Trial by Teenager, Part 1

Welcome to the last archive, the show about how we know what we know and why it seems lately hard to know anything at all. I'm Jill Lapoor. This episode, we're going back to school to learn how to know what's true. Tell me be brave? Now, what's a fact? Who wants to go first? Start me? What's a fact? Benji Cohen teaches world history at Cambridge Ringe in Latin School, a public high school in Massachusetts outside Boston. So we're

gonna watch it, being like three minutes long. You have in front of you the transcript of it to use afterwards. One day last winter, he started his class by playing a campaign ad, actually a spoof of a campaign ad in which a generic political candidate says meaningless things over stock footage and sappie music. Hello, it's me candidate for president. A person with a face, a person whose hand gestures

are definitely not weird. Here are a bunch of different people matched with career signifiers like a helmet, a uniform, or a stethoscope on the off chance that you identify with one event. And here's a guy with a belly, a beer, and a hard hat. I talked to this guy. I think the kids in mister Cohen's class thought this was pretty funny, laugh out loud funny. They got it right away. They'd seen political ads their whole lives, and they get oh my god, they so get irony. What

is this ad arguing? What's it actually say? What aesthetic choices stand out to you? What has it revealed to you about America politics? And are there any factual claims here? And if so, what are they take two minutes talk to another? I was there in Benji Cohen's class to witness a thought experiment brought to life, an attempt in this our season of solutions to confront up close Mano Amato.

The problem of political missin formation. These kids know their country is facing a lot of problems, but a lot of the election talk they hear sounds more like a fight in the hallway. You lie, No, you lie. Politicians lie, They tell big lies. This has been true for as long as there have been politicians, and it'll be true forever. Well, I'm not a crook. I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it and didn't inhale.

Campaign ads are full of misrepresentations. Attack ads are the worst, but even straight up pro candidate ads can be outrageously deceptive, and entire political campaigns, even campaigns for the White House, can be lost over these ads. Considered the time in nineteen eighty eight when supporters of George hw Bush aired an ad attacking Massachusetts Governor Michael Ducaucus for being weak

on crime. Duconcas not only opposers of the death penalty, he allowed first degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. Was Willie Horton. The ad was deceptive, but it was also effective. It's often cited as a major contributing factor for Ducaucus losing his election. Or think about how in two thousand and four, when one ad all but accused Vietnam veteran John Kerry of treason. He betrayed us in the past, how could we be loyal to him now?

This was not true, but it helped sink Carry's campaign. To say that this has been going on for a long time, isn't to say that it isn't especially terrible right now, because it is terrible. There's no real way to answer lies and misrepresentations, and political ads no effective way to fact check them. In the broadcast era of broadcast radio and television, the FCC created a set of rules for political ads. Those rules mean that broadcasters just can't cannot refuse to air a political ad if it's

been made by the candidate's own campaign. You might remember last season when we had a whole episode about a thing called the Fairness Doctrine, an FCC rule that made it so television and radio stations had to reflect all points of view. But that rule ended in nineteen eighty seven with the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of talk radio and partisan cable television, an era where you get stuff like this and I rescue feminazis here's the deal. What I have Here is a copy

of Donald Trump's tax returns. We have his federal tracks return for one year, for two thousand and five. What we have are these two pages. People have tried to bring back the fairness doctrine, but it never works. It's not coming back. And even though this is a season of solutions, I have to be honest broadcast television and radio, cable television, I don't see a solution there when it comes to horrible political ads. The real fight, and the

real possibility too, is with social media. The FCC doesn't control political advertisements on social media, No central governing body does. There are no rules except the ones social media companies make for themselves. Wild West to all that, and usually I would say this is a bad thing. The Internet. It loves lies, It thrives on lies, conspiracies, Lies get clicks, Clicks make money. You know all about it. The thing about these companies is they can still change how they work.

They could still change how they handle political ads. They could make a new version of the fairness doctrine something better, not a doctrine, but a practice. That's how I ended up in Benji Cohen's history classroom at Cambridge Ringe and Latin, because who knows social media better than teenagers. Also, I'd come across an idea that I thought maybe could fix this whole mess while back, when the days were cold and short and COVID was in one of its peaks.

