Welcome to In Reality—the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media with Eric Schurenberg, long-time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

Here is the question of our information-saturated age: Why, when they have access to more information than ever in history, do so many people believe things that are demonstrably untrue? This is not just the gullible, not just “those people”—but also all of us who pride ourselves on thinking clearly.

Today’s guest has spent his career trying to answer that question. David Robert Grimes earned his PhD as a physicist, but switched over to public health and is now an assistant professor at Trinity College School of Medicine in Dublin Ireland. But it’s his parallel career—as a science journalist and author—that brings him to In Reality.

His book Good Thinking—published in the UK as The Irrational Ape—is one of the most readable guides at explaining why human reasoning fails us. In 2014 he won the John Maddox Prize for standing up for science in the face of adversity. In Grimes’ case, that included death threats and campaigns to have him fired from his university post. He kept writing anyway.

In Grimes’ view the barrier is the cognitive architecture we all share—the confirmation biases, the motivated reasoning, the deep human need to protect our identity even at the cost of the truth. In this conversation we’ll dig into why people believe what they believe, what even the most respected journalism institutions get wrong, what AI means for the information ecosystem—and what we can do about it.

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com

It’s pretty much a cliché to say that Americans live in two separate political realities. We shout at each other from our separate bunkers, unable to agree even on basic facts. One coping strategy—and maybe the default, given human nature—is to hunker down with our own tribe and demonize the other. But there are more constructive ways, and today’s guest makes a living examining those alternatives. He’s Jonathan Stray, senior scientist at University of California Berkeley’s Center for Human-Compatible AI and the creator of the excellent newsletter Better Conflict Bulletin.

Jonathan studies the growing field of peace-building—that is, helping people from different factions work together. He’s involved in research about AI primed to unite people rather than divide them. Some things we learn from this conversation: About a journalistic standard called multi-partiality, a more attainable goal than impartiality. About how you might construct an algorithm that prioritizes reliable news over popular news. And why, despite the state of discord right now, there are reasons to be optimistic.

Faithful listeners might recognize that we recorded this podcast about a year ago, but its relevance has only increased. We're re-posting this the day after the most divisive state of the union address Eric has ever heard. This administration will not last forever, and we will as a country need to find our way back to working together. And we can really use some of Jonathan’s optimism about our ability to do that.

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media with Eric Schurenberg, founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

On In Reality, we spend most of our time on the media environment in the US. But information integrity is also under assault in Europe, where Russian propaganda efforts are, if anything, more pervasive than here. For example, late last year, Russia hit Poland with a wave of AI generated TikTok videos featuring attractive, but deep faked young women arguing that Poland should exit the EU...

At last year's World Economic Forum in Davos, delegates named misinformation the leading threat to political cohesion and social trust. So hence today's guest, John O'Brennan, professor of European politics at Ireland's Maynooth University.

John and Eric cover the information environment on his side of the Atlantic. They talk about the perverse incentives that have aligned big tech with the pollution of the information environment. We'll pivot to the role of media illiteracy and illiteracy in general in the erosion of social trust. As

we recorded this, the 2026 Davos Conference was unfolding against the inconceivable backdrop of the President of the United States, demanding his allies hand over Greenland. So they cover that too...

Website - free episode transcripts
www.in-reality.fm

Alliance for Trust in Media
alliancefortrust.com

Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
soundsapien.com