Nolan Higdon is an author, political analyst, and lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, whose work focuses on the intersections of politics, media, technology, and education. A prominent voice in media criticism, he is a columnist for the Gaslight Gazette on Substack, co-host of The Disinfo Detox podcast, co-host of Just Ask the Press, a KTVU political analyst and national judge for Project Censored.

Higdon has authored numerous books including United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (And What We Can Do About It) (2019); The Anatomy of Fake News: A Critical News Literacy Education (2020); Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy (2022); The Podcaster’s Dilemma: Decolonizing Podcasters in the Era of Surveillance Capitalism (2022); The Media and Me: A Guide To Critical Media Literacy For Young People (2022); Surveillance Education: Navigating the conspicuous absence of privacy in schools (2025); and MAGAcademy: How Corporatism Paved the Way for the Hostile Takeover of Higher Ed (Spring 2026).