231: Unabridged Interview: Garrett Graff
No Small Endeavor with Lee C. Camp
When the Internet Became a Tool of Repression
Garrett explains how authoritarian states learned to weaponize online tools and how algorithms began to encourage polarization.
This is our unabridged interview with Garrett Graff.
What can it possibly mean to flourish in our tech saturated world?
In the early 2000s, the internet felt like a civic miracle in the making, with profound possibilities for human flourishing and civic progress. Facebook gave voice to protestors in Egypt’s Tahrir Square. Twitter helped bring down dictators. The web seemed poised to enhance democracy, amplify transparency, and connect us more deeply. But then the tide turned.
This episode features Garrett Graff, historian, journalist, and host of the award-winning podcast Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet. In this sobering conversation, Graff joins Lee to unpack how a platform born of hope became a tool for outrage, surveillance, and even genocide.
Drawing on more than three decades of digital history, Graff traces how tech's shift from user-driven exploration to algorithmic manipulation created not just a loss of innocence—but a structural system designed to enrage. We hear the story of the Arab Spring, where connectivity spurred revolution, only to become a mechanism of authoritarian control. We examine Myanmar, where unchecked hate speech on Facebook helped fuel mass atrocities. And we explore a haunting question: What kind of people are we becoming through our use of these technologies?
Along the way, Graff reflects on his own tech optimism, the moral responsibility of tech executives, and why understanding internet history is a civic—not academic—duty. He and Lee also examine whether AI is already repeating these same mistakes.
If you’ve ever asked how the internet became what it is today—or what role we each play in its future—this episode offers both clarity and a call to courage.
Garrett Graff’s insights offer one of the most thoughtful takes yet on the digital age’s moral and social consequences.
Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript for abridged episode with Garrett Graff.
Thank you to our sponsors:
Ka’Chava: Go to https://kachava.com and use code NSE for 15% off your next order
Boll and Branch: Get 20% off plus free shipping by visiting BollAndBranch.com/NSE
AquaTru: Go to AquaTru.com and use promo code NSE
Join our subscriber-only community called NSE+ BY CLICKING HERE
Get tickets to NSE Live in Nashville BY CLICKING HERE
Get ad-free listening, great member-only bonus content, and early access to tickets for our live shows. AND, you're helping make NSE sustainable by becoming a member!
No Small Endeavor: An award winning podcast exploring what it means to live a good life, with thought provoking conversations about human flourishing, spirituality, theology, politics, faith, social sciences, search for meaning, meaning and purpose, practices, common good, truth beauty and goodness, productivity, habit formation, neuroscience, science and religion, social justice, the cardinal virtues, the how of happiness, theology and culture, self development, virtue theory, being human, moral philosophy, and community. Follow @nosmallendeavor
Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow @leeccamp
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The AI-powered Podcast Player
