Just because you have not been radicalised, it doesn’t mean you are not being manipulated.

When popular culture uncritically employs familiar motifs of secret societies plotting to control humanity, it can also have real-world consequences.

Brexit could never work, because there was no consensus among ‘Leavers’ of what they were seeking to achieve. Not only were their objectives not aligned, they were fundamentally opposed on many issues.

Ambient pessimism is so pervasive that our society’s problems can seem intractable, but this fatalism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy that puts democracy itself at risk.

Tristan Harris, a former Google engineer who now advocates for ethical social media algorithms, coined the term “race to the bottom of...