Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Daniel Moody. Pre recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: it is time for rest and respite, and so I'm
Speaker 1: very excited to bring you a lot of pre recorded
Speaker 1: fantastic interviews and solo combos that I will be having
Speaker 1: while wok F is out on break and today I
Speaker 1: am super excited for you all to hear this conversation
Speaker 1: with Andy Norman, who is an award winning author of
Speaker 1: the book Mental Immunity. He is also the co founder
Speaker 1: and CEO of Mental Immunity Project. What is that you ask,
Speaker 1: Let me tell you. The Mental Immunity Project aims to
Speaker 1: reduce the public's susceptibility to bad information, extremism, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, propaganda,
Speaker 1: and more by equipping them with skills they need to
Speaker 1: identify and reject misleading or manipulative content. Doctor Norman is
Speaker 1: the award winning author of Mental Immunity, Infectious Ideas, Mind Parasites,
Speaker 1: and the Search for a Better Way to Think. His
Speaker 1: work has appeared everywhere from Scientific American Psychology Today, Free Inquiry,
Speaker 1: the Humanists, and other places. I was so excited to
Speaker 1: delve into this conversation with doctor Norman because I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the conversation that we needed to be having
Speaker 1: back in twenty fifteen. This is the conversation that needed
Speaker 1: to be pervent across the media about how to deal
Speaker 1: with an entity like Donald Trump that the truth clearly
Speaker 1: abates him at all times, What to do in order
Speaker 1: to protect yourself from habitual liars and an entire party
Speaker 1: that would create an entire apparatus that included one of
Speaker 1: the most widely watched networks, to create a feeder system
Speaker 1: for their lies right that would then expose millions upon
Speaker 1: millions of people to what doctor Norman refers to as
Speaker 1: mind parasites, These things that kind of get into your
Speaker 1: brain and begin to eat at your ability to decipher
Speaker 1: between right and wrong, to be able to decipher between
Speaker 1: truth and fact. When you plant seeds as Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and the Republican Party has done to destroy faith in
Speaker 1: agencies in what you see with your own eyes, you
Speaker 1: begin to believe nothing, which makes it easier for an
Speaker 1: authoritarian to take over and just take back control. Because
Speaker 1: as doctor Norman and I will begin to discuss, is
Speaker 1: that it is very hard right in an open society,
Speaker 1: which a democracy is right where we are having conversations
Speaker 1: about how we want our society to look as opposed
Speaker 1: to it being dictated to us from up on high.
Speaker 1: But when you have those avenues of communication and information
Speaker 1: corroded and eroded with series after a series of lies
Speaker 1: in gaslight and misinformation, discerning the truth becomes really difficult,
Speaker 1: as we have seen, and so here in this book
Speaker 1: and with his project, doctor Norman really talks about the
Speaker 1: ways that we can protect ourselves and the ways that
Speaker 1: we can protect those around us. Check out this conversation
Speaker 1: coming up next with doctor Andy Norman. Folks. I am
Speaker 1: very happy to welcome to WOKF doctor Andy Norman, who
Speaker 1: is the award winning author of Mental Immunity, Infectious, Infectious Ideas,
Speaker 1: Mind Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think,
Speaker 1: and is the co founder and CEO of Mental Immunity Project,
Speaker 1: which aims to reduce the public susceptibility to bad information, extremism, pseudoscience,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, propaganda, and more by equipping them with the
Speaker 1: skills they need to identify and reject misleading or manipulative content.
Speaker 1: Um Doctor Norman, let me say this that your work
Speaker 1: is needed now more than ever, which I'm sure you
Speaker 1: are well aware of and know. Yeah, thank you, And
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, I guess to start off with.
Speaker 1: You know, we are living in such a polarized time
Speaker 1: and such a dangerous time as it pertains to the
Speaker 1: information silos that we live in. Yes, the information silos,
Speaker 1: meaning that we are able to find whatever quote unquote
Speaker 1: truth aligns with our own feelings and desires depending on
Speaker 1: what platform that we decide to go to. We no
Speaker 1: longer live in a time when there are four channels
Speaker 1: that we're all watching to get the same news from.