I went to visit a colleague of mine, Jonathan Zittrain. He teaches at Harvard Law School and he's the co founder of the Berkman Client Center for Internet and Society. I had a hunch one of ZiT Traine's ideas would be perfect for my season of solutions. Everyone calls Jonathan ZiT Train jay z Okay, not jay Z as in Jay Z and Beyonce jay Z as in Jay Z the legal scholar. He might not be a multi platinum Grammy winner, but jay Z is the man. He got into computers as a siss up on a CompuServe forum

for people who love Texas instruments. That's computer speak for moderator on a discussion board. He was in sixth grade. He's still got that anarchic early web energy and faith. He's always got these ideas that are so crazy they just might work. This idea was really, to myself, just met as a thought experiment that was clearly goofy. But I was just going to think it through and see where it led. And as time has gone on, it

has seemed less and less goofy. Or maybe it's that everything else has seemed more and more so, so it's the last plan standing. Citrian said, I know how to solve political misinformation and campaign ads, or at least he said, I have a pretty darn good idea for how to try. Imagine, in every Civics or US History classroom in every public high school across the country, students gathering, say for one class period a week to decide what political ads should

be allowed on the internet trial by teenager. If we ask those students to have a look at the ads as they are proposed to be run on a platform like Facebook, and take a moment and see if they pass some threshold of disinformation, of lying outright, of inaccuracy, deliberate in whatever small groups they might form from among a single classroom, and see if they can come to consensus or if necessary, a vote on whether the ad

meets a minimum standard of truthfulness. And if the students decide that it fails, to their decision sticks and that ad will not run. And there you have it high

school students, they decide. Not only would you, turns out, have enough high school students to actually manage the scale of the number of ads being lodged, but maybe you'd be in a position both to have their decisions respect it, and you might be helping them exercise a muscle from the vantage of playing the role of an arbiter that could come in handy as they in turn become voters a year or two after these exercises. Yeah, I love

that sort of two for quality about it. Right that it both resolves the question of should these ads be made available to the public and how high school students can learn skills as citizens in a democracy. It also because as I understood your proposal, you'd be grouping together students from different communities kind of anti polarization or check

against polarization. Is also maybe the piece of I think that's right for now, and you would get the value of both the deliberations, and this is something you don't much get on a jury. Asking the students to craft their reasoning, and it might be that some students would write in dissent and that that could be very nice. Yeah, Yeah, there could be like a Minority report exactly. Now. I think this is a fascinating idea and a really promising one, but I want to be very clear about what it's not.

It's not a lark, it's not idle speculation or armchair quarterbacking. It comes from Jay Z's very careful analysis of the problem with the Internet and society. He described for me three different eras in that history, and the first era was one of what i'd call the rights era. Era one, the rights era where anything goes free speech. That era lasts through the early years of the Internet and even the start of social media, and that era you could

say anything you wanted, there are no limits. A lot of people hoped expected even that the Internet with strengthen democracy by democratizing publishing, and as you know, this isn't quite what happened. People started to revolt against this idea of free speech, and so Era too started around the year twenty ten, jay Z says, and he calls Era too the public health era. It's then that some kinds of speech came to be understood as harm, as if

bad ideas are viruses. But a problem with the public health era is this, who decides which speech is harmful. The problem is that we don't even trust our public institutions, and it's not like we're trusting Facebook or Twitter these days so much so, whom would we want to wield the power or to shape what we can and can't see. And that led to me thinking it might be a third era in the making, which is the era of legitimacy or process Era three? The process or a legitimacy era,

I think maybe it needs a better name. But jay Z's point is that in the era we're now in, we need to find a process, one that people respect as legitimate, that can start to reconcile the tension between rights arguments and public health arguments. And so he says, what process to people still respect? Trial by jury? You say, gosh, what that jury decided doesn't seem like what I would decide from what little I followed that case. But they were there, they know, and that person who was judged

by that jury got a fair spin. Would be the idea of an ideal process. From there, jay Z came up with the idea of having a jury of high school students decide what political ads can and cannot get stood on social media. For jay Z, this scheme began as a thought experiment. I mean, I think it also came out of the fact that he was moderating content online when he was in sixth grade. But some of the best things ever invented started out as thought experiments.

