Throughout the 21st century, mistrust in our societal institutions has become commonplace. Regardless of your political leanings, we’ve become skeptical and suspicious of the governmental, educational, and religious institutions meant to support and protect us. How did this happen? What should we do about it? Perhaps, this mistrust is the very catalyst for reform? In today's episode, Prof. Ethan Zuckerman dissects this phenomena.
Topics:
- The rise of institutional mistrust
- Is influencer culture a response to mistrusting institutions?
- How to transform institutions
- Social media and worldview differences
- "What books have had an impact on you?"
- "What advice do you have for teenagers?"
Bio:
Prof. Ethan Zuckerman is an associate professor of public policy, communication and information at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is the founder of the Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure, a research group that is studying and building alternatives to the existing commercial internet. Prof. Zuckerman is the author of two books: Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them and Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, both published through W.W. Norton. He is also the co-founder of global blogging community Global Voices and works with social change nonprofit organizations around the world. He is an alumnus of the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, the MIT Media Lab and Comparative Media Studies at MIT, Geekcorps, and Tripod.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Regardless of your political leanings, we become
skeptical and suspicious of thegovernmental, educational and
religious institutions meant tosupport and protect us.
How did this happen?
What should we do about it?
Perhaps this mistrust is thevery catalyst for reform?
This is the Aiming for the Moonpodcast, and I'm your host,
(00:31):
taylor Bledsoe.
On this podcast, I interviewinteresting people from a
teenage perspective.
In today's episode, professorEthan Zuckerman dissects this
phenomena.
He is an associate professor ofpublic policy, communication
and information at theUniversity of Massachusetts at
Amherst and founder of theInstitute for Digital Public
Infrastructure, a research groupthat is studying and building
(00:54):
alternatives to the existingcommercial internet.
He is the author of two booksMistrust why Losing Faith in
Institutions Provides the Toolsto Transform them and Rewire
Digital Cosmopolitans in the ageof connection.
If you like what you hear today,please rate the podcast and
subscribe.
You can follow us at aiming thenumber for moon on all the
(01:15):
socials and stay up to date onpodcast news and episodes.
Check out the episode notes forProfessor Zuckerman's full bio,
as well as links to his bookMistrust, our website
aimingforthemooncom and ourpodcast sub stack Lessons from
Interesting People.
All right, with that.
(01:36):
Sit back, relax and listen in.
Thanks again to Paxton Page forthis incredible music.
All right, well, thank you somuch for coming on the podcast.
It's been really-.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
It's great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I've been looking through your book Mistrust and
doing research about, basically,how do we?
We have this culture wherewe're very nervous about
institutions and so you have aculture, as the book implies, of
mistrust, both left, right-wing, institutionalist and then
insurrectionist, and we saw thisall through COVID.
So you and it's we see, we sawthis all through covid so you
(02:06):
have the vaccine and then youhave um, the response to that
and then, of course, justgeneral other if you want to
call them culture war issueswhere you get worried about
institutions as well.
So how did we get to this placeof mistrust?
Could you kind of back it up tolike, because, of course, my
generation being gen z, likethis has always existed.
Everyone, everyone's alwaysupset at institutions.
So where did this come from?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Sure.
So I'm a Gen Xer.
I'm 50.
So a lot of this comes from myparents who were boomers or sort
of right on the edge of boomers.
That's a moment where trust ininstitutions in the United
States is really high.
So my father graduates fromcollege in 1964.
(02:53):
That's the year when trust ingovernment is at its highest in
the United States.
At that point four out of fiveAmericans, if you interview them
, say they trust the governmentto do the right thing all or
most of the time.
You ask Americans the samequestion right now, do you trust
the government to do the rightthing all or most of the time?
You ask Americans the samequestion right now, do you trust
the government to do the rightthing?
You get fewer than one out offive.
So that is a huge, huge, hugeslide.
So what happens?
(03:14):
A bunch of things.
Vietnam happens, richard Nixonhappens the 70s and this is
where I start to remember things.
Jimmy Carter, the 70s and thisis where I start to remember
things.
Jimmy Carter, the oil crisis,like that.
Stuff happens.
In many cases our institutionsfail us, and this is pretty much
the story that I startdocumenting in the book.
(03:34):
When people lose faith ininstitutions, it's often that
they can point to a moment wherethose institutions really screw
it up.
Faith in the church fallsreally sharply when the Boston
Globe reveals the fact that theCatholic Church is putting
pedophiles, moving them fromdiocese to diocese.
Faith in the banking systemgoes down during the 2008
(03:57):
banking crisis.
So when you're coming along asa Gen Z-er, you're sort of
inheriting this slide.
That really sort of starts, youknow right about the time that
I'm born and has been going onfor 50 years to the point where
you're coming into it.
You're looking at this andgoing why would anyone trust any
of these institutions?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
From my generation's perspective, it's almost like
wait, people even like listen,people enjoyed the media.
Like what's going on exactly?
You have both sides who arelike don't listen to that guy,
that guy has no idea what he'stalking about, and then the
other person has no idea either.
Quote, unquote.
And so, yeah, it's definitely aculture where we're very
skeptical about a lot of stuff.
It's yeah.
So you talk about, of course,institutions on your book and
(04:38):
I'm curious, what exactly isyour definition of institution?
Because, depending on yourgeography, you might think, okay
, that's the government,obviously, or that's a
university, or is that a school?
Like, what exactly do you meanwhen you say we mistrust the
institutions?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah.
So for me an institution isanything that doesn't have a
face and it's anything where thepeople behind it are sort of
interchangeable.
So think of it this way I'vegot a restaurant in my
neighborhood and I know theowner, kirk, and if Kirk wasn't
there it wouldn't be thatparticular restaurant anymore.
(05:15):
It might be a restaurant, butit wouldn't be the old Forge.
So that's not an institution,that's a very personal sort of
project and my relationshipthere is very much a
relationship with a person.
But if I go further down theroad and I go to McDonald's, it
sort of doesn't matter who thegeneral manager is at McDonald's
.
