The Dangerous Decline in Vaccination Rates

In the year 2000, measles were declared eliminated from the United States. But thanks to declining vaccination rates, Americans may have to contend with a much scarier future for the deadly disease. Today on the show, we talk about the state of measles, and we explain the role Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of  Health and Human Services, has played in the shifting culture around vaccines in America.

You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode, and Katie Drummond on Bluesky at @katie-drummond. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.

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Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Michael Calore: How’s everybody feeling?

Katie Drummond: I’m on the road this week, which listeners might notice, but I feel okay, I feel good. Lauren, how do you feel?

Lauren Goode: I’m doing good, actually. I’m feeling better than I’ve been feeling in months.

Katie Drummond: Wow!

Lauren Goode: Somehow, some way. I’m not on the road. I think maybe that’s why, I’ve had a long bout without travel. Katie, I thought you were going to say that after you came back from France and you developed this new French butter habit that you were feeling better than ever before.

Katie Drummond: I do. The butter is so life-affirming. I’ve been eating a lot of French butter. And I feel great! I feel incredible.

Lauren Goode: Amazing. Did you run five miles this morning? That’s what I want to know.

Katie Drummond: I ran seven miles this morning. Sorry.

Lauren Goode: Stop it!

Michael Calore: Seven?

Katie Drummond: Yeah.

Michael Calore: Wow.

Lauren Goode: Flex.

Michael Calore: I have run zero miles in the last month. No, no, that’s not true.

Lauren Goode: No, we went running.

Michael Calore: In the last two weeks. We did.

Lauren Goode: Yeah.

Michael Calore: It’s an important part of my health routine and when I don’t do it, I definitely feel it.

Katie Drummond: Oh, yeah.

Lauren Goode: Yeah,

Michael Calore: Today we are going to be talking about our health, and not just our own health, but the health of all Americans because it has been on everybody’s mind lately. Here at WIRED, we’ve been reporting on the current administration’s dismantling of the public health agencies and defunding of research programs. We’ve tracked all the ways that Elon Musk and his DOGE cohort have been hoovering up all of our sensitive health data and the sensitive health data of millions of Americans without offering a clear explanation of why they’re doing it. And we’ve been watching the shift in culture around vaccines in America, and changing attitudes about what the government’s role should be in our collective well-being. On this episode, we’re going to talk about all of that. We’ll talk about the measles outbreak. We’ll talk about all of the other health crises that we really thought we would never have to talk about anymore. But it won’t be all heavy stuff, I’m sure we will find a way at some point to have some fun in this show.

Katie Drummond: We just had fun. 30 seconds ago we were having fun.

Lauren Goode: Can we just go back to talking about butter and running?

Katie Drummond: We’ll have fun again. We will have fun.

Michael Calore: We promise. This is WIRED’s Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. I’m Michael Calore, director of consumer tech and culture here at WIRED.

Lauren Goode: I’m Lauren Goode, I’m a senior writer at WIRED.

Katie Drummond: And I’m Katie Drummond, WIRED’s global editorial director.

Michael Calore: Let’s start by talking about the measles outbreak. Oddly, this is not the first time that we’ve brought up measles on Uncanny Valley. Because last month, Katie, you talked with Emily Mullen from our science desk on one of our Tuesday episodes about the rise in measles cases that have happened under the watch of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is the country’s head of health and human services appointed by the Trump Administration. Can you tell us what is going on with measles?

Katie Drummond: Unfortunately, I can. I wish that I didn’t have to talk about measles, but here we are. Look, measles cases are on the rise in this country. Measles has not been a going concern in the United States for a very, very long time. But that is because of vaccinations. That is because of successful campaigns to get American parents in particular to vaccinate their children. But an outbreak in Texas that started earlier this year is changing that. We have seen more than 600 cases of measles and two deaths, two children who have died from measles this year alone. It’s the largest outbreak of measles in Texas since 1992. Nationally in the United States, we’ve seen 800 cases of measles so far this year, which is the most since 2019. Just by comparison, take that 800 number so far this year, last year, how many measles cases did we see in the United States in the entire year? 285. This is an exponential increase in measles cases in the United States, primarily concentrated in Texas around that outbreak.

Michael Calore: We also have some new research about measles that we should talk about, some research out of Stanford. Lauren, your alma mater.

