How to Be a Citizen in the Information War (And Stay Sane)

On this week’s Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel opens with what it means to live in 2026, when our phones can drop us into graphic, real-time violence without warning—and when documenting that violence can be both traumatizing and politically consequential. Using recent footage out of Minneapolis as a lens, he explores the uneasy collision of algorithmic feeds, misinformation, and the moral weight of witnessing. Charlie also traces how viral documentation can puncture official narratives, pushing stories beyond political circles and into unexpectedly “apolitical” corners of the internet, even as platform-ownership shifts and suspected censorship (or outages that look like censorship) deepen public paranoia about who controls what we see. Then, Charlie is joined by Amanda Litman, a political digital strategist and the co-founder of Run for Something. They discuss how to be a good citizen in the information war without losing your mind. Specifically: In an age of algorithmic fragmentation and billionaire-owned platforms, does sharing that devastating image or news article actually accomplish anything? Or is it just performative activism? Together they explore how nonpolitical creators and everyday people can be especially persuasive messengers, and how to pair online engagement with offline activism. It’s an episode about how to stay engaged without surrendering your nervous system and how to use the internet as a tool for connection, clarity, and action, not just despair. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at theAtlantic.com/listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Speaker 01

  Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science and tech alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future. I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pescek and Anna Raffman, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute, USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  I think there's like a hesitation that some people have, especially after the last five years of like, oh, I don't just want to post and like performative activism. I don't just want to do virtue signaling. I think virtue signaling is good. I think it is good to want to show people you're a good person.

• 1:04Charlie Warzel?

  I'm Charlie Warzel, and this is Galaxy Brain. For the last few weeks, I've been obsessing over a question, the answer to which may be impossible to know. What do we do with this window we have to the world? We're living in this moment of genuine chaos, in a decade that's already been full of global conflicts, a botched insurrection, a pandemic, political dysfunction, all of that colliding on an internet full of conspiracy theorizing, synthetic AI slop, endless memes.

• 1:48Charlie Warzel?

  Our phones bring us delights and numbing distractions, but also fresh horrors every day. Maybe you, like me, woke up last week and found yourself faced with a series of auto plane videos of agents mobbing Alex Preddy in Minneapolis. Maybe you watched as an agent shot him while he lay on his knees on the street. Or maybe a few weeks ago, your phone showed you the amateur video taken from multiple angles of Renee Good's last moments before she was shot by an ICE agent at close range. Or maybe you logged on this fall and had to witness Charlie Kirk's gruesome assassination in your feed. Social media has enabled us to vicariously witness terrifying scenes, and this is especially

• 2:31Charlie Warzel?

  true in recent weeks in the Twin Cities. Sometimes, we seek them out, but other times, they find us in moments when we're especially unprepared to see them. A colleague of mine recounted checking his phone and accidentally stumbling upon an autoplay video of Preddy Saturday morning while at the aquarium with his daughter. A reality of being alive in 2026 is that you may accidentally open your phone, witness a man being shot to death, and then have to figure out how to continue on with your day. The cognitive dissonance here is extremely difficult to sit with, to say nothing of the psychological trauma of witnessing such violence. Even if you're able to stay away from the worst of it, watching armed masked agents

• 3:12Charlie Warzel?

  pulling elderly people out of their homes in the cold, or detaining young children, that takes a toll, especially when you close your device and you find yourself back in your own life. The world feels on fire, and your life is just moving on. It can feel alienating, and it can make a person feel so angry, sad, and ultimately powerless. And yet, the power of this kind of documentation, the kind that's being performed by observers in Minnesota every day who are risking their lives to film clashes between agents and protesters, that cannot be understated. Preddy's last seconds were captured from multiple angles in sickening footage that

• 3:54Charlie Warzel?

  was widely distributed on social media and news organizations. It is able, though, to be seen and dissected online precisely because of the observers who were there to document it, who did not drop their phones when the gunshots rang out, and who kept recording when federal agents piled atop Preddy. All of it has had an immediate effect. Encountering the administration's smears that Preddy was a "would-be assassin" and "tried to murder federal law enforcement," the news and the footage of Preddy's death managed to break through the usual informational chaos. On Reddit, and Instagram, and Facebook pages, the videos of Preddy's last moments appear to have galvanized people who don't normally engage or post about politics at all. You have sports meme pages and golf influencers,

• 4:39Charlie Warzel?

  the climbing subreddit, knitting accounts, not say for work pages. I mean, even a Facebook page as apolitical as the gravestones of New England was calling out ICE's excessive force in the aftermath. Something has changed. All of this underscores that if the truth is ever going to win out over propaganda, it can only do so in the face of overwhelming evidence, the collection of which has become ever more treacherous in the second year of Trump's second presidency. You can understand the power of documentation and of witnessing, but you can also struggle with how to consume it all yourself. I'm reminded of this great sobering essay by the New York Times writer Amanda Hess.

