In this episode of SDPtalk, William Clouston is joined by photographer, artist and author Laura Dodsworth.

We are constantly bombarded with attempts to influence our behaviour, our speech and even our thoughts. Some are overt and transparent, such as advertisements which seek to persuade you to buy their product instead of a competitor’s. Others are more insidious, such as the ‘nudge’ tactics and fear propaganda deployed by the Behavioural Insights Team during the Covid pandemic.

In their bestselling book Free Your Mind, Laura and her co-author Patrick Fagan discuss how to spot and resist the increasing manipulation present in our everyday lives. 

Why are some attempts at political or social manipulation more successful than others? Can such tactics ever be justified? And what are the implications for freedom of thought and for democracy?

Laura is also a guest speaker at the SDP Conference in October 2023.

Learn more about the SDP at: https://sdp.org.uk/

The opening and closing music for SDP Talks is "Prelude in C (BWV 846)" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/