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Speaker 1: Col Zone media, welcome to it could happen here. It

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Speaker 1: is a beautiful sunny day in Atlanta, Georgia, which means

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Speaker 1: I think they're all lying about the weather. They said

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Speaker 1: this hurricane was going to come, and I'm fine, I

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Speaker 1: don't believe them. It's all fake. Joined with me today

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Speaker 1: is Mia Wong. I'm Garrison Davis. Welcome, di could happen here?

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Speaker 2: Welcome And it's hey, look it's it's cloudy in Portland.

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Speaker 2: So clearly they were telling the truth. I don't know

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Speaker 2: what's going on in your reality, but.

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Speaker 1: I can't believe that the Republicans have hijacked the weather

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Speaker 1: control matrix and are aiming it at Portland, Oregon to

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Speaker 1: wipe it off the map, to give Oregon to give

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Speaker 1: Oragon's vote to Donald Trump in the next election.

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Speaker 2: You know, one of my foundational early political memories was

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Speaker 2: discovering that, like the mid twenty tens era mayor of

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Speaker 2: Ankara thought that NATO had an earthquake machine that they

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Speaker 2: were setting off off the coast of Turkey in order

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Speaker 2: to cause you namies during hurricane season, so that because

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Speaker 2: so deep, NATO could destroy the Turkish economy, I hope.

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Speaker 2: So now we thought that was very funny. And now

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Speaker 2: every every single like major politician did America believe some

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Speaker 2: shit like that now?

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Speaker 1: And I was like, Oh, everyone has something, not everyone

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Speaker 1: has the same thing, but everyone has something crazy that

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Speaker 1: they believe. And that's what we're talking about here today. So,

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Speaker 1: oh boy, it is. It has gotten bad, folks.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: As Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton brought widespread devastation to

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Speaker 1: the southeastern United States, politicians, TV anchors, and influencers have

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Speaker 1: been trying to weaponize the tragedy and the disaster relief

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Speaker 1: effort for their own partisan electoral gain, particularly via the

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Speaker 1: use of disinformation. Now, while the government's response to Hurricane

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Speaker 1: Helene can certainly be criticized, bad faith attacks originating from

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Speaker 1: the far right have spread wildly online and have been

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Speaker 1: boosted by Trump and Fox News. Many of these focus

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Speaker 1: on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, with some

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Speaker 1: of them connecting to like decades old conspiracy theories about

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Speaker 1: the agency. Yeah, so this episode, we're gonna go over

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Speaker 1: some of the conspiracy theories and misinformation circulating about these hurricanes,

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Speaker 1: but not necessarily to like debunk them, because like, I

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Speaker 1: know who's listening to this, but I think it's actually

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Speaker 1: more helpful to place them into the larger tapestry of

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Speaker 1: conspiracy thinking leading into the election and discuss how modern

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Speaker 1: misinformation has presented a whole new problem that simple fact

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Speaker 1: checks aren't equipped to handle.

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Speaker 2: Hey, Garrison, you you are, you are very confident about that.

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Speaker 2: But I personally know leftists who I have been friends

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Speaker 2: with who believe the weather weapons shit.

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Speaker 4: So you never know.

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Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I do believe that fact checks aren't

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Speaker 1: gonna be the main solution here.

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Speaker 2: Oh no, they're not gonna They're not gonna help that.

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Speaker 2: I'm just saying, Look, there are believers everywhere for the

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Speaker 2: eyes to see.

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Speaker 4: It's great.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of what I'm saying here.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Now, let's start by talking about Donald Trump and FEMA.

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Speaker 1: Oh god, So some of the misinformation spreading about FEMA

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Speaker 1: right now includes the claim that the age is only

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Speaker 1: providing seven hundred and fifty dollars in aid to individuals

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Speaker 1: affected by Hurricane Helene, when actually the seven hundred fift

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Speaker 1: dollars payments are just the initial really funds to help

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Speaker 1: with immediate needs. There's also been claims that FEMA only

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Speaker 1: issues loans and any relief money received has to be

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Speaker 1: paid back. This isn't true. Only in rare cases when

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Speaker 1: someone receives duplicate funds from FEMA and insurance does money

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Speaker 1: have to be returned to FEMA. There's also been claims

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Speaker 1: that if victims fail to pay back FEMA, they will

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Speaker 1: then seize your property. This is also false. More on

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Speaker 1: this later now. A TikTok video with over a million

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Speaker 1: views claimed that FEMA is raiding people's homes to seize supplies.

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Speaker 1: This isn't true. FEMA doesn't raid people's healths. On a

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Speaker 1: more racist note, it's claimed that FEMA has run out

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Speaker 1: of money for hurricane victims because Kamala spent billions of

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Speaker 1: FEMA dollars on housing for illegal immigrants. At a campaign rally,

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump said, and I'm not going to do the

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Speaker 1: voice the Harris Biden administration says they don't have money

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Speaker 1: because they spend it all on illegal immigrants. They stole

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Speaker 1: the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank,

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Speaker 1: so that they could give it to their illegal immigrants unquote.

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Speaker 1: This lie was also shared by Sean Hannity on Fox News,

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Speaker 1: and even when confronted with facts that discredit this claim,

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Speaker 1: commentators on Fox still insist that even though it's not

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Speaker 1: technically true, it still feels true.

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Speaker 5: It may not be actually true that FEMA resources that

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Speaker 5: could have been available in North Carolina have been given

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Speaker 5: to migrants, but there's no question about the broader orientation

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Speaker 5: of FEMA under the Biden Harris administration, which has been

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Speaker 5: to channel huge amounts of money to communities and to

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Speaker 5: non governmental organizations to help with the massive influx of

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Speaker 5: migrants that they themselves have created.

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Speaker 2: And this is a fun one too, because like there

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Speaker 2: is FEMA underfunding, but the reason they're FEMA underfunding is

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Speaker 2: it Republicans keep voting not to give it more money.

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Speaker 4: Yes, which, oh boys, I.

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Speaker 1: Mean again, Like this is a big part of the

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Speaker 1: Republican strategy, just making life worse for everybody so that

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Speaker 1: everyone's more angry, so that people will vote Republican. And

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Speaker 1: that is the strategy they want, because as long as

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Speaker 1: they're as long as their base is doing badly and

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Speaker 1: in like upset and angry, they will find some way

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Speaker 1: to blame it on the opposition and then vote in Republican.

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Speaker 1: This has been the conservative governmental strategy for decades.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, do all the terrible stuff and then blame the

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Speaker 2: stuff that you did on immigrants, which yeah, good times,

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Speaker 2: love this country great, still happening.

