Latest / Why We Do What We Do / Propaganda: How You Are Being Tricked pt. 2

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Propaganda: How You Are Being Tricked pt. 2 · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we Do what we Do. Welcome
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: to Why We Do what we Do. I am your
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: still blabbing about things host Abraham.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: And I'm your poster making host Shane.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: that humans and non human animals do, and today we
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: are going to a part two. This is following up
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: our discussion that we had last week where we were
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: talking about propaganda and psyops and that sort of thing.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Strategies used to persuade and influence you often in ways
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: that you don't know that you're being persuaded and influenced,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: And so if you did not listen to that episode,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I do recommend that you go back and check that out,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: because we covered a lot of ground in understanding a
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: bit of the history and understanding the various specific tactics
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: of that episode. But just in case, we will recap
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: some of that before we dive into the second part,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: where we're going to talk a lot about examples of
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: propaganda and also really get into what we think we
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: might be able to do about this sure, how we
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: can try and recover from the system that is just
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: pure nonsense and designs to orchestrate behavior rather than facilitate
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: a community of people.
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  Speaker 2: Right, And at the end of the day, you know,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: the thing that is really important to remember is that
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: every system can change, because all every system that we
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: know has been made by humans, so it can change.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: It does take effort, it does take time, it does
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: take lots of things, but it can change, and we
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: can do something about it, at least on some level.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Yes, So that's a great teaser because I do need
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: to give my other preamble things, which is that if
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: you're joining us for the first time, then welcome. We're
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: happy to have you here. As I said, I would
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: recommend you check out that previous episode, but if you
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: don't want to do that and just pick up here,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: then cool. Hope that you enjoy what you hear today
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and that it's not super confusing. If you are a
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: returning listener, then welcome back. We're happy that you have
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: found us again. And either way, if you like to
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: support us, ways you can do that are joining us
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: on Patreon, picking up some merch, leaving us a rating
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: and review, liking, subscribing, telling a friend, and I'll talk
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: more about those things at the end of all this discussion.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: But before we even get into our topic. DuJour would
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: really dig into it. I would like to acknowledge that
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: it is, in fact September twenty fourth, and that means
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: happy punctuation Day period no exclamation point exp point.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's more confusing if it's punctuation Day, question mark exactly.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: It's National Mufungo Day. Yes, uh, this is some type
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: of food. I didn't look into it, but it's a thing. Yes,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: it is Banned Websites Awareness Day. I'm curious about what
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: that could mean. Like, on the one hand, I think
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: of things like banned books and I'm intrigued. But I
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: also think about like things that are banned because they're
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: overtly racist or harmful, and I'm like, maybe they stay banned. Sure.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also Banned Books Week, so that's maybe it's
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: maybe more in line with the former, not the ladder.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: So hopefully got it? Okay.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: It is the Festival of Latest Novelties, m gall Bladder
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Good Health Day.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Take care of that gall bladder you need it. It's
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: kiss Day.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's the band or Smooches, but
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: either way, smooches are better than the band.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Agreed yes, with consent of course, yes, of course. It
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: is lash Stylists Day, not lashes in like you received
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: twenty lashings, but lashes like eyelashes. I think. Yeah.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's National Bluebird of Happiness Day.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Is National Cherries Jubilee Day. Oh, celebrate cell lebrate.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: That's that's also you put an insclamation point on that
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: one punctuation day. It's also National Horshatta Day.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Mmm. I love horn Chatah. That's so good. It is
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: National Women's Health and Fitness Day. Great love that.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: It's Schwenkfelder Thanksgiving.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Sure that that's a really fun just word to say. Yeah,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Mike Feld, it's really fun to say. As you mentioned,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: it is Banned Books Week. So I'll go ahead and
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: take the next one, which is that it's also Child
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Passenger Safety Awareness Week.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: It certainly is. It is Deaf Dog Awareness Week.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Ooh, and fall Astronomy Week. I hope that doesn't mean
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: that astronomers like fall down or something. No, no, no, no.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: I think it's like they're looking at stars that are
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: only like yellow, brown, red, and orange.
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  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. Great, all right, so
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  Speaker 1: we will get into our topic. As we said, we
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: are following up on our discussion last week of propaganda,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: and last week we sort of dug into the fact
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: that propaganda has been around for a very long time
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  Speaker 1: and that a lot of propaganda consists of different elements,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: which is that you want to know your enemy, but
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  Speaker 1: you also want to make your enemy confused. That like
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: having disinformation or misinformation as like as effective as other
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: wartime strategies. And this is written centuries ago in the
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: book Art of War by Sunzu. But that whole idea
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: of confuse your opponents and radicalize and trick people and
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to being sympathetic to your cause has actually been around
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  Speaker 1: for a very long time. Like people have understood that
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: being able to leverage people's emotions to again either have
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: them turn on each other or to be sympathetic to you.
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  Speaker 1: All of that is a way that can help the
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the orchestrator of that misinformation to accomplish whatever their goals
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  Speaker 1: might be.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so we covered a couple of strategies that
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: included name calling, transfer, glittering generalities, bandwagoning, scare tactics, playing
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: folk card stacking, testimonial stereotyping, unrealistic promises, manipulating information, snob appeal, repetition,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: loaded language and weasel words. There were so many things
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: that we found that people do in the name of
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: propaganda to get you to believe a certain thing or
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: to follow along or push you into a certain belief system.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: It's pretty astounding it is, and how effective these things are.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they've got a lot of weapons in the arsenal.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: But the other thing that I think is important to understand,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and this will be useful I think for this part
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: as well, and it's also just worth repeating, is that
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: there are four core tenants to propaganda. One is avoid
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: argument and appeal to emotion. You're not using facts, like
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: you're really just trying to get people riled up in
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: some way sympathetic or angry or some combination of those things.
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  Speaker 1: The second tenant is that you want to have a
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  Speaker 1: clear US versus them. This is very embedded into all
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: other strategies of propaganda, whatever specific tool it is us
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: versus them. Yes, it's very important, where like us includes
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: you and them as the enemy of some thing like that.
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  Speaker 1: The third is you want to have social groups on
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: your side. Churches are a really convenient way to do this. Like,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: if you can get churches on your side, then like
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: you get whole groups of people to come with you.
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  Speaker 1: So you sort of like extend in all of branch
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: if you will, to the church of like, hey, you
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: want more power, I know you do, well, you help
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: me accomplish this goal. I'll help you accomplish yours, right
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: and make you look really good. In the same time,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: That's not the only way. There are lots of ways
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: to do that, but that's just like that's a way
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: where you have a built in audience that's like really
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: committed to that message, and so having a captive audience
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: really allows that to spread easily. But there, like I said,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: otherwise to do it. And the fourth and final tenant
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: is that you want the propaganda to be fairly invisible.
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  Speaker 1: You don't really want it to be clear and overt
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  Speaker 1: that it's propaganda. You want it to be sort of
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  Speaker 1: quiet and insidious. You want it to be sort of
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  Speaker 1: whispered around and passed around. I think in the past
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  Speaker 1: this was a great way of doing this was just
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: having it come up and conversation a lot. But now
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: we have bots in AI and like they can be
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  Speaker 1: on the social media spaces spreading this in a way
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  Speaker 1: that you don't even realize your sort of being influenced
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  Speaker 1: by the things they're spreading, because like, if one real
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: person picks up some of the hate nonsense that a
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  Speaker 1: bot created or one of lex Luthor's evil social media monkeys,
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  Speaker 1: then like they they start spreading that to people who
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: that actually trust that person, So like it only takes
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  Speaker 1: one really to start to spread. We found that during COVID,
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  Speaker 1: like all of the misinformation or like a huge amount
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: of it could be traced back to just twelve people
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  Speaker 1: that was affecting millions of people's decisions to not wear masks,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: to not get vaccinated, to believe that it was a hoax. Like,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: all of that was just twelve people that they trace
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: it back to who started that sort of thing.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of scary, like a virus. It's just
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: like a virus.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, like an AIDS virus basically, Yeah, terrible. It takes
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: down all your defenses and then you just die from
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: extreme stupidity, not AIDS, that's not stupidity propaganda. Yeah. Anyway,
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  Speaker 1: So that was part one, So we're getting into part two.
