The Digital Insider with Sinan Aral

Sinan and fellow MIT alumnus, Albert Wenger, partner at Union Square Ventures, a New York-based early stage VC firm focused on investing in disruptive networks, whose portfolio companies include: Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Etsy, Kickstarter and Shapeways. 

Albert shares some excellent business advice and the lessons he’s learned along the way. 

• The Winding Road from MIT PhD to Venture Capitalist (2:07-15:34)
• What Makes an Invest...

Sinan welcomes guest, Renée DiResta, author, analyst, speaker and the technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory.

Renee investigates the spread of narratives across social and media networks, with an interest in understanding how platform algorithms and affordances intersect with user behavior and factional crowd dynamics. She led an investigation into the Russian Internet Research Agency’s multi-year effort to mani...

This week's guest, Gary Vaynerchuk, is considered one of the leading global minds on what’s next in culture,  relevance and the internet. Gary is a serial entrepreneur, and serves as the Chairman of VaynerX,  the CEO of VaynerMedia and the Creator & CEO of VeeFriends.

Sinan and Gary discuss everything from web3, TikTok, consumer blockchain, entrepreneurship and what it takes to be successful, as well as AI algorit...

This week Sinan Aral and guest, Ali Velshi, journalist, news anchor and host of "Velshi" on MSNBC, cover his firsthand experience on the frontlines of some of the most notable events in history. The pair also explore fake news–its genesis, propagation, consequences and solutions and more!

Visit ide.mit.edu/podcast for more.

Follow @sinanaral and @mit_ide on Twitter and @professorsinan and @digitalinsider...

Get ready for The Digital Insider bonus series, "Hot Takes" where host Sinan Aral gives a deep dive and his expert opinion on one of the most topical issues of today.

This week it's all about influencer marketing. Who are influencers? How do influencers, well... influence? From celebrities to micro-influencers, politicians and how their campaigns have been (and continue to be) influenced. Sinan breaks down t...

Today's guest, Scott Galloway is arguably the most prolific thought leader in the business world today, with millions of views on his viral YouTube and videos on his various social media channels filled with business advice and predictions.

He's the bestselling author of Post Corona, The Four, and The Algebra of Happiness. The host of two chart-topping podcasts, The Prof G Show and Pivot with tech journalist, Kara Swisher ...

Today’s guest, Frances Haugen, is a radical advocate for accountability and transparency in social media.

In 2019, she was recruited to Facebook to be the lead Product Manager on the Civic Misinformation team, which dealt with issues related to democracy and misinformation, and later also worked on counter-espionage. Frances became increasingly alarmed by the choices the company makes prioritizing their own profits over public safet...

Sinan is joined by Gary Marcus, scientist, best-selling author, and entrepreneur. Gary is Founder and CEO of Robust.AI, and was Founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence, a machine learning company acquired by Uber in 2016.

The pair discuss topics ranging from artificial General Intelligence, GTP-3, neuroscience, genetics, linguistics, and more. Gary's newest book, co-authored with Ernest Davis, Rebooting AI: Building...

Sinan is joined by expert guests, Natalia Levina – Professor, New York University, Stern School of Business, Richard Stengel – Former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs and Political Analyst, CNBC and Clint Watts – Distinguished Research Fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute and national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC, to discuss the information war in Ukraine. The historical sophistic...

On today’s episode Sinan sits down with friend and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Maria Ressa, who shares her fascinating insights on her work as a fearless advocate of journalism and freedom of speech. The co-founder, CEO and executive editor of Rappler.com, an online news organization in the Philippines, Maria was one of the first reporters to expose the human rights abuses of President Rodrigo Duterte which culminated in her being ...

Get ready for the Digital Insider with Sinan Aral - Professor and Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and author of "The Hype Machine". Sinan is joined by the worlds leading thinkers to explore the latest trends in digital business and society. But with the goal of taking deep dives under the hood of how the digital economy actually works -- from AI bias, to NFTs, fake news to two-sided markets, cryptoc...