EPISODE 29: Can People Become Addicted to Extremism?

We explore the intersection of hate and addiction in an attempt to find ways to prevent radicalization to violent extremism with Ryan Andrew Brown, a social scientist with the RAND Corporation, in part two of our talks with RAND experts.

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Guest Bio

Ryan Andrew Brown is a senior behavioral/social scientist at the RAND Corporation. Broadly, Brown’s work concerns the role of culture and social networks in driving risk-taking, violence, and other destructive and self-destructive behaviors. His current work focuses on the individual, social, and cultural drivers of domestic extremism. Brown is also conducting work on the role of foreign disinformation and domestic political polarization in propagating conspiracy theories regarding COVID-19. Finally, he has pursued research that betters the lives of rural and remote populations, with a focus on American Indian and Alaska Native groups. Brown employs mixed methods in his research, ranging from qualitative interviewing and analysis to computational linguistics. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in anthropology from Emory University, and received postdoctoral training in population health from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholars Program at UC-Berkeley and UC-San Francisco.

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RADICALIZED: Truth Survives is a weekly investigative podcast exposing the strategies and techniques used in disinformation and the rise of far-right extremism with Heidi Cuda, Jim Stewartson, High Fidelity, and Sean Conner.

New episode every Monday morning at 8:00am CST.

Twitter: @radicalizedpod.com