pocket Casts
Subscribe to The Ticket: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pocket Casts

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Introducing New Atlantic Podcasts

The numbers are staggering: thousands of titles for 160 million subscribers in 190 countries. Netflix has changed where we watch -- that's obvious. But has it also changed what we watch, and how? 
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How Has Netflix Changed Entertainment?

Algorithms pervade our lives. They determine the news we see and the products we buy. But most Americans don’t understand how they are transforming every part of the criminal justice system—from policing and bail to sentencing and parole. Could computers make the legal system more fair? Or is it inherently unjust to put a person’s life in the hands of an algorithm?
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Should We Be Afraid of AI in the Criminal Justice System?

Instagram influencers are beloved by fans and mocked by critics, but is there more to influencing than meets the eye? A look at what a growing industry can teach us about the future of life online.
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Influencers: Frauds or the Future of Online Commerce?

From Beijing to Brooklyn, facial recognition is on the cutting edge of surveillance technology. But does the threat of this tech outweigh its benefits? A look at two communities living under the microscope.
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The U.S. and China: A Tale of Two Surveillance States

From Charlottesville, Virginia, to Christchurch, New Zealand, the last few years have been filled with examples of online hatred spilling over into offline violence. How did the Web become one big media channel for the far right, and how can we make the Internet safe from extremism?
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How Did the Far Right Take Over the Web?

Young people are having less sex, and access to digital pornography has never been greater. Coincidence? In this episode, we wade into the debate over pornography and determine what, if anything, can be said about its effect on our relationships.
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What Is Pornography Doing to Our Sex Lives?

Admit it: You have no idea what privacy means anymore. These days, virtually all online activity—searching, shopping, browsing—requires giving away our personal information to tech companies. In this episode, we review the 200 year history of privacy in America and explain what the new age of “surveillance capitalism” means for all of us who have to live in it.
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Why Should We Care About Privacy?

Ten years ago, “Move fast and break things” was the clarion call of the world’s tech giants. Well, they moved fast and broke stuff, alright. Lots of stuff. Whether it’s Facebook privacy scandals, YouTube’s radicalization of the far right, or China’s brutal use of surveillance gadgetry, digital technology seems to be a relentless force for greed, bad faith, and tyranny these days. Let’s talk about it.
“Unbreak the Internet” is the theme for the third season of Crazy/Genius, The Atlantic’s podcast on tech and culture. Over the course of eight weeks, we’ll expose the surveillance states in both western China and East New York, ask if digital platforms are an accelerant for right-wing nationalism, tell you why privacy is the climate-change crisis of the internet, and more.
 The third season of Crazy/Genius returns on May 9.
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Season 3 Trailer: Unbreak the Internet

In a special bonus episode, computer scientist and data journalist Meredith Broussard explains how “technochauvinism” derailed the dream of the digital revolution.
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Tech Was Supposed to Be Society’s Great Equalizer. What Happened?

AI can beat human geniuses at Jeopardy, chess, and complex mathematics. But surely, these machines don’t have anything that even closely resembles human imagination. Or do they?
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Can Artificial Intelligence Be Smarter Than a Human Being?

Americans eat more meat now than ever. That’s a problem for the planet’s future. Animal farming takes up 30 percent of the earth’s landmass (the equivalent of Asia), and livestock causes one-sixth of global greenhouse gas emissions. We need more than moral arguments against meat. We need a technological revolution in better, cleaner food. 
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Will We Ever Stop Eating Animal Meat?

Some scientists see aging as a disease that can be cured—but what would immortality mean for humanity?
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Can We Extend Human Lifespans to 150?

Over the last 130 years, the automobile shaped the modern world—it redefined the city, filled the suburbs, and revved up pop culture. With autonomous technology, everything about our relationship to cars is about to change. Then what?
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How Will Self-Driving Cars Change the World?

Climate change could be the most important problem facing humanity. To address it, scientists are thinking seriously about an idea that might sound like something from a sci-fi dystopia: Spraying the skies with sulfuric acid to partially block out the sun.
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Should We Dim the Skies to Save the World?

Crazy/Genius is back with a new season featuring five ideas to save the world.
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Season 2 Trailer

It’s our best hope for life after earth—and a freezing, irradiated desert more than 30 million miles away. In our season finale, scientists and writers debate whether colonizing Mars is the most important mission in the history of the human race, or an absurd daydream.
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Should We Go to Mars?

“Where is everybody?” That’s the question physicist Enrico Fermi asked in 1950. Nearly 70 years later, we’re getting tantalizingly close to solving the riddle known as Fermi’s Paradox: If the universe is so large and so old, why haven't we found life on other planets?
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Why Haven’t We Found Aliens?

Since the Internet exploded journalism’s business revenue, local newsrooms around the country have been in free fall. We speak to The Denver Post's former managing editor and other experts to debate how to save the news—and, just possibly, democracy itself.
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Who Killed Local News?

Finding love on the Internet can be awkward, annoying, or downright scary. In this episode, two sociologists debate the merits of online dating and discuss their research on the history of romance in America.
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Is Online Dating Destroying Romance?

Digital devices rob us of our attention, creativity, and, some studies show, our mental health. We ask psychologists and authors if smartphone and social media usage has triggered a national health crisis — and what we can do to free ourselves from the allure of modern technology.
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Are Smartphones Ruining Our Lives?

Silicon Valley and Wall Street are obsessed with Bitcoin and its underlying technology called blockchain. Boosters say it'll fix everything from elections to shipping to identity theft. But what exactly is blockchain, how is it being used, and is the hype really worth it?
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Blockchain: The Next Internet, or the Next Beanie Baby?

Amazon might become the first trillion-dollar company in the history of the world. Has the Everything Store become a dangerous monopoly threatening the U.S. economy?
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Should We Break Up Amazon?

In the last 18 months, Facebook has gone through one of the worst public relations crises of any major tech company. In this episode, two guests debate whether Facebook is fixable, or whether its business model is designed to sell us lies. Read more here.
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Why Can’t Facebook Tell the Truth?

On Crazy/Genius, host Derek Thompson asks big questions about everything from online dating to blockchain to space exploration. Is technology moving us forward or backward? How did we get here — and where are we headed? Starting May 10.
Music by Breakmaster Cylinder.
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