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  Speaker 1: As I said, the purpose of this one is that
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  Speaker 1: we're really going to be talking. We have a little
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: bit more of the tools to unpack, and then after
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  Speaker 1: that we're going to be talking about examples of propaganda
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  Speaker 1: and then things that we can do about this to
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  Speaker 1: hopefully right the ship, if you will. Is there any
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: other preamble or anything you'd like to add before we
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: get into our topic, du jour No, I.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Think we can just dive into these next couple tools.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: All right, great, So a couple that we left off
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: last time that I think are really important to make
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: sure we come back around to here are also with
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  Speaker 1: the first one, which is projection. This one is blaming
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  Speaker 1: others for your own often for your own flaws or faults,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: and the idea is to just deflect any criticism away
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: from yourself. And what this often looks like is the
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: people who are accusing others of doing the thing that
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: they're actually doing. So a really common strategy in conservative
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: spaces in the United States, at least I didn't look
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: at other countries, but in the United States, a lot
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: of the conservative like strategy around propaganda has been to
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: foment conspiracies that there are like these sex scandals and
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: child trafficking among these like democratic elites. The great irony
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: is we have a huge amount of evidence of this
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: happening in conservative circles, like Matt Gates credibly accused multiple
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: times of like sex trafficking children minors, Like we know
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: that he did this, he did it, and he was
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: a very outspoken extreme right wing conservative. Yeah. We had
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: one person who was like in congress or running for
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Congress who like had gone on some podcast and talked
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: about how once he got to Washington, d c. He
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: was invited to these like coca sex parties, Yeah, as
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: like a thing, and then he got in really big
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: trouble for that, which again they don't want their the
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: things revealed, but like they do this all the time.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of scary, but it comes up over
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: and over and over again, which is wild. The other
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: one is what about isms, And when we engage in
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: what aboutism practices, essentially what we're doing is we're shifting
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: the topic to something else in response to a legitimate
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: criticism or inquiry. So it's it's the equivalent of saying that, like,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: let's use the example of gun reform because I think
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: that's a hot topic right now, specifically the time they're
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: recording this, which it has been for some time, but
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: specifically right now. Yeah, so we have conversations about gun
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: reform and having legitimate conversations about this, and then somebody says, well,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: what about mental health? And you go, okay, well that's
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: not quite what we're talking about here, like that may
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: be part of it, but like you're kind of like,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: or what about gang violence and you go, okay, well,
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: gang violence is a different issue than gun reform. While
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: they might they have overlapped, might kind of be tangentially related,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: like they there is overlap on the Venn diagram, but
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: they're not what we're talking about right now, right or
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: you know, more blatantly, you know, somebody else make a
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: criticism about conservative politics politicians, and somebody will go, well,
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: what about democrats. It's like, we're not talking about We're
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: not talking about them right now. We're talking about this
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: particular issue with this particular person, not what about them
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: that and the other thing. And so you'll see that
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: kind of like that quick shift in those arguments that
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: is designed to derail your legitimate argument, your legitimate criticism,
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: your legitimate debate, and move the goalpost into a different
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: and into an entirely different field and sport.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So, Actually, some other examples of projection occurred
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: to me. I want to get into but I'm going
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: to first project an ad. Nice, you know what, I
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: actually should have done that as like, no, you're playing
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: an AD and then that would have been a good
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: example of projection. Well what about these ads there? You go? Yeah,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: what about is and with ads? And I want to
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: back to some more examples of the what about ism,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: But I was just thinking with projection again, we have
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: like I'm gonna pick on Donald Trump because he does
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: this more than anyone first of all, sure, but also
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: because he's the person in power right now and so
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: easy targets to sort of land on. Yeah. So there
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: were some specific examples of this that I wanted to highlight.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: There's him saying like, oh, we got to go after
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: all these criminals. We gotta like, you know, we got
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: to kick him out of our country. I'm like, you're
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: actually a convicted criminal, right felon in fact, like you
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: like you're calling everyone else criminals, You're a criminal. There's
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: the like, oh, the Democrats were weaponizing the Justice Apartment.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Actually they were just doing their job. You are actually
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: weaponizing the Justice Department. You're actually targeting political opponents with
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the political system to go after them, not because they
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: did anything wrong necessarily it's possible that they did, but
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: like it's because you want to go after and silence critics. Right,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: you're actually like trying to take away licenses from journalists
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: in media, You're actually cutting off funding to independent news
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: sources that have that will say anything to contradict you.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: They were accusing Obama when he was in office of
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: being a dictator, and like Trump is an office saying
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I think people want a dictator, I'm going to be
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: a dictator like that. Yeah, they do it so much
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: and it works so often. I'm like, it's so much
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: to the point where it's like if they point the
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: finger and accuse someone of something, at this point, we
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: could take it as an admission that they're the ones
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: doing it. Like there, it's that prevalent.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the adult equivalent of I know you are,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: but what am I?
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm rubber and you're glue. Ah, that's what it is.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: It's that's what it is. It's so it's so absurd.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: But I also want to come back to the what
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: about ism because that that comes up a crazy amount
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: as well, where it's like, all right, so we need
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: to talk about how we are going to address inflation.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: They're like, well, what about immigration. I'm like, where were
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: you five seconds ago when I said we're addressing inflation.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, but what about immigration. I'm like, yeah,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: hold on, shut up. The next words out of your
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: mouth better be about inflation, because we're not talking about
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: anything other than that. They're like, well, what about taxes?
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Like what about our emails?
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, what about Hunter Biden's laptop? I'm like that
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: comes up? So like that was basically they're talking points
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: is like half of its propaganda or half of its projection,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: half of it's what about ism? And then you fit
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: in like all the other things we talked about last time.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: I'm like, name calling and unrealistic promises and stereotyping and
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: stuff like that makes up like ten percent, but I
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: feel like forty percent is projection. Forty percent is what
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: about ism? Yeah, So, anyway, do you have any more
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: examples about what about ism that we should include? No?
