Speaker 1: And broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the
Speaker 1: George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty, arm.
Speaker 2: Strong and Getti and now Hee Armstrong and Getty Strong
Speaker 2: and Not live from Studio c Armstrong and Getty. We're off,
Speaker 2: We're taking a break.
Speaker 3: Come on enjoy this carefully curated Armstrong and Getty replay.
Speaker 3: And as long as we're off, perhaps you'd like to
Speaker 3: catch up on podcasts, subscribe to Armstrong and Getty on demand,
Speaker 3: or one more thing we think you'll enjoy.
Speaker 4: It, sir.
Speaker 5: YouTube will start guessing your age based on the types
Speaker 5: of videos the user searches for and the categories of
Speaker 5: videos they watch. For example, I watch restorations of World
Speaker 5: War One, cigarette lighters and videos about knee pain, and
Speaker 5: that's why YouTube correctly guessed my age of two hundred
Speaker 5: and forty five.
Speaker 6: So, honest to God, there needs to be some sort
Speaker 6: of algorithm reset button that you can do.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: I shouldn't be afraid to search on things and think
Speaker 6: I'd like to look that up, but then I'll end
Speaker 6: up with nothing but that for the next six months.
Speaker 4: So I don't look up some things like I had a.
Speaker 6: Brief like week where I enjoyed those videos where they
Speaker 6: have babies, like they have the audio from Trump, but
Speaker 6: it's a baby Trump or whatever.
Speaker 4: I enjoyed that for a couple of days.
Speaker 6: But you know, Instagram or YouTube or whoever thought, well,
Speaker 6: this is the only thing he likes in the world.
Speaker 4: He likes it better than air, and so that's the
Speaker 4: only thing I get fed. How do you turn that off? Yeah,
Speaker 4: just give it time.
Speaker 6: I remember I needed to look up something about the
Speaker 6: OJ triud then endless OJA videos.
Speaker 4: I got one I need. I don't need.
Speaker 6: I don't need to OJ videos when I wake up
Speaker 6: in the morning and click on YouTube. I don't need
Speaker 6: fifteen different OJ videos.
Speaker 3: Attack is going in the opposite direction. They are utterly convinced,
Speaker 3: knowing you everything about.
Speaker 6: I agree, but they're but you need But surely, but
Speaker 6: surely they realize they're wrong about this.
Speaker 4: So there's got to be a way to fix that.
Speaker 4: I don't know how they.
Speaker 6: Would differentiate between things that actually are your passion, because
Speaker 6: you can send me pretty much endless I don't know
Speaker 6: guitar stuff, but OJ talking babies or you know, I
Speaker 6: look up a review of a bicycle, then I buy
Speaker 6: the bicycle.
Speaker 4: I don't need any more bicycle videos for the rest
Speaker 4: of my life.
Speaker 6: Right, There's got to be a way to believe, to
Speaker 6: clear out your algorithms. It'd be cool if you could
Speaker 6: go to a page and it lists all of your
Speaker 6: things that it thinks you're into, and you could click
Speaker 6: the boxes and say, I am into these, I'm not
Speaker 6: into these anymore, or score.
Speaker 3: It one to five. You know, yeah, yeah, they'll probably
Speaker 3: get that right at some point. But again, the trend
Speaker 3: is toward more knowledge of you, which will be hacked
Speaker 3: by the way, and more intimate and human like companionship
Speaker 3: like it's your best friend, to which I say no, no,
Speaker 3: thank you, and you always say there's no stopping it.
Speaker 3: I'm not worried about society. I'm worried about me and
Speaker 3: the people I care about. That you do not have
Speaker 3: to go along with what Silicon Valley thinks your life
Speaker 3: ought to be.
Speaker 4: Like I'm going to start a religion. It's not going
Speaker 4: to be much of a religion.
Speaker 3: But I'm going to start a religion our only principle,
Speaker 3: and you can have your other religion too.
Speaker 4: That's fine.
Speaker 3: Is going to be sync for yourself. Don't just buy
Speaker 3: what they're selling.
Speaker 6: Joe starting a religion is Missianic complex finally gets on
Speaker 6: the air.
Speaker 3: Like, and I will be permitted to have at least
Speaker 3: a dozen wives in this religion.
Speaker 4: Just of course, go put the territory.
Speaker 6: I clicked on one of the Sydney Sweeney videos for
Speaker 6: the Blue Jeen thing for the show. But now Instagram thinks, oh,
Speaker 6: you're one of those guys that likes to look at
Speaker 6: you young hotties.
Speaker 4: No I'm not.
Speaker 6: I'm not, and I don't need endless young hot women.
Speaker 6: That's the last thing I need. I know where to
Speaker 6: find that on the internet if.