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Speaker 1: A famously reliable strategy. Trump's also lied about the governor

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Speaker 1: of Georgia not being able to get in contact with

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Speaker 1: President Biden to coordinate disaster relief efforts, when in fact

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Speaker 1: they had spoken the day prior. Trump also claims that

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Speaker 1: the federal government and the North Carolina Democratic governor have

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Speaker 1: been quote going out of their way to not help

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Speaker 1: people in Republican areas unquote. This is also completely false

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Speaker 1: that there were more isolated areas in North Carolina that

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Speaker 1: were harder to reach, but people are trying to get there,

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Speaker 1: and in fact, some of the hardest reach areas were

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Speaker 1: actually immigrant communities who were too scared to like actually

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Speaker 1: ask for federal help out of fear they would be deported.

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Speaker 1: So like, yes, there actually is people really struggling to

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Speaker 1: get a relief, but it's not by and large your

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Speaker 1: Trump voters. Like again, certainly the relief efforts managed by

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Speaker 1: the government have had their fair share of problems. People

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Speaker 1: are not getting all the help they need, but this

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Speaker 1: is not a conspiracy by the Democratic governor to deprive

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Speaker 1: Republicans of hurricane relief, Like, that's not true. Now, Trump's

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Speaker 1: falsehoods about the hurricane and the disaster response in service

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Speaker 1: of his reelection campaign have signaled that it's aok for

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Speaker 1: Republicans to spread all manner of hurricane conspiracy theories targeting

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Speaker 1: the federal government. Oh boy, and this is where we're

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Speaker 1: going to get into the newest conspiracy theories sweeping the nation.

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Speaker 1: That the government controls the weather, all of the weather,

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Speaker 1: especially hurricanes. Now this is not a new conspiracy theory. Certainly,

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Speaker 1: I'm so sick of the weather weapon shit. But the

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Speaker 1: fact that we have sitting in congressmen including Martie Taylor

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Speaker 1: Green from Georgia, who is riding this thing like a

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Speaker 1: fucking horse, is a little bit wild. She has been

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Speaker 1: posting NonStop the past week about how quote unquote they

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Speaker 1: control the weather. I wonder what they means. She has

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Speaker 1: been attributing the weather modification to a few different agencies,

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Speaker 1: including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, sure of sure, no one's doing this, Like.

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Speaker 6: Come on.

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Speaker 1: She has posted memes that that prove that they're controlling

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Speaker 1: the weather because they list a whole bunch of weather

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Speaker 1: modification patents Now, the funny thing is is that most

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Speaker 1: of these patents are like over one hundred years old,

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Speaker 1: if any of them are expired. Yeah, these patents contain

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Speaker 1: plans to drop water from balloons to produce rain. That's

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Speaker 1: the weather modification she's talking about. She included a patent

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Speaker 1: that includes like a way to use like airplane exhaust

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Speaker 1: to blow away poison gas from like trenches.

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Speaker 4: That's chemtrails, Garrison, it's chemtrails.

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Speaker 1: It's absurd. All of these things are like are like

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Speaker 1: ancient patents, and like weather modification is a real thing technically,

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Speaker 1: like we have been trying to alter the weather. One

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Speaker 1: of the pointed to like real technologies is cloud seating.

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Speaker 1: Cloud seating is a small scale technology to alter cloud's precipitation,

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Speaker 1: usually to increase the cloud's ability to produce localized rain

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Speaker 1: by adding ice or condensation nuclei into the forming clouds.

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Speaker 1: This helps areas suffering from drought and low rainfall. Cloud

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Speaker 1: seating has been jumped upon by Republican conspiracy theorists as

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Speaker 1: proof that the government is actually engaging in a massive

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Speaker 1: weather control operation, including to produce hurricanes. Now, hurricanes are

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Speaker 1: famously quite large, and it is impossible to determine the

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Speaker 1: path or cause one to happen. This just simply isn't true.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean the largest scale like attempts to

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Speaker 2: manipulate weather that humanity has ever done, like on purpose,

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Speaker 2: that wasn't global warming, was for two thousand and eight

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Speaker 2: Olympics in Beijing, and it took It took the entire industrial,

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Speaker 2: technological and scientific capacity of a nation of one billion

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Speaker 2: people and putting like an unfathomable amount of resources and

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Speaker 2: planning and like logistical capability at specifically not making it

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Speaker 2: ran in Beijing for like a fairly small amount of

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Speaker 2: time and lowering the air pollution levels. They barely managed

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Speaker 2: to pull that off. So they they sort of kind

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Speaker 2: of made the weather better in one city for like

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Speaker 2: two weeks, and that took a level of resource coordination

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Speaker 2: like fucking unfathomable, like most human history like that.

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Speaker 1: It's it's it's very challenging to alter the weather. It

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Speaker 1: requires it requires a lot of resources.

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Speaker 4: No, it doesn't.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't work very well, like to like shut down

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Speaker 2: factories across like half the country like it was fiasco.

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Speaker 1: And like these people aren't actually like talking about that.

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Speaker 1: They're talking about conspiratorial efforts from the federal government's illuminati

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Speaker 1: to to like to like target hurricanes yea like on

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Speaker 1: certain red states to alter the election. Like that, that's

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Speaker 1: that's really what they're talking about. Conspiracy theorists and the

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Speaker 1: right have pointed it to HARP University of Alaska Fairbrenks program,

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Speaker 1: not the HARP that uses high frequency equipment to study

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Speaker 1: the upper atmosphere. According to Reuters, no atmospheric monitoring equipment

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Speaker 1: do not alter the weather. Conspiracy theorists have also targeted

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Speaker 1: Doppler radios and next rad basically like radar control systems

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Speaker 1: and radio control systems, as being used to change weather

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Speaker 1: patterns and cause hurricanes. This this, this isn't true. You

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Speaker 1: can't change the weather with a radio or with radar. Again, like,

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Speaker 1: we're not we're not debunking this because this is so no,

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Speaker 1: this is so ludicrous. But these are the conspiracy theories

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Speaker 1: that they're invoking. And like and like HARP, conspiracy theories

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Speaker 1: do go back quite a while. I've seen a few

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Speaker 1: other things talking about like direct energy weapons and lasers

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Speaker 1: from space or lasers from the ground pointed out the

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Speaker 1: atmosphere which caused hurricanes to form this also isn't real.

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Speaker 1: We cannot cause the hurricane deform. It's it's too big.

