How do ideas, however crazy they might seem, spread?

Who's a true believer vs. a grifter following the money?

Can you talk about Epstein and QAnon without losing your rational mind?

How can investigative journalism move with the times?

These are just some of the questions I sat down to discuss with award-winning journalist and author James R Ball.

He has worked as the global editor of TBIJ, a special correspondent at BuzzFeed UK and special projects editor at The Guardian, where he played a key role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden, as well as the offshore leaks, HSBC Files, Reading the Riots and Keep it in the Ground projects. At WikiLeaks he was closely involved in Cablegate – the publication of 250,000 classified US embassy cables in 2010 – as well as working on two documentaries based on the Iraq War Logs.

James is the author of multiple books, including Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered The World and The Tangled Web We Weave: Inside The Shadow System That Shapes the Internet. His most recent book, The Other Pandemic: How Qanon Contaminated The World, was published by Bloomsbury in July 2023.

Where else you can listen

⁠Youtube⁠

⁠Apple podcasts⁠

Or wherever you get your podcasts!

Chapters

00:00 The Evolution of Information Sharing

08:41 Understanding QAnon: Origins and Impact

28:37 The Social Dynamics of Conspiracy Theories

29:34 Navigating Adolescence and Online Radicalization

34:20 The Manosphere and Young Men's Perspectives

37:01 Moral Panics and Information Overload

40:04 The Epstein Connection and Conspiracy Theories

52:37 The Future of Information in the Digital Age

Links

https://bsky.app/profile/jamesrball.com

https://www.jamesrball.com/about

Get in touch

Instagram

Email: ⁠seb@theuncommonfounder.com⁠

Website: ⁠https://www.theuncommonfounder.com