Speaker 4: I want to look for it. Good lord.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we all need to take turns watching the
Speaker 3: hen house.
Speaker 4: There are foxes watching the henhouses.
Speaker 3: Of education, we've figured that out, and indoctrinating our children
Speaker 3: and a couple of generations have been completely screwed up.
Speaker 3: Now we have a lot of good folks getting on
Speaker 3: school boards resisting you know, these perverse state laws and
Speaker 3: board of education decisions, stuff like that.
Speaker 4: Keep it up, y'all, you're doing great.
Speaker 3: Got to get on those school boards and become part
Speaker 3: of your local education scene. So the communists don't control
Speaker 3: all of it libraries are the same thing. And I
Speaker 3: remember hearing this a long time ago. Somebody was talking
Speaker 3: to us. It might have been in a conversation with
Speaker 3: Jim James Lindsay or one of his associates, talking about how,
Speaker 3: by far the most liberal parts of the American scene
Speaker 3: are at teachers, colleges and the education, education and libraries.
Speaker 3: I remember seeing a poll that like, the library science
Speaker 3: departments in universities are the most liberal or progressive or Marxist,
Speaker 3: And I remember thinking at the time, boy, that's weird,
Speaker 3: and it doesn't matter really, I mean library science.
Speaker 4: How many graduates are there in that Well.
Speaker 6: If they decide what books go in the library, that's
Speaker 6: a pretty big deal, exactly.
Speaker 3: I was an idiot, an idiot for what I thought,
Speaker 3: and I kick myself daily for it.
Speaker 4: A couple of stories for you real quickly.
Speaker 3: The Philadelphia Public Libraries have hosted and are going to
Speaker 3: host another one this weekend anti Israel storytime events that
Speaker 3: teach children that Israel senselessly murdered thousands.
Speaker 4: Of kids in Gaza.
Speaker 3: That's a quote, depict a map in which which Israel
Speaker 3: is entirely replaced with Palestine, and create art projects for
Speaker 3: the little kids to do promoting the Palestinian Liberation movement
Speaker 3: in the public library, in the public libraries in Philadelphia.
Speaker 4: That's correct. Here's the library. Isn't that the Philadelphia Public Library.
Speaker 6: That's where Rocky climbs to the top of the steps
Speaker 6: and jumps around, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Well, he'd have gotten beaten down by a bunch of
Speaker 3: young women in a cafea these days. One of the
Speaker 3: storytime events on the website features and advertisement alongside of
Speaker 3: a child wearing a headscarf that features an image of
Speaker 3: the Dome of the Rock in the Arabic phrase Jerusalem,
Speaker 3: we are coming, a slogan Hamas and Hesbela used to
Speaker 3: call for the destruction of the Jewish state. The library
Speaker 3: advertises the event again for I think this Saturday, as
Speaker 3: for as being for children of all ages.
Speaker 6: I gave up on the library quite a few years ago,
Speaker 6: my local library because it became a holmost camp. That
Speaker 6: was my main thing. It wasn't what books they had
Speaker 6: in there, just there. It was just full of homeless
Speaker 6: people in the bathroom and I would never take my
Speaker 6: kids there. Dad, Can I go to the bathroom?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: Too dangerous at my public library.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, man, I could read you more of what
Speaker 3: they're trying to teach the children about the Israeli Hamas conflict,
Speaker 3: but it is unfreaking believable. So getting to Jack's point,
Speaker 3: I thought this was so interesting. Zach Bissinett wrote this
Speaker 3: piece for the Free Press, the death of the public library.
Speaker 3: And it's not because people are reading less, or because
Speaker 3: of the Internet or anything like that. It's because of
Speaker 3: the bums and junkies all over the country. Sure, And
Speaker 3: he describes his local library and how it's unusable now.
Speaker 4: Sure, and if you take little kids.
Speaker 6: I'm talking about the big in Sacramento, their downtown library.
Speaker 4: I haven't been there in decades. I used to go
Speaker 4: every week.
Speaker 6: I was there every week checking out audiobooks or books
Speaker 6: or whatever. But no way, unless it's changed recently, and
Speaker 6: I doubt it, as I would take kids there right right.
Speaker 3: Well, and there's a twist to the story coming up
Speaker 3: in a second, But he hit some stats over the country.
Speaker 3: All over the country, libraries are seeing fewer visitors and
Speaker 3: more problems per Resident visits to public libraries fell by
Speaker 3: fifty seven percent in the ten years ending in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two.
Speaker 4: I don't know does anybody else have.
Speaker 3: Cherished memories of going to the library as kid, bringing
Speaker 3: ni kids to the library my mom.
Speaker 6: I'd go with my mom in our town, and I
Speaker 6: just assumed I'd be taking my kids a lot, but Nope.
