Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity With Sander van der Linden Ph.D.

Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan

Dr. Steven Hassan

Self-improvement, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 684 Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Misinformation spreads like a virus,” explained Sander van der Linden, Ph.D., a Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He asked the question, “Is there a way to inoculate or immunize people?” His award-winning book Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity explores this topic using decades of research and on-the-ground experience advising governments and tech companies. He wrote the book to devise a new paradigm to help readers understand and defend themselves against a worldwide information infodemic. Van der Linden’s biography describes his body of research as looking at “how people process (mis)information, how it spreads in online networks, and how we can most effectively prebunk and inoculate people against false information.” He served on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) infodemic working group. He has won numerous awards for his research on human judgment, communication, and decision-making, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). He co-developed Bad News, an award-winning fake news game designed to improve people’s ability to spot manipulation techniques! This is an very important interview. Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Dr. Stephen Hassan with another episode of my podcast, Cult Conversations, The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan.
0:24.9	And I have a very, very interesting scholar with me today.
0:32.2	Sander van der Linden wrote a brand new book called Foolproof. Why Misinformation Infect Our Minds and How to Build
0:42.4	Immunity.
0:43.8	Sandra, I heard you do an interview for the skeptics, and I was like, I want to talk to you, and
0:50.9	I just basically read your book twice. It was that good. We have a lot to share with
0:58.0	folks. It's going to be very, very helpful. Before we start, I just want to give your credentials,
1:04.7	please. So you are a PhD professor of social psychology in society and and director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making
1:14.6	Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge.
1:19.8	Folks, that's England, by the way, not Cambridge, Mass. We have Harvard and MIT,
1:25.3	so, but this is the UK.
1:35.5	He's ranked among the top 1% of highly cited social sciences worldwide has published over 200 research papers.
1:42.2	I am in awe of that, but I'm a new scholar relatively compared to you.
1:46.0	Your research has been frequently featured in outlets like the New York Times, BBC, Time magazine, Rolling Stone. Your book that I just mentioned was named
1:53.9	Book of the Year by nature, the Financial Times, and Waterstones has won several awards, including Harvard Goldsmith Book Prize and best
2:04.3	book prizes from the British and American Psychological Societies. And you were elected a fellow
2:10.2	of the Academy of Social Sciences this year, 2025. Congratulations. And thank you. So you are a social psychologist emphasizing research.
2:25.1	Give my listen. I read your book, so I'm going to pretend that being the interviewer,
2:29.7	that I don't know this, but give us how you got interested in the topic.
2:35.1	Let's set up the table.
2:37.0	Yeah, yeah, well, thanks so much for that generous introduction.
2:39.2	Real pleasure to join you.
	...

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