Maybe I like the person at thecounter, but at the end of the
(05:36):
day they're working from a threering binder.
They have a set of processesand such and those processes
survive beyond the individual.
So institutions are things thathave a memory, a set of
processes, a way of doing things, a logic behind it.
That's beyond any individual,that's beyond any sort
(05:57):
individuals and their decisions.
In some ways it's almost a 180from things like influencer
culture, where what you'redealing with is an individual
who sort of turns into a brand.
This is a brand that is so bigthat the individual sort of
(06:18):
disappears.
That's what institutions are.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Is kind of influencer culture.
Do you think that's a responseat all against kind of
mistrusting these institutions,right?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Your you know Human Rights Watch.
For the love of God, don'tspeak as Human Rights Watch.
Don't give us the voice ofHuman Rights Watch.
(06:56):
Show us one of your Gen Zstaffers who's working for Human
Rights Watch.
Show us one of your millennialresearch experts who knows
everything about Darfur.
Speak in that individual voice.
Don't speak in the brand voiceand so that notion of
authenticity coming out of anindividual voice rather than
coming out of sort of anofficial voice.
That's one of the things that Ithink smart organizations are
learning how to do.
(07:16):
I think influencers havefigured out how to hack this
right, like I think they'vefigured out how to do something
that feels authentic andpersonal, but, of course, in
many cases, it's just as thoughtand planned as a brand.
So it's almost like the twosort of coming full circle.
It's almost like, in trying toevade the institution,
(07:37):
individuals have gone over thetop and become institutions.
It may just be what happenswhen you're trying to speak to
10, know, 10,000, 100,000 people.
You end up taking on thatinstitutional voice, but I do
think that the impetus ofhelping people feel like they
were dealing with actualindividuals was right and
worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
The other question that we kind of get into, of
course, with every generation,they look at the world and they
see all the problems in it, aswell as all the futures that
could possibly happen.
And so my generation is lookingat the world like, oh dear,
there's injustice there, there'sthe world's on fire over there,
there's probably an incomingmeteor over there, and so we
(08:19):
look at it and then we kind offind these, we try to find these
ways to change the systems orchange society and change
culture, but then we get nervousbecause it seems like, well,
maybe that's not actually goingto work.
What is your words of advice?
For, of course, as your bookimplies, how do we go about
changing these systems?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Well.
So I think the first word ofadvice would be of course it's
not going to work Most thingsdon't work but what you have to
be careful about is gettingparalyzed and not trying
something.
One of the really interestingthings is that when systems fail
, there's an opportunity tobuild something else back.
I've spent most of my careerresearching the internet.
(09:00):
Lately, I'm spending a lot oftime researching cities, and not
like the big sexy cities likeNew York and Los Angeles and San
Francisco.
I'm researching like Utica,akron.
I'm researching cities thathave sort of hit some hard times
, and what's really cool aboutthese cities is that there's
enormous appetite for individualsmall groups to try something
(09:23):
new and all sorts of differentpeople.
Some of these cities are reallybeing transformed by refugees,
recent immigrants who want tosort of try things out.
So I actually think there's alot to be said for saying here's
a system that looks badlybroken.
We can all agree that thisisn't working right now.
Can we try something?
Can we try something different?
Part of what's so overwhelmingabout it is that so many huge
(09:48):
systems seem broken, but one ofthe really interesting things is
that a lot of those hugesystems have little small parts,
and those little small partscan change much faster than we
might think.
For all of my utter loathing ofElon Musk, I've been kind of
amazed at how fast electric carshave been coming on and
(10:12):
changing things, andtransportation emissions is one
of the major sources of carbonemissions in the US.
That looks like a space wherewe might actually change things.
I also think there's a lot to besaid for looking at history and
looking at things that seemedunchangeable.
When I was growing up, thething that was unchangeable was
acid rain and that came frommassive coal-fired power plants
(10:37):
polluting the environment andsulfuric acid raining down on us
.
We don't talk about thatanymore because we largely took
coal plants offline.
My generation actually is a fewIQ points behind your
generation because we grew upwith leaded gas in the air and
so we all have lead toxicity.
(10:58):
We're all actually slightlybrain damaged from lead toxicity
.
We managed to stop that and youguys aren't suffering from that
in the same way that we end upsuffering from that.
This sounds hard to be hopefulabout, but there really are
things where we've been able toidentify a problem, start
putting into place a solutionand, over the course of 20, 30,
(11:19):
40 years, watching things heal.
What's really hard is whenthings are as acute and
difficult as they feel right now.
It's often really hard to seeprogress in three or six months.
Sometimes what you have to dois have faith that it's the
right solution and that you maynot actually be seeing the
benefits until 10 or 20 yearsfurther down the road what are
(11:41):
some of the ways that we can goabout changing these
institutions?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Let's take one particular problem, and I don't
know name it, I guess.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah.
So let me.
Let me talk on climate changejust for a sec.
So the heart of the book isthis argument that there's
basically four categories ofways to try to change the world.
You can try to change lawsright, so you can go and pass a
law and the government has toenforce it.
You can go and change socialnorms.
(12:12):
You can make it really cool todo something or really uncool to
do something, and that'ssurprisingly powerful.
You can try to make good thingscheaper and bad things more
expensive.
And you can try to change thetechnologies behind things.
So let's take two examples onthis Smoking.
Smoking when I was growing uphappened in restaurants.
(12:34):
It happened, believe it or not,in airplanes.
We had a bunch of laws thatbasically said you can't subject
people to secondhand smoke.
Suddenly, smokers have to beoutside.
You can't be in indoor spacesanymore.
Smoking also becomes moreexpensive.
States put heavy taxes oncigarettes.
Cigarettes are about $2 a packwhen I'm growing up.
(12:55):
They're about $10 a pack now inMassachusetts.
That's a really expensive habitto pick up.
You might think twice aboutthat.
There have been attempts at codechanges.
One code change is the nicotinepatch.
People who are addicted tonicotine don't have to keep
smoking.
They can patch.
Maybe vaping is just as bad forus.
Hard to say, but that's atechnology change.