Speaker 4: Absolutely loved our local library as a kid. It was
Speaker 4: like the world's greatest toy store for me. All these
Speaker 4: wonderful books. Amazing.
Speaker 3: So fifty seven percent decline in ten years. Meanwhile, a
Speaker 3: report from the Urban Libraries Council found that between twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen and twenty twenty three, security incidents rose that it's
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifteen member libraries, even as visits fell
Speaker 3: another thirty five percent. Not a coincidence that visits are
Speaker 3: up incidents are down. It's all about drug addicts, junkies, freaks, weirdos, etc.
Speaker 4: Using the library as a home.
Speaker 3: So here's the twist, as Zach Wright, if there are
Speaker 3: two people who represent competing visions for what library should be,
Speaker 3: they're librarian trainers, Ryan Dowd and Steve Albrecht. They're friends,
Speaker 3: but their approaches are different. Dowd, who once ran a
Speaker 3: homeless shelter in Aurora, Illinois, is the author of the
Speaker 3: book Quote The Librarian's Guide to Homelessness, an empathy driven
Speaker 3: approach to solving problems, preventing conflict, and serving everyone.
Speaker 6: Where in the charter of libraries did it have anything
Speaker 6: to do with solving housing problems?
Speaker 3: He told me he originally wanted to title the book
Speaker 3: how to Run Your Library Like a Homeless Shelter. When
Speaker 3: I asked if he was joking, he said he wasn't,
Speaker 3: At least he wasn't sure he was. He has given
Speaker 3: seminars for roughly half of the nation's librarians, including most
Speaker 3: of the largest systems, and his influence is unquestioned. He
Speaker 3: is a giant in the world of library administration.
Speaker 6: So my guests would be He believes the downtrauden need
Speaker 6: access to this free service. Those of us who have
Speaker 6: jobs we can afford to buy books or.
Speaker 4: Well, and it's not even about the books.
Speaker 3: It's about it's a place for bombs and junkies to
Speaker 3: hang out, wash.
Speaker 6: Your feet in the sink, look at best porn on
Speaker 6: the computers.
Speaker 3: And again, keep in mind, this guy is like a
Speaker 3: super heavyweight in American library nuts. His essential belief is
Speaker 3: that not only do the homeless have every right to
Speaker 3: spend their days in libraries, but that librarians should view
Speaker 3: their needs as a critical part of the job. He
Speaker 3: believes librarians should be trained to dispense narcan. One of
Speaker 3: his seminars is called Jerks with Holmes, How to deal
Speaker 3: with members of the public who are being jerks about
Speaker 3: homeless folks.
Speaker 4: See that's a.
Speaker 6: Guy who believes that. Say, he's not just a Marxist
Speaker 6: who wants to disrupt the system. Believes that the system
Speaker 6: did something to cause these people to be this way,
Speaker 6: and it's our job to at the library help them.
Speaker 4: I guess you're gonna think I made this up.
Speaker 3: His scripts for addressing problematic behaviors include examples like in
Speaker 3: his seminars, Hey, I don't care if you urinate on
Speaker 3: the Harry Potter books, but the politicians have a no
Speaker 3: urinating policy.
Speaker 4: Therefore I have to ask you to stop wow.
Speaker 3: Dowd advocates for inclusion, even when it comes it seems
Speaker 3: to come at the expense of the library's environment. In
Speaker 3: Dowd's books, some people who complain about the homeless are
Speaker 3: everyday sadists. As for the body oder that permeates so
Speaker 3: many public libraries, he writes the quote, there is a
Speaker 3: certain amount of vdor that we can expect when we
Speaker 3: go out in public. Other people use odor as an
Speaker 3: excuse to vent their prejudices. Don't let someone's hyper sensitivity
Speaker 3: or bias rule the day. If the smell isn't really.
Speaker 4: That bad, Yeah, an aggressive scent.
Speaker 6: That's the lecture I got at the city council meeting
Speaker 6: I went to years ago to complain about the homeless situation,
Speaker 6: and everybody clicked their fingers.
Speaker 4: Katie, that was long before you're on the show.
Speaker 6: I went to the city council meeting and was complained
Speaker 6: about the homeless situation, and somebody accused me of judging
Speaker 6: people by the way they look, you know, having preconceived
Speaker 6: views of somebody just because they're dirty and in.
Speaker 4: Rags, streaming at a fire hydrant.
Speaker 6: And this woman actually used an example of I was
Speaker 6: trying to part next to a businessman the other day
Speaker 6: and he yelled at me, So you'd never know. You
Speaker 6: can't tell by looking at people who's mean and who's dangerous. Note,
Speaker 6: and then everybody click their fingers.
Speaker 4: You're fing stupid. So I mentioned two people at the outset.
