Propaganda: How You Are Being Tricked pt. 2

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we Do what we Do. Welcome
to Why We Do what we Do. I am your
still blabbing about things host Abraham.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I'm your poster making host Shane.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do, and today we
are going to a part two. This is following up
our discussion that we had last week where we were
talking about propaganda and psyops and that sort of thing.
Strategies used to persuade and influence you often in ways

(00:47):
that you don't know that you're being persuaded and influenced,
And so if you did not listen to that episode,
I do recommend that you go back and check that out,
because we covered a lot of ground in understanding a
bit of the history and understanding the various specific tactics
of that episode. But just in case, we will recap
some of that before we dive into the second part,

(01:08):
where we're going to talk a lot about examples of
propaganda and also really get into what we think we
might be able to do about this sure, how we
can try and recover from the system that is just
pure nonsense and designs to orchestrate behavior rather than facilitate
a community of people.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Right, And at the end of the day, you know,
the thing that is really important to remember is that
every system can change, because all every system that we
know has been made by humans, so it can change.
It does take effort, it does take time, it does
take lots of things, but it can change, and we
can do something about it, at least on some level.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yes, So that's a great teaser because I do need
to give my other preamble things, which is that if
you're joining us for the first time, then welcome. We're
happy to have you here. As I said, I would
recommend you check out that previous episode, but if you
don't want to do that and just pick up here,
then cool. Hope that you enjoy what you hear today
and that it's not super confusing. If you are a
returning listener, then welcome back. We're happy that you have

(02:05):
found us again. And either way, if you like to
support us, ways you can do that are joining us
on Patreon, picking up some merch, leaving us a rating
and review, liking, subscribing, telling a friend, and I'll talk
more about those things at the end of all this discussion.
But before we even get into our topic. DuJour would
really dig into it. I would like to acknowledge that

(02:25):
it is, in fact September twenty fourth, and that means
happy punctuation Day period no exclamation point exp point.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, it's more confusing if it's punctuation Day, question mark exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
It's National Mufungo Day. Yes, uh, this is some type
of food. I didn't look into it, but it's a thing. Yes,
it is Banned Websites Awareness Day. I'm curious about what
that could mean. Like, on the one hand, I think
of things like banned books and I'm intrigued. But I
also think about like things that are banned because they're
overtly racist or harmful, and I'm like, maybe they stay banned. Sure.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, it's also Banned Books Week, so that's maybe it's
maybe more in line with the former, not the ladder.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
So hopefully got it? Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
It is the Festival of Latest Novelties, m gall Bladder
Good Health Day.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Take care of that gall bladder you need it. It's
kiss Day.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
I don't know if it's the band or Smooches, but
either way, smooches are better than the band.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Agreed yes, with consent of course, yes, of course. It
is lash Stylists Day, not lashes in like you received
twenty lashings, but lashes like eyelashes. I think. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, it's National Bluebird of Happiness Day.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Is National Cherries Jubilee Day. Oh, celebrate cell lebrate.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
That's that's also you put an insclamation point on that
one punctuation day. It's also National Horshatta Day.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Mmm. I love horn Chatah. That's so good. It is
National Women's Health and Fitness Day. Great love that.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
It's Schwenkfelder Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Sure that that's a really fun just word to say. Yeah,
Mike Feld, it's really fun to say. As you mentioned,
it is Banned Books Week. So I'll go ahead and
take the next one, which is that it's also Child
Passenger Safety Awareness Week.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
It certainly is. It is Deaf Dog Awareness Week.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Ooh, and fall Astronomy Week. I hope that doesn't mean
that astronomers like fall down or something. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
I think it's like they're looking at stars that are
only like yellow, brown, red, and orange.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
That makes a lot of sense. Great, all right, so
we will get into our topic. As we said, we
are following up on our discussion last week of propaganda,
and last week we sort of dug into the fact
that propaganda has been around for a very long time
and that a lot of propaganda consists of different elements,
which is that you want to know your enemy, but

(04:55):
you also want to make your enemy confused. That like
having disinformation or misinformation as like as effective as other
wartime strategies. And this is written centuries ago in the
book Art of War by Sunzu. But that whole idea
of confuse your opponents and radicalize and trick people and

(05:20):
to being sympathetic to your cause has actually been around
for a very long time. Like people have understood that
being able to leverage people's emotions to again either have
them turn on each other or to be sympathetic to you.
All of that is a way that can help the
the orchestrator of that misinformation to accomplish whatever their goals

(05:42):
might be.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, and so we covered a couple of strategies that
included name calling, transfer, glittering generalities, bandwagoning, scare tactics, playing
folk card stacking, testimonial stereotyping, unrealistic promises, manipulating information, snob appeal, repetition,
loaded language and weasel words. There were so many things
that we found that people do in the name of

(06:03):
propaganda to get you to believe a certain thing or
to follow along or push you into a certain belief system.
It's pretty astounding it is, and how effective these things are.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, they've got a lot of weapons in the arsenal.
But the other thing that I think is important to understand,
and this will be useful I think for this part
as well, and it's also just worth repeating, is that
there are four core tenants to propaganda. One is avoid
argument and appeal to emotion. You're not using facts, like

(06:33):
you're really just trying to get people riled up in
some way sympathetic or angry or some combination of those things.
The second tenant is that you want to have a
clear US versus them. This is very embedded into all
other strategies of propaganda, whatever specific tool it is us
versus them. Yes, it's very important, where like us includes

(06:56):
you and them as the enemy of some thing like that.
The third is you want to have social groups on
your side. Churches are a really convenient way to do this. Like,
if you can get churches on your side, then like
you get whole groups of people to come with you.
So you sort of like extend in all of branch
if you will, to the church of like, hey, you
want more power, I know you do, well, you help

(07:18):
me accomplish this goal. I'll help you accomplish yours, right
and make you look really good. In the same time,
That's not the only way. There are lots of ways
to do that, but that's just like that's a way
where you have a built in audience that's like really
committed to that message, and so having a captive audience
really allows that to spread easily. But there, like I said,
otherwise to do it. And the fourth and final tenant

(07:40):
is that you want the propaganda to be fairly invisible.
You don't really want it to be clear and overt
that it's propaganda. You want it to be sort of
quiet and insidious. You want it to be sort of
whispered around and passed around. I think in the past
this was a great way of doing this was just
having it come up and conversation a lot. But now

(08:02):
we have bots in AI and like they can be
on the social media spaces spreading this in a way
that you don't even realize your sort of being influenced
by the things they're spreading, because like, if one real
person picks up some of the hate nonsense that a
bot created or one of lex Luthor's evil social media monkeys,

(08:25):
then like they they start spreading that to people who
that actually trust that person, So like it only takes
one really to start to spread. We found that during COVID,
like all of the misinformation or like a huge amount
of it could be traced back to just twelve people
that was affecting millions of people's decisions to not wear masks,
to not get vaccinated, to believe that it was a hoax. Like,

(08:48):
all of that was just twelve people that they trace
it back to who started that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yeah, it's kind of scary, like a virus. It's just
like a virus.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, like an AIDS virus basically, Yeah, terrible. It takes
down all your defenses and then you just die from
extreme stupidity, not AIDS, that's not stupidity propaganda. Yeah. Anyway,
So that was part one, So we're getting into part two.
As I said, the purpose of this one is that
we're really going to be talking. We have a little
bit more of the tools to unpack, and then after

(09:21):
that we're going to be talking about examples of propaganda
and then things that we can do about this to
hopefully right the ship, if you will. Is there any
other preamble or anything you'd like to add before we
get into our topic, du jour No, I.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Think we can just dive into these next couple tools.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
All right, great, So a couple that we left off
last time that I think are really important to make
sure we come back around to here are also with
the first one, which is projection. This one is blaming
others for your own often for your own flaws or faults,
and the idea is to just deflect any criticism away
from yourself. And what this often looks like is the