• 5:24Charlie Warzel?

  It's about witnessing sensitive content videos on Instagram from the conflict in Gaza. This wrenching series of videos and photos of dead children, all on an app dominated by ads and influencers and algorithmically chosen photos of friends doing fun stuff. Of that, she wrote, "Sometimes when I tap on a post from a journalist in Gaza, Instagram suggests next steps. Are you sure you want to see this video?" it asks. It tries to point me instead to resources for coping with sensitive topics. It suggests a crisis hotline for disaster survivors and responders. But I am not a survivor or a responder. I am a witness or a voyeur. The distress I am feeling is shame."

• 6:07Charlie Warzel?

  What Hess is getting at here in part is how what we might witness on our devices isn't just traumatizing or radicalizing, but it's also linked explicitly to the specific platforms that serve this content up to us. And these platforms are incredibly fraught curators. Many of them are owned by billionaires with their own political agendas. For example, late last week, TikTok finalized the sale of its US operations to an American investor group, and that includes, among others, Oracle, the private equity firm Silverlake, and the investment firm MGX. Now, this became relevant over the weekend when Preddy was killed because influencers attempted to upload videos to the platform criticizing ICE, and some found that they couldn't do that.

• 6:49Charlie Warzel?

  Others got the videos up but noticed they'd received zero views, and that was very suspect. So many of them naturally took to social media to express their outrage. They said that they'd been censored by the new leadership. Quote, "With Larry Ellison's takeover, TikTok is already silencing voices on the left in anti-Ice, anti-Trump content." That was what the popular podcast I've had it posted on X Monday morning. And so this is just a perfect encapsulation of this moment, right? TikTok noted that it had suffered a data center outage and that user uploads and views had been affected. The transfer of ownership from ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, to the US ownership group, paired with a data center outage, might mess with the platform.

• 7:33Charlie Warzel?

  That's an entirely plausible scenario. There's also the fact that non-political content on the platform, like posts from the NFL's primary account, also showed zero views on Monday, which suggests a broader issue here. But others just refuse to believe that. The only thing in this that is clear right now is that there are so many people who are extremely and understandably wary of TikTok's ownership and seem to assume at all times that somebody's thumbs are on the scales. All of this makes the job of being an informed citizen just tortured. Do you stare at the misery machine? If so, how much? What do you take from it? Is the misery machine real life? Is it not real life?

• 8:15Charlie Warzel?

  Don't be a doomer, they say, but also don't underreact. The truth out there is probably as bad, maybe even worse than you think. But if you remove yourself from it all, it's easy to slip back into something that is like complacency. It is crucial to pay attention right now. It's also crucial not to lose resolve, or get sucked in, or traumatize yourself. There's a real world out there. Touch grass, people say. The real world is likely full of people around you who tether you to your community, people you love and who love you. But the trauma in our screens, that is also the real world. So what are we supposed to do with this window to the world? It is such an unanswerable and essential question right now.

• 9:00Charlie Warzel?

  Sometimes it seems like this window has only made people grow apart, more callous, more self-interested, more addled. And yet, that very same window often shows us that people are good and decent, and that they care about each other and organize and have these huge reservoirs of empathy. We've seen that in Minnesota this month. So with all that, how should you or I, how should we all think about posting and consuming and being a good citizen in the information war? To answer that, I spoke with Amanda Litman. She's the co-founder and president of Run for Something, which is an organization that recruits and supports young and diverse progressive candidates running for down-ballot office.

• 9:43Charlie Warzel?

  She's the author of multiple books, including When We're in Charge: The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership. And most recently, she's been writing on her Substack about the ways that people and politicians can calibrate themselves to the internet, to feel some agency and make a difference in the world. She joins me now to talk about it all. But first, a quick break.

• 10:06Speaker 00

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• 10:39Speaker 01

  Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science, and tech, alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future? I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pescek and Anna Raffman, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute, USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 11:18Charlie Warzel?

  Amanda, welcome to Galaxy Brain.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 11:21Charlie Warzel?

  So you've been in politics a while as an organizer, a digital strategist. And I get the sense from following you online that you have, you're a pretty online person. And that you've been closely following what's been happening in Minnesota online. And so I want to start by getting a sense from you of what you've witnessed these past three weeks. What the experience has been like watching this. But then also what you've been seeing in terms of the broad effect of other people watching this collectively.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  It's been so interesting because my algorithm very clearly knows who I am. I, it knows I like politics, it knows I work in politics, it knows I'm a mom. Like it, it's nice to feel seen in some ways.

