The Echo Machine Review (David Pakman)

Cover art for “The Echo Machine” by David Pakman. Image taken from Amazon’s website.

I recently finished reading David Pakman’s new book The Echo Machine, so I figured I might as well write a quick review of it. That’s just what I do.

For those of you who don’t know, David Pakman is a progressive podcaster and talk show host who has a YouTube channel bearing more than three million subscribers. I count myself proudly among that group. Pakman has been one of the foremost advocates for critical thinking in recent years, something very much lacking in modern American society.

Because it was the only chapter I took detailed notes on, a lot of this review is going to be focused on the first chapter, which describes our current predicament and how we got here. So let’s go.

In this first chapter, Pakman (a naturalized citizen of the United States), mentions that in Argentina, his country of origin, it’s very common for people to casually discuss politics at locations like a barbershop or restaurant. In America, this is generally seen as taboo unless you know with near-absolute certainty that the other person shares the same views as yourself. This serves as additional evidence, as if it were needed, that the United States is a deeply and bitterly polarized society.

One thing I knew before reading this book was that voter turnout was relatively low in the United States. In the 2014 midterms, turnout was only about 36 percent when counted against the number of eligible voters. It’s been said many times before, but if we saw that in another country, we would question the legitimacy of that election. In fact, in countries where elections are known to be rigged, opposition parties sometimes boycott the election to deny perceived legitimacy to the winners.

In the 2020 presidential election, turnout reached 65 percent , which is the current record for American elections. However, as Pakman notes in The Echo Machine, voter turnout in Sweden and Denmark, commonly cited as two of the world’s healthiest democracies, regularly exceeds 80 percent. 

I found this a fascinating paradox. The United States is an extremely polarized country, at least relative to other wealthy democracies (if America can even be considered a democracy anymore), but lots of people aren’t politically engaged. It is my belief that if more people knew what was going on, Donald Trump likely would not have won the 2024 election. Perhaps this isn’t a paradox at all, though; as Pakman notes, the acrimonious divide often makes people decide politics isn’t for them and therefore check out of the process.

In the first chapter, Pakman argues that the “breaking” of American society that led it to the sorry state it’s in today started with the Watergate scandal. At the time, it must have been absolutely shocking to live through such blatant corruption. Now, under Trump, it’s not shocking anymore - though that’s a rant for another post.

Another development frequently discussed in the book is the monumental shift in the way people access information and communicate, which Pakman dates back to about 2012. Historically, the “third place” besides home and work may have been a park, bar, house of worship, or even a barbershop. Now, that “third place” is social media for many people in America and elsewhere.

On social media, one’s feed can be tailored to an individual’s tastes and interests. This is hardly a secret, of course - my BlueSky timeline is almost exclusively political posts because that’s what I’ve found myself interacting with. Anyone can post anything online, so long as they follow the content guidelines of the various social media platforms.

 In such an environment, the barrier to entry to becoming a “journalist” has been greatly diminished. It used to be that if you wanted to disseminate information about current events, you would apply (with proper qualifications) to join a newspaper’s staff. At the news agency, information was rigorously vetted before it was released to the public. Needless to say, that is no longer the case.

Now, in the year of Arceus 2025, all you have to do is type out the message and hit send. It’s a lot easier for misinformation (and disinformation) to circulate, and it doesn’t help that traditional newspaper-based journalism is withering away at an alarming rate. Really, it’s not surprising; traditional journalism simply can’t compete with news that can be at your fingertips at no financial cost (though it may be at a heavy mental-health cost).

Anecdotally, my 60-year-old mother still gets the Boston Globe in physical format. So does my 90-year-old grandmother. But they’re very much in the minority, and in twenty, thirty years, will any significant number of people still get the Globe, let alone the numerous small-town papers that have been hit even harder by the digital revolution?

As Pakman notes, at a time like this, it is even more vital for children to learn critical thinking skills at school. Unfortunately, when school budgets are cut, often deliberately by Republicans who want kids to remain dumb and keep voting for them, courses such as media literacy are typically the first to go. Even as media literacy is needed more than ever, it’s being taught less than ever.

This is not the case everywhere. Pakman cites Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands as examples of countries that emphasize such practices in their primary and/or secondary school curricula. Finland in particular is given a spotlight - apparently in math class, Finnish children learn how quantitative data can be manipulated to suit a given narrative. 

There is one area in which I disagreed with Pakman’s position. One chapter of The Echo Machine is dedicated to methods for fighting a movement that has no policy (which he argues the modern-day Republican Party has completely abandoned). Pakman states that the reason the GOP has jettisoned policy from their platform is because their policy positions are increasingly out of step with what most voters want. 

I would not, however, argue that the Republican Party has abandoned policy totally. Yes, during the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 (and it worked to great effect). However, the tariffs that are shocking people so much shouldn’t be surprising. Most of what he’s doing right now is stuff he said he would do before the election. 

In much the same way, Trump kept bragging about how he was able to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision granting the right to have an abortion. Even as some voters finally realized what not having abortion access actually means, Trump was still able to bamboozle enough pro-choice people into voting for him. Honestly, good for him - I hate to admit it, but he’s an evil genius.

Consider these 2024 exit polls. Several states had ballot initiatives last year that would enshrine abortion access into their state constitution. Even in states where these measures succeeded massively, however, Trump very often carried said states. Many would argue that this speaks to a deficit in Democrats’ messaging abilities, and I tend to agree with this.

It’s a spectacular failure of the Democratic Party that voters who thought abortion should be legal in “most” cases split evenly between a woman who made protecting abortion rights a central issue in her campaign and a man who bragged about taking that right away from half the country’s women. Like, that’s unforgivable.

Some also speculate that the abortion rights amendments helped Trump because some people thought abortion would be safe in their state if the amendment passed, and therefore they gave themselves “permission” to vote for Trump. These people are stupid, yes, but in the words of Katniss Everdeen, stupid people are dangerous.

Ultimately, I don’t know what the solution is to get the United States moving in a saner direction. But some of the tips listed in his book are a good start. I highly recommend anyone with interests in politics and critical thinking to give The Echo Machine a read.