(13:17):
But then there's a norms change.
Smoking was cool.
My sense is that smoking isnowhere near as cool.
It's now sort of an addiction.
Why would you sort of pick thatup but you'd apply the same
things to climate change?
I've got solar panels on myhouse, despite the fact that I'm
in Western Massachusetts.
It's not as good an investmentas it would, be say, in Texas,
(13:39):
but there's laws here that makesolar panels cheap.
There are market incentives.
I can sell my power back to thegrid and the grid has to buy it
.
Solar panels are way betterthan they used to be 10 or 20
years ago, which is a technologychange.
And solar panels advertisethemselves.
I can look around and see myneighbors putting them up and
over time that changes norms.
(14:01):
So the answer to all of this isfind something you care about
and then think about differentways to make a change around it,
because one change almost neverdoes it.
It almost never works to passthe law.
You got to change people'sminds.
You got to change their hearts.
You got to change business.
You got to change markets.
Those things all have to changesimultaneously to get really
(14:24):
deep social changes.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I'm curious.
So I'm into kind of as thephilosopher next to me probably
implies philosophy and howdifferent philosophies and
worldviews kind of interact.
I was brainstorming questionsfor this interview and I was
curious do you think some ofthis mistrust in institutions is
because you have very differentworldviews, you have the left
and the right perspectives andoftentimes you have different
(14:49):
moral structures that peoplekind of refer to when they look
at political issues as well sex,institution and then the person
who's looking at them is like,oh, they don't have the same
moral framework that I do.
So you both look at the samemaybe problem or same event and
you're like, oh, no, that'sawful.
(15:10):
Then the other guy goes, oh,that's great, and so how do we
deal with that?
Is that a problem?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
So there are a lot of issues where moral frameworks
can come into play, and you'llsee it around things like
spending.
If you lean to the left, you'reprobably more inclined to have
the state spend on things.
If you lean to the right,you're perhaps more likely to
have private individuals spendon things.
But there's a saying aboutlocal politics, which is that
(15:36):
there's no Democratic orRepublican way to fix a pothole.
No-transcript, no easy left,right way to sort of break down
(16:15):
around it.
If I were going to put myfinger on any one thing, it
would be cable news.
Cable news has to createconflict.
It's the cheapest way to fillairtime, and so what you really
need are either people yellingat each other about values
conflicts, or what Fox Newsfigured out is you don't even
(16:35):
have to have both sides, you canjust have one side beat up on
the other side in absentia.
And so there's this argumentthat all of our politics has
become national, and this istrue to a certain extent.
When you look at people comingout to vote in the 2022
elections, it had a lot to dowhether a woman's right to
(16:56):
choose was threatened in theirstate.
That seemed to be what drewpeople out, but the truth is
there's all sorts of otherthings going on that don't
necessarily have to be reducedto moral issues.
There are Democrats andRepublicans who have people in
their family who get addicted toopiates, and if you have
someone who's going through thatstruggle, you can get into an
(17:19):
ideological you know argument.
You know God has to step in andsave you.
It's your own responsibility towork this out.
But if you really have someonein your life who's suffering,
having a program for safeinjections, having a program to
get people off the streets,having a program to test drugs,
those start making a lot ofsense.
(17:41):
And I'm finding here, where Ilive, you know, in an area that
actually is pretty politicallymixed not my state so much, but
once you get over into New Yorkwe're actually finding a lot of
common ground around addressingthings like opiates.
So I think if we can find theissues that haven't already been
(18:03):
taken over by Fox News, by CNN,by the pundits, you know, sort
of arguing here's what the leftthinks, here's where the right
thinks there's actuallypossibility for solidarity
instead of working through thesethings.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yeah, that's the interesting thing about these
political issues, especiallybeing a generation that's always
on the internet, connectedthrough social media and just
media in general, you look atthe world and you look at it in
headlines and then oftentimesstereotypes because of you're
looking at the world onheadlines and it's actually it's
very hard to see some of theseissues as nonpartisan, non
(18:36):
whatever things, and so here's aweird piece of that.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
You have been encountering a very particular
sort of social media, which iswhat we might call big room
social media.
Right, everyone is in the samebig room on Twitter or on
Instagram and everybody's sortof shouting for attention.
You've got the influencerswaving their hands and saying
you know, come, pay attention tome.
Right, those rooms can bereally powerful.
(19:04):
They're really important forthings like Me Too or Black
Lives Matter Movements can startin those spaces, but they're
really toxic.
It's mostly a lot of peopleyelling and asking for attention
.
There's also small room spaces.
The one that people probablyknow the best is Reddit, where
people might get in and actuallyhave a serious discussion about
(19:26):
you know what it's like livingin Cleveland, or what it's like
working for an Amazon warehousecenter, or what it's like being
a person dealing with depressionor alcoholism, and those spaces
tend to have very differentconversations.
They're not as much about hey,everybody, look at me.
They're really much more aboutwhat could we learn from one
(19:51):
another about theseconversations?
Now, obviously, reddit is goingthrough its own crisis their
CEO is having his Elon Muskmoment but I think the broader
shift away from these big spacesto these small spaces might
actually be really healthy forus as citizens.
We might find ourselves in morespaces where we end up
interacting with people who arecoming from a different point of
(20:12):
view than we are politically,and finding common ground
because we're engaged in acommon project.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, one of the reasons I started this podcast
actually in 2020, wheneverything was kind of shut down
and everyone was bored at leastI was podcast actually in 2020,
when everything was kind ofshut down and everyone was bored
at least I was um is basicallyto kind of create a common
ground to work, to discussinteresting ideas with the next
generation and then successfulpeople, um, who have their own
ideas, like yourself, and booksand stuff like that and it's
been very interesting to see thereaction both in teenagers and
(20:42):
in guests who have like just theinteractions and conversations
that we have are very unique, Ibelieve, and it allows you to
facilitate a conversation thatmaybe, of course, in these big
spaces that you were talkingabout, you can't have on Twitter
.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Well, it's interesting.
In our case, we're having sortof an intergenerational
conversation.