This high school thing, it had started as a thought experiment. But I told jay Z I wanted to actually do it, and then we both got excited because jay Z will he thought that if it worked, it might actually become a thing. If Mark Zuckerberg woke up on morning or one of his primary deputies and said this would be a great idea, you could like suddenly have a nationwide implementation rather quickly. That makes it very high stakes. That

brings us back to our experiment. I put together a lesson plan and I went to Ringe to test it out to Benji Cohen's class back to school right after the bill. For those who can't see, my room is small and has no windows, and so when I moved in, I was like, these walls are going to become tattooed. Benji mister Cohen, mister c at age thirty two, He's already a legend Cohen's Lean. He's a runner in winter. He wears Chuck's All Stars otherwise Sandals. He is killer

at Ultimate Frisbee, also tennis. He tells the students they can gamble their grade on his serve one serve. If they can return it, he'll give them an A plus. Otherwise they flunk his class his first year teaching, one kid who was already getting an F took him up on it. The whole class went outside their tennis courts out front. Mister Cohen aced him. The kids f stood. That was four years ago. No one has challenged him since.

The walls of his classroom are covered. There's a giant poster that reads are you public education is a civil right? There's a photo of James Baldwin, and paste it on all four walls. Our student projects. Some highlights include the Pizza Gate board game. I teach a class about American politics and current events, and we do a unit on like conspiracy thinking and the infiltration of that into politics, and so we examine pizza Gate and some students decided

to turn it into a game. This school, Cambridge Ringe in Latin School, a Ringe, as everyone calls it, is a big citywide public school. My kids all went to Ringe. Come on school, has nearly two thousand students. More than half of them are students of color. Kids at Range are native speakers of more than twenty languages. At graduation, they welcome the audience in each of those languages. I've attended that ceremony, and I can tell you everyone cries

when that part happens. If you live in Cambridge, you heard about the famous people Blue went to Ryne, Patrick Ewing, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck build a Blasio, NPRS car talk guys. They went to Rynch too, Benji Cohen, he went to Ryne. Anyway, it's a fantastic, amazing, hubbubby school. What's the morning? We went to Ryne just after MLK Day. The kids tramped in winter coats, face masks, backpacks, looking a little sleepy. They slouched into those chairs, you know,

the ones with the tennis balls on the feet. They checked TikTok, and then mister Cohen got started. All right, everyone put your welcome. Um, here's what we're gonna do today. Our guests are gonna introduce themselves and then we're just gonna jump right in. Sound like a plaid. All right, rock on, let's do it all right, Good morning everybody. Um, mister cos I told you were working out on a podcast, and the podcast is about how people know things and

know whether things are true. Something one. There's a piece of paper at your desks. You can use it or you cannot. The first thing I want you to think about as a collective, just talk to each other. You could write notes if you want, is what is a fact and how do you know when something is true? We wanted to figure out how kids thought about facts, opinions, beliefs. Twenty or so students, mostly juniors, divided into four groups and sat huddled around tables, pushed together, trying to write

a definition for the word fact. It was a kind of beautiful chaos. That is like something that I feel like people getting back to a beliefs like Ruth is a junior, plays on the basketball team. She's also part of a student run project at Ringe whose aim is to integrate more of the black past into the history curriculum. She seemed like a classic go getter for the room. Hand raised kind of kid. Mister Cohen nodded along, encouraging them. Then he called on a ninth grader, Oh, yes, start,

what's a fact. So a fact is something that can be like proven. You have a statement that's been said, like um Benji was born on July twenty second, July twenty second, nineteen ninety two or whatever I wish um and to prove that he would have like a birth certificate to prove it, which would mean like, you know, that's that, that's the fact. And but like I think that's what happened. As sounds what you're saying you need like a primary source. Yeah, ok yeah, that okay, great,

