Erik Torenberg

What did you find so interesting about the founding or the history of CNN and how it could apply to what we're doing here or this broader media moment?

The current thing.

And why do we think the amount of current things or randomonium or situations just is continuously accelerating?

It seems like it's, you know, just the amount, the velocity of these moments just keeps on increasing.

How do we make sense of that?

The global village, McLuhan.

Amen.

And is the reason why you think it's better is because even though there's more noise, there's more signal.

And as kind of a collective global brain, we get closer to the truth or...

Well, it's fascinating because there's kind of a different kind of

ideological sorting happening because because people you say things like hey you know now they can't even talk to their own families because they've sort of found their tribe online that agrees with them uh and uh you know it's no longer the people they you know it's no longer their families and back in the day you know you didn't have as as much

The logic goes as much political polarization of the idea that I can't even talk to someone, not from the same side.

Part of that perhaps is because the internet allows them to find their tribe so strongly and so clearly that they're able to have an exclusionary tribe as well.

one response to political polarization argument uh is that hey at least it's not going to uh you know leading to physical combat uh what might you say more broadly is is it just overstated in general because people also have this idea of filter bubbles too but uh of course in some ways it's the opposite in the sense that the internet exposes you to ideas that you wouldn't have seen otherwise

Wait, Mark, I thought the past was all matriarchies and everyone just so peaceful.

And just to that end, too, when people say, oh, ever since 2008 or, you know, your smartphone sort of, you know, propagating that it's led to increased depression or things like that.

Is that also another example of, hey, we were underestimating how depressed people were

And it's kind of a measurement thing.

Or is it, oh, but lots of other things happened in 2008 too, like political extremism and other things that make people more depressed.

How do you engage in that topic?