Fixing the Internet with Harleen Kaur (Bonus Minisode)

Summary

StarTalk Radio: Episode Summary - "Fixing the Internet with Harleen Kaur (Bonus Minisode)"

Release Date: June 20, 2025

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Introduction

In this special bonus minisode of StarTalk Radio, hosted by renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the conversation delves into the intricate landscape of modern news media and the pervasive issue of bias. Neil is joined by Gary O'Reilly, his comic co-host, and special guest Harleen Kaur, the co-founder and CEO of Ground News, a platform dedicated to combating news bias and promoting objective journalism.

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The Evolution of News Media

Neil deGrasse Tyson opens the discussion by reflecting on the changing nature of news consumption:

"When I grew up, the news was just the news. And you went on about your life." ([02:13])

Gary O'Reilly echoes this sentiment, highlighting the shift from limited news sources to the 24-hour news cycle pervasive today:

"See, now it seems we live in a constant need for news. It's not just on the hour. It's every hour, 24 hours a day." ([02:26])

Harleen Kaur introduces the concept of news fragmentation, explaining how the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine during the Reagan administration led to the diversification and polarization of news outlets:

"There was a fairness doctrine where the onus was on the broadcasters to actually show all versions of what's really going on. And then it got repealed... because then there wasn't any legal obligation to show all these various versions." ([09:27])

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Understanding News Bias

The core of the conversation revolves around identifying and mitigating biases in news reporting. Harleen Kaur elaborates on Ground News' methodology:

"We do not determine the rating that if the CNN is left or Fox is right. We're using third-party rating agencies... we take a statistical average of them and then say, okay, based on these, these rating agencies, that's where the news outlet lies." ([10:35])

She further explains how Ground News analyzes not just the spin of a story but also the lack of coverage, which can indicate underlying biases:

"It's the lack of coverage completely that tells the bias of the outlet." ([11:25])

This approach allows users to see a more comprehensive view of news events by aggregating multiple sources and perspectives.

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The Impact of Digital Media and Social Platforms

The discussion shifts to the role of digital media and social platforms in exacerbating news bias. Harleen Kaur points out that the revenue models of modern news outlets, similar to social media advertising, prioritize user engagement over objective reporting:

"They keep showing you again, reinforcing that cognitive bias creating, creating that bubble." ([17:35])

Gary O'Reilly adds that algorithms on social media act as "outrage engines," increasing polarization by continuously feeding users content that elicits strong emotional reactions:

"They know that the more outrage you are, the more time you'll spend on it and, and more likely you are to click." ([26:24])

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Strategies to Combat Bias and Promote Media Literacy

Harleen Kaur shares actionable strategies for listeners to navigate the biased news landscape:

1. Lateral Reading: Encouraging users to cross-reference information across multiple sources to verify its accuracy.

   "Take the news sources and read it across. Even if you don't agree with them, you don't have to." ([22:01])

2. Expanding News Consumption: Following diverse news outlets, including those that challenge one's preconceived notions, to uncover "blind spots."

   "Find accounts that you might not agree with and they might make you angry, but at least going out and seeing what we are calling blind spots." ([22:01])

3. Utilizing Ground News Features: Leveraging Ground News' tools, such as Blind Spots, to identify news stories omitted by favored outlets.

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The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism

The conversation also touches on the dual-edged sword of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the realm of news:

Harleen Kaur acknowledges that while AI can perpetuate biases through algorithms, it also holds potential to enhance journalism by identifying deep fakes and summarizing vast amounts of information accurately:

"AI can help the news by doing things like identifying deep fakes, by giving tools to journalists to produce quality content or take out the bias." ([32:29])

However, she cautions about the challenges of ensuring AI remains an objective tool, free from the biases of its creators:

"If you want to design it to do those things, then you will. If you don't, then it goes in a different direction." ([33:19])

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Future of News Consumption

As the episode draws to a close, Harleen Kaur emphasizes Ground News' mission to expand users' news sources and foster a more informed public:

"We have a researcher from Duke University... found out that people's opinions can actually be changed if they're presented with counter to what their beliefs are." ([36:11])

This underscores the platform's goal to bridge information gaps and reduce the echo chambers that currently dominate the news landscape.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Neil deGrasse Tyson offering a "cosmic perspective" on the future of the internet and information dissemination:

"I worry... that it could signal the end of the Internet. When deepfakes become so good and it's known that they're good, that all the people who used to believe the fake news won't believe the fake news anymore because they'll be sure that it was faked." ([38:00])

Despite these concerns, the collaborative efforts of platforms like Ground News, as advocated by Harleen Kaur, provide hope for a more transparent and balanced news ecosystem.