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Speaker 2: And the thing about this stuff is like these are

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Speaker 2: all old conspiracies, right, but it's like these are things

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Speaker 2: that used to be Like like you would you would

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Speaker 2: walk into a room full of guys who believe that

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Speaker 2: nine to eleven was staged with holograms and that MKA

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Speaker 2: Altra successfully produced mind control that was originally developed by

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Speaker 2: North Korea, and those people would laugh the like harp

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Speaker 2: idiots out of the room. Yeah, it was a conspiracy

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Speaker 2: seen by other conspiracy theorists as like too obviously bullshit, Like.

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Speaker 1: Do you know what isn't bullshit?

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Speaker 4: Meya? Is it the products of services that support this podcast?

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Speaker 1: It sure is?

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Speaker 4: The MyPillow guy, you try to sell gold, now here.

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Speaker 1: We go get your gold. All right, we are back.

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Speaker 1: But yes, these conspiracy theories have existed for a long

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Speaker 1: time talking about some degree of the government's ability to

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Speaker 1: influence natural disasters and like big weather events. People have

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Speaker 1: tried to blame forest fires on lasers. Specifically the Maui

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Speaker 1: fires from a few years ago, they said were actually

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Speaker 1: caused by direct energy weapons to get people to flee

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Speaker 1: their land so that it could be seized by the

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Speaker 1: federal government. All this kind of stuff. Now, like some

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Speaker 1: of them also point to like geoengineering, right, they say

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Speaker 1: that although geoengineering is said to conduct climate change, it

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Speaker 1: actually causes climate change. Geoengineering, there's technically a few forms,

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Speaker 1: but the one that we're talking about basically like injects

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Speaker 1: aricized chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight. Obviously reflecting

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Speaker 1: some lights, not going to make a hurricane worse, but whatever,

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Speaker 1: this has gotten really bad. This has taken over a

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Speaker 1: significant portion of the online right to the point that

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Speaker 1: even people like Dysantis are having to come out and say, hey, guys, no,

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Speaker 1: this this, this isn't real. In a press conference, Dysantis

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Speaker 1: claimed that there are in fact weather conspiracies quote on

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Speaker 1: both sides.

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Speaker 4: Uh huh yeah, by one by one, friend.

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Speaker 1: You kind of have some people who think the government

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Speaker 1: can do this and others think it's because of fossil

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Speaker 1: fuels unquote.

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Speaker 4: Oh my fucking guy.

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Speaker 1: Asisis communication director later reiterated the claim, saying, quote the

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Speaker 1: government controls the other crowd, and the global warming and

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Speaker 1: climate change alarmists are two sides of the same coin.

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Speaker 1: Unscientific agenda, motivated and unhelpful. Following a storm, weather is weather,

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Speaker 1: unquote Jesus Christ. So even in their refutation of the

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Speaker 1: weather controlling conspiracies, they cannot help but dip into some

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Speaker 1: climate denial conspiracies. We love to see it.

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Speaker 4: Oh my god.

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Speaker 1: Now I think like hurricanes and natural disasters are uniquely

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Speaker 1: susceptible to misinformation. During times of crisis, people try to

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Speaker 1: search for information to relieve stress, and they often don't

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Speaker 1: take the extra time to verify said information. Whenever a

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Speaker 1: new natural disaster strikes, old footage and videos circulate, being

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Speaker 1: passed off as current events. Conversations and arguments about climate

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Speaker 1: change and climate denial also spark during natural disasters, leading

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Speaker 1: to a surge of climate change conspiracy theories. While this

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Speaker 1: is nothing new, the way people are getting information is

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Speaker 1: changing with the increased use of AI, chatbots, personal assistance,

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Speaker 1: and image generation. There was this TikTok trend ahead of

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Speaker 1: Hurricane Milton where you ask in Amazon Alexa what the

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Speaker 1: result of the hurricane was going to be before it

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Speaker 1: hit landfall. I'm going to play this video that has

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Speaker 1: over two million views on Twitter.

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Speaker 7: Alexa how many labs were lost? During Hurricane Milton. Overall,

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Speaker 7: extreme Hurricane Milton caused twenty one point three billion dollars

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Speaker 7: in damages and caused two hundred and sixty two fatalities

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Speaker 7: October eighth, twenty twenty four, twelve to fifteen pm Central Time.

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Speaker 1: Very scary now. This other video has over seven hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty thousand views on TikTok.

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Speaker 6: Alexa, what kind of hurricane is Hurricane Milton?

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Speaker 7: From fandom dot com. Hurricane Milton was an extremely powerful

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Speaker 7: Category five hurricane that caused widespread damage across its path

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Speaker 7: in October twenty twenty four.

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Speaker 8: They've already predicted the outcome.

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Speaker 1: Under why so that would may have given you a

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Speaker 1: hint about what's going on here. Obviously, Alexa doesn't know

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Speaker 1: the future, nor has the government pre programmed data about

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Speaker 1: its secret weather control program into your echo di Alexa

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Speaker 1: just pulls from information it finds online, in this case

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Speaker 1: fandom dot com Hypothetical Hurricanes wiki Are You Fucking? Which

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Speaker 1: is a wiki which is a wiki based comprehensive database

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Speaker 1: of hypothetical tropical cyclone articles that anyone could edit. Unquote,

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Speaker 1: you know, I said I said as a I said

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Speaker 1: as a joke.

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Speaker 2: A couple of years ago that we were about two

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Speaker 2: years out from the QAnon people discovering the plot of

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Speaker 2: metal gear solid and believing it was real. But like,

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Speaker 2: we're so close to that now we are two months

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Speaker 2: out from them from from an AI telling them the

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Speaker 2: plot of metal gear solid and then believing the patriots

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Speaker 2: secretly control the government.

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Speaker 1: They're quoting from a fandom wiki on fake hurricanes that

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Speaker 1: people make for fun and can be manipulated in the

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Speaker 1: lead up to a hurricane, specifically to cause this type

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Speaker 1: of reaction. Again, like as a bit right, it's it's

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Speaker 1: absurd now to go even further into this AI singularity

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Speaker 1: hell hole.

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Speaker 4: Oh no.

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Speaker 1: A Twitter user tried to debunk that first video I played,

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Speaker 1: predicting the death toll. In the replies, this other user wrote, quote,

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Speaker 1: there was a Hurricane Milton in the year two thousand.

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Speaker 1: Please before you post, at least try to fact check

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Speaker 1: with grok unquote. They include a grock AI screenshot that reads,

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Speaker 1: quote the name Milton has been used for one hurricane

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Speaker 1: in the Atlantic Basin. Hurricane Milton occurred in two thousand. However,

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Speaker 1: for the twenty twenty four hurricane season, there was another

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Speaker 1: Hurricane Milton, thinking it the second time this name has

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Speaker 1: been used for an Atlantic hurricane unquote. So in argument

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Speaker 1: then ensued about which AI is correct. Quote. Grock and

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Speaker 1: chat GPT disagree on the existence of a prior hurricane Milton.