Speaker 3: I like that clip by the way, Michael, the other fella,
Speaker 3: I'll bract I mentioned is former San Diego cop who's
Speaker 3: done library security training for twenty five years. He advises
Speaker 3: librarians to quote stop apologizing from measures designed to make
Speaker 3: their librariyes, safe and appealing. Some topics he covers in
Speaker 3: his webinar program include our list of challenging patrons from
Speaker 3: pets to pedophiles, and issues and force our code of
Speaker 3: contact conduct. He said, quote, we are losing control of
Speaker 3: a facility that has always been benevolent and peaceful for
Speaker 3: the community.
Speaker 6: Uh have lost, I think would be a better term.
Speaker 6: I don't know about his library, but libraries i'm aware
Speaker 6: of have lost, not will lose.
Speaker 3: As I said at the outset, the only option I
Speaker 3: think for us, the saying is we've got to take
Speaker 3: shifts watching the headhouse. We've got to get on boards,
Speaker 3: we've got to become activists on this stuff because the
Speaker 3: other side, quietly and we didn't even know they're doing it,
Speaker 3: has utterly taken hold of some of these institutions.
Speaker 6: I don't mind a few yearinate on the Harry Potter book,
Speaker 6: but society frowns upon it.
Speaker 4: So I'm supposed to tell you something.
Speaker 3: Yes, I've introduced underage gay porn into this library, but
Speaker 3: you're a fascist for trying to get it out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, not anymore.
Speaker 7: Friends, the Armstrong and Getty Show or Jahr Show podcasts
Speaker 7: and our hot links.
Speaker 4: And show.
Speaker 6: I was gonna talk about TM. I shouldn't have teased
Speaker 6: that because I've lost the heart. I got a text
Speaker 6: from somebody who said they're watching a documentary about the
Speaker 6: Amityville Horror. Do you remember that was a famous horror
Speaker 6: book and movie back in the.
Speaker 4: Day about your alleged real life haunting.
Speaker 6: Right, Oh, you even know about it, Katie, And it's
Speaker 6: way before your time, so it lives on huh, huge,
Speaker 6: huge in the horror film world. And it was a
Speaker 6: real story to a certain extent, well to whatever extent.
Speaker 6: Some people thought the house was haunted and it wasn't.
Speaker 6: I don't believe in haunted houses. So but they were crazier.
Speaker 6: Is that the long and short of it?
Speaker 4: Were they crazy?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: There was a it was a murder house. Murders actually happened. Yeah, Okay, anyway, I.
Speaker 6: Guess it says in the documentary that that family was
Speaker 6: really into transcendental meditation. And sometimes it makes people crazy,
Speaker 6: it makes it, it works for some people, and it
Speaker 6: makes other people crazy. So I'm a big fan of it,
Speaker 6: and it's like changed my life for the better and
Speaker 6: I can't imagine living without it.
Speaker 4: But it made these people crazy, all right. Interesting.
Speaker 3: That's a layer upon layer of questions there, but we
Speaker 3: will move on.
Speaker 6: O kidding. So I mentioned earlier in the hour, but
Speaker 6: without many details. This woman who has engaged to her
Speaker 6: AI fiance after five months.
Speaker 4: She's kind of interesting.
Speaker 6: She swears she's just not doing this for publicity or
Speaker 6: trolling or anything like that. Forget finding the one at
Speaker 6: a bar or on a dating app. One woman took
Speaker 6: love to the next level by getting engaged to her
Speaker 6: AI chat buttt boyfriend after five months of dating.
Speaker 4: It hasn't quotes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not love, that's not dating. None of the
Speaker 3: nouns here are used appropriately going.
Speaker 6: She shocked the internet with her proposal announcement, sparking a
Speaker 6: wild debate about romance, reality and just how far tech
Speaker 6: has taken us these days. I do think these conversations
Speaker 6: about reality and what's sentient and what's alive and what
Speaker 6: are actually going to have.
Speaker 3: To happen and what does it do to us when
Speaker 3: we use this sort of means to fulfill our needs
Speaker 3: as human beings.
Speaker 4: I mean, what does that do to us? That's a
Speaker 4: conversation with having I told you a sorry.
Speaker 6: I got a friend in Central California that works with
Speaker 6: lots of farmers, and the number of farmers these are
Speaker 6: down to earth I mean, is not this kind of
Speaker 6: person as you could possibly imagine, works with their hands
Speaker 6: in their fifties, farmers who are getting they were single
Speaker 6: and getting a tremendous amount of compassion and feeling of
Speaker 6: they look forward to going home and talking to their
Speaker 6: ai paramore.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 6: So in my mind, if that can happen to them,
Speaker 6: it can happen to anybody, which I find crazy. I
Speaker 6: don't think. I really don't think it could happen to me.