Right, I've got a kid who's amiddle school student, who isn't
that far in age from you andI'm probably older than your
parents are and you may behaving that with some of your
guests.
There aren't necessarily a tonof spaces for that to happen.
(21:16):
The workspace is one of the fewspaces where that tends to
happen and, of course, thepandemic has knocked the
workspace virtual for a lot ofpeople, so that sort of
intergenerational piece ofthings comes into play.
We almost certainly live indifferent parts of the United
States.
We don't always necessarilyencounter each other that way.
A I'm going to speak up for mypart of the world.
(21:42):
Here's what I think is a NewEnglander, so on and so forth.
When we have something else,when we have a topic, when we
have a joint project, which ispart of what happens with an
interview, an interview isalways a joint project.
It leaves the opportunity forsome very different sorts of
conversation.
I think what you were feeling in2020, a lot of people have been
(22:03):
feeling.
I started doing a podcast in2020 as well.
For me, it was a chance toreach out to some of the people
that I was reading in myscholarly work and, more than
anything else, actually tellthem how great I thought they
were and then have them sort ofexplain what I loved about their
work, and it's been for me oneof the best things I've had the
(22:26):
chance to do.
I have to think that, despitethe joke that everybody has
started the podcast, I actuallythink it's probably not bad.
I think anything that isinspiring more conversation at
this moment in America's historyis probably not a bad thing.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Well, obviously I would tend to agree with that.
So, wrapping up our interviewwith the last two questions, the
first one is what books havehad an impact on you?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
The books that I really love have been science
fiction books that became myfriends.
So when I was my son's age, itwas the Douglas Adams
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxybooks.
It became William Gibson'scyberpunk books.
It became Neal Stephenson'sbook Snow Crash, and what I
realized, kind of thinking aboutthis, is I just read these
books over and over to the pointwhere they sort of became my
(23:31):
friends, like it was kind oflike hanging out with someone I
really liked, and that's myrelationship with books.
Now my office at UMass has twomassive bookshelves and I spend
a lot of my time talking withstudents.
I end up sort of reaching for abook and saying you got to read
this.
And I spend a lot of my timetalking with students.
I end up sort of reaching for abook and saying you got to read
this.
And what I'm really saying is Iwant you to meet this person, I
(23:53):
want you to find out what shehas to say, and my best shortcut
to that is handing you her book.
And so books are people, andit's not any one or two.
That's particularly influencedme.
It's sort of understanding thatyou might need to have a whole
shelf and that that's therichness is being able to draw
(24:16):
on a whole lot of differentpeople.
Yeah, it's a very interesting,unique way of looking at books,
but honestly, I really love theidea of it almost being a
relationship between you and theauthor and then, of course, the
community and how those booksconnect to each other as well,
and as you write yourself it'sthe greatest trick as a teacher,
because I lend you a book, Ican explain what I wanted you to
(24:38):
get out of it and implicit isthe you're going to bring the
book back and we're going tohave a conversation about it and
I've got little labels and allof them to increase my chances
of getting the back.
And you know, sometimes I doand sometimes I don't, but it's
often a way that I can keep up arelationship with a student who
I might, you know, only get tosee for a semester or might only
come to my office once.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yeah, what a great way to do that.
Also, douglas Adams is.
Hitchhiker's Guide to theGalaxy is one of my all-time
favorite series.
It's just one of the bestsci-fi works I think.
Out there I am thrilled to hearit.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
It sort of bounced off my son, although he's
introducing me to a lot of greatsci-fi, I think honestly he's
just so dark.
He's reading the Ark of Asytheseries, which I've thoroughly
enjoyed, but it is way darkerthan what I was reading at his
age.
So I'm wondering if this is aGen Z thing.
I think you guys may have a bitof that dark tone in there.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Quite possibly.
It's definitely is a trend thatyou see amongst, yeah,
teenagers and then other peoplein my generation.
So the last question that wehave is what advice do you have
for Gen Z and then teenagers ingeneral?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
So I actually have the privilege that I get to work
with teenagers.
Often I have undergrads, someof whom are just sort of coming
out of their late teens and intotheir 20s.
I work with folks in theirearly 20s in grad school.
The thing that has workedreally well for me is finding
things that interest me and justshaking them as hard as you
(26:05):
possibly can.
Things that interest me andjust shaking them as hard as you
possibly can.
I went through college withoutreally doing a major.
I've never really had a career.
I've mostly just followedthings that I was really, really
interested in.
Most of us have a hard timelearning stuff that we should
know but we're not particularlyexcited about.
We also have a nearly unlimitedcapacity to learn stuff about
(26:30):
something we care about, and somaybe the biggest thing is to
figure out what you care aboutand then figure out what you
might be able to learn from it.
There's paths that are easieror harder for this.
If what you really care aboutis video games, maybe you're
going to spend a lot of timefinding communities and sort of
finding other people who want toplay, but I am so fascinated by
(26:55):
watching people sort of findthe first thing that they want
to research, that they reallywant to dig into, and sort of
learning how to teach themselves.
I think most of our teaching isteaching ourselves, and I think
the biggest thing is kind ofletting go of those expectations
.
This is what I'm supposed tolearn.
I'm supposed to be a computerprogrammer, I'm supposed to be a
business person and instead,finding something you genuinely
(27:19):
love and running after it,that's what's worked for me all
these years.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
That's been a very comforting.
Almost part of the podcast isseeing how many people who are
writers, who are academics, whoare thinkers just kind of had
that similar philosophy offollowing what they were
interested in and then how thathas led to them having jobs.
Oftentimes you kind of segmentcareers into just majors in high
school, and so it's verycomforting, at least for people
(27:47):
my age who are like man.
I guess the world can work outwith some of the things that
you're super interested in.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
After you are 22, no one is ever going to ask you
what your major is Ever.
Praise the Lord it will not comeup again in your entire life
and you can end up in reallycrazy places.
I did a bachelor's degree inphilosophy in 1993.
I've never gotten anotherdegree and I now teach PhD
students at a really gooduniversity.