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: I think people got that one. I mean that feels
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: pretty good, and.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I think, to be fair, like, I think all political
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: parties do this to some extent. I think you rarely
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: rarely find someone who's like authentically engaged to this in
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: this process. But the Conservatives in the United States, this
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: is like all they do, Like I feel like you
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: almost never get a straight honest word out of them.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: It's just projection and what about ism. They'll sit there
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: and accuse people of lying while lying, right, They'll be
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: lying about the things they're accusing people of lying about, right,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Like that's how extreme it is, Like it's so bizarre,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: and the fact that it works is really depressing, Like
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: people really buy it and listen to it. And I
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, it's and it's so blatantly
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: obvious too in my mind at least. Yeah, it's so gross.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: I don't like it all, right, But we can move
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: on from those parts. I think what we need to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: do is we need to take a look in the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: mirror here. Yeah.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: So, I think when we talk about propaganda, we have
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: to be careful about what we say and how we
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: approach things, and how we make arguments and how we
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: debate people, Like we kind of have to ask the
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: question of are we propagandists, And certainly the conspiratory really
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: minded will think so. But one thing that we do
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: well that is the opposite of propagandas is we try
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: to embrace nuance, at least we try to, right, We
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: try to out the argument here on the show. But
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: if you are trying to embrace nuance or trying to
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: see multiple sides of things in an honest way and
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: not like, you're not entering these debates or these situations
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: without like the intent of actually having a debate when
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: you're wanting to have a debate and have a discussion,
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I think if you're doing that, then you're probably on
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: your way to fighting that propagandist inside you.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I think the enemy of propaganda is nuance. Yeah,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the enemy of propaganda is asking questions. Like they want
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: to avoid those things in their messaging. They want to
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: avoid those things and their audience. Propagandists do not want
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: you asking questions. They really don't want you thinking very
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: much at all about their message because I mean, if
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: you really spend any time thinking, like some of the
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: things they'll say, they will contradict themselves within the same breath,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Like they they'll say something and then say something that
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: is basically the opposite of that. Like if we say,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: for example, that terriffs are meant to bring manufacturing back
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: to the United States and our negotiating tactic to get
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: better like deals with other countries. Those are opposite. Things
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: like if you accept that you're willing to renege on
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: your tariff because it would be a more favorable deal
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: for the United States than you were saying that, like
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: that will not bring manufacturing back to the United States,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: So it can't work. So like that is a self
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: contradictory statement. And nevertheless they completely say and it completely works.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: But again it's just if you think about it, then
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: it starts to fall apart. But they what they want
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: is a nice, easily deliverable package that you simply swallow
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and then move on through with your day in the
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: direction that they have pointed you believing the things that
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: they have said without spending any time thinking about it.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: That's the whole idea here is they do not want questions,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: They do not have nuance.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so something that you know from our perspective,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: like we want you to ask questions, We want you
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: to be skeptical, We want you to present new who
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: wants and complication into discussions, especially our discussions, Like we
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: love that as people who are generally skeptical people. Now,
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: I do think it's important to kind of pin down that, like,
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: when we're asking questions, there are people that are gonna
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: go like that are gonna ask questions, and they're not
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: asking questions in good faith exactly. I think that there's
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: there's a difference between asking questions to antagonize and just
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: to kind of like do the thing that like, you know,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: some people were doing on their platforms, but like we
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: are like actually talking about scientific inquirer, we're talking about skepticism,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: We're talking about honest, good faith arguments. And the truth is,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: while propaganda can be extremely dangerous, it is just a
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: tool one that has been used for good and for ill.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Some propaganda campaigns have furthered human rights, motivated social and
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: societal changes that lead to greater well being for a
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: larger number of people and resulted in tremendous progress. So
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: we do understand that like propaganda by itself is neutral
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: at best, but it's used in ways that perpetuate evils
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: or perpetuate good depending on how it's used used.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the fact that it's as effective as
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: it is at quietly influencing public opinion has made it
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: a particularly preferred tool of people with nefarious motives. Sure,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: but it could be used for positive and I think
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: in the show Parks and Recreation they had some good
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: examples where they used some propaganda things to simply help
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: move some agendas through that were like really good for people. So,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: for example, the dentist in town doesn't want Flora in
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the water because he has more business when people have
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: more cavities, and so they essentially rebrand floride as tea
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: dazzle or I think that's what is a tea sparkle
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: something like that, and they make it look like really
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: fun and like engaging, and so that gets people all
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: on board socially with it. But again, like it was
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: just a campaign to help people be on board with
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: the thing that they were proposing, and anyway, that was
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: very much like a propaganda campaign. Oh yeah, it can
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: be kind of used in any direction. Is just the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: whole point of that. It just is a particularly beloved
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: tool of the people who are very selfish and want.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: To cause harm and want to consolidate power.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Okay, as I said, these are
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: tools that can cause harm, Well, let's start getting into
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: some of these specific examples of this here. In twenty seventeen,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: US Democrats were linked to a disinformation campaign to influence
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: a Senate election in Alabama. Russian operatives paid Ukrainians for
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: access to their faith. This is a separate item. Sorry
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: I'm jumping around. But the second one that I'm a
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: list here is that Russian operatives paid Ukrainians for access
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: to their Facebook accounts to spread pro Russian messages and
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: a pro Russian sentiment in advance of an election that
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: was coming up in Ukraine. And then another one here
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: in Great Britain. There was a pro Brexit lobbying firm
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: that ran a campaign using Facebook ads that were in
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: support of Brexit, and they specifically made it look like
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: it was this grassroots campaign. It was actually this like
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: very wealthy, multimillion dollar lobbying firm, but they spun the campaign.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: They made it look like it was being run by
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: like on the ground electorate people who were like just
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: they just wanted to move forward with Brexit, and actually
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: goes back to one of the techniques we talked about before,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: which was called plain folk, which is that like, you
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: know this, these are your neighbors, these are your people.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: They believe in this cause I'm like, they actually weren't that,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: but they presented it that way and people believed it. Yeah.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I mean it's kind of like how ads use paid
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: actors to talk about their products and maybe they've never
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: even used those products. Like here's an example.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, all right, yeah go buy that thing. It
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: was really important endorsed by us or something, but maybe
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: don't if it was bad.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Oh man, if it was like yeah, let's let what
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: it could be the worst thing possible. It could be like, yeah,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: a non environmental grill that only cooks like side giant
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: sides of beef, And both of us are like, we
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: don't do it.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: We don't like any of that stuff. Very true, Very true.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: I like grills, but like I like, I like environmental grill,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: you like bear grills. I like beer grills. Yeah, so
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know, do I like, I don't know enough
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: about him right now, Like I don't want I don't
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: want to say like anybody who endorse anybody right now
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: because I don't know. Like it's just it's such a landmine,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: like a minefield right now that like you know, who
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: knows beer girls might be fine. I prefer let's you
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: know what I like Steve Irwin.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: There you go. Ye, that seems like a safe bet,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: no changing now, Yeah, yeah, it does feel like it's