(10:00):
people who are accusing others of doing the thing that
they're actually doing. So a really common strategy in conservative
spaces in the United States, at least I didn't look
at other countries, but in the United States, a lot
of the conservative like strategy around propaganda has been to
foment conspiracies that there are like these sex scandals and

(10:21):
child trafficking among these like democratic elites. The great irony
is we have a huge amount of evidence of this
happening in conservative circles, like Matt Gates credibly accused multiple
times of like sex trafficking children minors, Like we know
that he did this, he did it, and he was

(10:43):
a very outspoken extreme right wing conservative. Yeah. We had
one person who was like in congress or running for
Congress who like had gone on some podcast and talked
about how once he got to Washington, d c. He
was invited to these like coca sex parties, Yeah, as
like a thing, and then he got in really big
trouble for that, which again they don't want their the

(11:06):
things revealed, but like they do this all the time.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, it's kind of scary, but it comes up over
and over and over again, which is wild. The other
one is what about isms, And when we engage in
what aboutism practices, essentially what we're doing is we're shifting
the topic to something else in response to a legitimate
criticism or inquiry. So it's it's the equivalent of saying that, like,
let's use the example of gun reform because I think

(11:30):
that's a hot topic right now, specifically the time they're
recording this, which it has been for some time, but
specifically right now. Yeah, so we have conversations about gun
reform and having legitimate conversations about this, and then somebody says, well,
what about mental health? And you go, okay, well that's
not quite what we're talking about here, like that may
be part of it, but like you're kind of like,
or what about gang violence and you go, okay, well,

(11:52):
gang violence is a different issue than gun reform. While
they might they have overlapped, might kind of be tangentially related,
like they there is overlap on the Venn diagram, but
they're not what we're talking about right now, right or
you know, more blatantly, you know, somebody else make a
criticism about conservative politics politicians, and somebody will go, well,
what about democrats. It's like, we're not talking about We're

(12:13):
not talking about them right now. We're talking about this
particular issue with this particular person, not what about them
that and the other thing. And so you'll see that
kind of like that quick shift in those arguments that
is designed to derail your legitimate argument, your legitimate criticism,
your legitimate debate, and move the goalpost into a different
and into an entirely different field and sport.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, exactly. So, Actually, some other examples of projection occurred
to me. I want to get into but I'm going
to first project an ad. Nice, you know what, I
actually should have done that as like, no, you're playing
an AD and then that would have been a good

(12:53):
example of projection. Well what about these ads there? You go? Yeah,
what about is and with ads? And I want to
back to some more examples of the what about ism,
But I was just thinking with projection again, we have
like I'm gonna pick on Donald Trump because he does
this more than anyone first of all, sure, but also
because he's the person in power right now and so

(13:14):
easy targets to sort of land on. Yeah. So there
were some specific examples of this that I wanted to highlight.
There's him saying like, oh, we got to go after
all these criminals. We gotta like, you know, we got
to kick him out of our country. I'm like, you're
actually a convicted criminal, right felon in fact, like you
like you're calling everyone else criminals, You're a criminal. There's

(13:36):
the like, oh, the Democrats were weaponizing the Justice Apartment.
Actually they were just doing their job. You are actually
weaponizing the Justice Department. You're actually targeting political opponents with
the political system to go after them, not because they
did anything wrong necessarily it's possible that they did, but

(13:56):
like it's because you want to go after and silence critics. Right,
you're actually like trying to take away licenses from journalists
in media, You're actually cutting off funding to independent news
sources that have that will say anything to contradict you.
They were accusing Obama when he was in office of
being a dictator, and like Trump is an office saying
I think people want a dictator, I'm going to be

(14:17):
a dictator like that. Yeah, they do it so much
and it works so often. I'm like, it's so much
to the point where it's like if they point the
finger and accuse someone of something, at this point, we
could take it as an admission that they're the ones
doing it. Like there, it's that prevalent.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah, it's the adult equivalent of I know you are,
but what am I?

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Well, I'm rubber and you're glue. Ah, that's what it is.
It's that's what it is. It's so it's so absurd.
But I also want to come back to the what
about ism because that that comes up a crazy amount
as well, where it's like, all right, so we need
to talk about how we are going to address inflation.
They're like, well, what about immigration. I'm like, where were

(15:04):
you five seconds ago when I said we're addressing inflation.
They're like, yeah, but what about immigration. I'm like, yeah,
hold on, shut up. The next words out of your
mouth better be about inflation, because we're not talking about
anything other than that. They're like, well, what about taxes?

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Like what about our emails?

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Yeah, exactly, what about Hunter Biden's laptop? I'm like that
comes up? So like that was basically they're talking points
is like half of its propaganda or half of its projection,
half of it's what about ism? And then you fit
in like all the other things we talked about last time.
I'm like, name calling and unrealistic promises and stereotyping and
stuff like that makes up like ten percent, but I

(15:41):
feel like forty percent is projection. Forty percent is what
about ism? Yeah, So, anyway, do you have any more
examples about what about ism that we should include? No?

Speaker 2 (15:51):
I think people got that one. I mean that feels
pretty good, and.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
I think, to be fair, like, I think all political
parties do this to some extent. I think you rarely
rarely find someone who's like authentically engaged to this in
this process. But the Conservatives in the United States, this
is like all they do, Like I feel like you
almost never get a straight honest word out of them.

(16:14):
It's just projection and what about ism. They'll sit there
and accuse people of lying while lying, right, They'll be
lying about the things they're accusing people of lying about, right,
Like that's how extreme it is, Like it's so bizarre,
and the fact that it works is really depressing, Like
people really buy it and listen to it. And I
was like, oh my god, it's and it's so blatantly

(16:36):
obvious too in my mind at least. Yeah, it's so gross.
I don't like it all, right, But we can move
on from those parts. I think what we need to
do is we need to take a look in the
mirror here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
So, I think when we talk about propaganda, we have
to be careful about what we say and how we
approach things, and how we make arguments and how we
debate people, Like we kind of have to ask the
question of are we propagandists, And certainly the conspiratory really
minded will think so. But one thing that we do
well that is the opposite of propagandas is we try
to embrace nuance, at least we try to, right, We

(17:08):
try to out the argument here on the show. But
if you are trying to embrace nuance or trying to
see multiple sides of things in an honest way and
not like, you're not entering these debates or these situations
without like the intent of actually having a debate when
you're wanting to have a debate and have a discussion,
I think if you're doing that, then you're probably on
your way to fighting that propagandist inside you.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, exactly. I think the enemy of propaganda is nuance. Yeah,
the enemy of propaganda is asking questions. Like they want
to avoid those things in their messaging. They want to
avoid those things and their audience. Propagandists do not want
you asking questions. They really don't want you thinking very
much at all about their message because I mean, if
you really spend any time thinking, like some of the

(17:50):
things they'll say, they will contradict themselves within the same breath,
Like they they'll say something and then say something that
is basically the opposite of that. Like if we say,
for example, that terriffs are meant to bring manufacturing back
to the United States and our negotiating tactic to get
better like deals with other countries. Those are opposite. Things

(18:13):
like if you accept that you're willing to renege on
your tariff because it would be a more favorable deal
for the United States than you were saying that, like
that will not bring manufacturing back to the United States,
So it can't work. So like that is a self
contradictory statement. And nevertheless they completely say and it completely works.
But again it's just if you think about it, then

(18:34):
it starts to fall apart. But they what they want
is a nice, easily deliverable package that you simply swallow
and then move on through with your day in the
direction that they have pointed you believing the things that
they have said without spending any time thinking about it.
That's the whole idea here is they do not want questions,
They do not have nuance.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, and so something that you know from our perspective,
like we want you to ask questions, We want you
to be skeptical, We want you to present new who
wants and complication into discussions, especially our discussions, Like we
love that as people who are generally skeptical people. Now,
I do think it's important to kind of pin down that, like,
when we're asking questions, there are people that are gonna
go like that are gonna ask questions, and they're not