(28:14):
It's a long, complicated storyhow that worked out, but there
are more than two ways to getanywhere in the world.
To get anywhere in the world,and one of them's
well-documented, one of them'sless well-documented.
If you follow the stuff youwant to do, you're probably
going to end up somewhere prettycool.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Well, with that, thank you so much for coming on
the podcast.
I really enjoyed ourconversation.
Check out his book Mistrust.
I'll have it linked below.
And yeah, thanks everyone forlistening.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Thanks so much, Taylor.
What a pleasure.
Regardless of your political leanings, we become
skeptical and suspicious of thegovernmental, educational and
religious institutions meant tosupport and protect us.
How did this happen?
What should we do about it?
Perhaps this mistrust is thevery catalyst for reform?
This is the Aiming for the Moonpodcast, and I'm your host,
(00:31):
taylor Bledsoe.
On this podcast, I interviewinteresting people from a
teenage perspective.
In today's episode, professorEthan Zuckerman dissects this
phenomena.
He is an associate professor ofpublic policy, communication
and information at theUniversity of Massachusetts at
Amherst and founder of theInstitute for Digital Public
Infrastructure, a research groupthat is studying and building
(00:54):
alternatives to the existingcommercial internet.
He is the author of two booksMistrust why Losing Faith in
Institutions Provides the Toolsto Transform them and Rewire
Digital Cosmopolitans in the ageof connection.
If you like what you hear today,please rate the podcast and
subscribe.
You can follow us at aiming thenumber for moon on all the
(01:15):
socials and stay up to date onpodcast news and episodes.
Check out the episode notes forProfessor Zuckerman's full bio,
as well as links to his bookMistrust, our website
aimingforthemooncom and ourpodcast sub stack Lessons from
Interesting People.
All right, with that.
(01:36):
Sit back, relax and listen in.
Thanks again to Paxton Page forthis incredible music.
All right, well, thank you somuch for coming on the podcast.
It's been really-.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
It's great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I've been looking through your book Mistrust and
doing research about, basically,how do we?
We have this culture wherewe're very nervous about
institutions and so you have aculture, as the book implies, of
mistrust, both left, right-wing, institutionalist and then
insurrectionist, and we saw thisall through COVID.
So you and it's we see, we sawthis all through covid so you
(02:06):
have the vaccine and then youhave um, the response to that
and then, of course, justgeneral other if you want to
call them culture war issueswhere you get worried about
institutions as well.
So how did we get to this placeof mistrust?
Could you kind of back it up tolike, because, of course, my
generation being gen z, likethis has always existed.
Everyone, everyone's alwaysupset at institutions.
So where did this come from?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Sure.
So I'm a Gen Xer.
I'm 50.
So a lot of this comes from myparents who were boomers or sort
of right on the edge of boomers.
That's a moment where trust ininstitutions in the United
States is really high.
So my father graduates fromcollege in 1964.
(02:53):
That's the year when trust ingovernment is at its highest in
the United States.
At that point four out of fiveAmericans, if you interview them
, say they trust the governmentto do the right thing all or
most of the time.
You ask Americans the samequestion right now, do you trust
the government to do the rightthing all or most of the time?
You ask Americans the samequestion right now, do you trust
the government to do the rightthing?
You get fewer than one out offive.
So that is a huge, huge, hugeslide.
So what happens?
(03:14):
A bunch of things.
Vietnam happens, richard Nixonhappens the 70s and this is
where I start to remember things.
Jimmy Carter, the 70s and thisis where I start to remember
things.
Jimmy Carter, the oil crisis,like that.
Stuff happens.
In many cases our institutionsfail us, and this is pretty much
the story that I startdocumenting in the book.
(03:34):
When people lose faith ininstitutions, it's often that
they can point to a moment wherethose institutions really screw
it up.
Faith in the church fallsreally sharply when the Boston
Globe reveals the fact that theCatholic Church is putting
pedophiles, moving them fromdiocese to diocese.
Faith in the banking systemgoes down during the 2008
(03:57):
banking crisis.
So when you're coming along asa Gen Z-er, you're sort of
inheriting this slide.
That really sort of starts, youknow right about the time that
I'm born and has been going onfor 50 years to the point where
you're coming into it.
You're looking at this andgoing why would anyone trust any
of these institutions?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
From my generation's perspective, it's almost like
wait, people even like listen,people enjoyed the media.
Like what's going on exactly?
You have both sides who arelike don't listen to that guy,
that guy has no idea what he'stalking about, and then the
other person has no idea either.
Quote, unquote.
And so, yeah, it's definitely aculture where we're very
skeptical about a lot of stuff.
It's yeah.
So you talk about, of course,institutions on your book and
(04:38):
I'm curious, what exactly isyour definition of institution?
Because, depending on yourgeography, you might think, okay
, that's the government,obviously, or that's a
university, or is that a school?
Like, what exactly do you meanwhen you say we mistrust the
institutions?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah.
So for me an institution isanything that doesn't have a
face and it's anything where thepeople behind it are sort of
interchangeable.
So think of it this way I'vegot a restaurant in my
neighborhood and I know theowner, kirk, and if Kirk wasn't
there it wouldn't be thatparticular restaurant anymore.
(05:15):
It might be a restaurant, butit wouldn't be the old Forge.
So that's not an institution,that's a very personal sort of
project and my relationshipthere is very much a
relationship with a person.
But if I go further down theroad and I go to McDonald's, it
sort of doesn't matter who thegeneral manager is at McDonald's
.
Maybe I like the person at thecounter, but at the end of the
(05:36):
day they're working from a threering binder.
They have a set of processesand such and those processes
survive beyond the individual.
So institutions are things thathave a memory, a set of
processes, a way of doing things, a logic behind it.
That's beyond any individual,that's beyond any sort
(05:57):
individuals and their decisions.
In some ways it's almost a 180from things like influencer
culture, where what you'redealing with is an individual
who sort of turns into a brand.
This is a brand that is so bigthat the individual sort of
(06:18):
disappears.
That's what institutions are.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Is kind of influencer culture.
