It's Monday, June 1st.

I'm Erin Ryan in for Jane Koston, and this is What a Day.

School's out or almost out for summer.

And what have we learned this year, class?

Because most people don't know that, you know, dumb ends with the B, but most people don't know.

And all I do is I switch the E with the U, and you have a Democrat.

This is what happens when you don't hire union writers for your portion of the roast.

On today's show, President Donald Trump's walkback weekend had not very much winning, but a lot of whining and waste.

We're also going to cover escalating protests and government crackdowns outside of an immigrant detention center in New Jersey, and Congress returns this week.

Whether or not its members have found their respective spines hiding in their home districts is TBD.

But let's start with a conversation about a piece

of long-form journalism that confirmed what a lot of us suspected about what we see on social media.

It's all choreographed. We're each the star of our own Micro Truman show. Well, kind of.

Writing for New York Magazine, Lane Brown's piece uncovers the world of artificial hype that drives what we perceive as buzz.

The piece dominated the group chats these last few days, and for good reason.

It taps into a general unease about how we've ceded our reality to platforms that are manipulated by shadowy ad campaigns.

No wonder Backrooms is killing it at the box office.

Here's my conversation with Lane Brown. Lane, welcome to what a day. Thank you, Erin. Glad to be here. Well, since the

early days of social media, people have been trying to figure out the algorithm, how to make sure the

maximum number of people are seeing whatever it is you're posting. I'm a web native, so I'm familiar

with the beast of the

algorithm as well. What do we know about how social media algorithms work today? It seems like

...