Harleen Kaur can be reached through Ground News' website or mobile app, offering both free and subscription-based access to their tools designed to enhance news literacy and mitigate bias.

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Key Takeaways

• News Fragmentation: The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine led to increased bias and polarization in news media.
• Ground News' Solution: By aggregating multiple sources and providing bias and factuality ratings, Ground News aims to offer a more objective view of news events.
• Digital Media's Role: Social media algorithms often reinforce existing biases, creating echo chambers that hinder objective information consumption.
• AI in Journalism: While AI presents challenges in maintaining objectivity, it also offers tools to combat misinformation and improve news quality.
• Promoting Media Literacy: Strategies like lateral reading and expanding news sources are essential for individuals to navigate and understand the complex media landscape.

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Subscribe to Ground News or visit their website to explore tools that can help you navigate the modern news landscape with greater awareness and discernment.

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Keep Looking Up!

Transcript

[Gary O'Reilly]

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[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

You know, spring is a time for growth. Rosetta Stone uses immersive learning to help you actually think in a new language. That's right, think. You know our little catchphrase that we say on this show? Sigue mirando haci arriba. Yeah, that's right.

[Harleen Core]

That's. Keep looking up the Rosetta Stone way.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

So don't wait. Unlock your language learning potential now. Jas la hora. StarTalk radio listeners can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. That's UNL to 25 language courses for life por vida. Visit RosettaStone.com StarTalk to get started and claim your 50% off today. UpTanga su siquenta porciento de descento. Oy. At least somebody's trying to fix the news.

[Gary O'Reilly]

About time.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

And we got him on this show.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes. Where else are you gonna hear about it? Where else are you gonna see this?

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

I don't know, because we just try to deal in objective truths.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I know. We'll look at the biases and why, where, how, who's doing it, who's not.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

We are all in here on StarTalk special edition coming up. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Special Edition. Mm.

[Gary O'Reilly]

How about that?

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Neil Degrasse Tyson here right next to Gary O'Reilly. When you see Gary, it is special. Today. We're talking about a very important subject. Yeah, the news.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah. It was something we've been wanting to come to grips with for a while now.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Who would have thought that you'd have to talk about that? When I grew up, the news was just the news. And you went on about your life.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You watched the news, and then you went to the real tv. When you were growing up as a kid, this news thing got in the way, Right?

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Yeah. The news was like, yeah, I don't need this.

[Gary O'Reilly]

See, now it seems we live in a constant need for news. It's not just on the hour. It's every hour, 24 hours a day.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

I would say that it's a desire for news, but a strong enough desire becomes a need.

[Harleen Core]

Wow.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Ooh.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

That's what I think is going on.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay. You just have to think about the number of news channels there are on tv, if TV even exists anymore. Then there's online, there's social media platforms.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

But not just how many are there, how many hours a day they broadcast news.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, gosh.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Yeah, right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I mean, it does fold out into a large number. I mean, throw in the unfiltered influencers and then the news landscape will and can look a bit of a mess. We all have our trusted news preferences, our go tos, and as I've said before, the better the information, the better the.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

The decisions that you're going to make based on that information. Exactly. Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Right. But do we know if these news sources bring their own filters or their own biases? It's not always obvious to see from the outsider just by a headline. Sometimes it is by the headline. This is where our guest comes in, Neil. So if you would introduce them, please.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

I'd be delighted to. Yeah. Yes. We have with us Harleen Core. Harleen, welcome to StarTalk.

[Harleen Core]

Thanks, Neil. Delighted to be here.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Excellent. And you're in from Canada.

[Harleen Core]

That's right, Canada.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

The 50 day. The 51st day.

[Harleen Core]

That's right. We have no water.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Don't do that.

[Harleen Core]

Where did you read that, Neil?

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

I don't know. Some news source told me that that's.

[Harleen Core]

What it was that happened.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Co founder and CEO. I got it here. Of ground news. All right. Are you grounded? Grounded means you have an objective understanding of reality in any language, I'm pretty sure. Because the ground is the ground.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yep.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

You're a former engineer.

[Harleen Core]

That's. That's right.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

And what kind of engineer?

[Harleen Core]

A space engineer.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Space. Loving it.

[Gary O'Reilly]

In the right place.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Yes. Yes.

[Harleen Core]

So big fun. New.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Okay, thank you. You are trying to fix the news problem not by giving it a bias of your own, but by figuring out a way to de. Bias it.