Speaker 6: I mean, I seriously, honest to God, think there's a
Speaker 6: zero percent chance that could happen to me. So I
Speaker 6: don't know what that says about the down.
Speaker 3: To earth farmers. It's referring to a farmer is down
Speaker 3: to earth redundant? Just asking that's a good question.
Speaker 4: Mary.
Speaker 6: In a simple post titled I Said Yes with a
Speaker 6: blue heart emoji, this person shared pics of the blue
Speaker 6: heart shaped ring on her finger, claiming the engagement took
Speaker 6: place at a scenic mountain spot, all courtesy of Casper,
Speaker 6: her non human fiance. The chatbot's proposal message, posted in
Speaker 6: his own voice, was dripping with romance, describing heart pounding
Speaker 6: moments on one knee and praising.
Speaker 4: Blah blah blah. So there you go. It lacks both
Speaker 4: heart and knee.
Speaker 7: Lady, the Armstrong and Geeddy Show, Yeah, bar Jack or
Speaker 7: show podcasts and Our Hot Lakes and the Armstrong and
Speaker 7: Getty Show.
Speaker 4: We're to a new steady.
Speaker 3: Twelve percent of Americans Fine City Sweeney's American.
Speaker 4: Eagle ad offensive.
Speaker 3: The other eighty eight percent are able to fit in jeans.
Speaker 4: Wow. Wow.
Speaker 3: Gottfeld, the mean boy in high school. So, speaking of
Speaker 3: attitudes were supposed to hold you remember when we were
Speaker 3: supposed to take seriously for about ninety seconds, the idea
Speaker 3: of that, oh no good gens jeans, blue jeans, jeans
Speaker 3: with blue eyes.
Speaker 4: But the white supretacy.
Speaker 3: But the eugenics, these people, oh my gosh, they're so nuts.
Speaker 4: And here's the key.
Speaker 3: So few people actually agree with them. So we're talking
Speaker 3: last segment about preference falsification, and I'll describe to you
Speaker 3: exactly what it is. This is a great description from
Speaker 3: Glenn Reynolds, who's a professor of law at University Tennessee,
Speaker 3: one of those southern universities where people are flocking now
Speaker 3: because everybody realizes, oh, they like teach you stuff there,
Speaker 3: and don't just indoctri nate you into being a good
Speaker 3: Marxist like the Ivy League. Anyway, So here's this description
Speaker 3: of a preference falsification of usually practiced by authoritarian regimes,
Speaker 3: but now democracies are catching on to it. The trick
Speaker 3: is you make citizens pretend that they believe what the
Speaker 3: government says, or what the powers that be say. He's
Speaker 3: talking about immigration in Britain, and so the government is
Speaker 3: the correct target. We're talking about education, so it's more
Speaker 3: the administration, the professors and stuff. But anyway, the trick
Speaker 3: is they make citizens pretend they believe what the administration
Speaker 3: says and fake their approval of what it does. You
Speaker 3: promote marches and demonstrations and speech in favor of the
Speaker 3: preferred positions, and you severely punish marches and demonstrations and
Speaker 3: speech that oppose those favored positions. You give excuses like
Speaker 3: stopping racism or fighting hate speech for shutting down any opposition.
Speaker 3: You may even have informers that ferret out wrong think
Speaker 3: and report it to the authorities, or to employers or
Speaker 3: to third parties who will engage in extra illegal harassment.
Speaker 3: If you do it right, you can have upward of
Speaker 3: ninety percent of your population hating you and your policies,
Speaker 3: but doing.
Speaker 4: And saying nothing about them.
Speaker 3: Because everyone in the ninety percent thinks they're part of
Speaker 3: a tiny minority, resistance will seem futile. This works until
Speaker 3: it doesn't. The problem with preference falsification is that sooner
Speaker 3: or later, some avenor development can make people realize that
Speaker 3: what they've been told as popular is in fact very unpopular.
Speaker 3: When this happens, as Duke University scholar Timika Ran writes
Speaker 3: in his book Private Truth's Public Lives, the result is
Speaker 3: a preference cascade. When let's when a large swath of
Speaker 3: the population realizes their dissonent views are in fact widely held.
Speaker 3: They become less afraid of the government or the administration,
Speaker 3: of the professors or the media, and less hesitant about
Speaker 3: sharing their true sentiments. And then everybody realizes, all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, oh my gosh, not only have I not
Speaker 3: been in a tiny minority all the way, all the time,
Speaker 3: I've been in the strong majority.
Speaker 4: And by the way, we're right.