Lauren Goode: Oh my gosh. I wish Zoe was here just so that she could groan and say, “Do we need to talk about Stanford again?” Yes, there is new analysis from epidemiologists out of Stanford, our colleague Emily wrote about this last week. The research was published in the Journal of American Medical Association and they used a computer model basically to look a little bit into the future. And determined that, with current state-level vaccination rates, measles could reestablish itself and become consistently present in the United States in the next two decades. Then they tried a variety of different simulations and their model predicted this exact outcome in 83% of the simulations that they did. What’s interesting is that if the current vaccination rates just stayed the same, the model estimated that we could see more than 850,000 cases, 170,000 hospitalizations, and 2500 deaths over the next 25 years. We need to get our vaccination rates higher, at a better level, in order to thwart that. Basically, they said measles could become endemic if we don’t course-correct quickly. There is a difference between endemic, an epidemic, and pandemic, which we’ve all just been living through. It’s still not good.

Michael Calore: Right.

Lauren Goode: No matter which way you look at it.

Michael Calore: Right, because it’s a deadly disease.

Lauren Goode: Correct.

Michael Calore: This goes beyond just measles. What we’re talking about is the MMR vaccine, measles, mumps, and rubella. But there are other vaccines that people are supposed to be taking that they’re not taking and it’s mostly among children. I think all the numbers show that kindergarten vaccines are down, which is one of the big factors that public health experts study.

Lauren Goode: That’s the scary part. By the way, for all of us here, do you remember getting MMR?

Michael Calore: Oh, of course.

Lauren Goode: Right. I’m looking at Katie, too. I’m like, “Katie?”

Katie Drummond: I was just going to, as you were asking that question, in my head I was like, “Who remembers what they did when they were five?”

Lauren Goode: Well, that’s the thing.

Katie Drummond: I don’t remember that happening to me, but I know from … I remember I think when I was pregnant, you have to get some vaccinations and some updates. I think I remember checking in with my dad just to be sure. But it wasn’t really a question in our family. I think for still, the majority of families in the United States, it’s not really a question of whether or not you’re going to vaccinate your children, whether or not you were vaccinated. But there is this growing minority of people who are making a different choice, who are choosing not to vaccinate their kids, who are changing the vaccine schedules, who are spreading out vaccinations because they incorrectly think that that is a safer way to vaccinate. It is that minority as those percentages makes a really, really big difference when you’re talking about herd immunity and you’re talking about protecting an entire community. But no, I don’t remember being vaccinated, but I was.

Lauren Goode: That’s exactly it. I don’t remember the shot going into my arm, but I remember it was just standard that you got MMR. Then subsequently, for example when I did go to grad school, which happened to be a little bit later in life, I was in my early 30s, I remember asking my mother because I literally would not have been allowed to go to school if I didn’t have evidence of these vaccines. We were looking for a little piece of paper-

Katie Drummond: Right.

Lauren Goode: … from the late 1980s that had this. But it was just assumed that we did it. The vaccines we’re talking about here include MMR< measles, mumps, rubella, DTaP, polio, and chicken pox. The drop in vaccination rates is especially dangerous for babies and kids. That decline, which I believe is at the state level from 95 to 93% vaccination rates, may seem small. But when you consider other factors, like how contagious some of these diseases are, how contagious measles is, that's the alarming part.

Michael Calore: Yeah. All of this data coming out, and the outbreak, and vaccine hesitancy that we’re seeing in society are happening at a moment when we have a new cabinet secretary for health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has brought many of these beliefs about vaccinations being bad and about how public health should be managed into his job. What kind of energy is he bringing? We all know the answer to this, but I want to break it down. I want to talk about what his role in this moment will be.

Katie Drummond: I think it’s really important to be really, really clear about RFK Jr., about his legacy, about the damage that he and others have done to this country, and to the integrity of trust in science and in scientific research in the United States. I think one of the really interesting things we’re seeing play out now with RFK Jr. is that he is walking back, or modifying, or trying to tread this very careful line where he doesn’t come out and enthusiastically deny that vaccines are safe and effective, which they are. But he doesn’t want to go so far in the other direction, either. He’s essentially trying to launder his history in the eyes of the American public. But the reality is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been leading the charge against vaccinations in this country for decades. He was the chair of the Children’s Health Defense, which is a nonprofit that campaigns very vigorously against vaccinations. He has many times suggested things like that vaccines cause autism. I remember during the pandemic he said that COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. He said, “The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” More recently, we have seen him try to tread the line where he is essentially saying things like, “People should think about vaccines. They should talk to their doctor. This is a personal choice.” I don’t really think it is actually a personal choice. I think it is a choice that you make with the knowledge that you live among a community of other people. You don’t necessarily get vaccines just to protect yourself or just to protect your child. You get vaccines to protect the entire community that you live within. This is a population-wide imperative. That’s something that I think even now in his current role, where he does need to tread a more careful line or he is trying to tread a more careful line, he has failed spectacularly to communicate that to the American public.

