This week, we welcome Susie Alegre, a leading human rights barrister in the internationally renowned Doughty Street Chambers. She has been a legal pioneer in digital human rights, in particular the impact of artificial intelligence on the human rights of freedom of thought and opinion.

Her book, Freedom to Think, charts the history and importance of our most basic human right: freedom of thought. From Galileo to Nudge Theory to Alexa, Susie explores how the powerful have always sought to get inside our heads, influence how we think and shape what we buy. Providing a bold new framework to understand how our agency is being gradually undermined, Freedom to Think is a groundbreaking and vital charter for taking back our humanity and safeguarding our reason in the technological age.

In this fascinating episode we discuss:

• How human rights underpin what it means to be human and why the right to the freedom of thought should be protected at all costs
• How historically this right has come under threat, but never more so that today, when the threat of surveillance capitalism means our minds are read every single minute
• We discuss how to stay cognisant of how technology is affecting our freedom of thought
• And future strategies to keep us safe.

This episode is part of our mini-series on 'Self' where we explore how our technology impacts some of the most important aspects of being human. Over the coming weeks we will speak with Krista Tippett, creator of On Being, Susie Alegre, human rights lawyer and author of Freedom to Think, Jillian Horton MD, physician and author of We are All Perfectly Fine, Casey Swartz, author of Attention, A Love Story, L M Sarcasas, renown commentator on technology & society, and Sharath Jeevan OBE, motivation expert and author of Intrinsic. Our goal: to help all our listeners to think more critically about the role of technology in our lives, and how it shapes who we are.

To find out more about Susie: https://susiealegre.com/

Purchase Freedom to Think in the US

Purchase Freedom to Think in the UK

Susie talks about Magic Sauce: https://applymagicsauce.com/demo

And also Privacy International's Twitter Bot: https://twitter.com/privacyint/status/1148506707150200833

Host and Producer: Georgie Powell https://www.sentientdigitalconsulting.com/

Music and audio production: Toccare https://spoti.fi/3bN4eqO