Speaker 1: You can get whatever news that you want. And so
Speaker 1: first off is that doesn't seem to be changing. It
Speaker 1: only seems to be increasing. That's right, talk to us,
Speaker 1: what is at stake if we don't have the agility
Speaker 1: to be able to create mental immunity when it's coming,
Speaker 1: the disinformation is coming at such an expedited rate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the more scholars study the way misinformation spreads
Speaker 2: through societies, through cultures, the more they realize it behaves
Speaker 2: an awful lot like a disease. And our minds actually
Speaker 2: struggle with missing disinformation and pretty much the same way
Speaker 2: that our bodies, immune systems struggle with pathogens. In fact,
Speaker 2: people now experts now take the analogies so seriously that
Speaker 2: they're starting to think of bad ideas as minded parasites
Speaker 2: of a sort. And by bad ideas here I just
Speaker 2: mean misinformation or falsehoods, or even you know, ideas spread
Speaker 2: hate and disnction. Those ideas too can be thought of
Speaker 2: as parasites of the mind. The good news is that
Speaker 2: our minds evolved in a rich stew of problematic ideas,
Speaker 2: and we actually have the capacity to become very good
Speaker 2: at discriminating between the good stuff and the bad stuff.
Speaker 2: So our minds actually have evolved immune systems that, under
Speaker 2: the right conditions, can do a really good job of
Speaker 2: keeping our minds relatively infection free. It's important to note
Speaker 2: that nobody has a mind completely free of mind infections.
Speaker 2: We all harbor bad ideas, and if we don't take
Speaker 2: that to heart and bring the kind of humility needed
Speaker 2: to unlearned things, then we're going to have it. We're
Speaker 2: really going to struggle. In this day and age, we
Speaker 2: think that what we call subtractive learning, learning to let
Speaker 2: go of ideas that probably don't measure up. That's as
Speaker 2: important as inputing new information that's that should be added
Speaker 2: to the mind's knowledge stockpile.
Speaker 1: Let's dig into the idea of mind parasites for a minute.
Speaker 1: As somebody who loves sci fi like I do, it
Speaker 1: conjures ideas in my mind. You know, of aliens, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty and pretty creepy. So can you just explain what
Speaker 1: you mean by by the concept and and the term
Speaker 1: so that people get to get a get a better
Speaker 1: sense of what that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so I think the first thing, well, I'm
Speaker 2: glad that concept is different enough to catch your attention.
Speaker 2: Second thing I'll say is don't don't don't be too
Speaker 2: freaked out about it that the bad ideas that have
Speaker 2: crept into your mind all these times are aren't suddenly
Speaker 2: going to come alive and you know, get the way
Speaker 2: through your brain. It's nothing like that. But the fact
Speaker 2: is ideas don't always serve the host the minds that
Speaker 2: host them. They don't always serve them well. And to
Speaker 2: really reflect on the So philosophers have been reflecting deeply
Speaker 2: on this fact for a long time and trying to
Speaker 2: develop methods to better weed out the problematic ideas from
Speaker 2: the good ones. And some of the most powerful methods
Speaker 2: involved just learning to ask good questions, learn to listen
Speaker 2: to your doubts, express them with questions, and especially common
Speaker 2: use of clarifying questions, and that can go a long
Speaker 2: way towards improving your thinking and helping you make better decisions.
Speaker 1: You know, right now, I think that what makes me
Speaker 1: excite but also nervous about the work that you do
Speaker 1: is that it requires a desire to want to think
Speaker 1: and be better. Right, It requires a desire, like you
Speaker 1: had said earlier, to unlearn and a humility to unlearn
Speaker 1: bad ideas. And we are living in a time of
Speaker 1: strong men, right that are spreading disinformation, and humility is
Speaker 1: not a part of that package, right It toxic masculinity
Speaker 1: and aggression is actually a part of that passage. So
Speaker 1: to say to myself, hmm, let me ask myself questions
Speaker 1: as opposed to I know everything that there is to
Speaker 1: know is almost like the first step in order to
Speaker 1: get to the place of mental immunity. And so how
Speaker 1: do you how do we navigate that? Because for someone
Speaker 1: like me and listeners to this show, they are about expansion, right,
Speaker 1: they are about learning more and being curious.
