Welcome to the Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates interview series on radio and podcast.

The show covering all things health, wellness, culture, and more. The show for all of us who aren't old, were better.

Each week we'll interview superstars, experts, and ordinary people, doing extraordinary

things, all related to this wonderful experience of getting better, not older. Now here's your host,

the award-winning Paul Vogelzang. Thank you. I'm Paul Vogelsang, and welcome to the Smithsonian Associates interview series.

Have you ever wondered if the thoughts your thinking are actually yours? Well, today's Smithsonian Associates conversation might just change the way you think. Literally.

Our guest is Harvard historian and scientist

Rebecca Lemoth, who spent the last two decades pulling back the curtain on something

most of us think we're immune to. Brainwashing. Yep, brainwashing. But this is not

science fiction or Cold War spy stuff, though it starts there.

In The Instability of Truth, Dr. Rebecca Lemoth takes us deep into the hidden archives of CIA

experiments, cult psychology, secret black sites, and perhaps the most chilling battleground of all, the

home screen of your phone.

That's right.

Rebecca Lemoff uncovers how techniques once used in POW camps and radical political groups

are now quietly running beneath our everyday lives inside social media feeds,

AI chatbots, and even dating apps.

Emotional engineering.

Hyper persuasion, algorithmic manipulation, it's all happening.

And most of us don't even know it.

Here's the twist. Education and

intelligence, they don't protect you. They might even make you more vulnerable. In today's

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