(19:15):
asking questions in good faith exactly. I think that there's
there's a difference between asking questions to antagonize and just
to kind of like do the thing that like, you know,
some people were doing on their platforms, but like we
are like actually talking about scientific inquirer, we're talking about skepticism,
We're talking about honest, good faith arguments. And the truth is,
while propaganda can be extremely dangerous, it is just a

(19:35):
tool one that has been used for good and for ill.
Some propaganda campaigns have furthered human rights, motivated social and
societal changes that lead to greater well being for a
larger number of people and resulted in tremendous progress. So
we do understand that like propaganda by itself is neutral
at best, but it's used in ways that perpetuate evils

(19:58):
or perpetuate good depending on how it's used used.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, I think the fact that it's as effective as
it is at quietly influencing public opinion has made it
a particularly preferred tool of people with nefarious motives. Sure,
but it could be used for positive and I think
in the show Parks and Recreation they had some good
examples where they used some propaganda things to simply help

(20:24):
move some agendas through that were like really good for people. So,
for example, the dentist in town doesn't want Flora in
the water because he has more business when people have
more cavities, and so they essentially rebrand floride as tea
dazzle or I think that's what is a tea sparkle
something like that, and they make it look like really
fun and like engaging, and so that gets people all

(20:48):
on board socially with it. But again, like it was
just a campaign to help people be on board with
the thing that they were proposing, and anyway, that was
very much like a propaganda campaign. Oh yeah, it can
be kind of used in any direction. Is just the
whole point of that. It just is a particularly beloved
tool of the people who are very selfish and want.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
To cause harm and want to consolidate power.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Okay, as I said, these are
tools that can cause harm, Well, let's start getting into
some of these specific examples of this here. In twenty seventeen,
US Democrats were linked to a disinformation campaign to influence
a Senate election in Alabama. Russian operatives paid Ukrainians for

(21:33):
access to their faith. This is a separate item. Sorry
I'm jumping around. But the second one that I'm a
list here is that Russian operatives paid Ukrainians for access
to their Facebook accounts to spread pro Russian messages and
a pro Russian sentiment in advance of an election that
was coming up in Ukraine. And then another one here
in Great Britain. There was a pro Brexit lobbying firm

(21:56):
that ran a campaign using Facebook ads that were in
support of Brexit, and they specifically made it look like
it was this grassroots campaign. It was actually this like
very wealthy, multimillion dollar lobbying firm, but they spun the campaign.
They made it look like it was being run by
like on the ground electorate people who were like just

(22:18):
they just wanted to move forward with Brexit, and actually
goes back to one of the techniques we talked about before,
which was called plain folk, which is that like, you
know this, these are your neighbors, these are your people.
They believe in this cause I'm like, they actually weren't that,
but they presented it that way and people believed it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
I mean it's kind of like how ads use paid
actors to talk about their products and maybe they've never
even used those products. Like here's an example.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Now, Yeah, all right, yeah go buy that thing. It
was really important endorsed by us or something, but maybe
don't if it was bad.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Oh man, if it was like yeah, let's let what
it could be the worst thing possible. It could be like, yeah,
a non environmental grill that only cooks like side giant
sides of beef, And both of us are like, we
don't do it.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
We don't like any of that stuff. Very true, Very true.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
I like grills, but like I like, I like environmental grill,
you like bear grills. I like beer grills. Yeah, so
I don't know, do I like, I don't know enough
about him right now, Like I don't want I don't
want to say like anybody who endorse anybody right now
because I don't know. Like it's just it's such a landmine,
like a minefield right now that like you know, who
knows beer girls might be fine. I prefer let's you
know what I like Steve Irwin.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
There you go. Ye, that seems like a safe bet,
no changing now, Yeah, yeah, it does feel like it's
you never know like where things are going to end up,
and we just don't, I don't know, we don't have
the hindsight, I guess, you know, or the foresight to
like be able predict that. Sometimes. I mean like you

(23:55):
can point to anybody at like Fox News and say
like they're they've got some skeletons in their closet, like
they're just bad people. Let's just assume that anyway. Yeah,
moving on, So.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Speaking of bad people, let's talk about Twitter.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
So Twitter Twitter band ads.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
From a Chinese controlled news outlet that was denouncing Chinese
protesters and also found other fake news organization accounts that
were spreading disinformation about the protests. Facebook found a group
of fake accounts linked to Saudi Arabia that were also
spreading disinformation. And misinformation and disinformation are two very different things,
and I think that we've talked about that on the

(24:33):
show before, or maybe we need to do a full
episode on the difference between the two, or maybe even
a mini because disinformation is like more intentional or misinformation
is just like maybe I just don't have enough facts.
But disinformation is like explicitly like targeted propaganda messaging that
is supposed to like spread false information on purpose.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, yeah exactly. We actually did talk about that a
little bit in the part one. I don't know that
we made a clear distinction between the two, but yes,
I wouldn't say that they're very different. They are different.
They have a lot in common too. Yeah, yeah, for sure,
one way or another, you're getting stuff that's like demonstrably wrong. Yeah,
yeah exactly. But okay, yeah this was before Facebook like abolished.

(25:15):
It's like campaign to try and have any kind of
quality control over the things that go on on Facebook,
which effects and Twitter to that point, Like Twitter now
is fully like it's just a propaganda machine, that's all
it is. Yeah, there's you do not go there for information.
You go there for a lack of information. You spend
any amount of time on Twitter, you will walk away

(25:35):
knowing less than you did than when you got before
you got on Twitter. Yeah, it creates a negative space
in your brain where there used to be seals and
now there's just a hole.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah that's a small little black hole.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, black hole. Yeah, it's consuming the rest of your
brain from yeah, yeah, give it time, all right. Some
more examples. In Turkey, there was this quote unquote fact
checkers website or like it was a group that was
that linked to government run websites that were essentially rewriting
history and spreading their own version of events. So the
government sort of set up these these websites and then

(26:07):
these groups that linked to the websites where it was
like get the real facts, but then there was the
government actually controlling the presentation of those facts. Sure, and
I think a sort of similar one here there. For
decades now, Republicans have been claiming that there was a
migrant invasion every time a Republican is not in office,
And so that's just another one of those things where

(26:28):
they it's sort of a whataboutism a little bit, but
also just like just making things up, yeah, because they
want to spread fear and hate, hatred and anger. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
I mean, if you ever hear the term border crisis,
just know that it's not accurate. Like that's just what
it is right now. There is no border crisis right now,
because if there are border crisis, that be happening on
multiple borders, but it seems to only be happening on
one border. That border is linked to people who are brown,
So you know, maybe maybe I don't know. Just ask
some questions about that, is all I'm saying. In August
of twenty twenty five, Trump mobilized the the National Guard

(27:00):
to DC under the pretense of quelling crime while crime
rates were at an all time low. So that is a
thing that happened in the distant past, not very recent now.
He specifically targeted multiple cities led by specifically Democrat leaders
in this campaign to create the impression that democratic cities
have higher rates of crime, to give the impression to
his supporters that he is doing what he promised to

(27:23):
destabilize and demoralize the people of those cities he's terrorizing,
and to energize his vitriolic, violent supporters who only wish
to see harm. Come to quote liberals, I mean that
talking point about democratic cities being gang run hellholes has
been one of his major talking points from the beginning

(27:44):
of his campaign. So it should be no surprise that
he's trying to mobilize military into these cities and really
like make them targets.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah, and it's just propaganda, it's just trying to create
an impression for people that's just completely and utterly untrue. Yeah,
and you know, I think you could definitely points to
many decades ago there were much worse and more severe
crime rates in some places in some of those cities,
even if it wasn't necessarily that city as a whole. Yeah,
but that has large let us like, been trending downward