• 12:06Charlie Warzel?

  By big tech.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  By big tech, you know, recognition is recognition. But the people I follow are broadly speaking, people who work in politics for the most part, or people I've met in the political circle. Those folks have been tuned in since the beginning. What I have noticed over the last three weeks, both on the folks I follow from like other parts of my life, but also from the cultural creators, especially from like the parenting creators, from the book people, from the romance writers, like from the other parts of my life that are not politics. And I think this has been true across the internet is people feeling like the shooting of Alex Preddy is the last straw. That this is the thing where you cannot stay silent. And it has felt so reminiscent of 2020 in that way.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  We're just like, in that there is a tipping point where the, the conversation cannot continue as normal in a way that I have found shocking, to be honest.

• 13:02Charlie Warzel?

  Yeah, it's, it's really wild to, to see it. I've seen it too, and I think a lot of people have remarked on this. I, I like in my. Other life, I like to play golf. And so I follow a lot of like people who are like golf influencers or whatever, or like my algorithm gives me people like that. And that is usually a pretty like we're staying out of politics crew of people, you know? And there are like, there was one image I posted online of a golf influencer. He's just like out of driving rage, just like hitting a shot. And he's like, this normally wouldn't be a political account, but golf is political because you can't play it if you get shot by an agent of the state in the street. And it was like, this moment for me of like, this has bled through in a, in a, in a really, really shocking way.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  It, it does, it feels like the conversation has shifted from it being a thing that political people are talking about to a thing that everyone is talking about in a way that doesn't feel like it's happened, honestly, since Jimmy Kimmel was fired, which feels like the last big cultural moment that sort of broke through in, at least even the online space.

• 14:06Charlie Warzel?

  And so, so you wrote this piece, this is one of the reasons I want, I want to talk to you today, about the politics of posting and, and this idea of what we do on these platforms, whether it matters. But I, I think in the, this is a great context for this idea that there has been this shift. And you wrote it, I think, before Alex Preddy was shot, a day or two before. And you started the piece by describing seeing this now famous photo of this five-year-old boy who was detained by ICE. In the image, he's wearing this little backpack and this hat. And it's an extremely, I think, difficult thing for anyone to see, but especially a lot of parents. It really broke through online. And you talked about posting that image yourself on your own platforms in

• 14:51Charlie Warzel?

  order to, you know, put some pressure on ICE or raise awareness here. And then you wrote, but did my posting, or any of our posting on the platform, do anything to further that effect?

• 15:03Charlie Warzel?

  Walk me through your process there, did it?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yes and no. I, I'm not sure if I actually wrote this, but I have come full circle here. I used to be back in my digital strategist, strategist days. So when I worked for the Obama campaign in 2012, that was my first job out of college. I was doing online fundraising. I then did digital strategy for the governor's race and then did online fundraising for Hillary. I was like kind of maybe counterintuitively, like posting doesn't matter. It is important in that it is like participatory, but it doesn't change things. It alone, it's like, it's not enough. You can't just post and be like, great, job done. Over the last now 10 years of the work I've done and seeing how things have shifted, I have moved my barometer for success a little bit.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  I think in this moment, as you have written so much about, there is no singular media source. Like, everyone is getting a slightly different algorithm, a slightly different fractured media diet. They're seeing something a little bit different. So if I post the picture of Liam Ramos, or the headlines from the Minneapolis paper, it might be the only thing that someone sees about that story if they follow me. Even though it feels like my entire newsfeed is 100% that, it might be the only thing. And there's actually some really interesting research about this, that I think Wired wrote about in December, how political content posted by non-political creators has more

• 16:29Speaker 02

  influence than political creators doing it. Like, it does more to move people to the left, in part because of the parasocial relationship that people have with folks who are talking about golf, or parenting, or books, or whatever it might be. And like, I'm not a creator, you're not a creator, we're not influencers in that same way, although maybe we are, which is a separate conversation. But that idea that, you know, you as a trusted source for your friends, your family, they know you, they know where you're coming from, seeing you speak up about it, you in the broad sense, that can be really, really powerful. And it takes the place of like, having a conversation in person that most people are a little bit too afraid to have these days.

• 17:07Charlie Warzel?