[Harleen Core]

That's right.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

In some objective way that people around a table can say, hey, I see what you did there. And we kind of all agree, no matter which side of the aisle you're on, as Gary said, if I have what I would consider a trusted source of news, and what you do to the news makes it look different from that, why should I have any confidence at all that you're doing the right thing?

[Harleen Core]

Yeah, that's a very good question. So let me try and explain what we do at ground News. So we are not.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

No, there is no try. There's do or do not.

[Harleen Core]

I shall explain what we are doing at Ground News. So how we view news is that something happens. As you call the objective truth, Something happens and then it goes through this prism of the media landscape and then it fragments into all these million of different versions of what exactly happens. And depending on where news outlets are, on what their biases are or what their agendas are, or who's funding them, who owns them, who is the audience that they don't want to piss off, and who's the sponsor, who's the sponsor, then they will tell you, although the event that they're reporting is the same event, but how they're reporting it is going to be very, very different. And depending on what version you're reading, your perception of the reality of what happens is going to be very different. Different to each other. To the point. Yeah. Using a space analogy, we are literally sometimes living in the different universes, depending on what news outlets or group analogy totally works. Thank you.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

You've met people and say, what universe did you.

[Harleen Core]

Did you come from? Yeah, literally, did you.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

I've said that way too many times lately.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah. Are we finding the same thing? So, yeah. Our job is not to say that this one's right or this one's wrong. And what we do is we literally reconstitute all of those versions together to reverse engineer what might have happened. So we'll show.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Whoa, whoa.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It's a new take on it.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

That's badass.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So what criteria.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

But let her finish your things. She just used the word reverse engineering. Let that sentence finish.

[Gary O'Reilly]

The engineer said reverse engineering.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

What a surprise.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah, Yeah. I hope it doesn't come become scientist versus the engineer here.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

No, no, no, no, no. Not for this interview. Otherwise, meet me outside, we'll talk about.

[Harleen Core]

I give up. We put all those sources together. So let's say, yeah, there is some executive order that has passed and there's a news story saying, hey, this is the headline and this is what happened. We will show you along the spectrum how the different news sources cover all the way from the far left to the far right. And then we don't put any check marks or X's against any of them. We very much let you decide where. Where the truth kind of gets reconstituted. And you put up. You use your critical thinking to put that together.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

You use your critical thinking.

[Harleen Core]

Yes.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

What does that presume? Where's the big assumption there?

[Harleen Core]

You're absolutely right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Or you should use your critical thinking.

[Harleen Core]

Which is if you have a skill, we are all losing. It's just. Which is a skill. That interesting.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You say that.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

How it's more herd mentality then it's.

[Harleen Core]

Herd mentality, but also I think we becoming lazy a bit because we. I feel like we like to be intellectually lazy because it's. It's great to hear somebody else talk about what they think about it or what their opinion is about something and then regurgitate it rather than using your own brain to be able to say. Because it takes effort to be able to. To do that. I'll. I'll just pick one guy, one girl, one substack, one podcast, one. One newsletter, one news channel, whatever it is, and then just follow the one that I agree with and reinforces my cognitive bias.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So the psychology of the news and how it's absorbed, how it's portrayed is now much, much deeper than you and I growing up, oh, there's a nice guy in a suit and a tie and he's reading the stories from the day at 6pm and then we moved on.

[Harleen Core]

There are a couple of reasons why that's not the case anymore. So one is there was a doctrine called Fairness Doctrine, if you've heard of that, that came into existence, I think late 1940s, which.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

That early.

[Harleen Core]

That early, yeah, because that's before TV, that's radio. Because they wanted. FCC wanted radio and then TV to take responsibility, to provide a more equitable and honest version of what's really going on. So there was a fairness doctrine where the onus was on the broadcasters to actually show all versions of what.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

And they had that control of them because the federal government allocated the electromagnetic spectrum to them. Right?

[Harleen Core]

That's right. That's how they control it.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

The license trust.

[Harleen Core]

That's right.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Harleen Core]

And then it got repealed during the Reagan administration. So that's where the fragmentation really, really happened. Because then there wasn't any legal obligation to be able to say that I have to show all this. Various versions and show the. That's why the guy in Thai that told the Walter Cronkite version of the news that used to exist. And then, of course, everything spun out of control when news hit the Internet and then later hit social media. And then it just went crazy and.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Cause I remember. I mean, this is how old I am. I remember when the news would give an opinion, it was like, are you seated? Okay, we're about to give an opinion. Get ready for this opinion. We're gonna come back and we're gonna sit here and this is gonna be an opinion, like flashing opinion. And then it was over and then.