good start. But then what mister Cohen kept pushing them. And what's striking here I hope you can hear it because it blew my ears right off my head is the seriousness with which the students are taking all of this. Sure they're messing around, but there's a real sense of solemn responsibility that this civic exercise. Maybe it matters maybe to their great okay, and maybe to their relationship to mister Cohen, whom they all adore, but also their relationship

to one another and to themselves. They care, they really care about getting this right. From the start, they cared about that, they cared about doing it well. Mister Cohen has this way of urging his students on. It just knocked me out. Be brave, He'll say, go for it. Rock on, We're gonna rock with an example. Get it from the back. I want to hear what everyone has to say. Okay, so Robbie, Robbie trying to make trouble Soren in the morning. So here's the question. You're ready,

you're ready? Is it a fact that on January sixth, Trump supporters went into the United States Capital? Is that an established fact? And if so, how do you know? Go ahead? Oh, yes, it is. So there's two parts of this. There's the went into the Capitol part and the Trump supporters part. After the went into the Capitol part. We have video have it enjoying the people were in the Capitol, and we also know from the um and it's so people appeared to be Trump supporters. It's a fact, Isaac.

You just heard Isaac. He's a junior, remember the school debate team. He was sitting next to Robbie, who started the school hiking club. Robbie piped up next, I'm under the belief that, I mean, there's like a one true fact. It's just whether we know it or not. And me personally I'm ninety nine percent sure that it actually was Trump supporters, but there's always, like, there's always a possibility

that it's something completely different. I think at this point it's not even whether or not you know it, it's whether or not you believe it. Robbie and Isaac and Zach, boys in the back of the room kept ramping it up. In the mythology of the big city public school classroom, the boys in the back of the room would be leaning their chairs back, chewing gum, throwing wads of paper at the front. But mister Cohen knows these kids are smart, so is a fact just about belief? He was just

accepting it. I'm on tea team that they must be this. And that's where it's true. Any of the understandings of a fact separate from that example, what else makes a fact affect alight? Go for it alor he's a senior, he's in the school musical Well, like I really liked um, Like George Ryals nineteen eighty four when he when he

was talking about like whether the truth really matters? And of course it does matter to all of the characters, right, Like the final thing that they ask you to dismisses the truth of your eyes and ears fact actually about like what majority accepted. Is that what makes a fact a fact? No, because that goes directly contrary to like the definition of facts that we've talked about before, which is a fact is something that can be basically verified

correct evidence. All right. That leaves us in a good place, yep, a good place with a working definition of a fact, and ready to apply that definition to some political ads, mister, and moved to that. Next, we're gonna watch two ads. These are we'll see what actually happens. I think the Republican incumbent, meaning the guy who's currently the Republican senator at Wisconsin. It's his reelection ad. His name is Ron Johnson, and I think fair to saying maybe the Democratic front

runner to challenge him. So you're gonna watch two ads in a row, mister Cohen, students were ready to be called to the jury. They'd be evaluating two internet ads from the same race for a Senate seat in Wisconsin. We picked Wisconsin sort of randomly, but this looked like an interesting race, and the goal of the first experiment was just to see how the kids thought about truth in advertising. See if they'd even be interested in this.

So for this version of the experiment, we wanted to ask high schoolers to consider candidates from another state campaigns they'd probably not followed or even heard of. First, the Democrat Mandela Barnes excuses are nothing but a dead end into expectations are something to be shattered. You can't see it. So I'll just tell you this whole ad. Basically, Barnes is running, literally running in track shoes and short way. There are no idle hands here, no low we haven't carried,

no one waiting for a handout. We were free pass. But that hard work isn't paying off like it used to. My mom takes school for thirty years. My dad worked third shift at the factory. When I think about their hard work, about everything that wisconstant, families have on the line. There's no option to tap out, no tie to throw in. Instead of changing our dreams, we got to change the game. That's America had his court in this state, our state.