  Well, I mean, it's such a great point about the influencer thing. When you look at, I think this is something, and we can get into this a little later down the line, but when you think about how different ideologies have harnessed the media, like, there was this whole long conversation after the 2024 election of who is the Joe Rogan of the left, right? And the smartest people on this subject who study this type of stuff, who really understand these dynamics, all said, "You can't create that because Joe Rogan is a guy who's a stand-up comedian, who started a podcast about stand-up comedy, where he interviewed comedians, then got into mixed martial arts, and did that, and built this huge audience that like, loved and trusted him, for whatever reason, and then he started

• 17:50Charlie Warzel?

  to get interested in like, conspiracy theories, and then politics." And like, all of the work that you do for a decade of like, building that trust in that audience. When you do turn on the the politics jet, like, as you said, it's like, oh, this is such a powerful source for people who have that relationship with them. And I think that it's really interesting to think about with our social feeds, this happening in a very, you know, one to one, very kind of community level aspect. I think that's really, really smart.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Well, and I think there's like a hesitation that some people have, especially after the last five years of like, oh, I don't just want to post like performative activism. I don't just want to do virtue signaling. I think virtue signaling is good. I think it is good to want to show people you're a good person. Like, I, and I write this, like, it feels a little self righteous. It can be a little bit annoying, but like, one, the the right has tried to make vice signaling very cool. They have tried to make being an asshole and a bigot and like a piece of shit on the internet, the hot, cool thing, and shame you if you're a good person. I think that's dumb. We should be proud of being of doing good things and it should be okay to post things that signal your values. And I will tell you, as somebody who runs a nonprofit, like, if you're making the donation so that

• 19:04Speaker 02

  you get the receipt to share, I don't care. That money spends all the same. Like, it doesn't matter why you're doing it, as long as you are doing it and actually taking action in a meaningful way that that moves the needle forward.

• 19:16Charlie Warzel?

  You, you write that it could also be a way to find your people. I think a lot of people don't believe that. But can you, can you give the case for, you know, finding community through some of these platforms and networks?

• 19:30Speaker 02

  I mean, it's hard for me personally to articulate this because everyone knows I work in politics. This is my life. But I hear this from the people who engage with this material all the time, which is like, it's so validating to see someone say something or post something you agree with in a way that might surprise you. Like, I didn't know that writer felt that way. I didn't know that creator felt that way. And especially for like people in real life, like, oh, I didn't know that fellow parent at school that I only follow because like we see each other at the playground every so often, feel similarly. Now we can have a conversation. Now, maybe next time I want to volunteer on a campaign, I could reach out to them. You know, it often can feel either like, you know, screaming into the void or preaching to the choir. But at least

• 20:14Speaker 02

  when it comes to preaching to the choir, like you might reach someone who just didn't feel like they could sing loud enough and you might encourage them to speak up. And it feels, it's like feels so cringey to say out loud. It really does. And I get that. But in this moment, especially with the propaganda war that the government is trying to instill, it really, really matters that there's a different kind of dispersion of information.

• 20:36Charlie Warzel?

  I think the, there's something to the, the, the cringey thing. Like, I, I've heard other people say this, so this is not like a deeply original thought, but like the, I, I think broadly speaking, it's like, the whole idea of cringe is, is really, I think, toxic. Like, the idea of labeling everything as this, like, like, in the same way, it's like virtue signaling is good when the world is full of this vice signaling, signaling. When there is like a terminal irony that like is basically poisoning all these different platforms and, and you know, that are, are the, the White House posts, you know, like they're a, a, a 4chan moderator or something like that. I feel like, like

• 21:19Charlie Warzel?

  cringe is good. Like, like, like, bring, bring us some cringe, right? Because it basically just means like you care a lot. And I think that that is something that, uh, I, I would like to see more people not be afraid to, to show that they're caring in that way.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Um, Rachel Carton had a thing, I think it was last week about like the Mr. Rogers vacation of marketing this year, of how more and more brands and, uh, marketing are moving into like Mr. Rogers vibes in their social media and like leaning into this idea of like kindness and hope. And I have been thinking about this a lot, you speak, even in 2025, like my hottest take is I think that the Democratic nominee in 2028 is going Be whoever can appropriately balance, fight like hell, like kindness and joy. You I don't know if you ever see that meme that's like the people yearn for glee. They just want glee to be on. We want that glee joy, you know, like the the television show.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  There is something real to that. It is nice to see nice things like fear and rage. It just it burns you out. Whereas when you reminder that like people care and they believe that better things are possible. It makes you feel like you can get out of bed in the morning.

• 22:33Charlie Warzel?

  Do you not to put you on the spot, but are there good examples of like brands or whatever that that have that have done this? Successfully pivoting to the uh to the cringe slightly or the or the Mr. Mr. Rogers vacation.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  OK, so I'm gonna quote from Rachel Carton's newsletter because I thought it was like it really spoke to me. And she talks about like a Nurses Week video from FIG. She talks about Elmo just checking in. How's everybody doing? There's a post from Willie Cavaria, who's a fashion designer, like leaning into the sort of joy that people are experiencing.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  I think you see this a lot with content creators in particular, like talking about the the beautiful things in their life, like the aesthetics of happiness feel really engaging.

