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The Jordan Harbinger Show

1323: Todd Rose | The Collective Illusions Tearing America Apart

The Jordan Harbinger Show

Jordan Harbinger

Education, Science, Business

4.8 • 12.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2026

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

90% of Americans privately agree on most issues, yet publicly act like enemies. Author Todd Rose unmasks the collective illusions fueling our division.

Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1323

What We Discuss with Todd Rose:

  • Collective illusions are social lies we all participate in because we mistakenly believe everyone else believes them. On most controversial U.S. issues, around 90% of people privately agree, yet publicly act like they're at war — we're not divided, we're confused and copying each other.
  • Our brains use a flimsy shortcut to gauge group beliefs: the loudest voices repeated the most are assumed to be the majority. On X, 80% of content comes from just 10% of users — fringe extremists who are not remotely representative — yet their volume warps our sense of what "everyone" thinks.
  • Foreign adversaries (China, Iran, Russia) have weaponized this vulnerability with AI-enabled bot armies. Roughly a quarter of social media interactions are with bots, and just 5% well-designed bot presence can dictate group consensus — manufacturing illusions to destroy social trust cheaply and effectively.
  • Conformity is biologically hardwired: agreeing with your group triggers a dopamine reward like hard drugs, while disagreeing fires an error signal that disrupts memory and attention. In one study, people unconsciously shifted their ratings of attractiveness to match a fake group — some literally seeing differently.
  • The good news: these illusions are fragile because they're lies, and shattering them happens at the speed of trust. Have one honest conversation with someone who matters to you, or simply inject uncertainty ("I'm not sure yet") into group conversations. That small act of moral courage cascades faster than you'd ever believe.
  • And much more...

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

0:02.7

Close to almost half of Americans think other Americans are the greatest threat.

0:06.7

Once you realize that this is a war that we're losing, we didn't even know we're fighting,

0:11.0

you can't beat us militarily or even economically, if we're really got our act together.

0:16.1

So what would you do?

0:17.5

What you do is you actually destroy the social trust, the very fabric, right? Like,

0:22.6

you actually start to get us to see each other as enemies. This is really effective. If we really

0:29.1

were that divided, if we really did have these wacky beliefs that we were consolidated around,

0:33.9

we should say it. It's just not true.

0:43.5

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom

0:46.8

into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission

0:50.8

is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, spies, CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers,

1:00.0

even the occasional former cult member, Fortune 500 CEO, or Russian chess grandmaster. If you're

1:05.0

new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter

1:08.8

packs. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes

1:11.1

on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea,

1:16.9

crime and cults, and more. It'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

1:20.9

Just visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.

1:25.9

Today on the show, apparently we're all lying.

1:28.6

Not in the fun, yeah, I read the article kind of way,

1:31.1

but more like we are collectively pretending to believe things

1:34.4

that almost nobody actually believes,

...

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