Do you think that's a responseat all against kind of
mistrusting these institutions,right?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Your you know Human Rights Watch.
For the love of God, don'tspeak as Human Rights Watch.
Don't give us the voice ofHuman Rights Watch.
(06:56):
Show us one of your Gen Zstaffers who's working for Human
Rights Watch.
Show us one of your millennialresearch experts who knows
everything about Darfur.
Speak in that individual voice.
Don't speak in the brand voiceand so that notion of
authenticity coming out of anindividual voice rather than
coming out of sort of anofficial voice.
That's one of the things that Ithink smart organizations are
learning how to do.
(07:16):
I think influencers havefigured out how to hack this
right, like I think they'vefigured out how to do something
that feels authentic andpersonal, but, of course, in
many cases, it's just as thoughtand planned as a brand.
So it's almost like the twosort of coming full circle.
It's almost like, in trying toevade the institution,
(07:37):
individuals have gone over thetop and become institutions.
It may just be what happenswhen you're trying to speak to
10, know, 10,000, 100,000 people.
You end up taking on thatinstitutional voice, but I do
think that the impetus ofhelping people feel like they
were dealing with actualindividuals was right and
worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
The other question that we kind of get into, of
course, with every generation,they look at the world and they
see all the problems in it, aswell as all the futures that
could possibly happen.
And so my generation is lookingat the world like, oh dear,
there's injustice there, there'sthe world's on fire over there,
there's probably an incomingmeteor over there, and so we
(08:19):
look at it and then we kind offind these, we try to find these
ways to change the systems orchange society and change
culture, but then we get nervousbecause it seems like, well,
maybe that's not actually goingto work.
What is your words of advice?
For, of course, as your bookimplies, how do we go about
changing these systems?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Well.
So I think the first word ofadvice would be of course it's
not going to work Most thingsdon't work but what you have to
be careful about is gettingparalyzed and not trying
something.
One of the really interestingthings is that when systems fail
, there's an opportunity tobuild something else back.
I've spent most of my careerresearching the internet.
(09:00):
Lately, I'm spending a lot oftime researching cities, and not
like the big sexy cities likeNew York and Los Angeles and San
Francisco.
I'm researching like Utica,akron.
I'm researching cities thathave sort of hit some hard times
, and what's really cool aboutthese cities is that there's
enormous appetite for individualsmall groups to try something
(09:23):
new and all sorts of differentpeople.
Some of these cities are reallybeing transformed by refugees,
recent immigrants who want tosort of try things out.
So I actually think there's alot to be said for saying here's
a system that looks badlybroken.
We can all agree that thisisn't working right now.
Can we try something?
Can we try something different?
Part of what's so overwhelmingabout it is that so many huge
(09:48):
systems seem broken, but one ofthe really interesting things is
that a lot of those hugesystems have little small parts,
and those little small partscan change much faster than we
might think.
For all of my utter loathing ofElon Musk, I've been kind of
amazed at how fast electric carshave been coming on and
(10:12):
changing things, andtransportation emissions is one
of the major sources of carbonemissions in the US.
That looks like a space wherewe might actually change things.
I also think there's a lot to besaid for looking at history and
looking at things that seemedunchangeable.
When I was growing up, thething that was unchangeable was
acid rain and that came frommassive coal-fired power plants
(10:37):
polluting the environment andsulfuric acid raining down on us
.
We don't talk about thatanymore because we largely took
coal plants offline.
My generation actually is a fewIQ points behind your
generation because we grew upwith leaded gas in the air and
so we all have lead toxicity.
(10:58):
We're all actually slightlybrain damaged from lead toxicity
.
We managed to stop that and youguys aren't suffering from that
in the same way that we end upsuffering from that.
This sounds hard to be hopefulabout, but there really are
things where we've been able toidentify a problem, start
putting into place a solutionand, over the course of 20, 30,
(11:19):
40 years, watching things heal.
What's really hard is whenthings are as acute and
difficult as they feel right now.
It's often really hard to seeprogress in three or six months.
Sometimes what you have to dois have faith that it's the
right solution and that you maynot actually be seeing the
benefits until 10 or 20 yearsfurther down the road what are
(11:41):
some of the ways that we can goabout changing these
institutions?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Let's take one particular problem, and I don't
know name it, I guess.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah.
So let me.
Let me talk on climate changejust for a sec.
So the heart of the book isthis argument that there's
basically four categories ofways to try to change the world.
You can try to change lawsright, so you can go and pass a
law and the government has toenforce it.
You can go and change socialnorms.
(12:12):
You can make it really cool todo something or really uncool to
do something, and that'ssurprisingly powerful.
You can try to make good thingscheaper and bad things more
expensive.
And you can try to change thetechnologies behind things.
So let's take two examples onthis Smoking.
Smoking when I was growing uphappened in restaurants.
(12:34):
It happened, believe it or not,in airplanes.
We had a bunch of laws thatbasically said you can't subject
people to secondhand smoke.
Suddenly, smokers have to beoutside.
You can't be in indoor spacesanymore.
Smoking also becomes moreexpensive.
States put heavy taxes oncigarettes.
Cigarettes are about $2 a packwhen I'm growing up.
(12:55):
They're about $10 a pack now inMassachusetts.
That's a really expensive habitto pick up.
You might think twice aboutthat.
There have been attempts at codechanges.
One code change is the nicotinepatch.
People who are addicted tonicotine don't have to keep
smoking.
They can patch.
Maybe vaping is just as bad forus.
Hard to say, but that's atechnology change.
(13:17):
But then there's a norms change.
Smoking was cool.
My sense is that smoking isnowhere near as cool.
It's now sort of an addiction.
Why would you sort of pick thatup but you'd apply the same
things to climate change?
I've got solar panels on myhouse, despite the fact that I'm
in Western Massachusetts.
It's not as good an investmentas it would, be say, in Texas,
(13:39):
but there's laws here that makesolar panels cheap.
There are market incentives.
I can sell my power back to thegrid and the grid has to buy it
.