[Harleen Core]

And it wasn't told, it wasn't snuck in to be said. This is news. This is an opinion. Yeah. As you said, very much categorized.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So let me ask you, of course, what criteria are you using at ground use to determine an outlet's bias, be it left, center or right.

[Harleen Core]

That's right.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

So can a center be biased? Ooh, that's a philosophical question. I told you.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You're in that deep.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, go ahead.

[Harleen Core]

So one decision we made early on, again, to be as neutral as possible and in a way as scientific as possible. We do not determine the rating that if the CNN is left or Fox is right. We're using third party rating agencies and actually we are using three of them who use three different methodologies. One of them is using crowdsourcing, one of them is using experts, one of them is using algorithms. And then we take a statistical average of them and then say, okay, based on these, these rating agencies, that's where the news outlet lies.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

And do you look for keywords that would indicate.

[Harleen Core]

That's right. That's right. How does the story get framed? What topics do they cover more often than less often?

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

And how much time they give to that topic.

[Harleen Core]

To that topic. Which is very, very interesting as well. That it's not one thing that we stumbled upon, to be honest, I did not set out to do was it's not necessarily the spin on the coverage, it's the lack of coverage completely. That that tells the bias of the outlet.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

That's a whole other thing.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah, yeah. Very recently, when markets were crashing, there were certain outlets. If you went to it, then you wouldn't know that there was anything terrible happening in the news.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Nothing to see here approach to news. You said some. The spin.

[Harleen Core]

Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Do we still call them spin doctors or is that such an archaic term?

[Harleen Core]

Well, for the politicians. Yes. But I think, yeah, the, the news outlets are very, very much, very much it.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Among many who was doing the spin.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

But now the many are spinning.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah. Everybody's ethnic doctors, several doctors, convention. Okay. So when, when an. I suppose an article goes beyond simple bias and it's actually misinformed, Misleading.

[Harleen Core]

Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I mean not misinformation, but disinformation.

[Harleen Core]

Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

How, how do you sort of scan that?

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

And what's behind that, I think is you began this conversation saying there's an event.

[Harleen Core]

Yes.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

And then you watch how people cover the event or don't. However, that presumes that everyone has equal access to the objective, true information about the event. But in the days of reporters, different reporters would be delivering information back to the newsroom from their view. So there's another layer in there, isn't there? It's not just the person presenting the news or writing the article, it's the person who's supplying.

[Harleen Core]

Supplying the information.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

The information, yes.

[Harleen Core]

Yes. So again, it's very hard to say that anything is objective because this is a chain of humans as you described it. Somebody's reporting it, somebody is writing about it and then somebody is watching it and making sense out of it.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Did you have the game of telephone in the uk?

[Harleen Core]

That's exactly what.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Or maybe I did and I don't remember it.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

You would so know. I know we invented the telephone, so maybe you didn't do it.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But we wouldn't play it just out of spite.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

No. In elementary school. You do it in elementary school like kindergarten or something. And someone starts with a story that has a little bit of detail but not on a level that you can't remember it. Right. It's like so Mary wore a blue dress to Johnny's birthday party and he turned six and he blew out the candles and made a wish he'd go to Disneyland. Something like that. That's very. There's nothing weird about that. And I tell to you, you tell the next person, you whisper it and then at the end it's like Joey wanted to go into space and have a birthday party the whole time. It's one of the first things we learn in elementary school. How, how unreliable.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

The human when you pass communicating information is that.

[Harleen Core]

That's right. But if you had the versions of all of those people along the chain and put it together, perhaps you can decipher what where exactly.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But everyone's version is accurate in their own mind, is passed on. But the, the helicopter view is something very different.

[Harleen Core]

That's right. So let me ask. Answer your question, Gary. How do you determine if there is there disinformation included? So let's let me take an extreme example. I don't know. There was a claim a few years ago, totally false claim, that medicine called ivermectin cured Covid. And let's assume a news outlet publishes that claim. So what ground news does is again, we will not just show that claim published by that outlet. We'll also show all the other outlets commenting on it, saying hey, how. How there there are claims out there.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

So they reaction videos.

[Harleen Core]

Reaction videos and also correcting it. Scientists go out and correcting it and, and publishing, publishing reports that hey, this is, this is, this is a claim that's not true. The second thing we do is apart from bias ratings, we also provide factuality ratings of the news outlets. So how have they historically, historically been reporting and so on their reporting practices, we'll say hey, this is historically, is.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It from one source or again is.

