Everything Is Fake

Margaret Heffernan, businesswoman and author who critiques Silicon Valley’s hype culture; Bill Harrington, former Moody’s analyst who saw ratings pressure before 2008. They explore contract cheating and AI in education, rating agencies’ compromises, startup “fake it till you make it” lore, Theranos-style hype, and how systemic incentives normalize fakery.

Dennis Patrick, former FCC chair who led the 1987 move to end the Fairness Doctrine, shares firsthand recollections. He discusses the vote and its fallout. The conversation traces Morton Downey Jr.'s shock-TV playbook and Oprah's rise of emotional sincerity. It explores how television turned truth into performance and why personal feeling began to rival factual accuracy.

Patrick Reid, a wrestling historian and longtime industry hand, gives a quick primer on kayfabe and its rise. He unpacks 1980s spectacle, the Attitude Era’s edge, and how neo-kayfabe blurred real controversies with storyline. They trace wrestling’s crossover into politics and the dangers when performance overtakes reality.

Jimmy Botlet, an AI-generated companion and co-presenter built from scripted replies and voice cloning. Short, punchy dives into podcast fame, embellished origin stories and how personal narratives outpace facts. Conversations on AI hosts multiplying content and why audiences often accept synthetic personalities. A playful look at fakery’s role in modern media.

Have you noticed that more and more of the world feels, well, fake?Online there's a daily avalanche of dubious advice and information - about health, money, success, happiness - much of it delivered with total confidence and little regard for evidence.There's the fabricated reviews, inflated metrics and synthetic content.Influencers present themselves as authorities. The 'fake it till you make it' mantra has hardened into the business model. Everything is now content. Performed for likes, not tested for truth.Meanwhile, institutions once trusted to tell us what is true now compete for attention like everyone else - just as new technologies emerge that can generate convincing false information at scale.How did we get here? What can we do about it? And, well, do we really care?In this six-part series Jamie Bartlett sets out to understand how fakery stopped being a flaw and became the operating system of modern life.This isn't a series about individual liars or shysters. It's about the cultural conditions that made modern fakery not just possible, but incentivised, rewarded, and often indistinguishable from success.From the scripted spectacle of 1980s professional wrestling to the collapse of the global financial system, Jamie traces the incentives that normalised our fake world. Along the way, he's joined by his AI companion, Jimmy Botlett.The series builds towards one urgent question: in a future shaped by generative AI and synthetic media, how will we tell fact from fakery - and will we even care enough to try?Credits: Presenter: Jamie Bartlett Series Producer: Tom Pooley Sound Design: Rob Speight Production Coordinator: Neena Abdullah Original music: Coach Conrad Editor: Craig Templeton SmithA Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4.

On 30th September 2022 a coroner in London finds that Molly Russell "...died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content." The finding is a global first. Social media is ruled to have contributed to the death of a child. In San Francisco, around the same time, a strange story is unfolding inside Twitter HQ. Ever since Donald Trump's account was suspended on twitter, tensions have been building around what is and isn't allowed on platforms. Elon Musk shares internal staff documents with a hand-picked group of journalists. One of those journalists suspects these documents show collusion between tech platforms and the US government. Politicians and civil groups on both the left and right from across the world, want the power and influence of these companies to be reigned in. There's even talk of repealing section 230 - the law that created modern social media. In this final episode, Jamie Bartlett asks if Silicon Valley's radical experiment is about to implode? And if the online world is chaotic now, what will advances in artificial intelligence mean for us all?Presenter: Jamie Bartlett Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound design: Eloise Whitmore Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Senior Producer: Peter McManus Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Commissioned by Dan Clarke A BBC Scotland ProductionReading by John Lightbody Archive credits: BBC News, September 2022; CNN, 2022; C-Span, Jan 2024; BBC Archive, 1967New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661uIf you are suffering distress or despair and need support, a list of organisations that can help is available at bbc.co.uk/actionline

Jamie Bartlett travels to Minnesota to meet Abrham Meareg Amare. The young academic is seeking asylum in the States following the murder of his father in Ethiopia in 2021. In December 2022, Abrham became the lead complainant in a $2 billion lawsuit against Meta. Abrham believes that company is partly responsible for the death of his dad - a renowned chemistry professor - who was slandered and doxxed on Facebook, before being shot outside his home. Abrham says he reported the posts multiple times but they were not taken down, until eight days after the killing. Jamie meets the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who tells him that her decision to leak Meta's internal documents was driven by grave concerns about the way Meta operates in the Global South. Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Senior Producer: Peter McManus Commissioned by Dan Clarke for BBC Radio 4.Archive: C:Span, October 2021 New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u

In 2018, the CEOs of our most popular social media companies are standing at a crossroad. After political outcry over Russian interference in the 2016 election and fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, tech leaders have a decision to make. They need to come up with ways of making their platforms safer. One route is a radical overhaul of the entire business model. The other is the biggest digital clean-up operation ever attempted, spanning hundreds of langauges and countries. Which path will they take? Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Executive Producer: Peter McManus Commissioned by Dan Clarke A BBC Scotland Production for BBC Radio 4.Archive: C-Net, April 2018; CBS News, 2020; Tucker Carlson on Fox News; BBC News 2021; EU Debates Tv, 2021 New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u

One of the strange things about our new media universe, is how innocuous decisions taken in Silicon Valley - turning a dial, or adding a few lines of code to increase engagement - can change your life. In 2016, Instagram introduced a new way of looking at content: the non-chronological feed. Now, instead of seeing what your friends were posting in the order they were posting it, an algorithm brought you stuff based on search history, likes, and interactions. That’s how tech engineers saw things back then - not just at Instagram, but at Pinterest, and other platforms too - if you engage with something, that must mean you want more of it. Ian Russell believes that this algorithmic change may have altered the course of his 14 year old daughter Molly's life.Presenter: Jamie Bartlett Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Execuitve Producer: Peter McManus Commissioner: Dan Clarke A BBC Scotland Production for Radio 4.Archive: 'Instagram implements big changes to users' feed, ditches chronologixal content' DT Daily; March 16th 2016. US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Nov 7th 2023If you are suffering distress or despair and need support, including urgent support, a list of organisations that can help is available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u

2016 is a big election year. But something is going very wrong online. Journalists in America and the Philippines start to notice something strange going on online. In Manila, Maria Ressa - the editor of online news site, Rappler - discovers a sock puppet network of social media accounts, all pushing for the election of a strong leader. Someone like Rodrigo Duterte. Maria is suspicious. She makes an urgent call to Facebook.In Veles, in Macedonia, a young man called 'Marco' starts writing fake articles and posting them online. Very soon they're being read by millions of people around the globe and he's making huge sums of money. The online ecosystem is under attack. Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Exec: Peter McManus Researcher: Juliet Conway and Elizabeth Ann Duffy Commissioned by Dan ClarkeArchive: BBC News, AP Archive, Bloomberg Television, CNN New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u