Solar panels are way betterthan they used to be 10 or 20
years ago, which is a technologychange.
And solar panels advertisethemselves.
I can look around and see myneighbors putting them up and
over time that changes norms.
(14:01):
So the answer to all of this isfind something you care about
and then think about differentways to make a change around it,
because one change almost neverdoes it.
It almost never works to passthe law.
You got to change people'sminds.
You got to change their hearts.
You got to change business.
You got to change markets.
Those things all have to changesimultaneously to get really
(14:24):
deep social changes.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I'm curious.
So I'm into kind of as thephilosopher next to me probably
implies philosophy and howdifferent philosophies and
worldviews kind of interact.
I was brainstorming questionsfor this interview and I was
curious do you think some ofthis mistrust in institutions is
because you have very differentworldviews, you have the left
and the right perspectives andoftentimes you have different
(14:49):
moral structures that peoplekind of refer to when they look
at political issues as well sex,institution and then the person
who's looking at them is like,oh, they don't have the same
moral framework that I do.
So you both look at the samemaybe problem or same event and
you're like, oh, no, that'sawful.
(15:10):
Then the other guy goes, oh,that's great, and so how do we
deal with that?
Is that a problem?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
So there are a lot of issues where moral frameworks
can come into play, and you'llsee it around things like
spending.
If you lean to the left, you'reprobably more inclined to have
the state spend on things.
If you lean to the right,you're perhaps more likely to
have private individuals spendon things.
But there's a saying aboutlocal politics, which is that
(15:36):
there's no Democratic orRepublican way to fix a pothole.
No-transcript, no easy left,right way to sort of break down
(16:15):
around it.
If I were going to put myfinger on any one thing, it
would be cable news.
Cable news has to createconflict.
It's the cheapest way to fillairtime, and so what you really
need are either people yellingat each other about values
conflicts, or what Fox Newsfigured out is you don't even
(16:35):
have to have both sides, you canjust have one side beat up on
the other side in absentia.
And so there's this argumentthat all of our politics has
become national, and this istrue to a certain extent.
When you look at people comingout to vote in the 2022
elections, it had a lot to dowhether a woman's right to
(16:56):
choose was threatened in theirstate.
That seemed to be what drewpeople out, but the truth is
there's all sorts of otherthings going on that don't
necessarily have to be reducedto moral issues.
There are Democrats andRepublicans who have people in
their family who get addicted toopiates, and if you have
someone who's going through thatstruggle, you can get into an
(17:19):
ideological you know argument.
You know God has to step in andsave you.
It's your own responsibility towork this out.
But if you really have someonein your life who's suffering,
having a program for safeinjections, having a program to
get people off the streets,having a program to test drugs,
those start making a lot ofsense.
(17:41):
And I'm finding here, where Ilive, you know, in an area that
actually is pretty politicallymixed not my state so much, but
once you get over into New Yorkwe're actually finding a lot of
common ground around addressingthings like opiates.
So I think if we can find theissues that haven't already been
(18:03):
taken over by Fox News, by CNN,by the pundits, you know, sort
of arguing here's what the leftthinks, here's where the right
thinks there's actuallypossibility for solidarity
instead of working through thesethings.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yeah, that's the interesting thing about these
political issues, especiallybeing a generation that's always
on the internet, connectedthrough social media and just
media in general, you look atthe world and you look at it in
headlines and then oftentimesstereotypes because of you're
looking at the world onheadlines and it's actually it's
very hard to see some of theseissues as nonpartisan, non
(18:36):
whatever things, and so here's aweird piece of that.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
You have been encountering a very particular
sort of social media, which iswhat we might call big room
social media.
Right, everyone is in the samebig room on Twitter or on
Instagram and everybody's sortof shouting for attention.
You've got the influencerswaving their hands and saying
you know, come, pay attention tome.
Right, those rooms can bereally powerful.
(19:04):
They're really important forthings like Me Too or Black
Lives Matter Movements can startin those spaces, but they're
really toxic.
It's mostly a lot of peopleyelling and asking for attention
.
There's also small room spaces.
The one that people probablyknow the best is Reddit, where
people might get in and actuallyhave a serious discussion about
(19:26):
you know what it's like livingin Cleveland, or what it's like
working for an Amazon warehousecenter, or what it's like being
a person dealing with depressionor alcoholism, and those spaces
tend to have very differentconversations.
They're not as much about hey,everybody, look at me.
They're really much more aboutwhat could we learn from one
(19:51):
another about theseconversations?
Now, obviously, reddit is goingthrough its own crisis their
CEO is having his Elon Muskmoment but I think the broader
shift away from these big spacesto these small spaces might
actually be really healthy forus as citizens.
We might find ourselves in morespaces where we end up
interacting with people who arecoming from a different point of
(20:12):
view than we are politically,and finding common ground
because we're engaged in acommon project.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, one of the reasons I started this podcast
actually in 2020, wheneverything was kind of shut down
and everyone was bored at leastI was podcast actually in 2020,
when everything was kind ofshut down and everyone was bored
at least I was um is basicallyto kind of create a common
ground to work, to discussinteresting ideas with the next
generation and then successfulpeople, um, who have their own
ideas, like yourself, and booksand stuff like that and it's
been very interesting to see thereaction both in teenagers and
(20:42):
in guests who have like just theinteractions and conversations
that we have are very unique, Ibelieve, and it allows you to
facilitate a conversation thatmaybe, of course, in these big
spaces that you were talkingabout, you can't have on Twitter
.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Well, it's interesting.
In our case, we're having sortof an intergenerational
conversation.
Right, I've got a kid who's amiddle school student, who isn't
that far in age from you andI'm probably older than your
parents are and you may behaving that with some of your
guests.
There aren't necessarily a tonof spaces for that to happen.
(21:16):
The workspace is one of the fewspaces where that tends to
happen and, of course, thepandemic has knocked the
workspace virtual for a lot ofpeople, so that sort of
intergenerational piece ofthings comes into play.
We almost certainly live indifferent parts of the United
States.
We don't always necessarilyencounter each other that way.