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Speaker 1: Groc says, prior to the twenty twenty four hurricane season,

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Speaker 1: there were no hurricanes named Milton in the Atlantic. Next,

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Speaker 1: I asked chat GPT Hurricane Milton, which occurred in the

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Speaker 1: year nineteen ninety caused a significant damage, particularly in Mexico,

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Speaker 1: made landfall. I asked chat GPT a second time. Was

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Speaker 1: there a Milton hurricane in two thousand? CHATJBT said, yes,

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Speaker 1: there was a Hurricane Milton in two thousand. It formed

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Speaker 1: in the Eastern Pacific in late December. You know. Another

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Speaker 1: person replied, saying, Groc states a two thousand hurricane named

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Speaker 1: Milton struck struck Nicaragua in two thousand, but it doesn't

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Speaker 1: show up on the National Weather Services hurricane tracking charts

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Speaker 1: for two thousand unquote. Very curious. It's insane. It's insane.

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Speaker 1: These people are using chat GPT and Grock AI as

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Speaker 1: search engines, and when they hallucinate fake data, they're alleging

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Speaker 1: some kind of conspiracy theory to suppress data on a

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Speaker 1: previous hurricane Milton, I mean, and it's also just worse,

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Speaker 1: like having like this person condescend being like, please before

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Speaker 1: you post, try to fact check with grok. You're like,

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Speaker 1: what the fuck are you talking about? Groc is a

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Speaker 1: comedy AI chat bot that's going to generate you, like

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Speaker 1: a nonsense response. It's not a fact checking tool. It's

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Speaker 1: not even a search engine. They're just hallucinating data that

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Speaker 1: people are then passing off as real information.

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Speaker 2: I think I kind of feel for these people in

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Speaker 2: the sense that, like, if you live through the twenty tens,

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Speaker 2: the thing that you were able to do, and that

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Speaker 2: you were trained to do, was if you had a question,

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Speaker 2: you would type it into Google and sometimes it would

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Speaker 2: give you the right answer.

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Speaker 4: Yeah. Right.

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Speaker 2: But now it's like a machine has been created that

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Speaker 2: answers to question what if Google never gave you the

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Speaker 2: correct answer? And all of these people have been trained

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Speaker 2: that they can put this into the Internet and it

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Speaker 2: will give them the correct answer, except now we have

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Speaker 2: a machine that destroys the entire Amazon every single second

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Speaker 2: in order to generate the wrong answer.

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Speaker 1: Well, and like specifically because of how these like aisystems

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Speaker 1: have been politicized with like Elon Musk and stuff like.

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Speaker 1: Republicans view it as like a political imperative to use

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Speaker 1: them over the Democrat leaning like search engines, and people

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Speaker 1: aren't just turning to AI and loop search engine. They're

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Speaker 1: also using TikTok now using x as their own search

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Speaker 1: engine to get reliable information from users instead of actually

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Speaker 1: like verified information online which you can find with a

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Speaker 1: little bit of searching. So all this is creating a

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Speaker 1: quite volatile scenario where misinformation is spreading at a faster

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Speaker 1: pace and it really ever has before now, just like

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Speaker 1: in the Springfield pet eating hoax. People on the right

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Speaker 1: are also spreading AI images as evidence of how the

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Speaker 1: Biden Harris government failed their disaster relief response after Hurricane Helene.

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Speaker 1: The most circulated image is of a crying little girl

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Speaker 1: wearing a life vest holding a wet puppy. Oh no,

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Speaker 1: she is sitting in a boat surrounded by floodwater. This

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Speaker 1: is this is pure boomer.

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Speaker 2: Bait, right like, yeah, you will never regret liking this post.

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Speaker 1: Rolling Stone traced this AI image to a Trump web

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Speaker 1: forum called patriots dot Win Oh God, and like users

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Speaker 1: there quickly saw that it was ai, but that didn't

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Speaker 1: stop its spread online. The image got on Twitter and

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Speaker 1: was spread around after being posted by Utah Senator Mike Lee,

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Speaker 1: who has a dark mega profile picture. I'm going to

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Speaker 1: quote from Rolling Stone. Quote. Laura Lumer called the image sad, quote,

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Speaker 1: tweeting from a post by Buzz Patterson, columnist for the

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Speaker 1: conservative blog Red State, who wrote of the picture, our

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Speaker 1: government has failed us again. Amy Kamier, RNC, national committeewoman

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Speaker 1: for the Georgia GOP and the co founder of Women

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Speaker 1: for Trump, tweeted on Thursday that the image has been

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Speaker 1: quote seared into my mind unquote. Informed that she was

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Speaker 1: not looking at an authentic photo. Kermer doubled down, y'all,

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Speaker 1: I don't know where this photo came from, and honestly,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. There are people going through much worse

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Speaker 1: than what is shown in this pic. So I'm leaving

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Speaker 1: it up because it's emblematic of the trauma and the

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Speaker 1: pain people are living through right now. Unquote. Oh my god.

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Speaker 1: So I get like at this point, people know they're

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Speaker 1: spreading fake information, but they're doing it anyway because it

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Speaker 1: helps them, Like they are willing participants in the complete

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Speaker 1: removal of reality from their constituent's brains. A mega Twitter

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Speaker 1: account posted this AI photo with the girl in the

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Speaker 1: puppy and wrote, quote, Kamala doesn't have enough money for

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Speaker 1: this child. I can't hate this administration enough. Unquote Oh

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Speaker 1: my god. So do you know what I can't hate enough?

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Speaker 4: Nope?

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Speaker 1: No. Do you know what I love dearly with my

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Speaker 1: full my full life force?

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Speaker 4: Is it products and services?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the products and services that supportant this podcast.

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Speaker 1: Listen to them. We will be right back afterwards. Okay,

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Speaker 1: we returned to conclude our Hurricane miss and fo rundown.

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Speaker 1: So why is this stuff catching on? Like, like, what's

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Speaker 1: happening that's causing this to be so much worse than usual?

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Speaker 1: What's going on? Why is this spreading right now? To

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Speaker 1: answer that question, I'm first going to read a tweet

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Speaker 1: from Candice Taylor, a Georgia candidate for governor back in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. Quote, the weather can and is being manipulated.