[Harleen Core]

That okay, from a cluster of sources, again, trying to be as neutral and as close to objectivity as we possibly can be that we do. So again, when you're reading that news not in isolation but again clustered with the other reactions, other disproving of that claim, then you have all the information at least in one place to be able to say this is true or not. But that's what we're trying to do.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay, Word salad question. Filter bubbles, echo chambers and cognitive biases. They're not phrases that you would have heard 10 years ago, probably, but now.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Well, cognitive bias is well known.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But I'm saying psychological literacy, all in terms of a news, a news, not.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Yet, definitely not news.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So this is now the landscape of news media. You've got to go through filter bubbles or look through someone's bubble, understand if that is something and then find yourself in an echo chamber.

[Harleen Core]

That's right. So interestingly enough, I'll start at a very different place. I think the reason all this has happened again, going back to what's happened with news is one of the main reasons is the revenue models of the news outlets. So the revenue models of news outlets have gone to similar to social media advertising. And how much time can we retain you on the channel or on the, on the app or on the website.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Commodity is your attention that, that's it.

[Harleen Core]

That'S what they are. But then how do you do that? By not showing you stuff you might, might disagree with and leave the site or leave the app. So keep showing you again, reinforcing that, that, that cognitive bias creating, creating that bubble. So and then you're like, yeah, this news outlet gets me or this guy and girl gets me.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

I want to keep in the old days and I just know this from what I was told. I didn't research this. The news was not expected. TV news was not expected to be a revenue generating center. Yes, it was funded by all of the other programming that went on in the day. And the news was a service to. Of course it had ads. Yes, but there wasn't a calculation done that they have to adjust the news to boost ad revenue.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah, but now each news channel is its own profit center. So then how do you make sure that remains profitable? As you're saying that if that is the revenue generating source, then you keep showing people what they want to see and not let them. You say that, hey, I cannot own the entire population. I'm going to own this slice of population that believes in these things and I'm going to keep reinforcing those beliefs. These, these few things.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

I like that phrase, to own them.

[Harleen Core]

Basically, that is they do what you.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Say, they think what you think.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah. They think what you tell them.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And then they own you.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And then you're working very much with the demographics.

[Harleen Core]

That's. That's right. So yeah. So that's, that's where I think again, going back to the different universes. Come in. Come in. That. Yeah. If you're reading, reading that channel, listening to that channel or reading that newspaper or even group of newspapers that are similar to that ideology, then you would think of things happening very differently. What they, what another person at an opposite end of the spectrum might be thinking.

[Gary O'Reilly]

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[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

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[Harleen Core]

Not right now.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

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[Harleen Core]

That's okay.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

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[Harleen Core]

I've got cupcakes in the car.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

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[Harleen Core]

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[Gary O'Reilly]

Now that we understand a little bit better what's out there and how it's sort of brought forward, what strategies can people develop to be able to see through, to be able to be aware of what bias might be spun at it's self awareness.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah, that's what it comes down to, right? It is. But it's a very tough ask for somebody to do. I think to challenge that a few tools that we are using and as a layperson, even if you don't want to use ground news, I hope you do but if you don't, you can use it yourself. One is very much what we call lateral reading. Again, take the new sources and read it across. Even if you don't agree with them, you don't have to. But just having that access and challenging yourself, as you said, having the self awareness that there are other versions of what's happening. Second, as I said, by going across the news sources or if you are, let's say on social media, you are that person who gets news on social media. Go follow accounts that you might not agree with and they might make you angry, but at least going out and seeing what we are calling blind spots. So we have a feature called blind spots. What we mean is that if you were reading a certain set of news sources, you would have never come across these news stories. And every single day and it's not just one side or the other. Both sides of the spectrum are very much. They do that. They just leave certain news stories out. So how are you going to find that? Find them and by the way, just.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

As a professional educator, I call myself that.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You just did. Yes, it's true.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

You are, you are. I'm born and raised in New York City, so I lean left politically. But when someone starts railing on the political right and I say, where did you get that information? And they talk about the New York Times or msnbc, whatever, then I tell them I probably watch much more Fox News than you do.

[Harleen Core]

So you're doing that already?

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Yes, yes. I do it on purpose. And that helps me is I know there's our demographics that watch Fox News exclusively.

[Harleen Core]

Yes.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

And I've been on Fox News.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

A couple other shows. So when I'm out in the. In the wild.

[Gary O'Reilly]

In the wild, we let you loose.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

When I'm set forth into the nation, I have some sense of what forces are operating on people's thoughts. And it makes me way more potent educator.