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: you never know like where things are going to end up,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and we just don't, I don't know, we don't have
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: the hindsight, I guess, you know, or the foresight to
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: like be able predict that. Sometimes. I mean like you
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: can point to anybody at like Fox News and say
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: like they're they've got some skeletons in their closet, like
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: they're just bad people. Let's just assume that anyway. Yeah,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: moving on, So.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Speaking of bad people, let's talk about Twitter.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: So Twitter Twitter band ads.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: From a Chinese controlled news outlet that was denouncing Chinese
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: protesters and also found other fake news organization accounts that
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: were spreading disinformation about the protests. Facebook found a group
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: of fake accounts linked to Saudi Arabia that were also
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: spreading disinformation. And misinformation and disinformation are two very different things,
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: and I think that we've talked about that on the
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: show before, or maybe we need to do a full
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: episode on the difference between the two, or maybe even
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: a mini because disinformation is like more intentional or misinformation
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: is just like maybe I just don't have enough facts.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: But disinformation is like explicitly like targeted propaganda messaging that
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: is supposed to like spread false information on purpose.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah exactly. We actually did talk about that a
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: little bit in the part one. I don't know that
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: we made a clear distinction between the two, but yes,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that they're very different. They are different.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: They have a lot in common too. Yeah, yeah, for sure,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: one way or another, you're getting stuff that's like demonstrably wrong. Yeah,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: yeah exactly. But okay, yeah this was before Facebook like abolished.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: It's like campaign to try and have any kind of
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: quality control over the things that go on on Facebook,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: which effects and Twitter to that point, Like Twitter now
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: is fully like it's just a propaganda machine, that's all
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, there's you do not go there for information.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: You go there for a lack of information. You spend
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: any amount of time on Twitter, you will walk away
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: knowing less than you did than when you got before
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: you got on Twitter. Yeah, it creates a negative space
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: in your brain where there used to be seals and
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: now there's just a hole.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah that's a small little black hole.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, black hole. Yeah, it's consuming the rest of your
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: brain from yeah, yeah, give it time, all right. Some
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: more examples. In Turkey, there was this quote unquote fact
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: checkers website or like it was a group that was
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: that linked to government run websites that were essentially rewriting
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: history and spreading their own version of events. So the
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: government sort of set up these these websites and then
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: these groups that linked to the websites where it was
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: like get the real facts, but then there was the
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: government actually controlling the presentation of those facts. Sure, and
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: I think a sort of similar one here there. For
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: decades now, Republicans have been claiming that there was a
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: migrant invasion every time a Republican is not in office,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: And so that's just another one of those things where
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: they it's sort of a whataboutism a little bit, but
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: also just like just making things up, yeah, because they
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: want to spread fear and hate, hatred and anger. Yeah.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you ever hear the term border crisis,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: just know that it's not accurate. Like that's just what
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: it is right now. There is no border crisis right now,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: because if there are border crisis, that be happening on
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: multiple borders, but it seems to only be happening on
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: one border. That border is linked to people who are brown,
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: So you know, maybe maybe I don't know. Just ask
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: some questions about that, is all I'm saying. In August
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: of twenty twenty five, Trump mobilized the the National Guard
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: to DC under the pretense of quelling crime while crime
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: rates were at an all time low. So that is a
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: thing that happened in the distant past, not very recent now.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: He specifically targeted multiple cities led by specifically Democrat leaders
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: in this campaign to create the impression that democratic cities
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: have higher rates of crime, to give the impression to
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: his supporters that he is doing what he promised to
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: destabilize and demoralize the people of those cities he's terrorizing,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: and to energize his vitriolic, violent supporters who only wish
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: to see harm. Come to quote liberals, I mean that
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: talking point about democratic cities being gang run hellholes has
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: been one of his major talking points from the beginning
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: of his campaign. So it should be no surprise that
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: he's trying to mobilize military into these cities and really
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: like make them targets.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's just propaganda, it's just trying to create
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: an impression for people that's just completely and utterly untrue. Yeah,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: and you know, I think you could definitely points to
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: many decades ago there were much worse and more severe
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: crime rates in some places in some of those cities,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: even if it wasn't necessarily that city as a whole. Yeah,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: but that has large let us like, been trending downward
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: now for as I said, decades, Like we're at a
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: point now where they're basically the lowest crime rates they've
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: ever had in some of these places. And that's where
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: he's sending troops. Right, it's completely not a nonsense, just
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: total fabricated bolt.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not even going to talk about the idea
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: that he's sending literal military into his own cities. Like
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: let's not even let's not even get into that mess,
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: which is scary.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but all right. RFK Junior claimed that there this
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: is at some earlier in twenty twenty five, shortly after
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: he was appointed to his position as the Czar of
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Killing All Americans, and he claimed that he said, quote,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: there's a Medos outbreak every year, or that was close
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: enough to be a direct quote. This is one hundred
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: percent false. One hundred percent false, right, although it might
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: be the truth moving forward now that vaccines are going
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: to be nearly impossible to get from many people. Measles
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: were so rare that it was actually declared an eliminated
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: disease in the year two thousand. Yeah, that's how rare
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: it is. It was considered eliminated. There hasn't actually been
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: an outbreak since two thousand and there. Since before two
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: thousand and there have been a few cases here and
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: there until last year, and it all the cases that
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: sprung up sprung up completely and entirely in communities with
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: low vaccine rates, and they started to break through. And
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: that's the major issue here. And so like, I think
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: that at this point, we can very reasonably expect that
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: we're going to have one of the worst flu seasons
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: we have ever had this winter, possibly the worst COVID
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: season we've had since COVID started, and very possibly we're
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: going to be facing the reality that measles might just
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: be a thing in this country again, even though we
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: had successfully eliminated it twenty five years ago.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, I agree. RFK also has started referring to
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: vaccines simply as quote the pharmaceuticals industry in an attempt
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: to equate vaccines with corporate greed and overreach. So we
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: would like to send a message as a podcast. I
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: think that you and I both agree on this. You
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: wrote this, I'm gonna say it, and we agree on
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: the same sentiment. Here this stupid piece of he is
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: a fucking Oh god, he is such an awful person.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: R FK, Junior, go yourself and get the away from
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: our health care. You are killing people with your stupid
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: just more just ooh you brain wore. I got no
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: words for it. It's so frustrating. It's astounding that somebody
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: put this brain damaged jackass into power. Whoever it was
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: is just maybe a little bit worse than he is.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's like people like him have existed and
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: for the most part they can't do a lot of
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: harm because just yelling on street corners and everyone knows
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: to ignore them because they're insane. And then someone put
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: them into power. Yeah, how did that happen? How and
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: why did that happen? It gave him a lot of power, Yeah,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of power like that guy should have. He
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: should not even have the authority to own an ant farm,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: like he should not have. Anyone that he can give
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: direction to and have them follow, let alone be in
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: control of our healthcare system. He is the worst person
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: who has ever had that much power in this in
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: this country, or tied for the worst.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Completely unqualified, completely unqualified. I would like to make a proposal.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: We need to we need to sign a bill. We