We were the first to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote. We were the first to protect the rights of the LGBTQ community. We are game. Okay, that's number one is number two. Remember the task of this jury is to watch and listen and look for assertions of fact, because afterward they'll have to check them. So next we all watch the Republican incumbent sad this guy's running for reelection as Wisconsin Senator. Our country is

in troubled. Democrat policies have been disastrous for America, opened borders in a flood of illegal immigrants, the twenty twenty summer Ryans defunding the police, glowering bail, and not prosecuting criminals. The result more crime, human and sex trafficking, record, drug overdoses, Kenosha set on fire, a growing number of murders in Milwaukee, and the walk Shop Christmas Parade turned into a terrible tragedy.

It feels like our country is being torn apart. That's not how it felt when I ran in twenty sixteen. Back then, I intended to serve a second term and go home. But now with the Democrats in total control, our nation's on a very dangerous path. If you're in a position to help make our country safer and stronger, would you just walk away? I've decided I can't. I'll stand and fight for freedom I'm Ron Johnson, and I've proved this message because I love America and Wisconsin just

like you. So the students watched the two ads, Ron Johnson Mandela Barnes. Then we handed out transcripts of what the candidates had said, line by line, and mister Cohen divided the class into two groups, one for each candidate. No, it's no y'all handled round. Y'all would say, y'all handled one, Bendella Barnes, listen close? What using those sheets in front of you? Does your ad have statements of fact? Find out which ones are true? Actually find out? Get a computer,

look one person. Is this ad useful? Is your ads true enough to be posted online by social media companies? Why? Or why not? Enjoy? Have fun? Ron Johnson Mandela Barnes will do it. I started at watching the kids who were evaluating Mendela Barnes's ad, The Jogging Democrat Are the kid in the school musical jumped in first. I mean he said to protect the rights of the LGBTQ community. Like, even though that's super broad, I feel like it's at least a stance kind of but it's still so vague.

Pretty workers is something that either one of them could say, like the Democrat and the Republicans, what does it mean to protect exactly right? I also thought it was odd how he said we were the first to protect the rights of the LGBTQ community. But I'm like, what does that mean? Where do you start? That's that's a pretty you can either find if that's correct or not. It's okay.

They only had about twenty minutes to get this done, but they took out their phones and started searching looking for places to catch Mendela Barnes in an error of fact. Teenagers are pretty good at the art of the takedown. The first thing by NPS dot Gov. June tenth, nineteen nineteen. Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin became the first states to ratify the amendment.

Wisconsin was among the first among the first foot well, maybe his we statement all right, if we make it vague enough, He's like, we as in like all of the states I did it with or maybe within nineteen nineteen, Wisconsin was first on the calendar. Oh, I think there's other.

I left them mulling over that one. Then I headed over to the group that was evaluating the Republican Ron Johnson said they've gotten really interested in this one line listed on the transcript that we'd handed out, line ten, where the senator says, as part of a list of things that are wrong with America, Kenosha set on fire. Mister Cohen got them started. Okay, I want one of you to explain how we've just gone through this thinking

about line ten. So start from the beginning. When we looked at the lines before we Consha set on fire? What did we think was Kenosha set on fire? Were there fires in Kenosha fires? Right? I'm just looking at his line here, right, he says, Conosha set on fire. If we googled right now, was Conosha set on fire? What would we find? Well, I guess Peter doing right now? You can tell us a moment. What I'm what I'm

getting at is is there a fact here? But there's something missing in the fact Kenosha might have been set on fire? But like, what is missing here? Context? Context? Who set it on fire? Why it was set on fire? In the context? That feels valuable information? Right. The students did a bunch more googling, close reading of the transcripts

of the ad checking facts. This much was clear for this experiment to really work, students would need more time, not just one class period, maybe more like a week. I have an idea that's Ruth again stepping in to save the day and come up with a possible verdict. I feel like I could kind of be a good ideas, like, so both perspectives at the same time, because I know, like first, for example, at first I could be this, and then the next slide could be like the other

side of it. So yeah, speaking at two perspectives at the same time. And also like um, when like when you postum this specific campaign on on social media and stuff, there can be like a link for like different words of kenosha and then you click on your earn like it takes you and like you actually know facts. So it's just like all you learn stuff altogether rather than just like seeing one thing and then going with it like you're presented with both sides and like contexts has worked.

