Somebody Told Me...
Have you been keeping your eye on your grandma lately? Have you been calling her enough? You sure she’s not spending too much time on YouTube? Is she talking fondly of dictators? Has she suddenly started quietly muttering in the Aldi queue about the “Jewish Space Lasers” she’s heard are setting wildfires around the world to make sure everyone believes in climate change? When was the moment the world began to believe anything?
Danny Wallace, million-copy bestselling author of Yes Man and Join Me, has fallen down the modern rabbit hole of lies, conspiracies and disinformation. Along the way, he encounters families torn apart by accusations and fake news, journalists putting themselves on the frontline of the disinformation war, reformed conspiracy theorists, influencers who see profit in stoking paranoia, and the shadowy nameless, faceless trolls on the other side of our screens. He discovers how disinformation and well-told lies can ruin a year or a whole life, how they can affect our family, our street, our community. How they can spread across a country, a continent, even the world. How they take hold of our imaginations and make us feel both helpless and powerful.
And Danny asks: can you do anything to stop it – even with the truth on your side?
Danny Wallace is a Sunday Times and Amazon #1-bestselling author, as well as a BAFTA, Arqiva and Sony-winning performer and presenter. His first book, Join Me, was described as a ‘word-of-mouth phenomenon’ by The Bookseller and ‘one of the funniest stories you will ever read’ by the Daily Mail. His second book, Yes Man – in which he decided to say ‘Yes’ to everything – became a hugely successful film with Jim Carrey in the lead role. He has written and presented shows on all the major UK television and radio networks, and GQ magazine has called him: ‘One of Britain’s great writing talents’. He currently presents the Important Broadcast on Radio X.