(28:13):
now for as I said, decades, Like we're at a
point now where they're basically the lowest crime rates they've
ever had in some of these places. And that's where
he's sending troops. Right, it's completely not a nonsense, just
total fabricated bolt.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Yeah, we're not even going to talk about the idea
that he's sending literal military into his own cities. Like
let's not even let's not even get into that mess,
which is scary.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yeah, but all right. RFK Junior claimed that there this
is at some earlier in twenty twenty five, shortly after
he was appointed to his position as the Czar of
Killing All Americans, and he claimed that he said, quote,
there's a Medos outbreak every year, or that was close
enough to be a direct quote. This is one hundred
percent false. One hundred percent false, right, although it might

(28:59):
be the truth moving forward now that vaccines are going
to be nearly impossible to get from many people. Measles
were so rare that it was actually declared an eliminated
disease in the year two thousand. Yeah, that's how rare
it is. It was considered eliminated. There hasn't actually been
an outbreak since two thousand and there. Since before two

(29:20):
thousand and there have been a few cases here and
there until last year, and it all the cases that
sprung up sprung up completely and entirely in communities with
low vaccine rates, and they started to break through. And
that's the major issue here. And so like, I think

(29:40):
that at this point, we can very reasonably expect that
we're going to have one of the worst flu seasons
we have ever had this winter, possibly the worst COVID
season we've had since COVID started, and very possibly we're
going to be facing the reality that measles might just
be a thing in this country again, even though we
had successfully eliminated it twenty five years ago.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, yes, I agree. RFK also has started referring to
vaccines simply as quote the pharmaceuticals industry in an attempt
to equate vaccines with corporate greed and overreach. So we
would like to send a message as a podcast. I
think that you and I both agree on this. You
wrote this, I'm gonna say it, and we agree on
the same sentiment. Here this stupid piece of he is

(30:24):
a fucking Oh god, he is such an awful person.
R FK, Junior, go yourself and get the away from
our health care. You are killing people with your stupid
just more just ooh you brain wore. I got no
words for it. It's so frustrating. It's astounding that somebody

(30:44):
put this brain damaged jackass into power. Whoever it was
is just maybe a little bit worse than he is.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like people like him have existed and
for the most part they can't do a lot of
harm because just yelling on street corners and everyone knows
to ignore them because they're insane. And then someone put
them into power. Yeah, how did that happen? How and
why did that happen? It gave him a lot of power, Yeah,
a lot of power like that guy should have. He

(31:16):
should not even have the authority to own an ant farm,
like he should not have. Anyone that he can give
direction to and have them follow, let alone be in
control of our healthcare system. He is the worst person
who has ever had that much power in this in
this country, or tied for the worst.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
Completely unqualified, completely unqualified. I would like to make a proposal.
We need to we need to sign a bill. We
need to get a bill in place. And that means that,
like anybody who's appointed into a position like this pass
to pass a basic science test.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
They should be a credential medical professional. In my opinion, yeah,
it should be.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
It should be a credit credential medical professional. But anybody
who's passing a law should be able to pass a
test on what that law means. And if they can't
pass a test on what that law means, they don't.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Get the vote on it.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
You know, you don't say anything about it because you
know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, having some sort of standards would be a great
a great place, a great way to help prevent things
like this from ever happening again. But yeah, in case
we weren't clear, I far of CA Junior ever hears this,
go yourself, you stupid piece.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
Of Yeah, and that's not propaganda, No.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
That's that's me stating my thoughts about this person who
is bably a person. Yeah all right, well maybe a
minute earlier. So but with that fiery exit, maybe we
insert some ads here. Yeah, we need a breath break. Okay,

(32:41):
so we're coming back. We've been talking through these various
examples of propaganda. We've largely been picking on the people
who do it the most because that's where the propaganda
examples are the most easy to find. Yeah, a lot
of people do versions of this. We've tried to include
multiple here. There are so so, so many examples. It's
across the political spectrum. Although again one side leans on
this i'll lot more heavily than the other does. But

(33:02):
it gets really sophisticated. There's actually this one that I found.
There was a strategy that it started by spreading disinformation
about a news story that wasn't real in a way
that had people be skeptical of the doubters of that
news story. Then it broke the news story that wasn't
real so that people would doubt the people who were
doubtful of the false story. Sure, so it was sort

(33:25):
of like it was trying to inoculate people against a skepticism.
When they launched their fake news campaign when it actually happened.
Some of them don't care at all about internally being
internally consistent, even within the same speech or within the
same sentence. As I said, they'll simply spout some catchphrase
that makes you angry or feel righteous, and then they'll

(33:47):
say something that is the opposite but also makes you
feel angry and feel righteous. It doesn't matter what it
was said. All that matters now is that you are
emotional and you are pliable, and they can tell you
once you are worked up, all right, how they are angry.
Here's our enemy, Go get them. And that's sort of
the strategy that they'll frequently employ.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, so I think, you know, going back to kind
of where we were going with this particular part of
the episode, we started this by talking about what we
can do about preventing or combating propaganda.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
So let's get to that. First.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
We need to be able to spot it. It would
be lovely if we could create some systems, a legislation
and litigation processes to help curb some of the worst
parts of propaganda. And indeed, we believe this is entirely possible.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
And I've been thinking about this, and I have tried
to start to solicit feedback from this, so maybe we
even consider this an opportunity to get some feedback. The
way the system currently works, and it makes sense that
it would be this way, is that if you do something,
some action that you take that you know is dangerous

(34:53):
or reckless or causes harm, and then that results in harm,
somebody dying or being seriously in injured, you are held
responsible for that. So let's take as an example, if
someone who I don't know engineers bridges or something decides,
I'm not going to include this component in this bridge,
and I know that if I if I don't include

(35:16):
this component, that this bridge will collapse while people are
driving it, and I'm just not going to do it. Yeah,
and then the bridge collapses and a bunch of people die,
and an investigation reveals that this person did in fact
leave this out, and even if they did it negligently,
like it was their job to do it right to
know that that had to be there, and it's even

(35:38):
worse if they did it on purpose. So understanding that,
we're starting from the position of if you do something
that you either have a responsibility to be competent in
the implications of your job for that thing, or you
do so knowing that what you're doing is dangerous and
that results in harm that that does and should be

(36:03):
held accountable as being responsible for causing that harm. Yeah. Absolutely,
And I think that taking that a step further, if
you say something that equally causes harm, you are as
responsible as if you had done that thing as an
action on purpose and gotten someone killed. And in many

(36:27):
of the cases, what's even more dangerous about language is
that you can affect a lot more people, a lot
more quickly than any one simple action you might take,
let's just say, using your hands, because you could potentially
incite a war or something. Right, and so it is
important in my mind to consider that the use of language,

(36:51):
particularly when you are in a position where you have
responsibility to be competent in the thing about which you
are speaking, that you are responsible for the harm that
is caused to the people who suffer from that, and
the magnitude of the stakes here, if that position is
powerful enough, can be gargantuan, far more dangerous than even

(37:16):
like some other violent act or, like I said, failing
to include a necessary component of a building or a
bridge that then subsequently collapses, the words can have far
reaching implications that result in the death and suffering of
millions of people. So with that in mind, I personally

(37:39):
believe that if you espouse something that is demonstrably false
about vaccines, or if you hold a position of power
and even imply something that is demonstrably false about vaccines,
including in the form of a question, amusing or a
whimsical remark, you should be immediately can victed of manslaughter.

(38:02):
For every person on earth who has died of a
preventable disease, not charged with manslaughter, convicted immediately and sentenced accordingly.
Vaccines have saved so many lives. They are one of
the only ways we are going to continue to make
it as a species. And like they are, they have
been proven safe and effective time and time and time again.