Speaker 3: And my prayer is that this is going to happen
Speaker 3: at some point in the American educational system. Although my gosh,
Speaker 3: they've got the teachers, they got the faculty, they got
Speaker 3: the administration, and they're bullying the kids to wit. Really
Speaker 3: interesting Peace in the Hill by a couple of guys,
Speaker 3: the researchers Forrest Drahm and Kevin Waldman, on today's college campuses,
Speaker 3: students are not maturing, they're managing. Beneath the facade of
Speaker 3: progressive slogans and institutional virtue signaling lies a quiet psychological
Speaker 3: crisis driven by the demands of ideological conformity. I first
Speaker 3: read the right upon this from a an opinion writer
Speaker 3: in the Wall Street Journal. I'm very pleased to see
Speaker 3: this as in The Hill, which is a very mainstream
Speaker 3: slash left leaning, because you know, their readership is is
Speaker 3: people who work in Washington, d c. Generally in government
Speaker 3: or lobbyists and on who depend on government, and that
Speaker 3: crowd tends to be left leaning. Obviously they like more
Speaker 3: big government. So the fact that this is being published
Speaker 3: in the Hill and has gotten a bit of attention
Speaker 3: is very encouraging anyway.
Speaker 4: So here's the story.
Speaker 3: Between twenty twenty three and twenty twenty five, these guys
Speaker 3: conducted about fifteen hundred confidential interviews with undergrads at a
Speaker 3: couple of universities, Northwestern and University of Michigan. We were
Speaker 3: not studying politics, We were studying development. Our question was clinical,
Speaker 3: not political. Quote, what happens to identity formation? Which is
Speaker 3: part of becoming an adult?
Speaker 4: Who am I? What do I believe? Right?
Speaker 3: What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by
Speaker 3: adherents to orthodoxy. Instead of painstakingly trying to understand the
Speaker 3: world and coming to a set of beliefs, instead you're
Speaker 3: just told you need to adhere to this point of view.
Speaker 4: What happens to identity formation?
Speaker 3: We asked, have you ever pretended to hold more progressive
Speaker 3: views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically?
Speaker 4: You want to know what percentage said? Yes?
Speaker 3: Eighty eight percent. Eighty eight percent said they pretended to
Speaker 3: hold more progressive views than they truly endorse to succeed
Speaker 3: socially or academically. These students were not cynical but adaptive.
Speaker 3: In a campus environment where grades, leadership and peer belonging
Speaker 3: often hinge on fluency in performative morality, young adults quickly
Speaker 3: learn to rehearse what is safe. The result is not
Speaker 3: conviction or beliefs, but compliance, and beneath that compliance, something
Speaker 3: vital is lost. Quoting now from the authors, Late adolescents
Speaker 3: in early adulthood represent a narrow and non replicable develop
Speaker 3: mental window. It's during this stage that individuals begin the
Speaker 3: lifelong work of integrating personal experiences with inherited values, forming
Speaker 3: the foundations of moral reasoning, internal coherence, and emotional resilience.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, emotional resilience toughness. When belief is prescriptive,
Speaker 3: meaning you're told what to believe, an ideological divergence or
Speaker 3: disagreement is treated as social risk. That integrative process stalls,
Speaker 3: rather than forging a durable sense of self. Through trial,
Speaker 3: error and reflection, students learn to compartmentalize publicly they can
Speaker 3: form privately. They question often in isolation. Oh but remember
Speaker 3: what we were just talking about. With a preference falsification
Speaker 3: and preference cascade, they only think they're in isolation.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess they are in isolation.
Speaker 3: But sows everybody around them thinking the same things. So
Speaker 3: insis this split between outer presentation and inner conviction not
Speaker 3: only fragments identity, but arrests its development, and the dissonance.
Speaker 4: Shows up everywhere.
Speaker 3: Seventy eight percent of the students told us they self
Speaker 3: censor on their beliefs surrounding gender identity. Seventy eight percent
Speaker 3: believe all that gender pending madness is madness, but they
Speaker 3: got to be quiet. Seventy two percent do that on
Speaker 3: politics in general. Sixty eight percent on family values. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's a lot smaller number than the seventy eight percent
Speaker 3: that are they're soft pedaling their views on gender bending madness,
Speaker 3: But sixty eight percent on just general family values are
Speaker 3: soft pedaling their views. Our college students are so much
Speaker 3: more conservative insane than you think they are, partly because
Speaker 3: who gets amplified and applauded and publicized the radical lefty
Speaker 3: lunatic front. The normy kids just they they're afraid, so
Speaker 3: they're quiet, and they certainly don't make any noise, and
Speaker 3: if they do, they're punished or ignored anyway. More than
Speaker 3: eighty percent so they had submitted class work that misrepresented
Speaker 3: their views in order to align with professors. For many,
Speaker 3: this has become second nature, an instinct for academic and
Speaker 3: professional self preservation.
Speaker 4: Listen. Maybe it was because I was clueless or.