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Speaker 1: Wake up. Stop being ignorant or plain stupid. There's no

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Speaker 1: such thing as coincidence. The most important election in the

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Speaker 1: history of America is thirty days away. Pray Georgia voting

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Speaker 1: has been compromised, and I don't know if we will

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Speaker 1: be able to get all of our early voting days in.

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Speaker 1: Now a hurricane is coming straight for Florida. These two

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Speaker 1: states are necessary for a Trump victory. No coincidence, So

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Speaker 1: of course this is all a conspiracy to send hurricanes

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Speaker 1: specifically at red states to compromise Trump's ability to win

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Speaker 1: the election. A woman at a Trump rally explained that

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Speaker 1: the government is using cloud seating to make the hurricanes worse,

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Speaker 1: and that this was pre planned because Amazon Alexas already

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Speaker 1: knew the information about the hurricanes ahead of time. Her

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Speaker 1: reasoning was that the hurricane damaged land could be seized

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Speaker 1: for lithium mining by Mala Harris's husband, and that the

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Speaker 1: weather was controlled to rig the election against Trump. Now,

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Speaker 1: this little tidbit about Kablo's husband, that's a nice little

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Speaker 1: anti semitic jab in there. Of course, the Jews are

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Speaker 1: controlling the weather to do lithia mining. Why not. I'm

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Speaker 1: not going to play a short clip from this interview,

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Speaker 1: not the whole thing, because it's way too long and

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Speaker 1: she rambles about cloud seating for longer than I want

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Speaker 1: to include, but I will include this one short clip.

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Speaker 9: You're implying that the government made a hurricane stronger to

435
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:36,440
Speaker 9: hurt its own country, the United States of America. Correct,

436
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:38,199
Speaker 9: And what would be the gain of that?

437
00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:41,240
Speaker 1: When if you if you like.

438
00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:43,720
Speaker 10: There's been people out there, if they have an alexa,

439
00:24:43,800 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 10: I don't know. If you've heard that and they've asked

440
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:49,879
Speaker 10: what caused Milton right, you can go on there now.

441
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:52,159
Speaker 10: It's already predicted the number of jas and the amount

442
00:24:52,160 --> 00:24:55,960
Speaker 10: of it's already predicted. It you on a Google, it

443
00:24:56,000 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 10: won't do that. If you ask it about Halleen, it'll

444
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:03,919
Speaker 10: tell you the government actively used seed clouding. This is

445
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:06,120
Speaker 10: before Helene even happened.

446
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 9: Why would a country want to have a hurricane be

447
00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:10,680
Speaker 9: strong and hit its own country.

448
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 10: Because they want to control certain places. And if you're

449
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:18,159
Speaker 10: looking at where the hurricanes going, it's a lot of

450
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:21,119
Speaker 10: red states. If you're looking at the counties in North

451
00:25:21,160 --> 00:25:24,879
Speaker 10: Carolina that were hit, there are all of them. Twenty

452
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:27,080
Speaker 10: six out of twenty eight, eight of those counties were

453
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 10: for Trump. They're doing whatever they can because they can't.

454
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:32,520
Speaker 4: Rig the elign even control the weather.

455
00:25:32,840 --> 00:25:36,879
Speaker 1: Yes, very compelling stuff coming out of the Trump rallies.

456
00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:38,800
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ, I'm.

457
00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 1: Going to quote from a Media Matters article on hurricane

458
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 1: misinformation and conspiracy theories. Quote. A video with over sixty

459
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:48,280
Speaker 1: four thousand views has on screen text that reads were

460
00:25:48,359 --> 00:25:52,200
Speaker 1: at the point of Revolution. It features a user speculating

461
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:56,160
Speaker 1: for over six minutes that Hurricane Helene was somehow part

462
00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:00,200
Speaker 1: of a plan to suppress white Republican votes. Quote. You

463
00:26:00,280 --> 00:26:02,000
Speaker 1: might be able to speculate that this is something to

464
00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:04,880
Speaker 1: do with the fact that these are largely white rule

465
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:07,840
Speaker 1: Appalachian areas that have been affected. They're looking at it

466
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:10,480
Speaker 1: like this, this election is three weeks from now. We've

467
00:26:10,520 --> 00:26:13,640
Speaker 1: just wiped out the complete and total infrastructure for all

468
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:17,560
Speaker 1: these towns and cities. That's great because guess which way

469
00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:21,439
Speaker 1: these towns leaned. They leaned red. These were largely Republican

470
00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: leading towns. As far as they're concerned, they could all

471
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:28,640
Speaker 1: die and they don't care because that's just one less

472
00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:34,280
Speaker 1: vote for Trump. Unquote. Yes, Asheville, North Carolina famously famously

473
00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 1: a Republican town, famously the conservative paradise of Asheville. Now,

474
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:44,720
Speaker 1: a lot of these conspiracies also link up to very

475
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:48,879
Speaker 1: old like FEMA conspiracies. Right, There's been conspiracies about FEMA

476
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:52,239
Speaker 1: since like the nineteen eighties, they've been heavily tied in

477
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:55,200
Speaker 1: with the militia movement. The formation of the Oathkeepers was

478
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:59,160
Speaker 1: in response to FEMA concentration camp conspiracy theories, basically that

479
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:02,040
Speaker 1: they'll use natural disasters and FEMA to like round up

480
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:05,919
Speaker 1: patriots to do some kind of new world order, or

481
00:27:06,080 --> 00:27:08,000
Speaker 1: that they're gonna use FEMA to seize your land, so

482
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:10,080
Speaker 1: then you're gonna be put in a FEMA concentration camp.

483
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:13,880
Speaker 1: Very old conspiracies. Now these have kind of fed into

484
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 1: the current conspiracy matrix regarding the hurricanes. I'm gonna quote

485
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:21,400
Speaker 1: from this one guy on Twitter called the health Ranger.

486
00:27:21,720 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 4: No, not the health Ranger.

487
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:28,280
Speaker 1: No, do you know do you know who the health

488
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:28,879
Speaker 1: Ranger is?

489
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:30,320
Speaker 4: Yeah?

490
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:35,120
Speaker 2: The health Ranger is is a frequent Alex Jones guest. Yes, yes,

491
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:39,040
Speaker 2: like an anti vax guy. And he's a whole He's

492
00:27:39,080 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 2: a whole thing in in this whole conspiracy universe.

493
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 1: I hate him so much he does. And this is

494
00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 1: this is what he says about the current hurricanes. Quote No,

495
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:53,080
Speaker 1: in cunning intel all caps, FEMA is waiving ungodly amounts

496
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 1: of money at private security firms right now, begging for

497
00:27:56,400 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 1: security contractors to station at Florida to prevent Floridians from

498
00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:03,919
Speaker 1: returning to their homes and businesses after the storm hits.