(38:24):
And even the COVID vaccines that we have that are
so good and were so impressive, and they were developed
entirely under the Trump administration during round one that they
greenlit that project and it was extremely effective and honestly
one of the only good things he ever did, and
good on them for that. I'm not sure that it

(38:45):
would have I don't know, but it was really amazing
that they did as quick of a job turning that
vaccine around and getting it out to people as quickly
as they did. Is like billions of shots now have
been given and saved so many lives. Yeah, So all
of that is to say that, like, vaccines are the
important piece of us protecting our future as a species,

(39:08):
and if you spread misinformation about that, you are complicit
in the deaths of people who could have had that
disease be prevented. And so I think that, particularly if
you're in a position of power, you have an obligation
to be well informed and to only espouse things that
we know about that. And I think being critical is fine.

(39:30):
We can say there are things, like we can point
out things that are unknown and that we want to
make better. But if you say something that is demonstrably false,
like saying there is no evidence that these are effective,
that's wrong. You should be convicted of manslaughter immediately and
sentenced accordingly. Like if you say things like we don't

(39:53):
know what ingredients go in these, that's you can't make
them without these ingredients. That is one hundred percent wrong.
That one's not even partially wrong. I would consider one
percent wrong wrong enough to be convicted that one was
one hundred percent wrong. We know what's in them right,
convicted immediately. So I feel very passionately about this because
it's one of the most ridiculously stupid hate campaigns that

(40:16):
seems like what's confusing about this is like I don't
even know what their goal is, Like who wins here?
The pharmaceuticals industry, the manufacturers of these vaccines. I don't
think they could be behind this. Why would they, Like
they're the ones who profit from these things being available
to people, although many of them have even operated at
a loss because they were willing to put vaccines out

(40:39):
so that people could get life saving medical care. But
like I just don't understand their goal, Like their goal
is just to get people to die, Like that's it,
Like we just want to have disease run rampant in
our species. I just it's very befuddling to me. But
I personally feel very strongly that like, if you say
something false about vaccines on a public place, you should

(41:00):
be immediately convicted of manslaughter immediately, and like we'll deal
with the fallout from there. But like we just can't.
It's the whole thing of like you can't say bomb
on an airplane. I think that you can't just point
a gun at someone's face. And I think there are
people who are gonna disagree with me about this, and
that's okay, but like, I think that we just cannot
allow this kind of ignorance to be out there affecting

(41:24):
people in that way.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
It's just so harmful. I too, am befuddled.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
What a great word love that anyway. I know that's
like I said, that's gonna sound really extreme, and that
puts me on a big soap box. And I know
people are going to disagree with me. And I'm not
even really suggesting we circumvey the rule of law. I'm
saying it's like what I if we watched someone murder
someone else, we wouldn't be like, I don't know if
he did it, and I'm like, he did, Let's just

(41:50):
figure out what we're gonna do about it now. Yeah,
And that's essentially what these anti vaccine people are doing.
I'm like, they eventually are They're killing people. Every time
they say something wrong, somebody dies, a lot of somebodies die,
and I think that we just shouldn't treat that as
flippantly as like, well, no freedom of speech I'm like, no,
if you're killing people, it's not freedom of speech anymore. Right,
I'm like words, words have power, and when you use

(42:13):
those words to kill people, then you should be treated
as if you killed those people because you did.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Yeah, you're making it, you're making it a more dangerous
world for people.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah. Yeah, no, No, you're good.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
You're good.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
You can stay on that soapbox.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
That's fine.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
So the problem is who, Like, when we talk about
what we can do, the problem is who decides what
isn't is in propaganda.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
That's always kind of the issue, Right.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
There are some things that are as close to objectively
true and we can reasonably hope to achieve, Like the
Earth is a sphere, anthropogenic climate change is real, slavery
is bad. People disabilities are humans and therefore deserve the
same rights and protections as all of their humans, et cetera, etcetera.
Like those should not be hard arguments. We don't need

(42:56):
to arbitrate those things. We've been there. Others will require
intense rutiny and probably heaping amounts of debate.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
And that's fantastic.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Let's use our language to get as close to accurate
as we can. On the more complicated, nuanced issues that
come up, we need all voices And this is actually
something that I know that Like, I strongly believe in
this too, Like you need multiple voices in a space
to solve a problem that affects people, like you need
to have nonpartisan discussions around what these issues look like

(43:25):
and have ideas in spaces that can that can foment
and turn into really good solutions for people. And we
need all those voices except for OURFK Junior, Like he
definitely lost the right to speak in those spaces because
he's an unreliable person and completely unqualified to have these discussions. Yes,
like if he wants to be like maybe an expert
on like swimming in sewage waste and stuff like that,

(43:48):
sure he can talk about that all he wants. He
can talk about brain worms, that's fine. He can talk
about those things. I don't think that he should be
able to make policies though, I think that's I think
that's it maybe a dangerous thing.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
He should only be allowed to talk to stuffed animals
and never heard again, would be my preference for him.
I think that's fine too, Like I don't even want
him instructing people on how to swim in sewage because
people might listen to him. I want him to speak
only to padded walls from now on, yes, fair, and
never never communicate with another human as long as he lives.
Would be the ideal situation to protect us from his

(44:20):
awfulness and terror. Yes, yes, yes, yes yeah. I think
just as you said, like, there are lots of complicated issues,
and I think that we are talking about gun violence
is one of them. Like, we need people who disagree
about this subject, and we need to hear people advocate
for the things that they believe in here because we
need to figure out how we're going to move forward.

(44:42):
If one of the people in that group was saying, like,
guns don't exist, I'd be like, all right, you're not
offering anything meaningful to this conversation because that's dumb and
it's not real. So like, I guess you're not in
this right, but like anybody else who has actually something
to say should be heard, Like, I think we need
to have these complex, nuanced discussions. And again, and part
of what is very different about what we're doing from

(45:02):
how propaganda tenderly works is propaganda doesn't want people to
have a conversation now, they just want people to be outraged,
like just be afraid or be elated about something and
just go out and vote accordingly. But we think that
the way to move forward in all of these spaces
is to have people communicating with one another and to
be like advocating for what they believe in. And that's important. Yeah, absolutely,

(45:26):
Like what's the role of religion in the government, Like,
I think that that is an extremely tricky issue. I
think that there's not a black and white answer that
is really clear, and we have to definitely follow that.
I think we need to have all people weighing in
on this issue. And like, I definitely know where I
stand on this, but I think that, like I've also
heard people who have showed me ways that I could

(45:48):
be wrong about the positions I've taken on this, and
I want to learn, Like I want to have someone
convince me or like present a compelling enough argument that
I can think about it in a more nuanced and
complicated way, because I don't want to go around with
these like outlandish extremist beliefs, And like I'm also open
to the fact that I'm wrong about as convicting people
of manslaughter for vaccines, for spreading misinformation about vaccines. I

(46:11):
just that's where I'm at currently, But I I think,
you know, I would love to have that debate with somebody.
But anyway, point being that, like all I'm really trying
to get to here is I think that is just
extremely important that when we find these complicated issues, that
we involve as many people as possible in that discussion
and we have a good faith argument where we honestly

(46:34):
try and communicate with one another so that we can
find our way through those issues. And doing it through
propaganda I think is not going to solve it. I
think that's going to make things worse, no matter what
side the propaganda.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Is on, right exactly, all right.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
So the very first thing we said and what we
could do about this is being able to spot it.
Recognizing propaganda is one of the very first things that
we need to be able to do, because we can't
do very much about it if we can't tell when
it's happening. But let's also talk about what we can
do and as far as individual action, and I think
the most important thing I really like to advocate for

