Are You In a Social Media Echo Chamber? (Your Radical Questions with Louisa Munch)
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2026
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Academic and social media influencer Louisa Munch answers your questions about her left-wing politics, whether online algorithms mean she’s preaching to the converted and what schools should be doing to develop critical thinking skills.
She also faces questions about her support for free university education and whether she feels pressure to bend her politics to suit a more mainstream line of argument.
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Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Thursday and you can also watch them on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002f1d0/radical-with-amol-rajan
Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor at The Independent.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Lewis Vickers with Anna Budd. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davis. Technical production was by Gareth Jones and Dafydd Evans. The editor is Sam Bonham. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Hello and welcome to your radical questions, where I put your questions to our magnificent |
| 0:11.9 | radical guests. This is your chance to really, really connect with and really engage directly |
| 0:17.2 | with the super smart, super interesting people that we have on this podcast and ask |
| 0:21.6 | them about their ideas for the future. Radical and otherwise. What a great way to kick off |
| 0:26.9 | the new year with historian Tom Holland. Very, very large numbers of you listened to and |
| 0:31.0 | enjoyed that episode. Thank you so much for all the feedback on social media and elsewhere. |
| 0:35.9 | Thank you so much to everyone who sent in such thoughtful |
| 0:38.4 | questions as well. And by the way, thank you to Tom Holland, who is very much a man in |
| 0:42.6 | demand but gave us a huge amount of his time, as has this week's very, very in-demand guest. |
| 0:48.8 | I don't want to sort of, it's almost dismissive to say Louisa Munch, social media phenomenon |
| 0:53.9 | or superstar. You've only |
| 0:55.6 | been doing this for six months. Actually, she's a critical theorist at the University of Warwick |
| 0:59.9 | in the English department. But she's also now, you are a social media phenomenon. Are you |
| 1:05.2 | comfortable about being described as that? I guess so, yeah. Yeah, you can live with it. And it all |
| 1:09.4 | started, because we've got questions on this. |
| 1:11.4 | It all started with this, so was it on TikTok or Instagram, your first one about books? |
| 1:15.8 | TikTok. |
| 1:16.5 | TikTok. |
| 1:17.0 | So you're an academic, University of Warwick, you do a TikTok video about which critical theory books to read, and it just kicks off. |
| 1:24.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:25.4 | Literally, I made one video because basically all my family were like, |
... |
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