Speaker 2: And my guess is most of your listeners bring a
Speaker 2: fair amount of.
Speaker 1: Humility to right right, right, And I think that we're
Speaker 1: out of time of there being a lack and almost
Speaker 1: as celebration of the lack of intellectual curiosity. Let me
Speaker 1: just follow like sheep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean you can see how I mean.
Speaker 2: For example, Rush Limbaugh was a radio host who would
Speaker 2: use bombast and overconfidence. His overconfidence, his lack of humility
Speaker 2: was really appealing to people because it seemed like I
Speaker 2: imagine it felt to some as though it was there's
Speaker 2: a way of orienting yourself in a confusing world. I mean,
Speaker 2: this guy at least has strong opinions and they don't waiver,
Speaker 2: and he sticks by his guns, So I want to
Speaker 2: be like that. That's can be really disorienting, both morally
Speaker 2: and practically. That the people most worth emulating, the people
Speaker 2: most worth listening and learning from, are extremely humble and
Speaker 2: are willing to rethink things. And as our world grows
Speaker 2: more and more complex in terms of the information that
Speaker 2: bombards us, we all need to learn to rethink things
Speaker 2: and also and to bring the kind of open mindedness
Speaker 2: and humility that allows people to do that. Philusphers have
Speaker 2: noticed for thousands of years that the least humble people
Speaker 2: are often society's biggest problems. Right, So if you want
Speaker 2: to be on the side of the angels, so to speak,
Speaker 2: instead of say yeah, I know this for sure, say
Speaker 2: I think that's true. I mean, last time I checked
Speaker 2: it seemed like so. One thing really good thinkers do
Speaker 2: is they try not to think in black and white,
Speaker 2: are in absolute terms. They think in shades of gray.
Speaker 2: So if you realize, I mean, if you're considering saying
Speaker 2: something or asserting something, it's tempting to just want to
Speaker 2: say it in very stark terms because you sound confident,
Speaker 2: you sound decisive, and people admire that. But if the
Speaker 2: truth is better served by saying, you know, I'm like
Speaker 2: eighty five percent confident this is true, but of course
Speaker 2: there are there's a possibility I might be wrong. Learning
Speaker 2: to say that to yourself and even saying it to
Speaker 2: others can make you part of the solution instead of
Speaker 2: part of the problem. We're at a moment in history
Speaker 2: where our entire culture needs to move away from sort
Speaker 2: of absolutist thinking and become more sensitive and actually better listeners.
Speaker 2: Almost the more. One of the most important skills in
Speaker 2: all of this is learning how to listen with humility
Speaker 2: and learn from people who's used different from ours.
Speaker 1: You know, I often say on this show and others
Speaker 1: that from the political perspective, the foundation of a democracy
Speaker 1: is based in critical thinking, right. It is based in
Speaker 1: the citizen turie's ability to think critically about who they
Speaker 1: are choosing to represent them right, and how they are
Speaker 1: going to be best served. Yes, and what I see
Speaker 1: now is a society, not just here but globally that
Speaker 1: is really being driven by fear. And I think about
Speaker 1: fear honestly, Doctor Normans as a different kind of mental parasite.
Speaker 2: I think that's right. So emotions can spread by contagion. Right,
Speaker 2: if somebody in your room, in the crowd where you
Speaker 2: are starting to freak out and ask act scared, you
Speaker 2: can actually contract that fear. It can spread through a
Speaker 2: crowd almost like a disease. And so emotions can spread virally,
Speaker 2: so to speak. And fear is one of the most
Speaker 2: Fear doesn't bring out the best in people. No, Fear, hate, resentment,
Speaker 2: these are the emotions that tend to make us the
Speaker 2: worst versions of ourselves. Compassion, sympathy, patience, these are the
Speaker 2: qualities that tend to bring out the best in people,
Speaker 2: and our fast moving information world seems to reward people
Speaker 2: who are quick and decisive and confident rather than people
Speaker 2: who are careful and cautious and slow.