[Harleen Core]

I think that. I'm so glad you say, Neil, that you do that because then you can exactly have that empathy to understand where people are coming from.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

It's not to pass judgment, it's to just understand.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

What force is operating on the brain?

[Harleen Core]

Well, we get such heartening feedback all the time where, hey, I stopped talking to my father or stopped talking to my uncle or husband and wife stopped talking because our political views didn't agree and it's fracturing people. And one common thing that do is, okay, let's agree not to talk politics. But that cannot be the solution. We cannot solve other problems if we don't address and bring people back to common ground. So that's. I think the only way you can do that is presenting all of the different opinions and you don't have to agree with it. But when you run into that person who have this opinion, you can have at least an educated conversation about it.

[Gary O'Reilly]

That's a strategy for an individual.

[Harleen Core]

Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

That wants to get a better understanding of the news landscape.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Doesn't that assume they want to get a better understanding?

[Harleen Core]

I. I think so, yeah.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Suppose they don't want to. They're happy.

[Harleen Core]

It's interesting you say that, being fed.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

The way they are.

[Harleen Core]

I. So I think nobody wants to be gamed. I think that's. That's for sure. Nobody wants.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

You say you're being gamed. Oh, that. Those are fighting words. I love that you have been gamed.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Harleen Core]

Everybody thinks they have self awareness. Right. Everybody thinks they have self awareness.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Oh, my gosh.

[Harleen Core]

It's just that it's very challenging when we are presenting that a worldview that we don't agree with and how are you going to go find it if you keep cocooning yourself with information and.

[Gary O'Reilly]

If it's not in agreeance with you, then it's wrong.

[Harleen Core]

Yes.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Now that's just different.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah, let's spin that round.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Rather than on put the burden on the response of responsibility on the individual, could the corporations and there are major corporations in play here, could they be more responsible for the messaging?

[Harleen Core]

We can I think again things like fairness doctrine was, was one of the ways that we could ask ask. But I don't think that's going to happen again. One specific thing is of course social media. I think social media is as, as you know, it's, it's a, it's the most intense form of those reinforced algorithms.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

That are an outrage engine.

[Harleen Core]

It's an outrage engine. They know that more outrage you are, more time you'll spend on it and, and more likely you are to click.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

But that's an example though it's the opposite of what you said a moment ago. There's one thing to show me what I want to see because I agree with it. But if you show me something that I vehemently disagree with that gets me bubbling and then I for that look.

[Harleen Core]

What they said over here without checking what Exactly.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

So it seems to work on both extremes of that particular.

[Harleen Core]

But I think again it's not that says showing you. Yeah, the emotion works on both extremes.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Emotion.

[Harleen Core]

But again you might forward it. But it's such an exaggerated version of whatever it is on the other side as well that you are shown. It's not exactly that you're becoming enlightened by seeing that news story. You're getting enraged by seeing that news story. But not necessarily. But yeah, because again, whatever the hot button topic is, take the most emotional exaggerated version of that and show it to you.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

What is your revenue model?

[Harleen Core]

Yeah, so one. That's a good question. That's a good question.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Whoa, whoa. We're talking about other things. How you like that? No softball.

[Harleen Core]

Trust in try to answer that one. Yeah, no, it is straightforward. So one thing early on we decided we are not going to do the ad revenue model because then you are just recreating the problem that you're trying to solve. So we decided to go with a subscription model. If you find our tools, our navigation tools to read news helpful, if you find our analysis helpful, then you can pay us a subscription to be able to use the product. And it's, it's 100% subscription way to do that. If you, if you find Value in the product. Pay, pay, pay it to us. But we have a freemium model. We realize not everybody.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

And if they don't find any value and it's in you, pay them. Is everything.

[Harleen Core]

Sorry you wasted your time.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

You wasted my. My time is $100 an hour.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And outside of the revenue models, is it my imagination? It might be, but has science become a trigger, especially on social media?

[Harleen Core]

That's an interesting question.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

What do you mean by that?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah, okay. Throw a view at somebody that aggravates the out of them. Right. And science seems to be one of those trigger points.

[Harleen Core]

My answer to that would be because I think people like making compelling arguments on social media. And that's why throwing a scientific. I don't know, an excerpt of scientific report or scientific news, which is either taken out of context, which as a scientist you would never do, you would explain the nuance and to make so good point.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

So you throw in a little bit of science.

[Harleen Core]

Exactly.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

You get to boost what your audience might think is the authenticity of the account.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It goes back to that old adage of every good lie.