• 23:23Charlie Warzel?

  And I I you know, that that that speaks a little though to the the the tension here, right? Of like I I know a lot of people who like I know somebody, a friend, who's just happens to be. They planned their one vacation for the year, you know, a a year ago. And it just happens to be during this time in American life that is just like like awful and very chaotic and feels just like, you know, something has has shifted and changed. And there's this, I think everyone makes all these different calculations of like, do I do I do I post a photo of the beach? Like, am I a bad person if I'm doing this? And I think it's interesting to think of it from this lens, right? Of no, there's a way of like.

• 24:04Charlie Warzel?

  You don't want to say like, oh, the world just goes on, right? But there is this way of thinking that, you know, sharing in joy and, and, and I, I don't know. There, there's a way that you can, you can create community that feels a little generative as opposed to the, the constant like soul sucking nature of like, we, we are on the brink, you know?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  And like, not to bring everything in, um, social media and politics factors or on Mamdani, but I do think this is something Mamdani did so, so well, which was that his stuff was joyful. Like it was

• 24:36Charlie Warzel?

  Right.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  heavily layered with millennial optimism and a little bit of cringe in a way that like really especially spoken opposition to the way that Cuomo or anyone else was campaigning. If you believe that better things are possible and you, you are inherently an optimist, because I think in participate in activism, you have to be a little bit of an optimist, even if you hate that about yourself. It is, it's contagious because it's like, what gives you the forward momentum to keep doing the work? So I, I know I had a friend who was doing that too. She was like, I just was surfing in Costa Rica and the world is falling apart. Can I post? I was like, yeah, of course you can, because the next day you'll be back, you know, donating and marching and doing what you can, post away.

• 25:19Charlie Warzel?

  Or shoveling snow.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:21Charlie Warzel?

  Doom scrolling, yeah. I, I wanted, I wanted to ask broadly, like we've touched on this in, in a lot of ways, but something that I have thought so much about and, and to be like very candid, like agonized about for the last decade is what do we do with this window to the world that we have? Right? I think whether it's seeing, you know, atrocities abroad as, as we have for, for, for so long, or the dysfunction here at home, like that, you know, there is a, there's a feeling right now that like part of just being alive today is like being confronted with auto playing videos of people being shot to death, you know?

• 26:03Charlie Warzel?

  It is, and, and that's something that I think is beyond just being hyper online. Like it is just a, if you are in these spaces at all, you, you may be confronted with, with like fresh, genuine horrors that if you open yourself to them fully, it, it's easy to shut down or to feel just so alienated because you are going throughout your day in the way that you are. I'm curious how you think about how we bear witness, how we think about showing and sharing these things with people because they're they matter to us? And how not to get demoralized in doing so.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  One of my generables of them for online content conception, especially as it relates to the news, is to only take the poison I have the antidote for. So like,

• 26:55Charlie Warzel?

  I love that.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  I can't always do this, but generally speaking, like, that means that there are huge parts of the things happening in the world that I just like I scroll past. I just I can't. There's nothing I can do about that. That doesn't mean it's not important. That doesn't mean it doesn't matter. It's just the things that I have chosen to dedicate my life and my career and my work to and my personal outside of work interest to are not that. Now, the things that I have, like what is happening in Minneapolis, like what's happening in the United States, like what's happening with Trump, you know, like what's happening in New York City where I live. Yeah, I'm diving deep, but you know what? That's because I can do something about it. Whether that's voting in an election, giving money, subscribing to media, like thinking about all the different sort of things I could do that affect it.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Pick the poison I've got the antidote for. I think the key is remembering that like the antidotes, to extend the metaphor a little bit, are more varied than you might think. Like I was talking to someone who was telling me they felt so hopeless about what was happening in Minneapolis. They're like, there's nothing I can do. This person was like, I've worked in politics, worked facilitator, whatever. There's so hard, but there's nothing I can do. It's like, you live in DC. There's a DC mayoral election in the upcoming year. It actually is going to be really, really, really important who the DC mayor is because this shit is going to come back to your city soon enough. Like dedicate all of your energy to that. And that, while it might not feel like a direct solution to what's happening in Minneapolis, that is a solution and it's a concrete thing you could do.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  It's a thing you could show up in person for. It's a thing you'll be able to live the results of. Like be expansive in what your idea of antidote is and it allows you, I think, a little bit more. Possibility.

• 28:37Charlie Warzel?