Lauren Goode: Katie, right now, is Kennedy in support of MMR, or is he still toeing the line on vaccines? What’s the latest?

Katie Drummond: Well, I think the most recent comments he has made about MMR, after months of a lot of pressure and a lot of back-and-forth, he said, “The MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent measles.” He has said that. That being said, in recent months he has also said things that directly contradict that statement or that call that statement into question. He did an interview with Fox News in March, so just a little over a month ago, where he said, “There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year. It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, et cetera. People ought to be able to make that choice for themselves.” I want to be very clear here. Healthy people, generally speaking, healthy kids, healthy adults who go get the MMR vaccine do not die from that vaccine. That is not a thing. What he is saying is false. He’s saying it on Fox News and he’s saying it to millions of Americans. Many of whom, if they are regular viewers of Fox News and regular consumers of right-leaning and far-right news organizations, they are already asking questions about vaccines. They are already potentially deciding not to vaccinate their kids. Maybe they are deciding not to get their own vaccines, not to get the flu shot every year. They are already a vulnerable community of people. What he is doing in interviews like that is he is further sowing doubt in that community, in those populations of people around the safety and efficacy of these vaccines. I don’t really care if, at some point now, he says the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent measles. Well, cool, dude. You have spent the last several months in your role as a government official, and the last several decades as a high profile person on this planet, telling everybody that this vaccine and other vaccines are not safe. That they might kill you. That is not true.

Michael Calore: We’re snapping our fingers here in the studio, but we need to take a break and we’re going to come right back. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. Ever since Donald Trump’s inauguration and Robert F. Kennedy’s approval as the cabinet secretary for health and human services, we have seen a rapid dismantling of HHS and all of the agencies that work underneath it. They’re not going away, but there have been jobs cuts, there have been consolidations, there have been funding cuts for research, and all kinds of chaos. Where should we start with what’s been going on in Washington?

Katie Drummond: Oh, boy. These are, as WIRED and so many other outlets have reported, these are huge cuts. These are tens of thousands of employees at these agencies losing their jobs. I think it’s important to note, just in the context of this conversation today, that at the same time as RFK Jr., and DOGE, and the administration are making these sweeping cuts to federal health agencies, they are also targeting what appears to be a lot of vaccine-related infrastructure. I think one of the most notable examples to me and something I found particularly disturbing is that the NIH is actually asking researchers to scrub references to MRNA vaccine research in grant proposals. Essentially suggesting, we don’t know for sure, but there are strong indications that the federal government under Donald Trump and these health agencies under RFK Jr. will be deprioritizing MRNA vaccine research. Now, I should remind everyone that MRNA vaccines and the incredible research that has allowed them to be possible is the reason several years ago we were able to get shots in arms to make sure that millions more Americans, not to mention people around the entire world, did not die of COVID. MRNA vaccines were the key to thwarting a devastating pandemic. This was just a couple of years ago. It’s an incredibly promising field of research, and it’s one that now potentially looks like it’s at risk because of the approach RFK Jr. is taking to what he describes, and the way he talks about it, is vaccine safety. “We need to make sure these things are safe.” God forbid, everybody die of measles because they got a vaccine for it. Which, again, doesn’t happen. That under the auspices of safety, that really promising, experimental work into vaccination technology will not happen. That’s what really stands out to me from all of this, among other things.

Michael Calore: They have to know that this is going to have a destabilizing effect on the health of Americans. Because the plan that they’re instituting right now involves not only rolling back research and funding towards new medicine, but also vital systems that mostly people who have lower means in our society use in order to access healthcare. Healthcare for minority communities, healthcare for people who are suffering from addiction issues, healthcare for people who are single mothers who are on public assistance. These are the programs that are all being rolled up into a new administration called the Administration for Healthy America. When those programs are rolled up, they’re going to be smaller and they’re going to have less funding and fewer people working there than they did. It’s this odd moment that we have where not only are we having less research and less effort put in to finding new cures for things, but we’re also providing less public support in general. My big question is what’s the plan here? What do we expect is going to happen?