Speaker 1: I wonder, then, if fear two spreads like a virus,
Speaker 1: and you have a political party, for instance, that has
Speaker 1: weaponized that fear in order to control the masses, would
Speaker 1: be that it isn't just enough to shut it off right,
Speaker 1: that there has to be a formulation that looks like deprogramming,
Speaker 1: because you've already if it is a virus and I've
Speaker 1: already come into contact with it, then it's already spreading
Speaker 1: around my system. Just shutting down doesn't stop the virus
Speaker 1: from moving. And so I'm wondering, you know, what does
Speaker 1: it look like once you vite because again this comes
Speaker 1: with awareness and consciousness. You have to be aware that
Speaker 1: you've caught the cold before you can rid yourself of it.
Speaker 1: So I'm really curious as to what it looks like
Speaker 1: then for those people, let's say I'll use this for
Speaker 1: reference of this show, the January sixth people who were
Speaker 1: convicted when asked, now, there many of them are just
Speaker 1: like they didn't know what they were doing. They got
Speaker 1: caught up right, is the the defense that they have,
Speaker 1: whether or not they believe that, or whether or not
Speaker 1: they're using it as a way to lessen sentences. There
Speaker 1: are some that have testified about needing to deprogram themselves,
Speaker 1: so I'm just curious as to what that looks like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, one of the things we're learning is
Speaker 2: that it's a lot harder to deprogram, say a cult member,
Speaker 2: than it is to prevent somebody to give people the
Speaker 2: skills they need to prevent from being seduced by the
Speaker 2: cult leader in the first place in the first place.
Speaker 2: So prevention, an ounce of prevention, is worth a pound
Speaker 2: of cure. A little bit of effort can go a
Speaker 2: long way to prevent people from being exploited by, say,
Speaker 2: manipulative messaging, But it's much harder after people have bought
Speaker 2: into that manipulative message and formed an identity around it,
Speaker 2: and then they fight like heck to main the sucker
Speaker 2: or the dupe of the person who's manipulating them with information.
Speaker 2: The astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said that you know, once
Speaker 2: you give your belief or your credulity to a charlatan,
Speaker 2: you almost never get it back. That propagandists and conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories and cult leaders have ways of hacking into your mind,
Speaker 2: winning your allegiance, preventing you from really thinking for yourself.
Speaker 2: And of course we can't run a democracy if people
Speaker 2: are falling prey to disinformation peddlers left and right. And
Speaker 2: of course this is one of the deepest challenges for
Speaker 2: any democracy because in an open society, we believe that
Speaker 2: people should be able to speak their minds, should be
Speaker 2: able to raise criticisms. But right now people are we've
Speaker 2: treated that idea as so sayrid that we're allowing people
Speaker 2: to weaponize information in ways that harm others. Right, So,
Speaker 2: in just the same way that it's not okay to
Speaker 2: I don't know, hypnotize and brainwash somebody, it's not okay
Speaker 2: to set up an info Wars platform and brainwash tens
Speaker 2: of millions of people. In fact, if the former is problematic,
Speaker 2: the latter is even millions of times more so.
Speaker 1: So, what does it look like then? You know, with
Speaker 1: the time we have, what does it look like as
Speaker 1: we're heading into an election year, right, I can't stress
Speaker 1: enough that it's going to be the most consequential of
Speaker 1: our lifetimes about whether we hold on to democracy or
Speaker 1: America falls to authoritarianism? And what does it look like
Speaker 1: when people know? Right, I'm I'm talking to the seventy
Speaker 1: percent because I personally believe that the thirty percent that
Speaker 1: have become hypnotized by trump Ism magaism, that they are
Speaker 1: not coming back right, That is my that is my
Speaker 1: They are very hard to reach, that is my belief.
Speaker 1: But there are seventy percent, the majority of people. How
Speaker 1: do they prepare themselves to be mindful of the disinformation
Speaker 1: and not fall prey to it?
Speaker 2: Let me offer what I think is maybe the most highest,
Speaker 2: highest impact thing that we as a nation need to realize.
