America’s Slide Toward Simulated Democracy With Eliot Higgins

Galaxy Brain

The Atlantic

Technology

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of “Galaxy Brain,” Charlie Warzel sits down with Eliot Higgins, founder of the open-source investigative collective Bellingcat, to examine how our public sphere slid from healthy debate into what Higgins calls “disordered discourse.” Higgins is an early-internet native who taught himself geolocation during the Arab Spring and later built Bellingcat’s global community. He has spent the past decade exposing war crimes and online manipulation with publicly available data. Higgins has recently come up with a framework to help understand our information crisis: Democracies function only when we can verify truth, deliberate over what matters, and hold power to account. All three are faltering, he argues. In this conversation, Warzel and Higgins trace the incentives that broke the feed: how algorithms reward outrage, how “bespoke realities” form, why counterpublics can devolve into virtual cults, and what “simulated” accountability looks like in practice. They revisit Higgins’s path from early web forums to Bellingcat, look at the MAGA coalition as a patchwork of disordered counterpublics, and debate whether America is trapped in a simulated democracy. Higgins offers a clear diagnosis—and a plan for how we might begin to claw back a shared reality. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	When was the last time you indulged your desires, felt true Ranger Rover refinement?
0:04.8	The last time you felt total serenity, total confidence, no matter the terrain?
0:09.0	Limitless, effortless, peerless.
0:11.2	How far can Rangerover take you?
0:13.1	Rangerover, designed for distinction.
0:15.4	Hey, everybody, it's Charlie.
0:17.2	And before we get to today's episode, I had a request for all of you listeners.
0:38.1	We're working on a story about screen time. And when we tend to talk about screen time, often the conversation will be focused on younger people. We're worried that they're getting too much screen time, or they've been radicalized by what they see on their devices, or that they don't seem to understand how they're being manipulated. But I've gotten a lot of anecdotal reporting over the last few years that the problem is similar,
0:43.3	if not worse, on the other side of the age spectrum. And so we want to do a story about a different
0:48.4	generations relationship to this technology. We'd really love to hear from you, whether you
0:54.0	are somebody who is having some of
0:55.9	these problems or you feel your relationship to your device has become a bit problematic or lopsided,
1:01.3	we'd really like to hear from you. Tell us your age and why you feel you have an unhealthy
1:05.8	relationship with your device. If you've noticed this with a family member, we also want to hear from you. So if you
1:12.9	could send us a brief voice memo about a minute no longer, we'd absolutely love that. Or than anything,
1:18.9	we want you to emphasize and describe what you're seeing and what you're feeling about your loved
1:23.0	one screen time or your own. And we want you to express whatever honest amount of concern you have.
1:29.0	Please send that voice memo to C-W-W-Z-L at the Atlantic.com. That's C-W-A-R-Z-E-L at the
1:37.1	Atlantic. Thank you so much. And here's today's episode. And you have these, you know,
1:42.2	20x versus 1-Y videos, which kind of do this
1:46.1	performance. Oh, you mean the, the Jubilee videos? Yeah, I despise those. I think they're just
1:52.7	a strong example of that kind of hollow performance of democracy, that no one's there to learn
	...

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