Katie Drummond: What we expect is going to happen is that some of these illnesses that were very much under control in this country will, as Lauren said earlier in the show, become endemic again. Or that the next COVID, the next devastating pandemic, we will not have the resources to contain that pandemic and communities won’t have access to the information, let alone the vaccinations that they need, to take care of their families. Some of the grants that have already been canceled in this mass culling of federal agencies and this realignment of federal priorities, these are grants that provide measles vaccination centers in Texas. Mike, you were talking a minute ago about what the administration thinks is going to happen and what the plan is here. I think it’s one of two scenarios to me, and neither one is particularly reassuring. One, scenario one is that they genuinely think that the United States will be a healthier country if they eliminate experimental research into vaccinations, if they provide less access to this medical care to communities across the country. They might actually think that, based on what they seem to believe, what RFK Jr. seems to believe, that this will be a healthier country if that happens. That’s scenario one. Scenario two is that they just don’t care. Especially when we’re talking about vulnerable communities. One of two scenarios, not sure which one it is, don’t like either of them.

Michael Calore: Yeah. I feel like both are on the table right now. The goal of DOGE is to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, that’s something that you see in all of the executive orders and all of the communications coming out of the government right now. “We’re stamping out waste, fraud, and abuse.” Sure, there was probably some waste, there was probably some fraud. I’m not so sure about abuse. But the wholesale dismantling of these programs that people rely on for their day-to-day lives to work just doesn’t feel like the right path forward for America. I do not feel bad about saying that on a podcast.

Lauren Goode: No. I think all of this actually threatens to make America as a nation weaker. Not great again. The MRNA research that Katie mentioned earlier that led to the COVID vaccines, that led to “Operation Warp Speed, look we’ve done this so quickly,” was actually years in the works, the foundational technology for MRNA. All of our most pivotal research around cancer treatments and other diseases takes years. Then when we have a fractured system, a fractured healthcare system, we also become unable to respond as quickly as we should be able to to threats of bio-terrorism. Just picture all of the misinformation that, in some ways, we’ve been faced with for years, but now it’s amplified because of internet culture, too. Just picture all of that flying around in a moment, in a very acute moment of needing a clear leader with evidence-backed knowledge in the room, and we don’t have that right now.

Michael Calore: Yeah. I want to dig into something you just said, which is internet culture.

Lauren Goode: It’s a big part of this.

Michael Calore: Yeah. Can you talk us through how big of a part it is, and what the influencers are doing in this moment?

Lauren Goode: Well, one of the trademarks of the wellness industry and particularly on the internet is that it doesn’t really have an established standard of credibility. And that it’s constantly suggesting information, and tips, and hacks to people that put something just out of reach for them. Just one more thing that you should be doing to optimize your health, it keeps that machine turning. There was this cultural critic that popped into my feed recently and I can’t remember his name, but he made a great point about how what happened after GLP1s became widely accessible to people. That you started to see all the wellness influencers start to hype Pilates. Pilates is having a moment because it’s the next thing in this flywheel of health hacks that just makes it a little bit more expensive, inaccessible, a thing that all the celebrities are doing that you can’t do, but you should be doing. In a nutshell, that is the health and wellness industry online. You combine the psychology of that with the fact that a lot of people do feel utterly disgusted with the US traditional healthcare system, with health facts that seem to give you this sense of control, with a total lack of enforcement around bogus health claims on the internet, and then you add someone like RFK Jr. to the mix, who is supposedly speaking from this position of authority. It’s a powder keg. It’s this non-toxic, fluoride-free vitamin A powder keg.

Katie Drummond: Save us from fluoride, Robert.

Lauren Goode: Right. Save our teeth from fluoride. Then occasionally, you have these outlier examples that come up that end up supporting these claims. Someone does happen to have an adverse reaction to a vaccine. A family member who has been shunned by traditional healthcare, but actually did self-diagnose and is now thriving. It becomes an example in people’s mind. Very occasionally, RFK Jr. will say something that a majority of people can glom onto, like wanting to ban those ridiculous pharmaceutical ads you see on television. Everyone goes, “Okay, yeah, that makes sense.”

