Personal Incentives and Cultural Pushback

Something is wrong with society—we feel it before we name it. Is it the algorithms? The platforms? The culture we create in response to them?

In this episode of Into the Machine, I sit down with Tim Urban—creator of Wait But Why, TED phenomenon, and author of What’s Our Problem?—to triangulate the crisis we’re living through: a moment where technology has outpaced our culture, and tribalism is turned into profit.

We trace a long arc—from the chaos of Gutenberg’s printing press to the attention fracking of TikTok—to ask a deceptively simple question: How do we build cultural immune systems strong enough to withstand viral algorithms?

We talk through the human capacity to evolve norms—to grow up as a species—when our informational environment breaks. We explore audience capture, the seduction of virality, the dangers of algorithmically misaligned incentives, and the hopeful possibility that cultural learning can catch up.

You’ll hear Tim unpack his “ladder of thinking” model: a two-axis framework for moving beyond left vs right and toward high- vs low-rung reasoning—and we explore what happens when the primitive mind takes the wheel.

We also talk candidly about how to build a large audience on the internet, the behind-the-scenes emotional machinery of posting in a way that doesn’t sap your soul, and the quiet courage required to be yourself when everyone online is asking you to be someone else

If this episode resonates with you, please do rate us on Apple podcasts, and consider sharing it with a friend. Thank you.

Special Thanks to Tycho for our intro music.