  We're talking a lot about the personal, political, media consumption, how to be online as a person. We've also touched, but I want to go deeper on the idea of politicians and being online. You've written about, a lot about leadership, especially in younger generations, about ways that, that people can leverage these platforms to connect, to get messages out, to, but also to, to inspire people to, to affect actual political change. And something that, that I feel, and I think a lot of people feel, is that there are really just, especially

• 29:20Charlie Warzel?

  when you look at, say, our politicians, they're, they fall into two camps. They're either like, hyper online, really cocooned, troubling, kind of like, edgelords. Or you have people who are kind of thinking and regarding the internet on dial-up terms, right? You've said that, you know, we need to find elected officials who are the right amount of online. Like, what is the right amount of online for an elected official?

• 29:48Speaker 02

  So I think it's folks who are enough of a consumer that they can be a producer without the brain rot. Like, J.D. Vance has brain rot. Trump has brain rot. Like, they're, they're so online that they're unable to see that it is an ecosystem, an echo chamber that they cannot get out of. Like, they are, they're sucked into it. And I think there's actually a lot of, you know, Republican electeds, candidly, who, whether it's Twitter or Fox News, same idea, like, there's not some secret source of information. They're doing the same shit. We saw that in the photo from the Venezuela attack, or coup, I guess, where they're like scrolling Twitter as they're, you know, kidnapping dictators.

• 30:31Charlie Warzel?

  Right. This is the sort of, the, not Situation Room, but the Mar-a-Lago Command Center during the Venezuela raid, where they are...

• 30:39Charlie Warzel?

  Conducting an operation and P tag Seth has a screen behind him that is showing a Twitter feed, an X feed.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  That is too online. And then you, as you say, like the politicians who clearly have no idea how the internet works. They don't understand. They don't know the language of like a forward facing video. So they can't do it in a way that feels genuine or authentic, which means they can't communicate in this moment. And that is 80% of a politician's job is communication. And if they can't do it in the way that works for 2026, they can't be a good politician right now. You've got some politician, I think, like AOC, Maxwell Frost, I actually think Chris Murphy and Brian Schatz. It's not all younger, but it's a lot like the ones who are online enough that they know how to use the tools, even if they don't actually know how to like edit the video themselves, while still understanding that

• 31:27Speaker 02

  the internet is not real life, but it is a huge part of real life for a ton of people. And it is how people understand real life. Like it's a mediation. It's a mediation. Yeah, mediation for how people understand real life.

• 31:38Charlie Warzel?

  What makes, when you see something good from, from a politician, like a, like a piece of, of content that they've produced, or like a, a response, what are some of the flavors of that? Like, what is like a taxonomy of like a good response or a good, you know, post from, from an elected official? Like, how, how does it work?

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Does it feel like it credibly could have come from them? Like, do I buy that this is a thing that even if they're like, you know, I said, like their Zoomer digital staffer told them, hey, this is a thing you should have, you should make, we're gonna edit it? Does it feel like it credibly have come from them? Does it feel like they're responding to a post that they probably could have seen? Does it look like they're copy pasting talking points they've been emailed, which you see politicians often do, and then forget to delete the like copy paste notes on top of, which is such a flag. And I think like, how much did their staff have to explain to them the format, the function, how it works? One of my favorite questions to ask politicians of any age, but especially the older ones, like, tell me about what side of the internet you're on. Like, what side

• 32:43Speaker 02

  of TikTok are you on? What Reddit subreddits are you in? What are you on Pinterest? Are you on, you know, some Ravel or if you're a knitter? I don't know. Like, tell me about the internet that you're on. And the ones who don't even understand the question are the ones who are not well suited for this moment.

• 32:59Charlie Warzel?

  It's interesting. I once asked, I had an opportunity. Via the New York Times editorial board to interview Bernie Sanders. And my job was to ask him a tech question. And I was just like, show me some of the apps on your phone. And he just yelled at me and said he doesn't have any. And yet somehow that works, right? Like somehow there are some people, because he is authentic to that, like, hey, man, like, miss me with all of this.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  He doesn't do, but you can tell the ones who are actually really good at it, don't do meme-y stuff. Like, they're not making memes. They're being like genuine, personal communicators who maybe are like using different formats and functions. But I think part of it is they so clearly know themselves and know what they believe. That the question becomes like, what tactics am I using to communicate it? As opposed to which memes am I jumping on to become trendy?

• 33:48Charlie Warzel?

  This is what I noticed about, and other people pointed this out about Mom Donnie. And again, like, politics aside, like, what was so... And also even beyond the like, the joy part of it aside, what I thought was so interesting as a, from a media perspective, about some of his videos, especially the first ones that he did when he was out in Queens on the street, was he was taking a very popular online form of content, which is the man on the street, asking random people with a microphone in their face, some kind of question, right? And then that getting chopped up and put online. Like, that's how we found Hawk to a girl who became like the, you know, that's like the other side of it. But he was just asking these questions about like, why did you vote for Donald Trump in 2024? Right?