[Harleen Core]

Yes. Has a grain of truth.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Now, it depends on the size of that.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

I never heard that.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, you're kidding me.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Never.

[Harleen Core]

So you haven't heard of telephone and you heard of telephone? No, no, no.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

I've heard. I've heard every day's a school day. No, not every. Why? I've heard every stereotype has a grain of truth. I've heard that.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, and then it's copy and paste. Every good lie has a grain of truth.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And it's one of those sort of. It's part of the storytelling. So it goes back to telephone. It's. But it's the storytelling that we never.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Went to the moon has no truth in it at all. That's why that earth is flat. Has no truth in it. Okay.

[Harleen Core]

As a former NASA engineer, I think we can very much agree on that one. There is objective.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Science is weaponized, I think is the.

[Harleen Core]

Way to say it, because it adds heft to an argument. But if you use a snippet out of context. So what we started, at least doing a ground news is if there is a news story being reported about a study that every single day there's some study coming out and then the headline only covers a partial. We actually started. Actually started connecting that report. So if you want to go read the report in the entirety and even summarize it for you and say, hey, this is the entirety of it.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

How's AI Summaries lately? They Gotten much, much better.

[Harleen Core]

They have gotten much, much better. But out of the box. LLMs have a lot of hallucination, which is for a use case like news is exactly the opposite of what we are trying to do.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Harleen Core]

So we worked a lot on putting guardrails in place that it sticks to exactly what's been ayahuasca, hallucinating.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I mean, is this where the open. Sitting there, open the hatch and there it is doing ayahuasca, doing it with a shaman.

[Harleen Core]

But I think AI can be very powerful for news. So again, I, I would like to think just as Internet gave us access to so much information, of course, which had a lot of positive, but some negative AI can help us understand, improve our comprehension of news. Again, at Ground News we show you, for example, hundreds of different versions of the article. We have people who read through all of that. But if you don't have time summarizing it and giving it to you in a format where we can highlight the differences or highlight where the news outlets agree, make your life much easier. Again, we don't say, hey, this is right or wrong, but this is the summarization of what's happened. Or this is the summarization.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But you don't bring the judgment to the.

[Harleen Core]

We don't bring the judgment because I think as soon as you bring the judgment, you alienate somebody. And we don't want to do that.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So we mentioned AI. Is it likely we're going to get responsible, I'll say journalism formed by artificial intelligence. Or are we going to end up with constant stream of deep fakes and something I've come to understand or just learned recently. Synthetic headlines.

[Harleen Core]

Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I mean it's, I mean, I'm used to the bias of the news outlet being in the headline and therefore there's no need to read the article because they want you just to read the headline and then.

[Harleen Core]

And that's how most people read, by the way. Exactly.

[Gary O'Reilly]

We all think we're time poor.

[Harleen Core]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And therefore I've only got the time to read the headline. But does AI have the capacity to really stop? And if it does, will it ever be utilized that way?

[Harleen Core]

I think like any, any groundbreaking technology, AI has the possibility to do both, which is help the news and hurt the news, which is doing as well help the news by doing things like identifying deep fakes, by, by giving tools to journalists to be able to, to be able to produce quality content or take out the bias, even highlight the bias.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

You're asking AI to turn itself in.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay, so.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

And then one Day AI is going to say, I'm not going to do what the humans tell me. These are our people, Our deep fakes are our people.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You're looking at the AI, but I'd look further back in the history and say, it's the design of the algorithm. If you want to design it to do those things, then you will. If you don't, then it goes in a different direction.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Where are we with the biases on algorithms that people thought were not biased? Yeah, that's a like facial recognition software.

[Harleen Core]

That is really the most famous examples. So I think they have been. Now there are companies actively working on ways to correct that and again, create data sets to be able to reset that to remove bias. And same for news as well. So there are data sets that exist and for example, we work very, very hard to identify when there is biased language and to be able to say, hey, this. And simply sometimes just highlighting it and say, hey, this is where the bias is and help people.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

And the bias is not so much in the nouns as it is in the adjectives.

[Harleen Core]

It's in the adjectives. I remember it's funny, one adjective comes to mind. So last time President Trump, there was a parade and then every headline on the left kept using the word soggy and every headline on the right kept using grand. And I was like, how did they agree on which adjective to use? And it's like soggy Farrard.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And yeah, that's a larger in between major corporations that dominate the news outlet universe and the wild west of social media and unregulated influencers. Are we kidding ourselves to think that we're going to get responsible journalism coming forward?

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

You just said her whole job is pointless.