(47:06):
is question things and we talked about this on our
Critical Thinking episode. Ask yourself, could I be wrong? Could
they be wrong? If so, how would I know? If
you read or hear something that's supposed to be relatively
factual information and not for entertainment only, and you have
an emotional reaction right away, you're probably being manipulated. And

(47:29):
this is whether the emotion iss is righteousness, fear, anger,
or even joy or glee. As Disinformation Nation puts it
as a website that I got a lot of information
for this this discussion. They described it this way, harness
the power of doubt. If something sounds too good to
be true, it probably is. And I think that's a

(47:49):
great way to think about it. And I also think
there are like there are people that use propaganda to
make unreasonable ideas sound reasonable. And actually Joe Wrotein's entire
podcast is basically that it's just have people come on
and say something insane, but say it in like a calm,
normal voice and then have him go hm. I never

(48:10):
thought about it that way, as if that were like
a reasonable thing to say. They're like, actually, if you
really think about it, everyone here is being controlled by lizards,
and jo Organ's like, oh oh, I never thought about
it that way. I'm like, that's stupid, that's the dumbest
thing ever. I was like, I can't believe that you
just uttered those words, and I really can't believe that
you took them even remotely seriously. Right, So, like that's

(48:31):
his whole platform is just let insane ideas have a
huge amount of space and then treat them as if
they're legitimate. I think that is also the same kind
of like asinine propaganda that we need to be worried about.
But just as I said, I think the main takeaway
for this my recommendation here not just mine. This is
actually from other websites and other sources that I found

(48:53):
that were specifically pointing to what can we do about
propaganda and in the way that it's used to manipulate people,
not to like push advance a like pro social agenda,
but to manipulate people is to question it is to
ask Like that sounds a little crazy, and sometimes it's not.
Sometimes it's like actually like a thing, but like we

(49:14):
should just be asking is that real? Like could they
be wrong? Could I be thinking about this wrong? Could
they be lying about this? Like? Just ask those questions
would be a huge step in the right direction.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yeah, I think one of the questions I like generally
ask in that space, like whenever I see information as
I go like, I'll ask myself like could I be
wrong about this? Under what conditions could this happen?

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Like?

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Or I might go like, is it time.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
For an AD? Why are there ads? What is AD?
We're back, We're to keep rolling on things that we
can do about this.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
Yeah, So one is to ask questions, but another one
is to avoid sharing dubious content. You know, I think
it's important and I see this a lot on social media,
where people will read a headline and they'll start to
react pretty rapidly to that headline, which you know is
designed to do that immediately. But I think it's important
to take a moment to not just read the headline

(50:14):
and start sharing the article. You should read the article,
you should read the website that the article is from.
It's worth kind of evaluating all of those things. So
if you read or hear this right quote, solve X
problem you have with this one simple trick or you know, quote,
here's the secret to X that they don't want you
to know. Someone is definitely trying to manipulate you. And

(50:35):
more than likely sell you something. Yes, the more you share,
the more propagandists can track you. Also, the more that
you engage in it, the more the algorithm will try
to try and feed it to you and then feed
only that to you. So now all of a sudden,
your algorithm is just like belly flattening teas you know,
or you know, things of that nature, Like you start
seeing that often, and so just be mindful of like

(50:58):
what you're sharing, what you're interacting with, and how that looks.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Yes, a huge amount of the power from propaganda anymore
comes from just sharing things, even if you don't believe it. Essentially,
what it does is that allows the propagandas to identify
you as a potential target, and it starts again tracking
and flooding your space with more and more of that
stuff to try and push you in that direction and
radicalize you. Yeah, and radicalize you in a way that

(51:24):
has you, I don't know, go commit a mass shooting
or vote for a crazy person who's saying insane things
about being a dictator and destroying the country. Yeah, Like,
there are various various ways that it can sort of
push you to start to buy into that stuff. Yeah,
so that's the thing. As I said, avoid engaging in
propaganda content if you can spot it. That's kind of

(51:46):
why the spot it is the most important. First step
here is we need to identify it. But you want
to browse using safe browsers or safe browsing mode, particularly
when you're like searching for things. Duc dut Go is
one that is specifically designed for this. Even Firefox is
really good with security. Safari's privacy mode is also pretty good.

(52:07):
Don't use Google or Chrome even in private mode, they
will track everything you do, regardless. Log out of platforms
after you use them. This one's very important. When you
get to a website and it asks you for cookies,
reject all optional cookies whenever they ask. And if it
evens as like customize your preferences, go in and customize

(52:27):
those preferences. It'll keep doing it every time, and it's
annoying as hell. But they used to not ask, and
legislation forced them to ask, and you want to reject
those things otherwise they will start to They will start
tracking your stuff a lot more than you want. And
in addition to that, you want to periodically clear your
cookies and browsing history. Avoid liking and sharing things unless

(52:49):
you're confident in their veracity, that you feel pretty sure
that they are accurate. Yeah, if it is from an
Fox News, it was from any of those conservative news websites,
they're lying to you. Nothing they say is accurate ever, Like, yeah,
they are less accurate than the Onion, who flagrantly just

(53:09):
makes up things. Like you will know more about the
world by reading the Onion than you will any of
their stuff, so you can just ignore them. I also, personally,
even though I tend to agree with them more politically,
I don't rely on any news from Huffington Post. I
think they're always trying to manipulate me. I think they're
always trying to sell me something. I'm sure that their
message is like supposed to be good, but like, I'm

(53:31):
not going to go there for information. And I also
know that like a lot of people accuse MSNBC of
being super left leaning, and I think that you could
certainly say they tend to be a lot more sympathetic
to left leaning policies and people than most of the
other news websites. So if you don't want to trust them,
that's fine too. But there are a lot of really
good websites that have really like legitimate news that you

(53:52):
can you can definitely depend on. But anyway, as I said,
just avoid liking and sharing contents that you're not sure about,
use safe browsing, and reject optional cookies, and clear your
cookies and browsing history periodically.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
So one recommendation is to branch out of your news
ecosystem bubble now. I think it's worth and we think
it's worth searching for the same news story across different
news platforms and see kind of like what they say,
if you read one from one source and read it
again from another source, you might discover that there's maybe
some nuances and differences in the facts or the information
from the story. So look for the ways they were things,

(54:27):
the way they were things to try to get a
rise out of you, or to try to portray the
narrative and a light that is more or less favorable
towards a particular agenda, because you're going to find that
and see that pretty clearly, especially when you're looking for it.
They suggest you consume news from two sources you trust
and in who you agree with, two sources you may
not trust or agree with within reason, and one source
that is neutral as you can find, so it's worth

(54:49):
kind of like looking at a few different things there,
but like really pulling your information from multiple sources.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Yeah, and I just did this, but I'm gonna do
it again. I'm going to call out some specific ones.
Fox News there's so unreliable, you know less after the
consuming their content that if you had sat in a
corner doing nothing at all. But they're not even the worst.
Oaan Newsmax, OutKick, Rumble, Epoch Times and Truth Social which
should actually be called Life Actory as a more accurate name,
among several others, are so aggressively radicalized far right Nazi

(55:19):
propaganda machines that you really can't believe anything they tell you.
And you hear me say like, well you're calling them Nazis,
like you're just trying to, you know, impart an emotional reaction.
I'm like, well, they're self proclaimed Nazis, like they have
Nazis on they talk about Nazism sympathetically, like they I'm
not using saying anything about them, they are not saying
about themselves. So like they are far right, ultra conservative,

(55:44):
like extremist hate groups. That's that's what they are calling them.
News is extremely generous. They're just far right hate group
propagandist lie machines. Yeah, that's all that they do, So
I'm calling them out for that right now.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
Yeah, and to be charitable, Yes, there are all so
far left news organizations that are also extremely manipulative. Like
that is not to say that the left side isn't
doing the same thing. Like the Huffington Post in particular,
is not particularly reliable as an objective news source. Some
segments in hosts on MSNBC are very one sided and
they're reporting as well. I mean, Routers is commonly ranked