499
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:07,560
Speaker 1: The evacuation orders are to push people out of Florida

500
00:28:07,760 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: and keep them out. Reportedly, Delta Force personnel advising FEMA

501
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:17,280
Speaker 1: at the top devising denial of area enforcement plans which

502
00:28:17,280 --> 00:28:21,159
Speaker 1: will be enforced at gunpoint if required. I'm told FEMA

503
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:25,040
Speaker 1: is practically panicked to get enough armed personnel on site,

504
00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:29,080
Speaker 1: anticipating a tremendous amount of resistance from displaced people who

505
00:28:29,119 --> 00:28:31,840
Speaker 1: want to return home to salvage whatever they can. This

506
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:34,800
Speaker 1: is the next step up the escalation ladder as the

507
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:37,679
Speaker 1: federal government wages war against the American people, as we

508
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 1: saw FEMA carrying out in North Carolina, actively hindering rescue

509
00:28:41,280 --> 00:28:45,960
Speaker 1: efforts to maximize starvation and death to the people. Do

510
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 1: not escalate. Hold your ground peacefully and firmly. This looks

511
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: a lot like a J six style trap to provoke

512
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:55,880
Speaker 1: an insurrection and declare martial law to cancel the election.

513
00:28:56,440 --> 00:29:01,640
Speaker 1: Don't play into their hands. Unquote. This unhinged diatribe got

514
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:04,479
Speaker 1: over ten thousand likes and was spread wildly around Twitter.

515
00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 1: A few days ago, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue posted

516
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 1: in an article documenting this current conspiracy ecosystem, and they

517
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: included one TikTok video that stated, quote to my North

518
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:19,760
Speaker 1: Carolina families, please, I know it's hard, but please do

519
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: not take that seven hundred and fifty dollars. It's alone,

520
00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: and if you don't pay it back, they will seize

521
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:30,120
Speaker 1: your property. In response to this, FEMA clearly stated that

522
00:29:30,280 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 1: FEMA cannot seize your property or land. Applying for disaster

523
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 1: assistance does not grant FEMA or the federal government authority

524
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 1: or ownership over your property or land. So now we

525
00:29:41,080 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: have these conspiracy theorists which are being boosted by Republican officials,

526
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:49,840
Speaker 1: basically encouraging people to resist help from FEMA, to not

527
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 1: evacuate and like all of this puts themselves and others

528
00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 1: in great danger. Right, you might say, well, if conspiracy

529
00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:59,120
Speaker 1: theorists don't want help from FEMA, like what's the harm?

530
00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:01,680
Speaker 1: Right these people have like kids, Like these these people

531
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:03,920
Speaker 1: have families. It's not just them that are going to

532
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 1: be affected. If they're refusing to evacuate their family from

533
00:30:07,480 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 1: the path of a hurricane and like their kids die,

534
00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:13,640
Speaker 1: that's super fucked up. If they're refusing like help from

535
00:30:13,640 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 1: FEMA to feed themselves in their family, that's not a

536
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:21,520
Speaker 1: good sign of the current state of this country. Yeah yeah,

537
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 1: like it's bad. Ron DeSantis's pres secretary had to come

538
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:30,200
Speaker 1: out against the unhinged ramble from health ranger on Twitter.

539
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 1: She quote tweeted his post saying spreading lives like this

540
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: could have serious consequences. If people in evacuation zones see

541
00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:40,400
Speaker 1: this and decide not to evacuate despite warnings from state

542
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: and local emergency management, they are unnecessarily putting their own

543
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 1: lives and the lives the first responders at grave risk.

544
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:54,560
Speaker 2: Unquote wow the wow, Well the fucking Rhondas sandus Is

545
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 2: press person. The leopards are finally eating your face if

546
00:30:58,040 --> 00:30:59,959
Speaker 2: you joined the lepredating face party.

547
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:00,320
Speaker 4: Wow.

548
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 1: Who could possibly have predicted this? The rawn decentis team

549
00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 1: has been replaced by the lizard people. I swear.

550
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:07,120
Speaker 9: No.

551
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:11,080
Speaker 1: Like things got so bad that in DeSantis' like emergency declaration,

552
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 1: he had to specifically put in language that stated that

553
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: law enforcement will help ensure that people can return to

554
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 1: their property after the evacuation has ended. Like goofy, goofy,

555
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 1: shit God and just like in general, all these FEMA

556
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 1: conspiracies are preventing people in need from requesting a badly

557
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:29,320
Speaker 1: needed help from the agency. I'm going to include this

558
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 1: one clip from this guy who was interviewed on MSNBC

559
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 1: talking about how his family has been refusing help in

560
00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: North Carolina.

561
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 3: My father in law lives just outside of Asheville, North Carolina,

562
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:44,959
Speaker 3: and he was badly damaged by Hurricane Helene. And he

563
00:31:45,040 --> 00:31:48,840
Speaker 3: has refused all FEMA help because he's a hardcore Trumper

564
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 3: and he believes, he literally believes that he accepts anything

565
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 3: from FEMA, they're going to take his house. I don't

566
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 3: understand how so many people are under the spell of

567
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 3: this freaking con man. I don't understand it.

568
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 11: Well, it's absolutely heartbreaking about your father in law. I'm

569
00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 11: so sorry to hear it.

570
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 6: It's you know, and it's hard. It's hard, just it's

571
00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:14,320
Speaker 6: hard to even imagine it. I mean, he lost almost

572
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:17,960
Speaker 6: everything and he's refusing all help from the federal government

573
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:20,680
Speaker 6: and complaining to us that he doesn't have food, that

574
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 6: he doesn't have the stuff he needs, and yet he

575
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 6: won't accept the help. What the hell are we supposed

576
00:32:25,120 --> 00:32:27,160
Speaker 6: to do. We're not in a position to be able

577
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:31,280
Speaker 6: to fly across the country and help him. There's people

578
00:32:31,400 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 6: begging us to get him to accept help, and he

579
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 6: won't do it.

580
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 1: Wow.

581
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 6: And I guarantee you I'm not the only one. I

582
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 6: guarantee you I'm not the only one.

583
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 11: I wish there was something I could say as to

584
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 11: you know, I don't know, is there. Does he have

585
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 11: access to any electronics where you could send him some

586
00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:00,240
Speaker 11: information debunking this and that he might be We've.

