We sometimes talk about whether politics is upstream of culture or culture upstream of politics,

and we ask which has the capacity to more fundamentally shape the character and imaginative horizons of the young.

But the information that we consume, whether it's news reporting about public affairs, in a way

that confirms our priors and sorts us into tribal partisan bubbles, or whether it is the deeper

ideas about what to honor, about what is good, about what's beautiful, and what's holy. Virtually

all of this information is mediated through technology, our computer screens and

smartphones. It's the way that you're listening to my voice right now. That means that

the technological infrastructure through which we encounter culture and

politics is in a way upstream of them both.

Now given that reality, helping our children navigate the internet would seem to be among the most important things that a parent or an educator could do,

both insulating them from the worst excesses of pornography, sexting, and social pressure,

but also just how to navigate the online world safely?

Now, how can you do that?

How can you take advantage of all that the internet offers while making it safe for your family?

Welcome to the tick for podcast.

I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. This week we enter into

that question with Sean Clifford, CEO of Canopy, the American Project of the Israeli

company NetSpark, which has developed a kind of technology that filters websites and

messages in real time and helps parents curate the internet for their children.

NetSparks technology has been adopted by Israel's Ministry of Education and is used in thousands

of schools there. Now, through canopy, it's come to the U.S. market, where Israeli technology

can be used to protect Muslim, Jewish, and Christian families all over the United States.

...