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: You just combine all of these things and you just have this perfect storm of the potential for misinformation that actually seriously harms people’s health.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Katie Drummond: Yeah, I think that that’s all right. I was thinking about this last night, knowing that we were going to be talking about this today on the podcast. I remember in 2011, I went to Minneapolis. I reported a story about how Andrew Wakefield, if that name rings a bell, it should. Andrew Wakefield was spending a lot of time with the Somali community. There’s a very large community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis. He was spending a lot of time with them and essentially telling them not to vaccinate their kids. That the MMR vaccine caused autism. He created this massive public health catastrophe in this one city in this one community that he decided to target. This was in 1998. Andrew Wakefield published a paper saying that, “It sure looks like this vaccine causes autism.” That was this seminal turning point to me, at least in our lifetimes, around this idea of vaccine hesitancy. Around this idea of just asking questions about vaccines, which ultimately became a very dangerous thing. I think through the 2000s, we’re now talking about 25 years of history, through the 2000s, the emergence of social media, of online connectivity really built up this mistrust and this anti-vaccine crusader movement. Along with very smart use of anti-vax activists, the use of celebrities. People like Jennie McCarthy, who I remember came out and said, “My son has autism and I think that vaccines are the reason.”

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Katie Drummond: Celebrities like Jennie McCarthy and RFK Jr., who has spent the last 20-plus years of his career parroting a lot of the language, a lot of the ideas that Andrew Wakefield, who has been discredited over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. But you have people like RFK Jr. picking up that mantle and taking it, and then feeding it into this social media machine where, to Lauren’s point, now that information, that misinformation more accurately, inaccurate information can propagate and reach communities not only all around the country, but all around the world. You saw it in the late ’90s with Andrew Wakefield, and it really to me, as I think about it in my lifetime, it has just metastasized from there. It has been taken on by high profile people. It has made its way onto the internet. It has made its way into influencer culture. Of course, then the COVID pandemic was the perfect storm for all of this to spiral I think really out of control.

Lauren Goode: I think we all remember that moment during the COVID pandemic when information was scant. I think we were all very afraid. Donald Trump said something about injecting disinfectant into your body. I think we can safely say that was misinformation.

Katie Drummond: Yes, I think we can safely say that injecting bleach or whatever horse medication was being bought up across the country from desperate people … Look, COVID was this very, very scary, very isolating, very unprecedented moment in American history, in world history. You think about that moment, the year 2020. Well, we all just spent the last 20 years being fed anti-vax, or at the very least just asking questions about vaccines kind of narratives. First, in the analog media, and then through social media and all over the internet. You have people who are already very alienated from the US healthcare system. They don’t trust big corporations, they don’t trust big pharma. There are good reasons for all of those things. They’re sitting at home, they’re by themselves. They don’t have access to their broader community. What they do have access to is the internet and they start hearing the President of the United States talking about injecting God knows what nonsense into their veins, and there you have it. I think COVID was the rock bottom moment for this country, at least so far, in adoption of vaccines. I will say, I have family members, I’m sure so many people listening do, maybe you guys do, too. I have family members who chose not to be vaccinated for COVID in 2020 or 2021, and to this day are not vaccinated against COVID because they are scared of MRNA technology, they’re scared of vaccines. They think that the vaccines do more harm than good. That is the institutional leadership that has brought us to this moment where we have children in the United States of America dying of measles. That is where we are.

Michael Calore: That is a rough place to be.

Katie Drummond: Yeah, it sucks.

Michael Calore: Okay, let’s take another break and then we’ll come right back. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. We’re going to shift away from talking about health and we’re going to talk about Signal. Because the thing that has been blowing up our group chat this week is, in fact, a group chat. It’s a Silicon Valley group chat, it’s a bunch of elites talking about God knows what. What do we know about the group chats?

Lauren Goode: Katie do you want to take this one?

Katie Drummond: Oh, Lauren, this is so yours.

Lauren Goode: Well, normally with Overheard, we would talk about something we’ve each overheard in Silicon Valley, but in this case, we are talking about what Ben Smith overheard. Ben Smith is the founder of a news outlet called Semafor and he published a story this week about the Silicon Valley private group chats that have been shaping politics for years now. There are several chats referred to in this story, but they fall under the umbrella basically of something called Chatham House, which is based on the idea that, in order for people to express their ideas freely, they have to be able to speak in a private space. These chats that Ben reported about are made up of billionaires, venture capitalists, thought leaders, and they’re views are mostly right-leaning or even fringe. These are members of a technocratic society who are expressing ideas that they believe would get them canceled online or shot down by the woke mob. Now instead of expressing them on Twitter like they might have a little while ago, they’re putting them in group chats. These include reactions to a Harper’s Letter that came out back in 2020 that was somewhat controversial. But also, more recently, these guys are responding to Trump’s tariffs where people aren’t necessarily falling along party lines. They’re actually criticizing Trump’s tariffs. What’s interesting to me, aside from the content of these chats, is that we’re in this moment where reactionary right-wing politics are playing out privately in private Signals, but actually have so much influence over the public sphere right now. It’s the modern day version of salons.