So this is a good idea, a really good idea. But it isn't a new idea. It is in fact the fairness doctrine. The classic way of navigating the murky waters were fact and opinion mix. Still, the idea was new to Ruth, and she came up with it in one class period. Up until this moment, I'd been wondering would this experiment work, would these kids get it? This was when I knew it was working. Soon we'd get

to hear their verdicts coming up after the break. The high school history students at Ringe were about the most thoughtful commentators on the problem of political misinformation that I had ever come across. I could have listened to them forever, But mister Cohen knew the bill was going to ring pretty soon. He called everyone back together time for a final verdict. Both ads were true enough, the students said,

both could be posted on social media. Then mister Cohen asked a different question, who is more honest, Mandela Barnes or Ron Johnson? In your opinion, who presents a more honest view of themselves as politician? This turned out to be a really difficult question. For a minute, the kids were stumped. They hadn't thought about honesty. Robbie said, honesty is a political good, maybe it really counts. And then when you started thinking about honesty and thinking about those

two ads through that lens, the ads looked different. Johnson, the Republican incumbent Remember and Barnes, his Democratic challenger. I could not predict what Barnes would vote for, which, as a voter is most important to me. Barnes thing his ad is so generic that I don't know where he stands, like, I don't know his base at all. I don't know how progressive he is. I don't know how modern he is. I mean the Democratic Party as a whole, it's like

a huge spectrum. So specifically for Barnes, I feel like I get less of a read on him as a person than I do on Johnson, even if I may agree with him. So this question of personally, yeah, so this question of honesty, would you say Johnson is more like Johnson is now more honest with himself, He's more honest with his policy. I don't know who Johnson as a as a person. I never will, but at least

I will know what he's going to vote for. And with that, the class was just about over and it was time to head off to calculus and Spanish and banned. But before we stopped recording, mister Cohen asked one last question just before the bell rang. He wanted to know if this actually happened, if high school kids were actually tasked with vetting political advertisements. Would these kids want to take part? How should social media companies decide, well, there's

true enough to be posted. Which one of you is going to be brave? Talk to me? Come on? Look got a jar? He was looking at me. Sheriffs had been quiet for a while. Mister Cohen was giving her an encouraging stare. Helly, do you think it's good for Do you want the responsibility as a citizen democracy? No? Not necessarily. I think I don't know if I should have that much of it to say of how social media companies like dictate what they do. I don't know

if that's then everyone had an opinion. Honestly, no one knows social media better than teenagers. The social media companies shouldn't be in charge at all. They have way too much to gain. I don't know if it should be teenagers, but it should just not be social media companies at all. I feel like we definitely should be asking random people, random citizens, to be the fact checkers, because they have

no idea. I think that the reason that works for jurys is because cases can take like weeks and stuff. I don't want to spend weeks of my life deciding whether or not to flag a post of thirty likes on Facebook. Then and no nonsense. I hit A junior named Geffen jumped in. He jumped all in. I don't think that the social media companies should be deciding what's true and what isn't true. They shouldn't be controlling what we see. Diversity of thought is important. Shutting everyone down

like Putin does not so great. I don't support that, but of course it is their right to do it, because it's their own business. Deefin. If you were to lean sort of all any meeting, the social media companies should just allow politicians to post whatever, don't regulate any of it, or don't allow any of it. Where would you fall? They should not ban anything, just let it all out. Yeah, did anyone want it? No? No one. No one wants to be that group decides. Everyone shook

their heads. Nah. They didn't want that responsibility. They didn't want to be making binding decisions for Facebook. Not Isaac, not Geffen, not Sherriffs, not Robbie. To any students, shaking their heads, hell yeah you got pad, you classic credit, Yeah you got today. Oh I was kind of staggered to hear that these incredible students didn't want to be the ones deciding what political ads are true enough to

go up on social media. They either thought someone else should do it, or it shouldn't be done, or they do it if they could get paid like me. Mister Cohen seemed pretty crestfall and he asked his students if in that case, democracy is just screwed? Are you asking like democracy a concept is like inevitably like like screwed? Be willing to like democracy is a but you like hard it? I don't aside your essays, you'll do it. Mister Cohen was trying to make a deal with his students.