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: need to get a bill in place. And that means that,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: like anybody who's appointed into a position like this pass
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: to pass a basic science test.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: They should be a credential medical professional. In my opinion, yeah,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: it should be.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: It should be a credit credential medical professional. But anybody
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: who's passing a law should be able to pass a
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: test on what that law means. And if they can't
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: pass a test on what that law means, they don't.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Get the vote on it.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: You know, you don't say anything about it because you
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: know what you're talking about.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, having some sort of standards would be a great
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: a great place, a great way to help prevent things
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: like this from ever happening again. But yeah, in case
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: we weren't clear, I far of CA Junior ever hears this,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: go yourself, you stupid piece.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: Of Yeah, and that's not propaganda, No.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: That's that's me stating my thoughts about this person who
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: is bably a person. Yeah all right, well maybe a
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: minute earlier. So but with that fiery exit, maybe we
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: insert some ads here. Yeah, we need a breath break. Okay,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: so we're coming back. We've been talking through these various
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: examples of propaganda. We've largely been picking on the people
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: who do it the most because that's where the propaganda
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: examples are the most easy to find. Yeah, a lot
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: of people do versions of this. We've tried to include
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: multiple here. There are so so, so many examples. It's
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: across the political spectrum. Although again one side leans on
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: this i'll lot more heavily than the other does. But
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: it gets really sophisticated. There's actually this one that I found.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: There was a strategy that it started by spreading disinformation
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: about a news story that wasn't real in a way
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: that had people be skeptical of the doubters of that
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: news story. Then it broke the news story that wasn't
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: real so that people would doubt the people who were
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: doubtful of the false story. Sure, so it was sort
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: of like it was trying to inoculate people against a skepticism.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: When they launched their fake news campaign when it actually happened.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Some of them don't care at all about internally being
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: internally consistent, even within the same speech or within the
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: same sentence. As I said, they'll simply spout some catchphrase
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: that makes you angry or feel righteous, and then they'll
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: say something that is the opposite but also makes you
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: feel angry and feel righteous. It doesn't matter what it
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: was said. All that matters now is that you are
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: emotional and you are pliable, and they can tell you
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: once you are worked up, all right, how they are angry.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Here's our enemy, Go get them. And that's sort of
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the strategy that they'll frequently employ.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think, you know, going back to kind
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: of where we were going with this particular part of
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: the episode, we started this by talking about what we
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: can do about preventing or combating propaganda.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: So let's get to that. First.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: We need to be able to spot it. It would
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: be lovely if we could create some systems, a legislation
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: and litigation processes to help curb some of the worst
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: parts of propaganda. And indeed, we believe this is entirely possible.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And I've been thinking about this, and I have tried
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: to start to solicit feedback from this, so maybe we
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: even consider this an opportunity to get some feedback. The
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: way the system currently works, and it makes sense that
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: it would be this way, is that if you do something,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: some action that you take that you know is dangerous
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: or reckless or causes harm, and then that results in harm,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: somebody dying or being seriously in injured, you are held
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: responsible for that. So let's take as an example, if
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: someone who I don't know engineers bridges or something decides,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to include this component in this bridge,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: and I know that if I if I don't include
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: this component, that this bridge will collapse while people are
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: driving it, and I'm just not going to do it. Yeah,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: and then the bridge collapses and a bunch of people die,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: and an investigation reveals that this person did in fact
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: leave this out, and even if they did it negligently,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: like it was their job to do it right to
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: know that that had to be there, and it's even
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: worse if they did it on purpose. So understanding that,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: we're starting from the position of if you do something
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: that you either have a responsibility to be competent in
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: the implications of your job for that thing, or you
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: do so knowing that what you're doing is dangerous and
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: that results in harm that that does and should be
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: held accountable as being responsible for causing that harm. Yeah. Absolutely,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: And I think that taking that a step further, if
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: you say something that equally causes harm, you are as
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: responsible as if you had done that thing as an
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: action on purpose and gotten someone killed. And in many
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: of the cases, what's even more dangerous about language is
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: that you can affect a lot more people, a lot
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: more quickly than any one simple action you might take,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: let's just say, using your hands, because you could potentially
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: incite a war or something. Right, and so it is
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: important in my mind to consider that the use of language,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: particularly when you are in a position where you have
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: responsibility to be competent in the thing about which you
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: are speaking, that you are responsible for the harm that
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: is caused to the people who suffer from that, and
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the magnitude of the stakes here, if that position is
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: powerful enough, can be gargantuan, far more dangerous than even
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: like some other violent act or, like I said, failing
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: to include a necessary component of a building or a
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: bridge that then subsequently collapses, the words can have far
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: reaching implications that result in the death and suffering of
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: millions of people. So with that in mind, I personally
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: believe that if you espouse something that is demonstrably false
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: about vaccines, or if you hold a position of power
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: and even imply something that is demonstrably false about vaccines,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: including in the form of a question, amusing or a
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: whimsical remark, you should be immediately can victed of manslaughter.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: For every person on earth who has died of a
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: preventable disease, not charged with manslaughter, convicted immediately and sentenced accordingly.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: Vaccines have saved so many lives. They are one of
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: the only ways we are going to continue to make
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: it as a species. And like they are, they have
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: been proven safe and effective time and time and time again.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: And even the COVID vaccines that we have that are
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: so good and were so impressive, and they were developed
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: entirely under the Trump administration during round one that they
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: greenlit that project and it was extremely effective and honestly
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: one of the only good things he ever did, and
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: good on them for that. I'm not sure that it
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: would have I don't know, but it was really amazing
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: that they did as quick of a job turning that
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: vaccine around and getting it out to people as quickly
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: as they did. Is like billions of shots now have
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: been given and saved so many lives. Yeah, So all
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: of that is to say that, like, vaccines are the
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: important piece of us protecting our future as a species,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: and if you spread misinformation about that, you are complicit
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: in the deaths of people who could have had that
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: disease be prevented. And so I think that, particularly if
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: you're in a position of power, you have an obligation
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: to be well informed and to only espouse things that
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: we know about that. And I think being critical is fine.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: We can say there are things, like we can point
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: out things that are unknown and that we want to
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: make better. But if you say something that is demonstrably false,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: like saying there is no evidence that these are effective,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: that's wrong. You should be convicted of manslaughter immediately and
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: sentenced accordingly. Like if you say things like we don't
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: know what ingredients go in these, that's you can't make
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: them without these ingredients. That is one hundred percent wrong.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: That one's not even partially wrong. I would consider one
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: percent wrong wrong enough to be convicted that one was
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent wrong. We know what's in them right,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: convicted immediately. So I feel very passionately about this because
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: it's one of the most ridiculously stupid hate campaigns that
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: seems like what's confusing about this is like I don't
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: even know what their goal is, Like who wins here?