587
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 6: Done all of that. We've done all of that. We've

588
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 6: sent him, We've sent him all the THEMA bulletins, we've

589
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:07,640
Speaker 6: sent him all the stuff from the fact checkers. He

590
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 6: doesn't believe it. He thinks it's all. He just believes

591
00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 6: Trump literally again, he just it's a cult. He's a

592
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 6: cult member. I'm sorry to say it. He's a he's

593
00:33:17,840 --> 00:33:22,080
Speaker 6: a cult member, and he's my father in law.

594
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:23,160
Speaker 4: And it sucks.

595
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:28,600
Speaker 1: That's pretty bad. That's devastating, and I think that is

596
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:31,520
Speaker 1: very resonant to a lot of people right now. And

597
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:36,280
Speaker 1: how this whole like conspiracy missymphi eqos system that's been

598
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:38,000
Speaker 1: getting worse slowly over the course of the eight years,

599
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 1: has just like ruined families and puts people in like

600
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 1: constant active danger. Now, these conspiracies have also led to

601
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 1: threats against FEMA workers and meteorologists for both being a

602
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 1: part of the conspiracy and for controlling the weather. Yeah,

603
00:33:55,720 --> 00:33:58,000
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quote from the Institute for

604
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 1: Strategic Dialogue. Quote. Falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible

605
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:05,479
Speaker 1: threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government.

606
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 1: This includes calls to send a militias to face down

607
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 1: FEMA for the perceived denial of aid, and that individuals

608
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:17,560
Speaker 1: should quote unquote shoot FEMA officials and the agency's emergency responders.

609
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:21,560
Speaker 1: Unverified claims, but attacks on FEMA representatives have been used

610
00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:25,880
Speaker 1: to glorify and encourage violence unquote. Media Matters archived a

611
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:30,160
Speaker 1: TikTok video threatening FEMA employees which received over two hundred

612
00:34:30,239 --> 00:34:34,960
Speaker 1: thousand views, saying, quote deer, FEDS and FEMA, if you're

613
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 1: trying to deny people access to help in the affected area,

614
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: be advised we're still under the War on Terror Emergency Declaration.

615
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:46,760
Speaker 1: If you violate your constitutional oath to protect and assist,

616
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:51,520
Speaker 1: the charge will be treason. Punishment can mean being unalived

617
00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: immediately by the citizens you are withholding aid from unquote

618
00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:07,320
Speaker 1: on TikTok. They're threatening to un alive governmentations. Another mineo

619
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 1: states quote public notice we the United States of America

620
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:14,360
Speaker 1: had declared FEMA personnel engaged in obstructing local rescue efforts

621
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 1: in the area impacted by Hurricane Helene to be enemies

622
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:21,280
Speaker 1: of the state. A FEMA personnel offer any further obstruction

623
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: or failed to immediately assist to their best ability, they

624
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:26,400
Speaker 1: can be arrested or shot or hung.

625
00:35:26,239 --> 00:35:28,680
Speaker 4: On site unquote Christ.

626
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 1: Now, a lot of these conspiracy theories are also heavily

627
00:35:31,960 --> 00:35:35,960
Speaker 1: anti Semitic, talking about like the religion of local officials,

628
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:38,239
Speaker 1: like I think, like the mayor of Asheville, and just

629
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:42,200
Speaker 1: in general, combining these weather control conspiracy theories with FEMA

630
00:35:42,239 --> 00:35:46,759
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, saying that like the Jews are somehow controlling

631
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:50,440
Speaker 1: all of this, and like that's just a recurring aspect

632
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:52,600
Speaker 1: of these conspiracies that I feel like it is it

633
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:55,360
Speaker 1: is worth mentioning, especially because like the right is like

634
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:58,640
Speaker 1: trying to weaponize claims anti Semitism to attack the Democrats

635
00:35:58,680 --> 00:36:01,760
Speaker 1: on Israel right now, which is absurd because the Democrats

636
00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:05,440
Speaker 1: are extremely pro Israil but still their constituents are going

637
00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:08,240
Speaker 1: to be spreading all these like very unhinged any Smitic

638
00:36:08,239 --> 00:36:11,719
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories about Jews controlling weather and using FEMA to

639
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:16,000
Speaker 1: hurt Christians in the Appalachians, all that kind of stuff.

640
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 1: Now it's not just threats against FEMA officials. Death threats

641
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 1: have also been targeted against meteorologists, as Rolling Stone documented

642
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:26,839
Speaker 1: in an article last week. Quote I've been doing this

643
00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:29,359
Speaker 1: for forty six years, and it's never been like this,

644
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:33,880
Speaker 1: says Alabama meteorologist James span. He says he's been inundated

645
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:37,200
Speaker 1: with misinformation and threatening messages like stop lying about the

646
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 1: government controlling the weather or else unquote.

647
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:40,520
Speaker 4: Great.

648
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:44,479
Speaker 1: A Washington, D C. Based meteorologist named Matthew Capussi said,

649
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:47,440
Speaker 1: quote for me to post a hurricane forecast and for

650
00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:50,280
Speaker 1: people to accuse me of creating the hurricane by working

651
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:54,279
Speaker 1: for some secret Illuminati entity is disappointing and distressing, and

652
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: it's resulting in a decrease in public trust unquote. So

653
00:36:58,760 --> 00:37:00,759
Speaker 1: like again, like, why is this all had happening? A

654
00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:03,000
Speaker 1: part of it is because the election is upcoming and

655
00:37:03,040 --> 00:37:05,640
Speaker 1: people are trying to find reasons to think why Trump

656
00:37:05,719 --> 00:37:08,640
Speaker 1: might lose, and they're saying that the hurricanes are actually

657
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:10,799
Speaker 1: a plot by the illuminati to make Trump lose the

658
00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:15,320
Speaker 1: election via having these storms controlled by Jews and Democrats

659
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 1: to target Republican areas. But like, what has changed in

660
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:21,920
Speaker 1: the actual ecosystem to allow this to feel like it's

661
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:24,359
Speaker 1: so much worse than what it usually has been? And

662
00:37:24,640 --> 00:37:28,800
Speaker 1: I've kind of decided that everyone is now Alex Jones,

663
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:32,360
Speaker 1: Like everyone has become their own little mini Alex Jones.