• 34:34Charlie Warzel?

  And having that man on the street thing. But it's that, that fluency with a type of content that people are familiar with, but is also a type of content that you can do in your own way, that is not going to, or that is going to then spread naturally, right? Because like, the internet is primed to take that type of content and just like, get it out to a lot of different people. I thought that was a really great example of like, of pairing form, regardless of even the politics, with something that's, that is actually gonna spread.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Well, and that's because he's the right amount of online. Like, that's a dude that has an FYP that is carefully calculated to his interests. Whether, and he's talked about this, and I think that is telling of like, a guy who at the very least, knows the language. Like, he can speak enough of it that he can get by. And I think that is true for so many of the politicians who are really effective in this moment, is they're good enough. They've done like enough days on Duolingo to get by.

• 35:32Charlie Warzel?

  They're not being, they're not being guilted by the Duolingo owl logo. That's very important, I think, in general. So if you could give, if you could give advice, and I'm sure you are, but if you could give advice to like the Democrats right now, and that's even just like in choosing candidates, like, how important is that part of it, like the online strategy in assessing overall, like, whether a candidate's going to be good? Obviously, you don't want a candidate who's just like, you know, hyper online and great at it and, you know, not good at the retail politicking

• 36:13Charlie Warzel?

  or whatever, but how do you, when, how should they judge that, that category of being online?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  I don't want to say it's everything, but I think it is a bigger part than most people would like to admit because I think it's how, one, it's how people get information. But two is like, we've learned with Joe Biden, if you cannot effectively sell the good stuff you're doing, it doesn't matter how good this stuff is. Like, you've got to be able to continually communicate in all the ways people get information, in all of the platforms. And part of that is like, yeah, being sufficiently online, but it's also being a normal person who can show up in non-political spaces and still be a normal person. Like, I think a lot about how many members of Congress could credibly go on basically any non-political podcast, chat show, influencer, and not sound like a robot. Maybe it doesn't, if you're

• 37:05Speaker 02

  being generous, which doesn't mean they're bad people or bad politicians or bad legislators. It just means that like, the skill set for what you need to be an effective leader in 2026 is not the same skill set that you needed in 1990, or 2000, or even 2010, when a lot of these folks got elected. And I think it's, it's the same thing that like, you're seeing CEOs struggle with too, where if you are too online as a CEO, you will suffer. But if you're not online enough, like, you're not going to know how to perpetuate the brand, you're not going to even know how to sell the work, you're not going to know even like, how to influence internal communication, which is driven off of external communication in many ways. Like, it really matters.

• 37:44Charlie Warzel?

  Something that I really appreciate about your writing on this entire subject is always that it draws back to I R L, right? It's always focused in the idea of actual civic engagement, actual community. The stuff that we do online driving change in the real world. You've written about things that you've written like a long list in one of your sub stacks of just things that people can do. Some of it is political, some of it is civic engagement, relationship building. Can you tell me some of the things that you have found most helpful there in just building community and giving people just a broader sense of agency?

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Go to a city council or school board or library board meeting. Go to a state legislative hearing. Go to a neighborhood cleanup. Stock your neighborhood fridge, if it has a free fridge. Participate in mutual aid. Support a local artist. Buy something from a local artist. Share the thing that you bought online so that more people can buy things from that local artist. Subscribe to local media. Bring a dish to someone who just had a baby or lost a loved one or just because. Start a neighborhood group chat. Sustain the neighborhood group chat and make sure it's not that annoying. You know, my favorite one, and I've written about this a lot. It's sort of like the other thing that I've been clinging to this year is-

• 39:05Charlie Warzel?

  I think I was gonna ask you about this one.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:07Charlie Warzel?

  This is your experiment?

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:10Charlie Warzel?

  Tell the people.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  So tell the people. So in 2025, and I've written about this a bunch and talked about a bunch lately. My husband and I, in order to combat our new parent isolation, decided to host people for dinner every Saturday in 2025. Every Saturday we were in town, which since we had a, we started the year, a two-year-old and a two-month-old was every Saturday because we didn't travel with them. And we ended up succeeding. We had 52 dinners. More than 100 some odd people came to our home over the year and 40 some odd kids. And it was hard in many cases, but so magical. And as I think about like, okay, what happens when ICE comes to New York? What happens? Which they will, they are, they are, I see it in the neighborhood chats already. Like when they sent tanks rolling down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Not a crazy thing to say might happen at some point in the next couple of years.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Who are the people that I'm gonna text? Who are the people I'm gonna turn to? It's the folks who've come over to my home for dinner and their friends and their networks. Like, I I described it as like the most political thing I did in 2025. And I am a political operative who voted in two different elections in 2025. Thank you, New York City, and give money and read and engage. Having people over for dinner was the most political thing I did. And as I read about what's happening in Minneapolis, I feel even more affirmed in that that like building strong relationships with the people around you is what will get us through this.