(56:18):
as one of the least biased and most objective news
sources on the Internet, and so it's probably worth using
them as one of your sources. In addition, Snopes can
be a useful way to fact check information, although they
get things wrong from time to time as well. Democracy
Now also does a great job of portraying information in
a factual, unbiased manner. I believe that Axios is another

(56:38):
one that does provide some pretty decent balanced news. So like,
those are different resources that you can check out and know,
like you know that they're not completely unbiased, but they
do at least try to balance where they can.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Yeah, I think Reuters recently has sort of tried to
embrace a slightly more enticing headline model, which I find
a little annoying but is probably working for them. But
they tend to be really, really good in neutral, objective reporting.
And then, as you said, democracy now is like they're
the most like clear news portrayal. What they're just like,

(57:14):
this is what happened. Yeah, like they'd really I think,
try not to inject a whole lot of adjectives or
bias into it. So I've been pretty impressed with both
of those news websites, and again it feel like I'm
getting actual factual information without being misled about things and
overlaid with tons of commentary about it. Right, all right,
The last thing here to recommend is that when you

(57:36):
get when you find these reliable news sources where you
can trust what they're saying, share the information from those
in your circles. The genies out of the bottle. As
far as propaganda's concerned, there's there's no closing that back up.
So the best offense we have right now is to
have actual, real, reasonable conversations and heart to heart, good
faith attempts to discuss these issues with each other, call

(58:00):
out the bullsh when you see it, and for the
love stop voting for these insane liars. They say the craziest, dumbest,
easiest to debunk bullshit, and then they somehow get elected.
Like what, the neither side is perfect here, and like
there are plenty of things to criticize about the entire
political system of the United States and many of the

(58:22):
other countries, but like one side is clearly clearly wrong,
which is the anti vaccine side. Sure, and like there
are plenty of instances in these spaces where you have
like a side that's pretty much like objectively doing harmful, terrible,
undemocratic things. So let's not put them into power, and

(58:46):
let's have like real, honest, meaningful discussions with each other.
Like I want us to discuss things when we disagree.
Like that's the only way we're really going to move
this forward is like that we have real conversations. But
if we keep just trying to trick like the most
gullible people out there into like buying into our side,
then like we don't even have a real side, you know, right,

(59:08):
it's people who don't even know what they're supporting that
we that were trying to trick into supporting us. I'm like,
if you don't have that strong of a message that
the only way you can get people to like get
on your side is by lying to them, then like
you're probably on the wrong side. I consider that, right.
So I don't know, that's That's a thing I've been
thinking for a while is I'm just like, I don't

(59:29):
even know why you choose this hill to die on.
I'm like, if you can't win by not cheating, then
you suck at this, Like just leave it at that,
Like you don't deserve to win, Like cheating doesn't make
it okay that you won. So like that's just we're
not gonna play the game that way, right exactly. Okay, Well,
there's probably so much to say about propaganda. We could

(59:51):
probably start up an entire podcast called propaganda and then
just dig into it every episode forever and it would
be an interesting discussion. But I wanted to tell people, like,
you're being tricked a lot of the time, and you
probably don't even recognize that it's happening a lot of
the time, and we want to try and help draw
some attention to it because I understand that we have

(01:00:13):
issues as a species and that we disagree with each
other about those issues, but we're not going to come
to a solution by like manipulating each other. Like we're
going to come to a solution by having actual discussions
where we're willing to listen to the other side and
find where we can accommodate one another and where we
have to compromise, and where we don't have to compromise.

(01:00:33):
Like that's how we're going to get through this anyway.
I think that's my final sort of send off for
this particular discussion.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
For me, I think the big thing that I land
on is just like just critically think about things, like
I do think it's important to question things that I
do think it's important to be able to like hear
multiple sides of things, you know. I think the one
thing that I kind of come back to, like, you know,
I've heard more recently people talking about science being a
political and I don't think that's fair. I don't think

(01:01:03):
it's reasonable. I think science is an active resistance against
against stuff like this. That's a good point, And as
a scientist, I think that like we have to kind
of like continue to push back against anti science rhetoric,
which is inherently political, right, So I think, you know,
when we're having these conversations and we're talking about this,
like one of the core tenets of science is that

(01:01:24):
it's it's inquiry, it's question, it's discovery. And I think
that that is like the active ingredient against stuff like propaganda.
Is inquiry, is question, is seeking answers, is finding solutions
to problems, like in real life, solutions to problems that
exist and problems that are re emerging as a result
of bad faith arguments and people in power. So I think,

(01:01:47):
you know, for me, I kind of always go back
to stuff like this, and I go at the end
of the day, science is an active resistance against systems
of oppression, and I think if you really want to
be a good scientist, you have to fight against bad
science and people that are arguing the stuff in bad faith.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
You actually just highlighted something for me that I never
quite put together, and I think you just made it click,
which is that, like, as I've been saying, what we
need to do is we need to have these good
faith conversations where we're trying to actually solve problems. Science
is that conversation. Yeah, the conversation is happening already and
it is the process of science. And I think that's

(01:02:25):
a great demonstration too, because like science has gotten things
very wrong in the past, where and as you said,
like it's never been a political it's never been without bias,
it's never been without a lack of values. Like there
are values, assumptions, politics, and things that are influenced that
that discussion. And so we look back at some of
the things that have been done in the name in science,

(01:02:47):
and they were terrible things that should have never happened,
but we that space kept enabling good faith discussions, and
so those things have been corrected over time. Yeah, and
like right now we probably can't even see the ways
that we're still doing that, but science will correct that
over time. Because that's what the conversation is that like
I said, I never actually put that together, but like

(01:03:08):
we are having that conversation, and the way that it's
playing out is in science, because that science is specifically,
like we have identified a thing, we are going to
do our best to understand that thing, and we're going
to disagree with each other a lot, but we're going
to keep talking and hashing it out and doing so
using like data and evidence and like good faith discussions

(01:03:32):
until we arrive at a consensus. So beautiful. I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Yeah, it's here's what we know today. Do we need
to know more about this?

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Likely? Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
How do we advance this discussion? Because this is what
This is the best decision that we can possibly make
with this given information, with the amount of information we have,
And that is that is the discussion. Not conservatives don't
believe in vaccines, liberals do, and vaccines are bad, like
it's that's not the conversation. Those are emotional conversations. When
we lay it all down, we go we know science,

(01:04:01):
like we know vaccines, we know vaccines have injuries, we
know people have reactions to vaccines. But the vast majority
of people that experience vaccines are safe from preventable diseases.
And we know that to be true and factual based
on current evidence. And that is the discussion. And so
when you're fighting propaganda, that's what you fight it with.

(01:04:22):
You fight it with inquiry, you fight it with facts,
You fight it with ongoing discussion and with the understanding
that your perspectives can change with new information. So anyway,
be a scientist, as I think my big take on
point here.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
I honestly think that if we move to a future
in human history where all the ways that we communicated
with each other were like scientific, that we would all
be better off in every conceivable way. Yes, Spach is stoked,
and I don't mean that to say that there's not
a space for like whimsy and theater and creativity and

(01:04:57):
fiction like that is not antithe ethical to science at all.
Matter of fact, many scientists love fictional stories as a
way to sort of explore these ideas and concepts, and
that's a great way to do it. But what I
think is like, if we stopped trying to manipulate each
other with emotions and only had good faith discussions through
the scientific method, I think we'd be much much better off. Yeah,

(01:05:20):
as a species, and I think everyone would prefer that system.
I think everyone preferred if we also didn't have any
more ads. Yep, sure, Okay, we are back. We are
actually wrapping this up here. I think we thought we
were wrapping this up a while ago, but we just
kept thinking of things to say, and that was great.

