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The Chaos Machine: How Social Media Rewired Our Brains and Our World — The Rich Roll Podcast #703

Sep 2022 🇺🇸 The Rich Roll Podcast

In this two-hour-plus episode of The Rich Roll Podcast, Max Fisher discusses the reporting behind The Chaos Machine: how he came to cover social media as an international-affairs story, the ways he argues algorithmic feeds are associated with shifts in users' moral judgments and tolerance for outrage, and research he cites linking recommendation systems to greater acceptance of misinformation and, in volatile settings, susceptibility to violence. Fisher describes engagement-driven design as functioning like a habit-forming product, and the conversation closes with practical strategies for reducing exposure — from disabling algorithmic feeds to muting engagement metrics. TechKids Foundation includes this episode because it pairs Fisher's investigative findings with the kind of concrete, family-usable mitigation steps the library's solutions tag exists to surface.

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Fisher, Max, interviewed by Rich Roll. "The Chaos Machine: How Social Media Rewired Our Brains and Our World." The Rich Roll Podcast, episode 703, September 12, 2022. https://richroll.com/podcast/max-fisher-703/

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