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: The pharmaceuticals industry, the manufacturers of these vaccines. I don't
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: think they could be behind this. Why would they, Like
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: they're the ones who profit from these things being available
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: to people, although many of them have even operated at
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: a loss because they were willing to put vaccines out
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: so that people could get life saving medical care. But
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: like I just don't understand their goal, Like their goal
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: is just to get people to die, Like that's it,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Like we just want to have disease run rampant in
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: our species. I just it's very befuddling to me. But
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: I personally feel very strongly that like, if you say
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: something false about vaccines on a public place, you should
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: be immediately convicted of manslaughter immediately, and like we'll deal
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: with the fallout from there. But like we just can't.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: It's the whole thing of like you can't say bomb
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: on an airplane. I think that you can't just point
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: a gun at someone's face. And I think there are
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: people who are gonna disagree with me about this, and
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: that's okay, but like, I think that we just cannot
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: allow this kind of ignorance to be out there affecting
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: people in that way.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: It's just so harmful. I too, am befuddled.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: What a great word love that anyway. I know that's
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: like I said, that's gonna sound really extreme, and that
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: puts me on a big soap box. And I know
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: people are going to disagree with me. And I'm not
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: even really suggesting we circumvey the rule of law. I'm
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: saying it's like what I if we watched someone murder
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: someone else, we wouldn't be like, I don't know if
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: he did it, and I'm like, he did, Let's just
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: figure out what we're gonna do about it now. Yeah,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: And that's essentially what these anti vaccine people are doing.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: I'm like, they eventually are They're killing people. Every time
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: they say something wrong, somebody dies, a lot of somebodies die,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: and I think that we just shouldn't treat that as
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: flippantly as like, well, no freedom of speech I'm like, no,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: if you're killing people, it's not freedom of speech anymore. Right,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: I'm like words, words have power, and when you use
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: those words to kill people, then you should be treated
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: as if you killed those people because you did.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're making it, you're making it a more dangerous
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: world for people.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, no, No, you're good.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: You're good.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: You can stay on that soapbox.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: That's fine.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: So the problem is who, Like, when we talk about
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: what we can do, the problem is who decides what
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: isn't is in propaganda.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: That's always kind of the issue, Right.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: There are some things that are as close to objectively
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: true and we can reasonably hope to achieve, Like the
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Earth is a sphere, anthropogenic climate change is real, slavery
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: is bad. People disabilities are humans and therefore deserve the
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: same rights and protections as all of their humans, et cetera, etcetera.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Like those should not be hard arguments. We don't need
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: to arbitrate those things. We've been there. Others will require
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: intense rutiny and probably heaping amounts of debate.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: And that's fantastic.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: Let's use our language to get as close to accurate
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: as we can. On the more complicated, nuanced issues that
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: come up, we need all voices And this is actually
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: something that I know that Like, I strongly believe in
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: this too, Like you need multiple voices in a space
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: to solve a problem that affects people, like you need
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: to have nonpartisan discussions around what these issues look like
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: and have ideas in spaces that can that can foment
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: and turn into really good solutions for people. And we
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: need all those voices except for OURFK Junior, Like he
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: definitely lost the right to speak in those spaces because
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: he's an unreliable person and completely unqualified to have these discussions. Yes,
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: like if he wants to be like maybe an expert
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: on like swimming in sewage waste and stuff like that,
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: sure he can talk about that all he wants. He
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: can talk about brain worms, that's fine. He can talk
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: about those things. I don't think that he should be
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: able to make policies though, I think that's I think
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: that's it maybe a dangerous thing.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: He should only be allowed to talk to stuffed animals
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: and never heard again, would be my preference for him.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I think that's fine too, Like I don't even want
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: him instructing people on how to swim in sewage because
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: people might listen to him. I want him to speak
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: only to padded walls from now on, yes, fair, and
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: never never communicate with another human as long as he lives.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Would be the ideal situation to protect us from his
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: awfulness and terror. Yes, yes, yes, yes yeah. I think
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: just as you said, like, there are lots of complicated issues,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: and I think that we are talking about gun violence
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: is one of them. Like, we need people who disagree
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: about this subject, and we need to hear people advocate
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: for the things that they believe in here because we
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: need to figure out how we're going to move forward.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: If one of the people in that group was saying, like,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: guns don't exist, I'd be like, all right, you're not
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: offering anything meaningful to this conversation because that's dumb and
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: it's not real. So like, I guess you're not in
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: this right, but like anybody else who has actually something
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: to say should be heard, Like, I think we need
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: to have these complex, nuanced discussions. And again, and part
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: of what is very different about what we're doing from
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: how propaganda tenderly works is propaganda doesn't want people to
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: have a conversation now, they just want people to be outraged,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: like just be afraid or be elated about something and
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: just go out and vote accordingly. But we think that
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: the way to move forward in all of these spaces
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: is to have people communicating with one another and to
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: be like advocating for what they believe in. And that's important. Yeah, absolutely,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Like what's the role of religion in the government, Like,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: I think that that is an extremely tricky issue. I
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: think that there's not a black and white answer that
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: is really clear, and we have to definitely follow that.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: I think we need to have all people weighing in
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: on this issue. And like, I definitely know where I
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: stand on this, but I think that, like I've also
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: heard people who have showed me ways that I could
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: be wrong about the positions I've taken on this, and
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I want to learn, Like I want to have someone
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: convince me or like present a compelling enough argument that
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I can think about it in a more nuanced and
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: complicated way, because I don't want to go around with
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: these like outlandish extremist beliefs, And like I'm also open
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: to the fact that I'm wrong about as convicting people
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: of manslaughter for vaccines, for spreading misinformation about vaccines. I
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: just that's where I'm at currently, But I I think,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: you know, I would love to have that debate with somebody.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: But anyway, point being that, like all I'm really trying
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: to get to here is I think that is just
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: extremely important that when we find these complicated issues, that
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: we involve as many people as possible in that discussion
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: and we have a good faith argument where we honestly
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: try and communicate with one another so that we can
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: find our way through those issues. And doing it through
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: propaganda I think is not going to solve it. I
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: think that's going to make things worse, no matter what
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: side the propaganda.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Is on, right exactly, all right.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: So the very first thing we said and what we
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: could do about this is being able to spot it.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Recognizing propaganda is one of the very first things that
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: we need to be able to do, because we can't
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: do very much about it if we can't tell when
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: it's happening. But let's also talk about what we can
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: do and as far as individual action, and I think
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: the most important thing I really like to advocate for
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: is question things and we talked about this on our
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Critical Thinking episode. Ask yourself, could I be wrong? Could
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: they be wrong? If so, how would I know? If
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: you read or hear something that's supposed to be relatively
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: factual information and not for entertainment only, and you have
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: an emotional reaction right away, you're probably being manipulated. And
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: this is whether the emotion iss is righteousness, fear, anger,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: or even joy or glee. As Disinformation Nation puts it
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: as a website that I got a lot of information
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: for this this discussion. They described it this way, harness
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: the power of doubt. If something sounds too good to
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: be true, it probably is. And I think that's a
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: great way to think about it. And I also think
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: there are like there are people that use propaganda to
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: make unreasonable ideas sound reasonable. And actually Joe Wrotein's entire
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: podcast is basically that it's just have people come on
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: and say something insane, but say it in like a calm,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: normal voice and then have him go hm. I never
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: thought about it that way, as if that were like
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: a reasonable thing to say. They're like, actually, if you
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: really think about it, everyone here is being controlled by lizards,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: and jo Organ's like, oh oh, I never thought about
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: it that way. I'm like, that's stupid, that's the dumbest
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: thing ever. I was like, I can't believe that you
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: just uttered those words, and I really can't believe that
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: you took them even remotely seriously. Right, So, like that's
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: his whole platform is just let insane ideas have a
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: huge amount of space and then treat them as if
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: they're legitimate. I think that is also the same kind
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: of like asinine propaganda that we need to be worried about.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: But just as I said, I think the main takeaway
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: for this my recommendation here not just mine. This is
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: actually from other websites and other sources that I found
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: that were specifically pointing to what can we do about
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: propaganda and in the way that it's used to manipulate people,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: not to like push advance a like pro social agenda,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: but to manipulate people is to question it is to
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: ask Like that sounds a little crazy, and sometimes it's not.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's like actually like a thing, but like we
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: should just be asking is that real? Like could they
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: be wrong? Could I be thinking about this wrong? Could
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: they be lying about this? Like? Just ask those questions
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: would be a huge step in the right direction.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think one of the questions I like generally
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: ask in that space, like whenever I see information as
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: I go like, I'll ask myself like could I be
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: wrong about this? Under what conditions could this happen?