A I'm going to speak up for mypart of the world.
(21:42):
Here's what I think is a NewEnglander, so on and so forth.
When we have something else,when we have a topic, when we
have a joint project, which ispart of what happens with an
interview, an interview isalways a joint project.
It leaves the opportunity forsome very different sorts of
conversation.
I think what you were feeling in2020, a lot of people have been
(22:03):
feeling.
I started doing a podcast in2020 as well.
For me, it was a chance toreach out to some of the people
that I was reading in myscholarly work and, more than
anything else, actually tellthem how great I thought they
were and then have them sort ofexplain what I loved about their
work, and it's been for me oneof the best things I've had the
(22:26):
chance to do.
I have to think that, despitethe joke that everybody has
started the podcast, I actuallythink it's probably not bad.
I think anything that isinspiring more conversation at
this moment in America's historyis probably not a bad thing.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Well, obviously I would tend to agree with that.
So, wrapping up our interviewwith the last two questions, the
first one is what books havehad an impact on you?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
The books that I really love have been science
fiction books that became myfriends.
So when I was my son's age, itwas the Douglas Adams
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxybooks.
It became William Gibson'scyberpunk books.
It became Neal Stephenson'sbook Snow Crash, and what I
realized, kind of thinking aboutthis, is I just read these
books over and over to the pointwhere they sort of became my
(23:31):
friends, like it was kind oflike hanging out with someone I
really liked, and that's myrelationship with books.
Now my office at UMass has twomassive bookshelves and I spend
a lot of my time talking withstudents.
I end up sort of reaching for abook and saying you got to read
this.
And I spend a lot of my timetalking with students.
I end up sort of reaching for abook and saying you got to read
this.
And what I'm really saying is Iwant you to meet this person, I
(23:53):
want you to find out what shehas to say, and my best shortcut
to that is handing you her book.
And so books are people, andit's not any one or two.
That's particularly influencedme.
It's sort of understanding thatyou might need to have a whole
shelf and that that's therichness is being able to draw
(24:16):
on a whole lot of differentpeople.
Yeah, it's a very interesting,unique way of looking at books,
but honestly, I really love theidea of it almost being a
relationship between you and theauthor and then, of course, the
community and how those booksconnect to each other as well,
and as you write yourself it'sthe greatest trick as a teacher,
because I lend you a book, Ican explain what I wanted you to
(24:38):
get out of it and implicit isthe you're going to bring the
book back and we're going tohave a conversation about it and
I've got little labels and allof them to increase my chances
of getting the back.
And you know, sometimes I doand sometimes I don't, but it's
often a way that I can keep up arelationship with a student who
I might, you know, only get tosee for a semester or might only
come to my office once.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yeah, what a great way to do that.
Also, douglas Adams is.
Hitchhiker's Guide to theGalaxy is one of my all-time
favorite series.
It's just one of the bestsci-fi works I think.
Out there I am thrilled to hearit.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
It sort of bounced off my son, although he's
introducing me to a lot of greatsci-fi, I think honestly he's
just so dark.
He's reading the Ark of Asytheseries, which I've thoroughly
enjoyed, but it is way darkerthan what I was reading at his
age.
So I'm wondering if this is aGen Z thing.
I think you guys may have a bitof that dark tone in there.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Quite possibly.
It's definitely is a trend thatyou see amongst, yeah,
teenagers and then other peoplein my generation.
So the last question that wehave is what advice do you have
for Gen Z and then teenagers ingeneral?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
So I actually have the privilege that I get to work
with teenagers.
Often I have undergrads, someof whom are just sort of coming
out of their late teens and intotheir 20s.
I work with folks in theirearly 20s in grad school.
The thing that has workedreally well for me is finding
things that interest me and justshaking them as hard as you
(26:05):
possibly can.
Things that interest me andjust shaking them as hard as you
possibly can.
I went through college withoutreally doing a major.
I've never really had a career.
I've mostly just followedthings that I was really, really
interested in.
Most of us have a hard timelearning stuff that we should
know but we're not particularlyexcited about.
We also have a nearly unlimitedcapacity to learn stuff about
(26:30):
something we care about, and somaybe the biggest thing is to
figure out what you care aboutand then figure out what you
might be able to learn from it.
There's paths that are easieror harder for this.
If what you really care aboutis video games, maybe you're
going to spend a lot of timefinding communities and sort of
finding other people who want toplay, but I am so fascinated by
(26:55):
watching people sort of findthe first thing that they want
to research, that they reallywant to dig into, and sort of
learning how to teach themselves.
I think most of our teaching isteaching ourselves, and I think
the biggest thing is kind ofletting go of those expectations
.
This is what I'm supposed tolearn.
I'm supposed to be a computerprogrammer, I'm supposed to be a
business person and instead,finding something you genuinely
(27:19):
love and running after it,that's what's worked for me all
these years.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
That's been a very comforting.
Almost part of the podcast isseeing how many people who are
writers, who are academics, whoare thinkers just kind of had
that similar philosophy offollowing what they were
interested in and then how thathas led to them having jobs.
Oftentimes you kind of segmentcareers into just majors in high
school, and so it's verycomforting, at least for people
(27:47):
my age who are like man.
I guess the world can work outwith some of the things that
you're super interested in.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
After you are 22, no one is ever going to ask you
what your major is Ever.
Praise the Lord it will not comeup again in your entire life
and you can end up in reallycrazy places.
I did a bachelor's degree inphilosophy in 1993.
I've never gotten anotherdegree and I now teach PhD
students at a really gooduniversity.
(28:14):
It's a long, complicated storyhow that worked out, but there
are more than two ways to getanywhere in the world.
To get anywhere in the world,and one of them's
well-documented, one of them'sless well-documented.
If you follow the stuff youwant to do, you're probably
going to end up somewhere prettycool.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Well, with that, thank you so much for coming on
the podcast.
I really enjoyed ourconversation.
Check out his book Mistrust.
I'll have it linked below.
And yeah, thanks everyone forlistening.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Thanks so much, Taylor.
What a pleasure.
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