April 7, 2016 9:49 pm

Friday – Neil Tyson Explores the Democratization of the Internet with Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian

If you’ve never ventured into the troll-infested waters of Reddit, you may reconsider after Friday’s episode of StarTalk Radio.

The “front page of the internet” is more than just a place for the day’s most popular cat photos and the latest scandalous expose: it turns out that it has become an important vehicle for the dissemination and popularization of science at a time when traditional science journalism is under siege.

And that’s just one of the threads you can “up-vote” or “down-vote” when host Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews Reddit’s co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, “a hero of the Internet” according to returning in-studio guest, Buzz Machine’s Jeff Jarvis.

You’ll learn about the successful fight for net neutrality and how Reddit is one of the most consistent champions of free speech in the information age.

There’s plenty more, from trolls, to AMAs, to the value of authenticity online, to the story of how Reddit might never have happened if Alexis and his co-founder Steve Huffman had succeeded with their first idea instead. You’ll even hear how the Internet was critical to co-host Eugene Mirman’s career.

Join us Friday, April 8 at 7pm EDT on our website, iTunes Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn and SoundCloud.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Jeffrey Simons