No homework. Okay, look, how about a different deal. Mister Cohen has that standing offer to all of his students. If a student can return his killer Tennis serve, they get an a. So how about any student who can return mister Cohen serve can skip this assignment and doesn't have to decide what political ads can go up on Facebook. But all you students who can't return that man serve, it is on you. The kids zipped up their backpacks, grabbed their water bottles, and left for the next period.

They'd issued their verdict. Their job was done in this test run. They'd set high standards, clear standards, hard rules. They challenged one another. They're willing to change their minds. These kids brought to this assignment a whole lot of savvy and energy, and those are brought an extraordinary capacity to look beyond their own views, to think about the

needs of everyone the public. My verdict, Jay Z's idea for high school juries to be the final content moderators of political ads online is even more brilliant than I thought. I was thinking two things when I left Benji Cohen's classroom. The first was, maybe our civic institutions still work. It felt good to spend a day in a public high school classroom and see an amazing teacher working his magic, see students being brave. We'd have to convince them that

they wanted to evaluate ads, but that seemed possible. Maybe the kids were all right. The second thing I was thinking, though, was that the solution can't come quickly enough. It was winter twenty twenty two, and already the nation was gearing up for another brutal election cycle. The last presidential election, the Biden and Trump campaigns together spent more than four hundred and sixty million dollars on ads online. That's not

counting all the state and local races. It seemed a safe bet that the money spent on online ads was only growing, and so were the lies. So I'll be honest. I tried this at first because we were working on the new season of our show and I wanted to do an episode on political misinformation, and this was just a very provocative proposal. But now I'd gone full Mad Soto scientist. I'd become convinced that Jonathan Zitrin's idea was a great one, but I knew I hadn't sufficiently proven

that it could work, and Jay z was right. If Mark Zuckerberg decided to run with this, it could be policy in a few months. So I went back to the lab. There were two things I needed to fix. First, one class period was not enough time for students to properly fact check and add Second, what if this class was a one off? Due to the genius of mister Cohen, everything in his classroom, from the stuff on the walls to his voice, said you are here to listen to one another and to learn, and to care and to

do good. And to be brave. So to really test this idea, I figured I needed to try it out at a bigger scale, different people, different place, teachers I don't know, schools I wasn't familiar with. I also wanted to try out a longer version, with more ads and giving students more time to do the research. And then, most of all, I wanted to mix things up and add another crucial element of Jonathan Zittrain's idea, political differences on the teen Jury. It's not that there weren't differences

at ringe. There were, but not enough differences. I needed to ask students in two different schools to evaluate the same ads. Students and two high schools in two very different states. Next time on the Last Archive, Trial by high school take two a whole other level, across state lines, dueling schools, the March Madness, the World Series, the Olympic Games, effect Checking The Last Archive is written and hosted by me Jill Lapour. It's produced by Sophie Crane, Ben Natt

of Hafrey and Lucy Sullivan. Our editors are Julia Barton and Sophie Crane, and our executive producer is Mia Lobell. Jake Gorsky is our engineer. Fact checking by Amy Gaines. Original music by Matthias Boss and John Evans of Stellwagen Symfinett. Our research assistant is Mia Hazra. Our full proof player is Robert Ricotta. Many of our sound effects are from Harry Janette Junior at the Star Jennette Foundation. Special thanks to Benji Cohen and the Cambridge Ringe in Latin High School.

The Last Archive is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus, offering bonus content like The Last Archivist, a limited series just for subscribers, and add free listening across our network for four ninety nine a month. Look for the Pushkin Plus channel on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm. If you like the show, please you remember to rate, share

and review. To find more pushkun podcasts. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jillapoor.