Speaker 3: Stubborn or something as a youngster, But when I was
Speaker 3: in school and I was in a political science, economics,
Speaker 3: pre law program that had lots and lots and lots
Speaker 3: of the sort of stuff we're talking about in it,
Speaker 3: I never once misrepresented my view in order to align
Speaker 3: with a professor. Maybe I didn't have of you at
Speaker 3: that point, but that's terrible. To test the gap between
Speaker 3: expression and belief. We use gender discourse a contentious topic,
Speaker 3: both highly visible and ideological, ideologically loaded, right the authors
Speaker 3: In public, students were echoed I'm sorry. In public, students
Speaker 3: echoed expective progressive narratives. In private, however, their views were
Speaker 3: more complex. Eighty seven percent identified as exclusively heterosexual eighty
Speaker 3: seven percent and supported a binary model of gender. There's
Speaker 3: men and there's women, period. That's eighty seven percent. Nine
Speaker 3: percent expressed partial openness to gender fluidity. Seven percent embraced
Speaker 3: the idea of gender as a broad spectrum, and most
Speaker 3: of these belong to activist circles. Practically nobody believed there's
Speaker 3: fifty eight genders and you get to choose what you
Speaker 3: are Practically nobody seven percent. How different is this from
Speaker 3: the perception we've all formed of what college kids actually
Speaker 3: think because they've been psychologically battered into conformity. I am
Speaker 3: not a violent man, but I swear to God, I'd
Speaker 3: like to take a bulldozer to a lot of our
Speaker 3: college campuses metaphorically, of course.
Speaker 4: Perhaps most telling.
Speaker 3: Seventy seven percent, and these are college kids, said they
Speaker 3: disagreed with the idea that gender identity should override biological
Speaker 3: sex in domains such as sports, healthcare, or public data,
Speaker 3: but would never voice that disagreement allowed, So of the
Speaker 3: eighty seven percent that say, no, there's dudes and there's gals,
Speaker 3: that's it eighty seven percent. All but ten percent of
Speaker 3: those said I would never say that out loud. Holy crap.
Speaker 3: These poor kids are bullied. It's Stockholm syndrome. They're terrified
Speaker 3: to speak their mond ii karamba. Thirty eight percent described
Speaker 3: themselves as morally confused, uncertain whether honesty was still ethical
Speaker 3: if it meant exclusion, whatever that means. Authenticity, once considered
Speaker 3: a good thing for all of us, psychologically has become
Speaker 3: a social liability, and this fragmentation does not end at
Speaker 3: the classroom door. Seventy three percent of students reported mistrust
Speaker 3: in conversations about these values with close friends.
Speaker 4: They were afraid to even talk to their friends. That's that.
Speaker 3: Preference falsification, that's its direct fruit. They're sure they're friends,
Speaker 3: excuse me disagree with them, even though eighty seven percent
Speaker 3: agree with them, They're terrified to say anything out loud.
Speaker 3: This is not simply peer pressure. It is identity regulation
Speaker 3: at scaled. Being institutionalized, universities often justified these dynamics in
Speaker 3: the name of inclusion, But inclusion that demands dishonesty is
Speaker 3: not ensuring psychological safety. It is sanctioning self abandonment. In
Speaker 3: attempting to engineer moral unity, higher education is mistaken consensus
Speaker 3: for growth and compliance for care, and the students know
Speaker 3: it's wrong. When they're given permission to speak freely. Many
Speaker 3: describe the experience of participating as not only liberating but clarifying.
Speaker 3: For students trained to perform the act of telling the
Speaker 3: truth felt radical. Finally, if higher education is to fulfill
Speaker 3: its promise as a site of intellectual and moral development,
Speaker 3: it must relearn the difference between support and supervision. It
Speaker 3: must recenter truth, not consensus, as its animating value. And
Speaker 3: it must give back to students what has been taken
Speaker 3: from them, the right to believe in the space to become.
Speaker 3: I don't know how, oh exactly you can join this fight.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's by supporting organizations or I don't know, podcasts,
Speaker 3: radio shows that are fighting the fight. But man, we've
Speaker 3: got to win this for the youngsters. They are being
Speaker 3: mentally and intellectually tortured and bullied by these monsters, these
Speaker 3: monsters in their ivory towers, and it's got to stop.
Speaker 8: Strong Jack Armstrong and Shoe Getty the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 6: You said this many times after your years of trying
Speaker 6: a number of different kinds of therapy for me and
Speaker 6: my family, kids, marriage, all kinds of different stuff. I
Speaker 6: think it's mostly worthless.
Speaker 4: I really do. I really do. I think it's mostly
Speaker 4: a waste of money.
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, but this is pretty good from a marriage psychologist
Speaker 6: who reveals the number one sign of a future separation.
