Everything Is Fake

This episode explores 1980s WWF wrestling and the idea of kayfabe: a spectacle everyone treats as real because it feels true. Jamie Bartlett follows that strange bargain from harmless entertainment toward a bigger question about what happens when the same logic shapes the wider world.

This episode looks at a 1987 rule change that reshaped American broadcasting and, with it, the public’s relationship to truth. Through Morton Downey Jr. and Oprah Winfrey, it traces how outrage and emotional sincerity became rival forms of authority.

This episode explores how fake essays, toxic debt ratings, and Silicon Valley’s “fake it till you make it” mindset reflect the same moral logic. Jamie Bartlett examines the creeping belief that if everyone else is doing it, bending the rules starts to seem justified.

This final chapter follows Jamie Bartlett and his AI companion Jimmy Botlett as the line between them grows harder to spot. With Geoffrey Hinton reflecting on AI’s consequences and alarming claims from inside a major company, the episode asks what’s real, what’s fake, and what that means now.

This episode examines Dr Aseem Malhotra’s widely shared claims about Covid vaccines and why so many people find him more convincing than major institutions. Jamie Bartlett approaches the arguments carefully, then turns to the bigger question of trust, authority, and public belief.