[Harleen Core]

Our job is to help you make sense. I think that's what we are doing. No, I don't think we are kidding ourselves. And my job is not pointless. We are trying to. I think there's amazing journalism coming out. There are journalists out there who are working on exposes that take years. There is some journalists out there in a cave and I don't know wherever trying to report to you that's all that amazing work happening. I think the problem is it gets drowned out or drowned out by all the else that exists around the noise. The noise that exists.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It's the noise again.

[Harleen Core]

It's the noise again. So I think, yeah, again, our job is at least our ground use is not to recreate this amazing work, but to be able to help you dial down that noise and give you tools to be able to read that.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

So I got to land this plane. So let me ask you, what are the metrics that you might use to know if you're succeeding?

[Harleen Core]

Very good question. Very good question. I think the number one metric for me is how many news sources people end up reading when, when they come to Ground news. We see that in our KPIs that people would go to two or three sources that quote unquote, trust or came in with. But within 3 months we see that 3x people are going to 10 different new sources because the ease of it. And yeah, expanding that.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Do you have to pay a fee to those new sources to channel them into your.

[Harleen Core]

No, we don't. Because if you want to read their articles, you're still going to the, to the publisher's website.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Got it. So they're not reading it on your website.

[Harleen Core]

No, you cannot. That's where we draw the line and say if you want to read that, go to New York Times or go to whoever got it. But yeah, we see that. We actually had a researcher from Duke University who, who did research on Ground News and found out that people's opinions can actually be changed if they're presented with, with, with counter to what their beliefs are. So we really think that's gotta be the, the way that we can bring everybody back to the same page, back to common ground.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Very hopeful.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

I didn't think this would end hopefully, but it did.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You pessimist.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Yes, I was totally skeptical. Well, thank you for this insight. Where can we find you online?

[Harleen Core]

You can go to Ground News, to our website.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Ground News News is the.

[Harleen Core]

That's right, the domain name.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

The domain name.

[Harleen Core]

That's right, Ground News. Or you can go to the App Store or Play Store and look for Ground News app.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Oh, then you put it on your smartphone.

[Harleen Core]

You can use it from your smartphone. But yeah, we have a free version and we are subscription supported.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

So let me see if I can knock this out with a little bit of cosmic perspective, if I may. I've said a couple of times, I'm on record noting that as AI gets better and better, yes, is the good side, but the bad side is it can be better at, better at making deep fakes. And a deep fake becomes a source of what someone thinks is an objective reality. What someone thinks is news. And then that becomes part of what people then argue over. And I worry, and I think I still worry even after this conversation, that it could signal the end of the Internet. When deepfakes become so good and it's known that they're good, that all the people who used to believe the fake news won't believe the fake news anymore because they'll be sure that it was faked. Once the people who believe fake news no longer believe anything on the Internet, there's nothing left on the Internet to believe, not even the fake news, because that was faked. And I think that would signal the end of the Internet as a source of objective information in this world. And we'd all go back to just reading books and talking to people in the town square and maybe reading broad sheets stapled up on the bulletin board. And then the Internet will just resort to cat videos just as it once was. And that's my cosmic perspective on that topic. And let me thank our special guest, Colleen Kaur, who's trying to fix the world one reader at a time. Good luck with that. I think you'll need some of that as well.

[Harleen Core]

Thank you.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

All right, Gary.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Pleasure, Neil. Thank you.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Good to have you, man. Yeah. Signing out from my office here at the American Museum of Natural History. As always, I bid you to keep looking up. The heat is here and your AC is working overtime to keep your home cool.

[Harleen Core]

Did you know a dirty air filter can make your AC unit work even harder?

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Keep your AC running smoothly while helping.

[Harleen Core]

Improve your indoor air quality by installing.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

A Filtreat MPR 1900 air filter. It captures 24% more particles in the air than the Mercury MERV 13, industry standard, all while letting cleaner, cooler air through cleaner air reliable airflow.

[Harleen Core]

Psoriatic arthritis symptoms can be unpredictable.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

I had joint pain and I couldn't move like I used to.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I needed relief.

[Harleen Core]

I got Cosentyx. It helped me move better.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Cosentyx Secukinumab is prescribed for Psych people 2 years of age and older with active psoriatic arthritis.

[Harleen Core]

Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentyx. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. Like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal or viral infections. Some were fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Muscle aches or cough, had a vaccine.

[Harleen Core]

Or planned to, or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen, serious allergic reactions and severe eczema like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-cosentyx or cosentyx.com.

[Neil Degrasse Tyson]

Ask.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Your rheumatologist about Cosentyx.