Speaker 2: There are people out there who are peddling counter narratives
Speaker 2: just to create confusion and to make people feel resignation
Speaker 2: and to just give up and then not vote. So
Speaker 2: if you feel like, yeah, the Dems say this, but
Speaker 2: the Republicans say that, who's to say it's all bullshit?
Speaker 2: And then you just don't even exercise your right to vote.
Speaker 2: If you do that, the disinformation peddlers have won because
Speaker 2: they've manipulated you into not exercising your judgment, into not
Speaker 2: using your ability to think for yourself to help protect
Speaker 2: our freedoms in our democracy. So I would urge your
Speaker 2: listeners to realize that there will be a crazy lot
Speaker 2: of inflammatory information flying around as we approach the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four election. Tensions will run high. People will be fearful, angry, resentful,
Speaker 2: All of these emotions will run high. Realize that you
Speaker 2: don't have to let that information trigger you. Keep your calm,
Speaker 2: keep your cool, be a good citizen, Get out and
Speaker 2: exercise your right to vote for the party, the one
Speaker 2: party in our nation anymore that is actually trying to
Speaker 2: do the best for all of us than just try
Speaker 2: to glorify a leader who will take advantage of anyone
Speaker 2: and everyone. So don't despair is the main thing. Stay strong,
Speaker 2: get out there, help your neighbors vote. If you can,
Speaker 2: donate to a political cause so that I mean Trump
Speaker 2: was raising lots of money to get reelected, and if
Speaker 2: he takes if he takes the White House again, I'm
Speaker 2: not at all sure our democracy will survive. And we
Speaker 2: who care about our democracy need to rise up in
Speaker 2: huge numbers on election day. And it's time to prepare
Speaker 2: yourself to do that now, and not to let all
Speaker 2: the bullshit that's going to overwhelm us for the next
Speaker 2: few months deter you from doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't, I can't agree more. This is
Speaker 1: the This is the drum that I beat on this
Speaker 1: show every single day because I do think, you know,
Speaker 1: And the the last question that I have for you,
Speaker 1: because I do think like fear, despair and hopelessness too,
Speaker 1: is can be viral.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, And I wonder for you, you know, to
Speaker 3: offer to the audience that by plugging in every single day,
Speaker 3: seeing violent, horrific wars, seeing death, and just feeling like
Speaker 3: they cannot hold this grief anymore, they want to shut down, right,
Speaker 3: they want to not discuss I don't want to talk
Speaker 3: about politics.
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about these things. And it's
Speaker 1: the conversation that allows us the ability to expand. So
Speaker 1: what do you offer to those people that are that
Speaker 1: are struggling with hopefulness?
Speaker 2: Well? I have to remind myself almost every day that
Speaker 2: the newspaper is a bias sample of stories about problems
Speaker 2: mostly right, Yeah, And when people quietly resolve things and
Speaker 2: solve problems, a lot of times it doesn't make the news.
Speaker 2: And so our information diets tend to make us more
Speaker 2: pessimistic and despairing than we probably ought to be, So
Speaker 2: it's worth just remembering that, stepping back from it and saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: if all I read is the news, it's natural I'm
Speaker 2: going to feel kind of down. But there are lots
Speaker 2: of things going on behind the scenes that are pushing
Speaker 2: humanity in the right direction. So stay, stay strong, keep
Speaker 2: hope alive.
Speaker 1: That was a perfect place to end on your call
Speaker 1: to action to keep Hope alive, folks. I will say
Speaker 1: that the book Mental Immunity, Infectious Ideas, Mind Parasites, and
Speaker 1: the Search for a Better Way to Think, is absolutely
Speaker 1: worth the read for those of you who are trying
Speaker 1: to stave off disinformation but also raise your levels of hopefulness.
Speaker 1: And also do check out Mental Immunity Project because I
Speaker 1: think that it is absolutely worth the discussion, particularly during
Speaker 1: this season when we're gathering with other folks. Doctor Andy Norman,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for making the time for WOKF.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Danielle, keep up the good work.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, dear friends on WOKF.
Speaker 1: As always, power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.