The Columbia University sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh has never been conventional. In graduate school at the University of Chicago, he embedded himself with a crack-selling gang. Later, he immersed himself in the lives of street prostitutes and then the teenage children of billionaires. His memoir Gang Leader for a Day became a national best-seller — and it caught the eye of Mark Zuckerberg, who hired Venkatesh to help Facebook deal with bullying and misinformation. Since then, Venkatesh has continued to embed at the highest levels of the tech world, including at Twitter and other companies at the vanguard of the digital revolution. And now he’s hosting a podcast. In each episode, Venkatesh will draw from his connections to interview the people who are building and running the digital world, and those who are using it in a signal way, digging deep into their motivations and challenging their priorities.

Sudhir Breaks the Internet is a production of the Freakonomics Radio Network. You can subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sudhir Venkatesh is a sociologist at Columbia University and Director of the University’s SIGNAL Lab on Tech & Society. He directed research teams at Facebook and Twitter that built products to ensure healthy consumer experiences and he served as Twitter’s first Director of Social Science Research.