S5 Ep. 5: The Internet Giveth, the Internet Taketh Away: Pamela Paul and Cecilia Kang on What We’ve Lost and Gained (But Mostly Lost) in the Age of Social Media

fiction/non/fiction

Author and editor of the New York Times Book Review Pamela Paul and New York Times journalist Cecilia Kang join hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to consider how social media and search engines have changed everyday life. First, Paul provides a nostalgia tour of pre-internet life, and reads from her new book, 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet, a wake-up call to identify the elements that might be worth saving. Then Kang, who has covered Facebook for 15 years, analyzes the globally dominant company’s relentless focus on growth, and reads from her new book with co-reporter Sheera Frenkel, An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination. Kang also considers the impact of information shared by former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Hayden Baker.

Selected readings:

Pamela Paul

• Rectangle Time
• How to Raise a Reader
• My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books
• The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony
• Pornified
• Parenting, Inc.
• By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life
• 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet

Others:

• Baby Einstein Videos
• A Clockwork Orange
• David Foster Wallace
• Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
• The Good Wife
• New York Times Book Review
• Talk of the Town, “Spring Rain” by John Updike
• Washington Post

Cecilia Kang

• An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination

Others:

• “Whistle-Blower Says Facebook Chooses ‘Profits Over Safety,’” by Cecilia Kang and Ryan Mac
• Buzzfeed
• NPR
• Times of London
• McClatchy
• Mark Zuckerberg
• “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook” by Chris Hughes
• Metaverse
• Roblox
• Sheera Frenkel
• “Network Free K.C.: The Free Network Foundation Takes on Google in Kansas City” by Whitney Terrell

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