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: Or I might go like, is it time.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: For an AD? Why are there ads? What is AD?
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: We're back, We're to keep rolling on things that we
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: can do about this.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So one is to ask questions, but another one
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: is to avoid sharing dubious content. You know, I think
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: it's important and I see this a lot on social media,
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: where people will read a headline and they'll start to
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: react pretty rapidly to that headline, which you know is
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: designed to do that immediately. But I think it's important
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: to take a moment to not just read the headline
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: and start sharing the article. You should read the article,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: you should read the website that the article is from.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: It's worth kind of evaluating all of those things. So
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: if you read or hear this right quote, solve X
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: problem you have with this one simple trick or you know, quote,
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: here's the secret to X that they don't want you
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: to know. Someone is definitely trying to manipulate you. And
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: more than likely sell you something. Yes, the more you share,
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: the more propagandists can track you. Also, the more that
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: you engage in it, the more the algorithm will try
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: to try and feed it to you and then feed
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: only that to you. So now all of a sudden,
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: your algorithm is just like belly flattening teas you know,
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: or you know, things of that nature, Like you start
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: seeing that often, and so just be mindful of like
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: what you're sharing, what you're interacting with, and how that looks.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, a huge amount of the power from propaganda anymore
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: comes from just sharing things, even if you don't believe it. Essentially,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: what it does is that allows the propagandas to identify
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: you as a potential target, and it starts again tracking
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: and flooding your space with more and more of that
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: stuff to try and push you in that direction and
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: radicalize you. Yeah, and radicalize you in a way that
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: has you, I don't know, go commit a mass shooting
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: or vote for a crazy person who's saying insane things
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: about being a dictator and destroying the country. Yeah, Like,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: there are various various ways that it can sort of
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: push you to start to buy into that stuff. Yeah,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: so that's the thing. As I said, avoid engaging in
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: propaganda content if you can spot it. That's kind of
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: why the spot it is the most important. First step
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: here is we need to identify it. But you want
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: to browse using safe browsers or safe browsing mode, particularly
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: when you're like searching for things. Duc dut Go is
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: one that is specifically designed for this. Even Firefox is
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: really good with security. Safari's privacy mode is also pretty good.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Don't use Google or Chrome even in private mode, they
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: will track everything you do, regardless. Log out of platforms
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: after you use them. This one's very important. When you
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: get to a website and it asks you for cookies,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: reject all optional cookies whenever they ask. And if it
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: evens as like customize your preferences, go in and customize
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: those preferences. It'll keep doing it every time, and it's
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: annoying as hell. But they used to not ask, and
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: legislation forced them to ask, and you want to reject
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: those things otherwise they will start to They will start
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: tracking your stuff a lot more than you want. And
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: in addition to that, you want to periodically clear your
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: cookies and browsing history. Avoid liking and sharing things unless
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: you're confident in their veracity, that you feel pretty sure
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: that they are accurate. Yeah, if it is from an
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Fox News, it was from any of those conservative news websites,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: they're lying to you. Nothing they say is accurate ever, Like, yeah,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: they are less accurate than the Onion, who flagrantly just
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: makes up things. Like you will know more about the
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: world by reading the Onion than you will any of
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: their stuff, so you can just ignore them. I also, personally,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: even though I tend to agree with them more politically,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: I don't rely on any news from Huffington Post. I
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: think they're always trying to manipulate me. I think they're
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: always trying to sell me something. I'm sure that their
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: message is like supposed to be good, but like, I'm
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: not going to go there for information. And I also
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: know that like a lot of people accuse MSNBC of
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: being super left leaning, and I think that you could
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: certainly say they tend to be a lot more sympathetic
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: to left leaning policies and people than most of the
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: other news websites. So if you don't want to trust them,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: that's fine too. But there are a lot of really
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: good websites that have really like legitimate news that you
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: can you can definitely depend on. But anyway, as I said,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: just avoid liking and sharing contents that you're not sure about,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: use safe browsing, and reject optional cookies, and clear your
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: cookies and browsing history periodically.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: So one recommendation is to branch out of your news
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: ecosystem bubble now. I think it's worth and we think
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: it's worth searching for the same news story across different
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: news platforms and see kind of like what they say,
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: if you read one from one source and read it
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: again from another source, you might discover that there's maybe
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: some nuances and differences in the facts or the information
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: from the story. So look for the ways they were things,
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: the way they were things to try to get a
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: rise out of you, or to try to portray the
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: narrative and a light that is more or less favorable
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: towards a particular agenda, because you're going to find that
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: and see that pretty clearly, especially when you're looking for it.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: They suggest you consume news from two sources you trust
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: and in who you agree with, two sources you may
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: not trust or agree with within reason, and one source
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: that is neutral as you can find, so it's worth
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: kind of like looking at a few different things there,
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: but like really pulling your information from multiple sources.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just did this, but I'm gonna do
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: it again. I'm going to call out some specific ones.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: Fox News there's so unreliable, you know less after the
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: consuming their content that if you had sat in a
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: corner doing nothing at all. But they're not even the worst.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: Oaan Newsmax, OutKick, Rumble, Epoch Times and Truth Social which
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: should actually be called Life Actory as a more accurate name,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: among several others, are so aggressively radicalized far right Nazi
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: propaganda machines that you really can't believe anything they tell you.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: And you hear me say like, well you're calling them Nazis,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: like you're just trying to, you know, impart an emotional reaction.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: I'm like, well, they're self proclaimed Nazis, like they have
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: Nazis on they talk about Nazism sympathetically, like they I'm
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: not using saying anything about them, they are not saying
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: about themselves. So like they are far right, ultra conservative,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: like extremist hate groups. That's that's what they are calling them.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: News is extremely generous. They're just far right hate group
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: propagandist lie machines. Yeah, that's all that they do, So
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: I'm calling them out for that right now.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and to be charitable, Yes, there are all so
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: far left news organizations that are also extremely manipulative. Like
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: that is not to say that the left side isn't
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: doing the same thing. Like the Huffington Post in particular,
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: is not particularly reliable as an objective news source. Some
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: segments in hosts on MSNBC are very one sided and
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: they're reporting as well. I mean, Routers is commonly ranked
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: as one of the least biased and most objective news
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: sources on the Internet, and so it's probably worth using
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: them as one of your sources. In addition, Snopes can
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: be a useful way to fact check information, although they
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: get things wrong from time to time as well. Democracy
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: Now also does a great job of portraying information in
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: a factual, unbiased manner. I believe that Axios is another
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: one that does provide some pretty decent balanced news. So like,
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: those are different resources that you can check out and know,
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: like you know that they're not completely unbiased, but they
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: do at least try to balance where they can.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Reuters recently has sort of tried to
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: embrace a slightly more enticing headline model, which I find
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: a little annoying but is probably working for them. But
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: they tend to be really, really good in neutral, objective reporting.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: And then, as you said, democracy now is like they're
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: the most like clear news portrayal. What they're just like,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: this is what happened. Yeah, like they'd really I think,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: try not to inject a whole lot of adjectives or
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: bias into it. So I've been pretty impressed with both
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: of those news websites, and again it feel like I'm
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: getting actual factual information without being misled about things and
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: overlaid with tons of commentary about it. Right, all right,
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: The last thing here to recommend is that when you
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: get when you find these reliable news sources where you
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: can trust what they're saying, share the information from those
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: in your circles. The genies out of the bottle. As
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: far as propaganda's concerned, there's there's no closing that back up.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: So the best offense we have right now is to
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: have actual, real, reasonable conversations and heart to heart, good
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: faith attempts to discuss these issues with each other, call
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: out the bullsh when you see it, and for the
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: love stop voting for these insane liars. They say the craziest, dumbest,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: easiest to debunk bullshit, and then they somehow get elected.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Like what, the neither side is perfect here, and like
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: there are plenty of things to criticize about the entire
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: political system of the United States and many of the
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: other countries, but like one side is clearly clearly wrong,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: which is the anti vaccine side. Sure, and like there
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: are plenty of instances in these spaces where you have
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: like a side that's pretty much like objectively doing harmful, terrible,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: undemocratic things. So let's not put them into power, and
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: let's have like real, honest, meaningful discussions with each other.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Like I want us to discuss things when we disagree.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: Like that's the only way we're really going to move
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: this forward is like that we have real conversations. But
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: if we keep just trying to trick like the most
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: gullible people out there into like buying into our side,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: then like we don't even have a real side, you know, right,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: it's people who don't even know what they're supporting that
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: we that were trying to trick into supporting us. I'm like,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: if you don't have that strong of a message that
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: the only way you can get people to like get
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: on your side is by lying to them, then like
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: you're probably on the wrong side. I consider that, right.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: So I don't know, that's That's a thing I've been
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: thinking for a while is I'm just like, I don't
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: even know why you choose this hill to die on.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: I'm like, if you can't win by not cheating, then
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: you suck at this, Like just leave it at that,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: Like you don't deserve to win, Like cheating doesn't make
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: it okay that you won. So like that's just we're
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: not gonna play the game that way, right exactly. Okay, Well,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: there's probably so much to say about propaganda. We could
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: probably start up an entire podcast called propaganda and then
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: just dig into it every episode forever and it would
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: be an interesting discussion. But I wanted to tell people, like,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: you're being tricked a lot of the time, and you
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: probably don't even recognize that it's happening a lot of
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: the time, and we want to try and help draw
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: some attention to it because I understand that we have
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: issues as a species and that we disagree with each
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: other about those issues, but we're not going to come
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: to a solution by like manipulating each other. Like we're
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: going to come to a solution by having actual discussions
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: where we're willing to listen to the other side and
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: find where we can accommodate one another and where we
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: have to compromise, and where we don't have to compromise.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: Like that's how we're going to get through this anyway.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: I think that's my final sort of send off for
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: this particular discussion.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: For me, I think the big thing that I land
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: on is just like just critically think about things, like
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: I do think it's important to question things that I
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: do think it's important to be able to like hear
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: multiple sides of things, you know. I think the one
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: thing that I kind of come back to, like, you know,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: I've heard more recently people talking about science being a
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: political and I don't think that's fair. I don't think
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: it's reasonable. I think science is an active resistance against
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: against stuff like this. That's a good point, And as
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: a scientist, I think that like we have to kind
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: of like continue to push back against anti science rhetoric,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: which is inherently political, right, So I think, you know,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: when we're having these conversations and we're talking about this,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: like one of the core tenets of science is that
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: it's it's inquiry, it's question, it's discovery. And I think
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: that that is like the active ingredient against stuff like propaganda.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: Is inquiry, is question, is seeking answers, is finding solutions
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: to problems, like in real life, solutions to problems that
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: exist and problems that are re emerging as a result
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: of bad faith arguments and people in power. So I think,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: you know, for me, I kind of always go back
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: to stuff like this, and I go at the end
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: of the day, science is an active resistance against systems
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: of oppression, and I think if you really want to
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: be a good scientist, you have to fight against bad
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: science and people that are arguing the stuff in bad faith.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: You actually just highlighted something for me that I never
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: quite put together, and I think you just made it click,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: which is that, like, as I've been saying, what we
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: need to do is we need to have these good
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: faith conversations where we're trying to actually solve problems. Science
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: is that conversation. Yeah, the conversation is happening already and
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: it is the process of science. And I think that's
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: a great demonstration too, because like science has gotten things
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: very wrong in the past, where and as you said,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: like it's never been a political it's never been without bias,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: it's never been without a lack of values. Like there
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: are values, assumptions, politics, and things that are influenced that
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: that discussion. And so we look back at some of
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: the things that have been done in the name in science,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: and they were terrible things that should have never happened,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: but we that space kept enabling good faith discussions, and
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: so those things have been corrected over time. Yeah, and
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: like right now we probably can't even see the ways
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: that we're still doing that, but science will correct that
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: over time. Because that's what the conversation is that like
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: I said, I never actually put that together, but like
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: we are having that conversation, and the way that it's
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: playing out is in science, because that science is specifically,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: like we have identified a thing, we are going to
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: do our best to understand that thing, and we're going
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: to disagree with each other a lot, but we're going
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: to keep talking and hashing it out and doing so
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: using like data and evidence and like good faith discussions
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: until we arrive at a consensus. So beautiful. I love that.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's here's what we know today. Do we need
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: to know more about this?
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: Likely? Yes?