• 40:34Charlie Warzel?

  What did you learn about about being social in 2025, 2026? You know, this era where people do feel really isolated a lot. There is a, you know, a quote unquote loneliness epidemic, however you want to describe it. What what what did you learn about being being social from from having 52 dinners at your house?

• 40:56Speaker 02

  One, that it really surprised people to be invited over. Like, like, people were like shocked that we were inviting them into our home. Two, that the tone that we set really mattered. Like, how casual could we make it? I'd often text people morning of to be like, hey, just FYI. One of my children is not wearing pants and I'm still in my pajamas. See you later.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Like, being really aggressive about making it clear, like, this is not fancy. This is this is as real as it can get because it's all I can say, all we can do at this stage in our lives. But come into our home anyway. I will say some of the questions that I've gotten since I've written about this and posted about it is always be posting is like, really have stunned me. People would ask, like, so what did you talk about? The books, movies, vacations, our kids, the the dog, all kinds of things. But I do think like that that that's social muscle. And I don't mean to embarrass anyone by saying that's a real question. Like, that social muscle has so clearly atrophied. And you so deeply overthink it to the point that you have, like, forgotten that actually you can just let go.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Not to like Mel Robbins you, but like you can just, just like let him, just let it go.

• 42:05Charlie Warzel?

  Yeah, I, I love, I, I am probably butchering it, but I, I believe it's, it's like a, it's a Vonnegut quote, but it's, I think it's like the, the humans were put on this earth to like, to fart around is, is the quote, right? And it's like, I think about that, I thought about that when I read your post and I think about it sometimes when I am out with, with my community, engaging in whatever. And a lot of that time is like, it's, it's not structured, right? It's not like, here's the list of what we're going to talk about today and the eight political actions we're going to take and the 12 things, you know, it's like, it, I almost sometimes can't remember what we talked about, right? But it's this, you leave with this feeling of like,

• 42:47Charlie Warzel?

  that was so great and unproductive, eh, be, because it was unproductive. It's, it's like a wonderful thing. And it feels like it's something that, that we just like, we need to have is that just that unstructured hang.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  And like, it's really hard to be on your phone when it's just like four or six people in your house, hanging out and having dinner, drinking wine, whatever it might be, which I think is also a big part of this is like, it's two or three hours in which I am not on the internet. And I wish that was more of my life. I wish I was better about not being on my phone, but like, especially when people are over, it is so valuable to unplug.

• 43:23Charlie Warzel?

  Well, I think we will let people unplug by wrapping this.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Excellent.

• 43:29Charlie Warzel?

  Amanda, thank you. I'm trying. And this is new, it's still new to me here. Uh, we're, we're, we're working on it, but, um, Amanda, this, this is lovely. I thank you so much for helping people try to understand how to, how to use these, these tools to, to feel like, like a person in the world instead of like, uh, you know, being tossed by the algorithm that wins. So, well, thank you so much.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  It's my pleasure. And I, I would just say like, I know it feels bad, but like, the, the, we're winning, like we're going to win. I think that's the, that's the thing I've taken away from the last even couple of days of the internet is like, oh, they're not popular. What they're doing is not popular. They're getting cat bongo Reddit sub threads to like vocally disagree with them. They are not popular. This is terrible, but we will win. And I find that to be really comforting.

• 44:17Charlie Warzel?

  Amanda, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

• 44:25Speaker 00

  If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait and AI noise. Thanks, social media. That's where Inpress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity. Ditch the echo chamber for reality with Inpress. Download it today for iOS or Android at Inpress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science and tech alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future. I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pechek and Anna Rattman, Executive Director of the Jane Goodall Institute, USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 45:30Charlie Warzel?

  That's it for us here. Thank you again to my guest, Amanda Littman. If you liked what you saw here, new episodes of Galaxy Brain drop every Friday. You can subscribe to the Atlantic's YouTube channel, or to Apple, or Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you want to support the work that I'm doing and the work that all of my colleagues at The Atlantic are doing, you can subscribe to the publication at theatlantic.com/listener. That's theatlantic.com/listener. Thanks so much, and I'll see you on the internet.

• 46:10Charlie Warzel?

  This episode of Galaxy Brain was produced by Nathaniel Frum and edited by Claudina Bade. It was engineered by Dave Grine. Our theme music is by Rob Smersiak. Claudina Bade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait and AI noise. Think social media. That's where InPress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity. Ditch the echo chamber for reality with InPress. Download it today for iOS or Android at inpress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.