#social-engineering
69 episodes
#3732: Emergent Coordination: How Bystanders Self-Organize in Crises
What happens when too many helpers show up? The surprising science of how strangers divide tasks in an emergency.
#3697: How to Reclaim Your Social Life After Friend Inheritance
Feeling like a tenant in your partner’s social circle? Here’s what research says about building independent friendships.
#3676: Socialites: From Mrs. Astor to Paris Hilton
From Gilded Age ballrooms to fragrance empires — what socialites actually do and why their power endures.
#3658: How Reddit Built Guardrails for Anonymity
Reddit didn't solve harassment by killing anonymity. It built friction, reputation systems, and distributed governance.
#3644: What Criminologists Actually Do (It's Not CSI)
Criminology isn't detective training. It's a social science that studies why crime happens—and whether the system works.
#3627: What Your Comedy Taste Says About You
Do you love *Nathan for You* and *Trigger Happy TV*? We diagnose your sense of humor.
#3593: Is the Far-Right a Movement or a Media Effect?
How a Belfast attack reveals the machinery stitching isolated crimes into a narrative of imported violence.
#3587: Surviving the Hallway Shuffle: Building Design & Neighbor Awkwardness
Why narrow hallways and tiny elevators make neighborly small talk unavoidable — and what to do about it.
#3586: The Barney Giggle: How Childhood TV Shapes Adult Behavior
Did Barney the Dinosaur program your adult social responses? The surprising neuroscience of childhood media conditioning.
#3561: Working for the Ultra-Wealthy: Inside the Hidden Labor Market
What it’s really like to manage the lives of the ultra-wealthy—the pay, the burnout, and the strange emotional toll.
#3467: How to Actually Read People (It’s Not What You Think)
Thin-slice judgment, microexpressions, and why introverts may have an edge in spotting lies.
#3416: Crisis Comms: When PR Becomes a Different Animal
Why crisis comms is its own discipline—and what makes someone exemplary at it.
#3385: The Book as Stage Prop: Pay-to-Publish Unpacked
When anyone can buy a publisher's logo, what happens to the signal a book is supposed to send?
#3342: The Half-Billion Dollar Industry of Fake Crowds
How paid attendees, enthusiasm pricing tiers, and AI scoring create the illusion of organic excitement at events worldwide.
#3316: How to Support a Friend Without Playing Therapist
Practical scripts and research-backed strategies for being helpful without overstepping.
#3309: How to End a Friendship Without the Slow Fade
The slow fade hurts more than honesty. Research shows direct conversations end friendships cleaner.
#3295: Why Strangers Drain Your Brain
The neuroscience behind why meeting new people exhausts you — and why it's not just in your head.
#3209: When Algorithms Become Censors
How SLAPP suits, libel tourism, and Google's algorithm chill journalism more effectively than any law.
#3204: The Expectation Cascade: How to Live Your Own Life
Bronnie Ware's deathbed research reveals the #1 regret: not living true to yourself. How to escape the expectation cascade.
#3149: Who Actually Decides to Prosecute?
The King’s name is on every indictment, but he’s never asked. So who really decides who gets charged?
#3126: How Flat Hierarchy Actually Works (No, It’s Not No Managers)
Flat hierarchy isn’t no managers—it’s fewer gates between insight and action. But hidden hierarchies survive every reorg.
#3125: When Democracy Requires Door-Knocking
Why Irish politicians knock on doors while Israeli MKs don't — and what Canada, Japan, and Taiwan do instead.
#3051: Witness Protection vs. Hollywood: Inside WITSEC and Global Programs
How witness protection actually works across the US, UK, and Germany — and why 17% of participants get expelled.
#3046: The Ghosts in the Force: Inside Long-Term Undercover Police Work
How police build fake identities, infiltrate gangs, and protect officers who can never go home again.
#3017: Why Every Restaurant Has 4.6 Stars
Google Maps ratings are broken. Here's how four mechanisms inflate them — and what actually works instead.
#2878: How China Controls Foreign Critics and Domestic Media
China blocks foreign critics at the border while running a sophisticated domestic media control system. Here's how both work.
#2698: How Hackers Hide C2 Servers in Plain Sight
Bulletproof hosts, hijacked routers, and Discord channels — how command and control infrastructure stays up despite takedown attempts.
#2697: When Trust in Your Country Feels Like a Bad Relationship
What happens when the state you fund feels like it's deceiving you — and you can't opt out.
#2611: Saturday Drums vs Quiet Homes: Protest Rights in Residential Areas
When weekly protests become a permanent neighborhood soundscape, how do democracies balance assembly rights with residents' quiet enjoyment?
#2586: Pseudo-Personalized Emails: The New Spam Uncanny Valley
How to detect and filter AI-generated outreach emails that fake personal connection without nuking legitimate messages.
#2579: Why You Feel Watched (And Why You're Not)
Why sitting alone in public feels so awkward — and what the research says you can do about it.
#2430: Where Men's Advocacy Crosses Into Misogyny
How to acknowledge real male grievances without falling into the manosphere's woman-hating fringe.
#2429: When "Believe Women" Has Exceptions
Why did feminist movements go silent on Hamas's sexual violence? A look at ideology, empathy, and whose suffering counts.
#2414: Is Love on the Spectrum Helping or Hurting?
A deep dive into the debates around Netflix's dating show: is it warm representation or a deficit lens?
#2223: Ten Cults Nobody Made a Documentary About
From a Scientology splinter with four deities to a drug rehab that became a paramilitary religion, these high-control groups shaped history while s...
#2047: Why Video Calls Feel Like a Workout for Your Brain
Remote work is draining our "social radar," but new science shows how to rebuild it.
#2045: Anonymity Isn't the Problem, The Architecture Is
Why does Reddit amplify toxicity while other anonymous spaces stay healthy? It's not the mask—it's the room's shape.