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: How do we advance this discussion? Because this is what
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: This is the best decision that we can possibly make
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: with this given information, with the amount of information we have,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: And that is that is the discussion. Not conservatives don't
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: believe in vaccines, liberals do, and vaccines are bad, like
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: it's that's not the conversation. Those are emotional conversations. When
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: we lay it all down, we go we know science,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: like we know vaccines, we know vaccines have injuries, we
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: know people have reactions to vaccines. But the vast majority
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: of people that experience vaccines are safe from preventable diseases.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: And we know that to be true and factual based
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: on current evidence. And that is the discussion. And so
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: when you're fighting propaganda, that's what you fight it with.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: You fight it with inquiry, you fight it with facts,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: You fight it with ongoing discussion and with the understanding
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: that your perspectives can change with new information. So anyway,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: be a scientist, as I think my big take on
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: point here.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: I honestly think that if we move to a future
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: in human history where all the ways that we communicated
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: with each other were like scientific, that we would all
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: be better off in every conceivable way. Yes, Spach is stoked,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: and I don't mean that to say that there's not
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: a space for like whimsy and theater and creativity and
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: fiction like that is not antithe ethical to science at all.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Matter of fact, many scientists love fictional stories as a
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: way to sort of explore these ideas and concepts, and
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: that's a great way to do it. But what I
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: think is like, if we stopped trying to manipulate each
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: other with emotions and only had good faith discussions through
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: the scientific method, I think we'd be much much better off. Yeah,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: as a species, and I think everyone would prefer that system.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: I think everyone preferred if we also didn't have any
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: more ads. Yep, sure, Okay, we are back. We are
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: actually wrapping this up here. I think we thought we
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: were wrapping this up a while ago, but we just
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: kept thinking of things to say, and that was great.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: It was actually a lot of fun. And I had
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: an epiphany that I was very excited to have, which
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: was that science is the conversation that helps us further
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: ourselves as a species, and that it's already happening, and
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: so we can just really lean into that, and that's
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: a really good thing to do in my opinion. But
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: I think that is otherwise what we're going to say
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: about propaganda. We'll wrap up this two parter here. I
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: would love to hear your thoughts on propaganda or anything
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: that we talked about in this discussion. If you'd like
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: to offer constructive criticism or just agree with us in
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: the loudest possible way, you can email us directly info
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: at wwdwwdpodcast dot com. You can also reach us on
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: the social media platforms. We do look forward to hearing
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: from you. If you offer something particularly useful, then we
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: will read that as a piece of listener mail, which
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: is something we really enjoy doing. Yeah, if you like
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: us and you like to support us, one way that
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: you can do that is leaving us a rating and
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: a review, liking, subscribing, telling a friend, word of mouth
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: is a great way to share this. You can also
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: join us on Patreon, and if you do that you
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: can get early episodes, ad free episodes, bonus content, and
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: maybe the best thing of all is that I will
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: read the list of names of people who have been
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: so generous as to join us, and that list of
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: people is Mike, m Meghan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Kiara and Charlie. Thank you all for your incredible support.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: We really appreciate you, We adore you on every level,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: and you two can be one of those names if
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: you head over there. And as I said, you also
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: get episodes without ads. We'll still say the ad thing,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: but we try and make those seguys fun so that
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: they're like worth listening to, but then you don't have
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: to listen to the actual ads. So it's a win win, right,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: You win, We win, the advertisers lose, which means that
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: society wins. Yeah, so it's a win win win. That's
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying, and that's that's how it goes. But
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: before we move on to the final thing that we
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: do here, which is recommendations, and recommendations are really fun,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: so you want to stick around for those, I also
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: need to thank my team of people without whom I
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: could not make this podcast running and fact checking. From
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Shane and myself, thank you for recording with me today.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: Shane, Hey, thank you for having me.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our audio
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: engineer who when you hear the music in this, when
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: you hear our voices sound like they are making cohesive
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: sentences that you can understand. That's thanks to Justin. He's
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: really good at his job. That is Justin. Also, thank
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: you all for listening. Talking into the void is something
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: I probably would do, but it doesn't help anyoney, So
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you being here and hope that you got
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: something out of this discussion. And I think that's what
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: we have to say before we move to our recommendations.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: Unless is there anything that I'm forgetting or you'd like
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: to add before we get to our recommendations. Nope, let's
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: recommend some stuff. Yay, recommendations. I'm gonna go first because
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: I feel like I wanna end on yours. Okay, for
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: those people who have any overlap and their taste in
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: music with mine. My favorite band just put out an album,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: a brand new album, about a week and a half
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: ago from this recording. I think this is between the
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: Buried and me. This is a like prog metal group.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: They put out an album called The Blue Nowhere. This
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: is very weird, and I'm so far, very optimistic that
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: I'm going to enjoy this lot. I recommended a single
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: they put out a few weeks ago, I think, but
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: the whole album is out now and it is some
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: of the most creative stuff they've ever done. And that's
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: really saying something. This is a band it was basically
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: seems like their only goal is to be creative. They
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: really were stretching themselves this time, and in terms of
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: like pushing the envelope what is normal? What is even music?
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: In some cases. Yeah, So it's hard for me to
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: recommend like full throated saying I love this album, But
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: so far, I'm really interested in the things I've heard
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: on this album, and it actually bodes really well for
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: this album that there's nothing that I'm like, oh, this
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: is great, because with this band in particular, it usually
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: takes me several listens and then I really love it.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: And it's because it's so complicated and like so nuanced
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: and so creative and so unique. Yeah, that it's like
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: it's hard to glom onto anything right away, and that's
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: what makes them great. Now. Most people hear that, and
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: they're like, that doesn't sound like anything I would want
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: to do, and I understand that, but sure, if you like,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: if you like metal at all, I think you can
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: probably I would give this a very solid try, and
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: I bet you'll find some things on this that you
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: really like.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's super super interesting. As a bonus recommendation,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I've ever talked to you about Intronaut,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: but I feel like you would like that band too.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: I know Internat Yeah, I've listened to them.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: They're great, love them, Okay, cool, Yeah, I second that recommendation.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: It's a fascinating record.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Fascinating is a good good word for it. It's fascinating
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: for sure.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: All Right. So I'm going to recommend an experience. So
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: I yesterday went to Epcot, and so as a Florida
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: native and Disney annual pass holder, I get to go
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: experience the parks like all the time whenever I want.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: And so yesterday I went to Epcot because they're doing
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: the Disney Food and Wine Festival, which every year they
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: have like special food offerings and snacks when you do
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: the World Showcase. If for those of you are not
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: familiar with Epcot, like you can kind of like walk
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: and drink around the world. Every like country that they
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: fat has like unique food offerings that are like you know,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: based in that country and all that, which is really nice.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: So during Food and Wine they do that, but it's
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: like on steroids. So like now they've got that on
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: top of having multiple food options. And the beautiful thing
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: in the last few years with Disney is they've been
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: really making an effort to make good, decent plant based
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: options for people. And so this year's Food and Wine
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: had some of the best plant based, like and vegetarian
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: options that I have ever had in my life. So
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: as a couple examples, there is an Impossible chili macaroni
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: and cheese that you can get. It It comes with
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: a vegan cheese and sour cream. It's made with the
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: Possible meat, which is really good. There is a slider
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: that you can get. It's a Montreal slider, a style
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: slider that's got looks like a type of like a
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: maybe like a cranberry jam or something like that, naoli
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: on it, like a garlic, like a vegan garlic aoli,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: and it's on a vegan bun.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: There was a spicy Impossible sausage that had like some
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: like grilled peppers and onions on it that was really good.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: They had buffalo chicken tenders with a vegan blue cheese
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: crumble on it. There was a guava cake that you
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: could get, like, I mean, it was like pretty pretty incredible.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: The falafel was really good. I mean it was all
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: like I mean, I was able to eat like halfway
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: around the world and I was like, I can't eat anymore.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: This is too much, and it was all it was
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: all vegan and vegetarian. Like they've got impossible musaka in Greece.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: They've got potato and pia samosas which were delicious. Like,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: it was a pretty great time. So if you're in
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: Orlando and you like to go to Disney and you
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: like to enjoy the Food and Wine Festival, go and
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: enjoy it because they do have really great food. And
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: I also got to see Starship play yesterday. Okay, she's
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: like the whole thing. If you don't know who Starship is, it's.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: We built this city on rocket.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: Saw them play at Epcot in the middle of the day.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: So it was a good time.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: Wow wow Okay, so hold on you you said everything
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: there was vegan or they just had a lot of
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: plant based options.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: They have a ton of plant based options. So like
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: every every country that you've visit at every stop has
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: a bunch of plant based options. So I see, So
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: there's a bunch of vegetarian options, but there's I mean,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: and there's les vegan options because it's it's for whatever.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: But like the vegan options are still more than they've
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: had any other year, and they're all very good.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, Ron Desandis must be furious about this. Oh
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: he's so mad. It's probably working on legislation to shut
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: it down. Oh he's so mad. Yeah, he's so mad.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: He's stopping his high heels all over the place.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: He and RFKJ are like actively working to dismantle anything
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: that Disney does that has vegan options. Yeah. Yeah, they
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: hate it. They hate it. They're like the soy, the
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: soil'll get you. Yeah, they really do hate it. Perfect. Well,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: we ran very long, but we kind of knew we
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: would with these propaganda episodes. Maybe we should have done
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: three episodes, but this is where we find ourselves. Hope
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: that you enjoyed what you heard today. I think we'll
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: go ahead and close it out there right into us.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: Let us know your thoughts leave us already of review.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: I think I said all those things, so I guess
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: I'll just say thanks for listening again. And this is Abraham,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: this is Shane. We're out. So yeah, you've been listening
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: to Why We Do What We Do.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: and we hope you have an awesome day