(01:05:41):
It was actually a lot of fun. And I had
an epiphany that I was very excited to have, which
was that science is the conversation that helps us further
ourselves as a species, and that it's already happening, and
so we can just really lean into that, and that's
a really good thing to do in my opinion. But
I think that is otherwise what we're going to say
about propaganda. We'll wrap up this two parter here. I

(01:06:03):
would love to hear your thoughts on propaganda or anything
that we talked about in this discussion. If you'd like
to offer constructive criticism or just agree with us in
the loudest possible way, you can email us directly info
at wwdwwdpodcast dot com. You can also reach us on
the social media platforms. We do look forward to hearing
from you. If you offer something particularly useful, then we
will read that as a piece of listener mail, which

(01:06:24):
is something we really enjoy doing. Yeah, if you like
us and you like to support us, one way that
you can do that is leaving us a rating and
a review, liking, subscribing, telling a friend, word of mouth
is a great way to share this. You can also
join us on Patreon, and if you do that you
can get early episodes, ad free episodes, bonus content, and
maybe the best thing of all is that I will

(01:06:45):
read the list of names of people who have been
so generous as to join us, and that list of
people is Mike, m Meghan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley,
Kiara and Charlie. Thank you all for your incredible support.
We really appreciate you, We adore you on every level,
and you two can be one of those names if

(01:07:06):
you head over there. And as I said, you also
get episodes without ads. We'll still say the ad thing,
but we try and make those seguys fun so that
they're like worth listening to, but then you don't have
to listen to the actual ads. So it's a win win, right,
You win, We win, the advertisers lose, which means that
society wins. Yeah, so it's a win win win. That's
what I'm saying, and that's that's how it goes. But

(01:07:27):
before we move on to the final thing that we
do here, which is recommendations, and recommendations are really fun,
so you want to stick around for those, I also
need to thank my team of people without whom I
could not make this podcast running and fact checking. From
Shane and myself, thank you for recording with me today.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Shane, Hey, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our audio
engineer who when you hear the music in this, when
you hear our voices sound like they are making cohesive
sentences that you can understand. That's thanks to Justin. He's
really good at his job. That is Justin. Also, thank
you all for listening. Talking into the void is something
I probably would do, but it doesn't help anyoney, So
I appreciate you being here and hope that you got

(01:08:06):
something out of this discussion. And I think that's what
we have to say before we move to our recommendations.
Unless is there anything that I'm forgetting or you'd like
to add before we get to our recommendations. Nope, let's
recommend some stuff. Yay, recommendations. I'm gonna go first because

(01:08:30):
I feel like I wanna end on yours. Okay, for
those people who have any overlap and their taste in
music with mine. My favorite band just put out an album,
a brand new album, about a week and a half
ago from this recording. I think this is between the
Buried and me. This is a like prog metal group.

(01:08:50):
They put out an album called The Blue Nowhere. This
is very weird, and I'm so far, very optimistic that
I'm going to enjoy this lot. I recommended a single
they put out a few weeks ago, I think, but
the whole album is out now and it is some
of the most creative stuff they've ever done. And that's

(01:09:11):
really saying something. This is a band it was basically
seems like their only goal is to be creative. They
really were stretching themselves this time, and in terms of
like pushing the envelope what is normal? What is even music?
In some cases. Yeah, So it's hard for me to
recommend like full throated saying I love this album, But

(01:09:33):
so far, I'm really interested in the things I've heard
on this album, and it actually bodes really well for
this album that there's nothing that I'm like, oh, this
is great, because with this band in particular, it usually
takes me several listens and then I really love it.
And it's because it's so complicated and like so nuanced
and so creative and so unique. Yeah, that it's like

(01:09:54):
it's hard to glom onto anything right away, and that's
what makes them great. Now. Most people hear that, and
they're like, that doesn't sound like anything I would want
to do, and I understand that, but sure, if you like,
if you like metal at all, I think you can
probably I would give this a very solid try, and
I bet you'll find some things on this that you
really like.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Yeah, yeah, it's super super interesting. As a bonus recommendation,
I don't know if I've ever talked to you about Intronaut,
but I feel like you would like that band too.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
I know Internat Yeah, I've listened to them.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
They're great, love them, Okay, cool, Yeah, I second that recommendation.
It's a fascinating record.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
Fascinating is a good good word for it. It's fascinating
for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
All Right. So I'm going to recommend an experience. So
I yesterday went to Epcot, and so as a Florida
native and Disney annual pass holder, I get to go
experience the parks like all the time whenever I want.
And so yesterday I went to Epcot because they're doing
the Disney Food and Wine Festival, which every year they

(01:10:50):
have like special food offerings and snacks when you do
the World Showcase. If for those of you are not
familiar with Epcot, like you can kind of like walk
and drink around the world. Every like country that they
fat has like unique food offerings that are like you know,
based in that country and all that, which is really nice.
So during Food and Wine they do that, but it's
like on steroids. So like now they've got that on
top of having multiple food options. And the beautiful thing

(01:11:14):
in the last few years with Disney is they've been
really making an effort to make good, decent plant based
options for people. And so this year's Food and Wine
had some of the best plant based, like and vegetarian
options that I have ever had in my life. So
as a couple examples, there is an Impossible chili macaroni
and cheese that you can get. It It comes with
a vegan cheese and sour cream. It's made with the

(01:11:35):
Possible meat, which is really good. There is a slider
that you can get. It's a Montreal slider, a style
slider that's got looks like a type of like a
maybe like a cranberry jam or something like that, naoli
on it, like a garlic, like a vegan garlic aoli,
and it's on a vegan bun.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
There was a spicy Impossible sausage that had like some
like grilled peppers and onions on it that was really good.
They had buffalo chicken tenders with a vegan blue cheese
crumble on it. There was a guava cake that you
could get, like, I mean, it was like pretty pretty incredible.
The falafel was really good. I mean it was all
like I mean, I was able to eat like halfway
around the world and I was like, I can't eat anymore.

(01:12:12):
This is too much, and it was all it was
all vegan and vegetarian. Like they've got impossible musaka in Greece.
They've got potato and pia samosas which were delicious. Like,
it was a pretty great time. So if you're in
Orlando and you like to go to Disney and you
like to enjoy the Food and Wine Festival, go and
enjoy it because they do have really great food. And
I also got to see Starship play yesterday. Okay, she's

(01:12:34):
like the whole thing. If you don't know who Starship is, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
We built this city on rocket.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Saw them play at Epcot in the middle of the day.
So it was a good time.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Wow wow Okay, so hold on you you said everything
there was vegan or they just had a lot of
plant based options.

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
They have a ton of plant based options. So like
every every country that you've visit at every stop has
a bunch of plant based options. So I see, So
there's a bunch of vegetarian options, but there's I mean,
and there's les vegan options because it's it's for whatever.
But like the vegan options are still more than they've
had any other year, and they're all very good.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
Yeah. Well, Ron Desandis must be furious about this. Oh
he's so mad. It's probably working on legislation to shut
it down. Oh he's so mad. Yeah, he's so mad.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
He's stopping his high heels all over the place.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
He and RFKJ are like actively working to dismantle anything
that Disney does that has vegan options. Yeah. Yeah, they
hate it. They hate it. They're like the soy, the
soil'll get you. Yeah, they really do hate it. Perfect. Well,
we ran very long, but we kind of knew we
would with these propaganda episodes. Maybe we should have done
three episodes, but this is where we find ourselves. Hope

(01:13:43):
that you enjoyed what you heard today. I think we'll
go ahead and close it out there right into us.
Let us know your thoughts leave us already of review.
I think I said all those things, so I guess
I'll just say thanks for listening again. And this is Abraham,
this is Shane. We're out. So yeah, you've been listening
to Why We Do What We Do.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
and we hope you have an awesome day

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Propaganda: How You Are Being Tricked pt. 2