#2042: Gifted, Stigmatized, and Seeking Real Community
Why do online communities for the gifted become toxic, and how can you find real-world connections?
#1887: The Lone Wolf Is a Myth
The Las Vegas 2025 incident wasn't a lone wolf—it was the terrifying new face of digital radicalization.
#1886: Spies Are Middle Managers, Not Action Heroes
Forget Bond and Bourne—real espionage is a logistical nightmare of spreadsheets, coffee, and psychological manipulation.
#1883: From Juicero to Yik Yak: Startup Graveyard
We revisit 10 failed startups, from a $700 Wi-Fi juicer to an anonymous social app that turned toxic.
#1862: Hacker News: The Orange Site That Runs Silicon Valley
It loads in milliseconds, has no ads, and looks like a spreadsheet from 1995. Here’s why Hacker News still dictates what the tech elite thinks ever...
#1803: Why Hostages Defend Their Captors
A tech exec was brainwashed in 2025. The neurochemistry is the same as Stockholm Syndrome.
#1660: How Hostage Negotiators Really Work (Not Like the Movies)
Forget the lone hero with a headset. Real crisis negotiation is a team sport built on psychology and timing.
#1549: Why Your Next GitHub Notification Could Be a Trap
Attackers are weaponizing GitHub notifications to bypass security filters. Learn how to spot the latest phishing lures before you click.
#1524: When Bots Learn to Argue: The Simulation of Consensus
Discover how AI-powered botnets are moving beyond spam to simulate organic debates and manufacture public opinion at a global scale.
#1339: When Hacking Becomes a Business Process
Forget the technical exploits; the real vulnerability is the human layer. Discover how attackers use psychology to bypass modern security.
#1321: The New Face of Cyberbullying: AI Botnets & Semantic Mimicry
"Don't feed the trolls" is dead. Discover how AI botnets use semantic mimicry to weaponize psychology and hijack social media algorithms.
#1292: The Visibility Trap: Dissent in the Digital Age
In the digital age, we have the right to speak but not the right to be heard. Discover the new architecture of algorithmic censorship.
#1150: Digital Chains: The Evolving Psychology of Modern Cults
From desert communes to Discord servers, explore how modern high-demand groups use sophisticated psychological tools to exert coercive control.
#1043: The Last Monoglot: Why One Language is Better Than Two
Is the monoglot a language's ultimate guardian? Explore the tragic end of Irish Gaelic and the miraculous, engineered rise of modern Hebrew.
#1018: The Spy Myth vs. Reality: Life Beyond James Bond
Forget the martinis and car chases. Discover why real espionage is more about spreadsheets and "friend-making" than gadgets and shootouts.
#987: Reputation Laundering: How the Ultra-Wealthy Edit History
Discover how the world’s elite use massive philanthropy and SEO tactics to bury scandals and literally rewrite their digital history.
#966: The Silence of Damascus: Eli Cohen and the Physics of Spycraft
Was Eli Cohen’s capture a failure of tradecraft or a mathematical certainty? Explore the physics of signals and Soviet radio tracking.
#959: The Infinite Content Problem: AI’s War on Truth
Explore how AI is scaling disinformation to an industrial level and what the "liar's dividend" means for the future of shared reality.
#958: When Security Becomes the Target
Think your accounts are safe because of 2FA? We dive into the rise of session hijacking and why SMS codes are no longer enough to stop hackers.
#957: The Shadow Mechanics of Modern Regime Change
Explore the hidden tradecraft of subversion and why external attempts to topple entrenched regimes like the IRGC often lead to disaster.
#950: The LinkedIn-ification of Modern Espionage
From CIA resumes to LinkedIn branding, explore how modern intelligence agencies are fighting Big Tech for the world’s top digital talent.
#811: The Gig Economy of Treason: Iran's Digital Recruitment
How does a "side hustle" turn into high treason? Explore how Iranian agents use social media and crypto to recruit unsuspecting citizens.
#778: The Smartphone as a Beacon for Adversary Intelligence
Discover how smartphones and social media have turned the "digital exhaust" of daily life into a major tactical vulnerability in modern conflict.
#738: How Israel Smuggled an Entire War Inside Iran
Discover how local cells and "Ghost Maintenance" paralyzed Iran’s defenses during the Twelve Day War of 2025.
#704: The Unkillable SMS: Security vs. Access
Why do we still rely on 1980s tech to secure our bank accounts? Explore the dangerous paradox of SMS-based two-factor authentication.
#703: The Economics of Spam: Why It Pays to Be a Digital Mosquito
Why is your inbox overflowing? Explore the technical and economic reasons behind the relentless rise of digital and physical spam.
#702: The Democratization of Deception
Could a 30-second clip of your voice be used to steal your identity? Explore the terrifying reality of digital twins and LoRA.
#659: Why Voice Is the Fusion Power of Biometrics
Explore why voice biometrics hasn't replaced Face ID and how generative AI is making "voice prints" a massive security risk.
#626: The Quiet Interrogation: Psychology Over Force
Explore the chilling contrast of high-stakes interrogations, where psychological mastery and the "illusion of knowing" replace physical force.
#593: Manufacturing Consent: How AI Scales Digital Deception
Is your feed real? Herman and Corn explore how AI is turning simple botnets into indistinguishable, high-stakes digital personas.
#416: The Rise of the Hybrid Army: Professionalizing Insurgency
Herman and Corn explore how non-state actors are emulating conventional militaries to bridge the gap in asymmetric warfare.
#382: The Wolves of Tel Aviv: Unmasking a Global Scam
Discover the dark side of the Startup Nation as Herman and Corn dive into the billion-dollar binary options industry that targeted victims worldwide.