Is the attention economy killing democracy?

With Andrew MacDougall, former Director of Communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper

This week, we’re joined by Andrew MacDougall, a fellow Harper PMO alum and one of the sharpest communications minds in the business. His latest paper for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute makes a bold case: that the attention economy, powered by Big Tech platforms, is actively undermining Western democracy—and that we’re letting it happen.

In this episode:

• 📱 What is the attention economy—and why it’s designed to addict, distract, and divide

• 🧠 Why today’s tech platforms are built to exploit your brain’s dopamine pathways

• 💥 Free speech vs. free reach: why more speech doesn’t mean better speech

• 🗞 How the collapse of traditional media business models is breaking political accountability

• 🗳 Why politicians like Trump and Farage thrive—and leaders like Harper and Starmer struggle—in today’s media environment

Also in this episode:

• 🧃 “The vegetable is the news, the dessert is content—and nobody’s eating their vegetables”

• 🧨 Why platforms like YouTube and TikTok aren’t neutral—they actively reward the worst takes

• 🤳 Why even good communicators struggle to compete with rage bait and algorithmic triggers

• 📊 What happens when every push notification must compete with Kim Kardashian, a war in Ukraine, and your local school board

And don’t miss:

• 🧾 Andrew’s proposal for an engagement-based tax to discourage addictive platform design

• 📉 How banning smartphones for kids—and showing users their “attention cost”—could help

• 🔌 What would happen if we unplugged the internet for just a month (hint: less Trump, more sanity)

Plus:

• 😬 Percy tries to warn us about AI-generated ‘80s nostalgia reels

• 📵 Joseph tries not to check his phone for a full 45 minutes (he fails)

• 💡 A very serious policy discussion… followed by a confession that we’re all still putting the clips on TikTok