Show Notes
The tech pioneers were right: all this connectivity and sharing is creating a new age of freedom and democracy. A global consciousness. Arab Spring, Barack Obama – both fuelled by social media - make the possibilities feel limitless. But, just as the dream to connect everyone is being realised - at the height of technological optimism - everything starts to fall apart. Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound Designer: Eloise Whitmore Mix: Gav Murchie Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Executive Producer: Peter McManus + Heather Kane-Darling Research: Rachael Fulton, Elizabeth Ann Duffy and Juliet Conway Commissioned by Dan Clarke Archive: C-NET Jan 2007; The Obama White House Archive, April 2011; C-Span, December 2008; C-Span 1996. New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u
More from Everything Is Fake
Jamie and his AI companion Jimmy Botlett become increasingly difficult to tell apart as they bring you the final chapter of this story - featuring Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI, who now wishes he'd thought harder about the consequences. Plus we hear claims that an engineer is building something rather frightening at one of the big AI companies. But what's true, what's fake, and what does any of it say about what's happening to all of us, right now? Presenter: Jamie Bartlett Series Producer: Tom Pooley Sound Design: Rob Speight Production Coordinator: Neena Abdullah Original music: Coach Conrad Editor: Craig Templeton Smith A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4
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In the early 2000s, a young man in New Jersey was writing thousands of fake university essays for paying students. Around the same time, financial analysts in New York were rating toxic debt as safe. And in Silicon Valley, a new business philosophy was taking hold: fake it till you make it. Jamie Bartlett asks how so many people, in so many different worlds, arrived at the same conclusion at the same time. The answer, he thinks, has a name - The Lance Armstrong Defence. A quiet, creeping logic that says everyone else is doing it so why can't I? Presenter: Jamie Bartlett Series Producer: Tom Pooley Sound Design: Rob Speight Production Coordinator: Neena Abdullah Original music: Coach Conrad Editor: Craig Templeton Smith A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4.
In 1987, the same year Hulk Hogan body-slammed Andre the Giant, something else happened that would change America's relationship with the truth forever - a Washington regulator abolished the law that required broadcasters to present both sides of an argument. What followed was Morton Downey Jr, a furious chain-smoking provocateur who discovered that outrage was more compelling than accuracy. And Oprah Winfrey, who found that sincerity and emotional honesty could be just as powerful. Together, they popularised an idea that has quietly shaped the world we live in - that your truth is just as valid as the truth. Presenter: Jamie Bartlett Series Producer: Tom Pooley Sound Design: Rob Speight Production Coordinator: Neena Abdullah Original music: Coach Conrad Editor: Craig Templeton Smith A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4.
In episode two, Jamie ventures into the strange world of 1980s WWF wrestling - where performers and fans share an unspoken agreement to treat the whole spectacle as real. A shared illusion where everyone knows it's fake, but plays along because it feels true. It sounds like harmless fun. And for a while, it was. But Jamie soon wonders: what happens when an idea like that escapes the ring and changes the world? Credits: Presenter: Jamie Bartlett Series Producer: Tom Pooley Sound Design: Rob Speight Production Coordinator: Neena Abdullah Original music: Coach Conrad Editor: Craig Templeton Smith A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4.