Katie Drummond: That’s what I thought was so interesting about the story. It’s a fascinating story and honestly it was the kind of story that made me wish there was more. I was like, “Come on, Ben. Get some screenshots, man.”

Lauren Goode: Get the goods.

Katie Drummond: Show us the goods.

Lauren Goode: Yeah.

Katie Drummond: But it was this idea that, for so many of these people … We are talking about millionaires, billionaires, we’re talking about the wealthiest, most powerful people running businesses or VC firms, or what have you, in this country who are effectively saying, “I’m too scared to go on social media anymore because people are mean to me in the comments. I’m going to go hide with my other rich friends and we’re going to talk on Signal instead.” That was one of the big takeaways for me was this incredibly thin skin of some of these people to feel like they can’t vocalize an opinion or share a point of view on social media. And that they feel like they need to take it to a safe space and workshop it with 100 of their closest billionaire friends, before they can all put it out in public together as a united front. I thought that was fascinating. I would say there are plenty of good reasons to shy away from using social media or sharing your opinions on social media. That is very real, the mob mentality, people going after you for what you think. Or your opinion if you are a public figure, making news in a way you may not like. But I had to laugh at the idea that, for some of these people, the idea of sharing a thought on Twitter of all places, which is a pretty safe space for people with pretty extreme points of view, I will say. That that just felt like too high risk in this woke world that we live in, that they need to go hide away in a confidential group chat to talk about what they really think. I thought that was a little bit ridiculous.

Lauren Goode: Well, right. Then the moment that someone says something that goes against their ideologies, like Marc Andreesen says, “I think it’s time to take a Signal break.” I also thought it was interesting how Marc Andreesen appears to have a couple of lackeys who he just tells to assemble these group chats for him. “Put me in with smart people!” Then someone goes and assembles a group chat of 20 people, and Marc Andreesen apparently is one of the most prolific texters.

Katie Drummond: Yes, I loved that.

Lauren Goode: Someone else in the article was saying, “I don’t know how he has the time to do this. He’s much busier than me, and yet he’s the most active participant in this group chat.”

Katie Drummond: Honestly, just imagining him frantically toggling between different text groups throughout his day and his night while trying to do his job made me feel very stressed out. Take a breather. Please.

Lauren Goode: Yes.

Katie Drummond: Please, just chill out a little bit, man.

Lauren Goode: Yes.

Katie Drummond: It’s too much. But also, add Lauren and I to your group chats.

Lauren Goode: Right. I was just going to say add us, you cowards. Add us to your group chats. We are open to joining the group chats. Max Reid did a pretty good analysis of this in his Substack newsletter. He described how this is the perfect confluence of events for people to be radicalized within these group chats.

Katie Drummond: Right.

Lauren Goode: Because they started back in 2019, 2020, and then Clubhouse was a thing. Clubhouse was a moment when people were saying the quiet parts out loud on Clubhouse. But really, there were all of these little networks and groups that were forming behind the scenes because were sitting home, nothing to do except be online and live online. That led to these people coming together, but coming together along these explicitly political lines, and then radicalizing each other.

Katie Drummond: So they’re saying the quiet part quietly over Signal, privately. I don’t love where all of this leads. I was very glad to see this story come out and to have a little bit of sunlight cast on this phenomenon. Thank you, Ben Smith. You did a good one.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, I don’t think that there’s anything else in Silicon Valley that people are talking about quite as much right now. Maybe we should be talking about other things, though.

Michael Calore: Yeah, we did just talk about RFK and Health and Human Services for 30 minutes, so thank you for the levity at the end of the show. Thank you all for listening to Uncanny Valley. If you liked what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. If you’d like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, write to us at uncannyvalley@WIRED.com. Today’s show was produced by Kyana Moghadam. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Paige Oamek fact-checked this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Katie Drummond is WIRED’s global editorial director. Chris Bannon is our head of global audio.