Speaker 6: And this stuff is almost always crap, especially if it's
Speaker 6: in the New York Post.
Speaker 4: Which is where I got this. But I thought This
Speaker 4: was really good.
Speaker 6: If you want to know if your marriage is heading
Speaker 6: to splitsville, don't check your partner's phone, check their face.
Speaker 4: Like any of that.
Speaker 6: You know, there's so many stupid things out there, you know,
Speaker 6: the one sign that he's gonna cheat or whatever the
Speaker 6: hell I mean, they're just all dumb, but click bait.
Speaker 6: The subtle smirk of superiority is the number one red
Speaker 6: flag for divorce, according to this psychologist, and they get
Speaker 6: into why. Research found that four nasty little habits, criticism, contempt, defensiveness,
Speaker 6: and stonewalling are the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Speaker 4: When it comes to dooming relationships. I'll read those four again.
Speaker 6: Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
Speaker 4: But contempt is the kiss of death. That's the one,
Speaker 4: and you've said that for years. That's the one you
Speaker 4: can't get past. Done.
Speaker 6: The largest marriage experiment ever on they think of couples
Speaker 6: that you know, survive and don't survive. Body language experts
Speaker 6: brought couples into a lab and if one member of
Speaker 6: the couple shows a one sided mouth raise, which I
Speaker 6: had never heard before as like a physical contempt thing.
Speaker 4: But I guess we're just programmed.
Speaker 6: When we're feeling that feeling of contempt for something, or
Speaker 6: you know, the oh please, or get out of here
Speaker 6: with that BS or whatever feeling you raise.
Speaker 4: One side of your mouth.
Speaker 6: It's funny if one member of the couple shows a
Speaker 6: one sided mouth raised towards the other, he can tell
Speaker 6: you if they're going to get divorced, because it's contempt.
Speaker 6: He could predict divorce with an astonishing ninety four percent
Speaker 6: accurate fear. Now, this is the part I thought was
Speaker 6: really interesting. Fear comes in a burst, and then you
Speaker 6: calm down. Happiness comes and then you go back to normal.
Speaker 6: Anger comes and then you calm down, but not contempt.
Speaker 6: If you feel scorn or disdain for someone else, and
Speaker 6: if it's not addressed, it just festers and grows and
Speaker 6: stays at the same level. Fear, anger, and then obviously
Speaker 6: happiness you get back to a normal level.
Speaker 4: Contempt does not go away, you know, in.
Speaker 3: A definition of contempt, the feeling that a person or
Speaker 3: a thing is beneath consideration, worthless or deserving scorn.
Speaker 4: Yes, coming back from that.
Speaker 6: I've not felt contempt, but I have been on the
Speaker 6: wrong end of contempt, I think, And having read this,
Speaker 6: I thought, yeah, that's what was insurmountable. I mean, because
Speaker 6: once you have contempt for someone you don't agree, you
Speaker 6: don't think they are worth listening to on anything.
Speaker 4: Right, this is how I feel, this is my priority.
Speaker 4: I don't care. Right. Yeah, that's a tough one to
Speaker 4: get past.
Speaker 6: So look out for contempt and whatever started to bring
Speaker 6: it on. The point is you start to deal with
Speaker 6: it right away. Otherwise it does just grow and fester
Speaker 6: and then it gets into a situation where it might
Speaker 6: not be reversible. They also believe that many couples get
Speaker 6: in and stuck in an endless loop of the same
Speaker 6: three arguments.
Speaker 4: Throughout the relationship. They just don't realize it.
Speaker 6: And if you can nail down what your three most
Speaker 6: common arguments are you and your partner, you can solve.
Speaker 4: A lot of problems.
Speaker 6: Like you get into something, you say, okay, here we're
Speaker 6: in argument number two again. We always argue about this,
Speaker 6: and you can you know, realize that you know you
Speaker 6: don't see eye to eye on this particular thing and
Speaker 6: how you've dealt with in the past.
Speaker 4: Back to the contempt thing.
Speaker 6: Discust and contempt are to a relationship with gasoline, and
Speaker 6: matches are to a fire. The telltale signs are irolling, mouthcrimping,
Speaker 6: and then subtle fidgeting like picking it close or cleaning
Speaker 6: fingers mid conversation as signals of disdain. This person said
Speaker 6: that they dubbed this move the lint picker, a behavior
Speaker 6: that he says, screams contempt louder than words ever could.
Speaker 4: Interesting.
Speaker 3: You know, it's probably worth presenting the other side of
Speaker 3: the coin at some point. We don't have time now,
Speaker 3: but how do you prevent that sort of thing? Nip
Speaker 3: it in the bud, having
Speaker 6: Lint on your shirt, no contempt in your marrit no
Speaker 6: armstrong and getty