It's the Brian Lairn Show on WNYC.

Welcome back, everybody.

I'm Matt Katz, keeping the big seat warm for Brian today.

We'll end the show with a look at Wikipedia. Opinions on the site have long been

divided. Some say it makes information more accessible. Opponents argue that because anyone can edit it,

it's not a reliable source. It is true that anyone in the world can edit the online encyclopedia,

but supporters claim that this strengthens the

website's credibility. A free source of factual information sounds like it would benefit everyone,

but this is an age, as we know, where facts are becoming increasingly political. Some people

on the right, like Elon Musk, have accused Wikipedia of left-leaning

bias, and recently the Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025,

threatened to leak the information of individual editors over their contributions to articles

on Palestine. So with Wikipedia in the far-rights crosshairs, we'll take a look at how the site works,

who it's run by, and why it might prove pretty resilient in the age of Trump's attacks on news

sources. Joining us now is Margaret Talbot, staff writer at the New Yorker. Her latest piece is

titled Elon Musk also has a problem with Wikipedia.

Margaret, welcome back to the show. Thank you. Nice to be here. So for those who aren't familiar,

can you just give us a quick summary of how the Wikipedia editing process works? What goes on there? Yeah, it's, yeah, it's pretty

remarkable because in many ways you could say that it really functions as the internet dreamers

kind of hoped the internet would. It's, it's collaborative, it's democratic, it's crowdsourced,

it's run by volunteers,

the content is not monetized in any way.

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