664
00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:35,080
Speaker 1: Platforms have changed in the past eight years to create

665
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:38,719
Speaker 1: massive social and financial incentives to go viral, So now

666
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:40,719
Speaker 1: everyone is just doing what Alex Jones did, right, Like

667
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:43,839
Speaker 1: Alex Jones learned that he could make a profit saying

668
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:47,120
Speaker 1: all kinds of crazy shit on air, and now other

669
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:50,479
Speaker 1: people have also learned this lesson. This is a part

670
00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 1: of I think, what's going on now? How does everyone

671
00:37:53,640 --> 00:37:56,480
Speaker 1: has the capacity to go viral by saying whatever crazy

672
00:37:56,480 --> 00:37:59,000
Speaker 1: shit they can during a moment of crisis. A few

673
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:00,880
Speaker 1: days ago, there was a really good article in the

674
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 1: Atlantic by Charles Rozel titled I'm running out of ways

675
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:07,680
Speaker 1: to explain how bad this is. This is going to

676
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:09,359
Speaker 1: be linked in the sources below. I recommend you give

677
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 1: it a read, but I'm going to read a paragraphic

678
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:14,239
Speaker 1: from it here. Quote. This is more than just a

679
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:18,799
Speaker 1: misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by

680
00:38:18,800 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to

681
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:26,960
Speaker 1: confront two alarming facts. First that a durable ecosystem exists

682
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:30,920
Speaker 1: to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second that

683
00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:35,320
Speaker 1: the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes,

684
00:38:35,600 --> 00:38:40,080
Speaker 1: but willing participants. This reality fracturing is the result of

685
00:38:40,120 --> 00:38:43,760
Speaker 1: an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer

686
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:48,680
Speaker 1: financial and intentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to

687
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: turn every tragedy and every large event into a shameless

688
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:57,520
Speaker 1: content creation opportunity. This collides with a swath of people

689
00:38:57,600 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 1: who would rather live in an alternate reality built on

690
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 1: distrust and grievance then change their fundamental beliefs about the world. Unquote.

691
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: I know, Mia, we've been talking about this misinformation problem

692
00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 1: in the chat, and I know you had some comments

693
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 1: you wanted to you wanted to share.

694
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:17,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a Oh god, where did I first hear?

695
00:39:17,160 --> 00:39:21,480
Speaker 2: This might even a philosophy episode. There's a bunch of

696
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 2: philosophical stuff about how ignorance works and about how it's

697
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 2: not just like ignorance, isn't just the state of not

698
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 2: knowing something. You have to actively create it, right, You

699
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:35,319
Speaker 2: have to you have to go out of your way

700
00:39:35,480 --> 00:39:38,920
Speaker 2: not to seek the information that would that would sort

701
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:41,239
Speaker 2: of like you know, cause you to have to know,

702
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:43,319
Speaker 2: or cause you to change your worldview, or cause you

703
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:46,360
Speaker 2: to like have to confront what your beliefs are. So

704
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 2: people actively sort of construct this this reality around themselves.

705
00:39:52,239 --> 00:39:55,640
Speaker 2: They don't have to do anything that ever sort of

706
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 2: challenges their own views. And this is something that you

707
00:39:57,719 --> 00:40:00,839
Speaker 2: can see, I mean, you see it happening all over

708
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 2: the place. And this is one of the things that

709
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:05,960
Speaker 2: where sale It's like gets right. That is important is

710
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 2: that like people are active participants in the construction of

711
00:40:09,880 --> 00:40:12,200
Speaker 2: their own universes. And now there's there's a financial incentive,

712
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 2: there's a social incentive, and there's also a cognitive incentive,

713
00:40:14,719 --> 00:40:16,799
Speaker 2: which is that like having to deal with the fact

714
00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:19,279
Speaker 2: that you might be wrong bustling fucking sucks, yes, and

715
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:22,920
Speaker 2: is hard, and sometimes you just don't want to know totally.

716
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:25,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and this is something that like myself,

717
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: Robert and you have been talking about increasingly the past

718
00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:34,080
Speaker 1: few years. It feels like misinformation is an outdated model

719
00:40:34,160 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 1: to understand our current predicament, right, Like misinformation is no

720
00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:41,160
Speaker 1: longer meant to like actually change minds or persuade people.

721
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:45,799
Speaker 1: It's just a mechanism to construct and reinforce false realities,

722
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:48,440
Speaker 1: like in the in the In the recent Meme of

723
00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 1: Politics episode, I talked about how AI images of trans

724
00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:54,839
Speaker 1: athletes or of immigrants stealing pets like these aren't meant

725
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 1: to convince anyone of their authenticity, but they exist in

726
00:40:58,040 --> 00:41:00,800
Speaker 1: lieu of evidence to help people maintain their reality tunnel.

727
00:41:01,160 --> 00:41:03,840
Speaker 1: An information researcher at the University of Washington named Michael

728
00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:06,759
Speaker 1: Cawfield wrote an article earlier this year about how a

729
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:10,480
Speaker 1: whole bunch of Mega people started to deny the authenticity

730
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:13,680
Speaker 1: of those videos of Kamala Harris's rally in that Detroit

731
00:41:13,680 --> 00:41:16,919
Speaker 1: hangar showing like a massive, massive, huge crowd with Air

732
00:41:16,960 --> 00:41:19,600
Speaker 1: Force one or Air Force two landing and her getting off,

733
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:21,760
Speaker 1: with these meg people saying that this was, like ais

734
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:23,239
Speaker 1: is fake, There was no way the crowd would be

735
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: this big, and they invented a whole bunch of reasons

736
00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:27,960
Speaker 1: for why that this photo must be fake and this

737
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:29,719
Speaker 1: this wasn't fake. This was a real photo. This was

738
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:33,520
Speaker 1: easily verified. There's like video evidence from multiple sources showing

739
00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: that this is a real thing that happened. But Cowfield wrote, quote,

740
00:41:37,160 --> 00:41:40,319
Speaker 1: the primary use of misinformation is not to change the

741
00:41:40,320 --> 00:41:44,240
Speaker 1: beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority

742
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:47,520
Speaker 1: of misinformation is offered as a service for people to

743
00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:52,719
Speaker 1: maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Unquote,

744
00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: and yeah, I don't believe in giving these people a

745
00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:59,240
Speaker 1: degree of passivity, right like. This is an active choice

746
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:02,680
Speaker 1: that they are doubling down and reinforcing and creating their

747
00:42:02,719 --> 00:42:05,040
Speaker 1: own reality tunnels to live in. And I think the

748
00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 1: other aspect of this, this is something that Robert was

749
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 1: talking with me last night, is like the people also

750
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:14,000
Speaker 1: propagating this, the people creating the environments to make this happen,

751
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 1: are also willing participants, right like this, This is a

752
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 1: big reason why Musk bought Twitter, is so that it

753
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:23,839
Speaker 1: purposely could turn into the current conspiracy like shit show

754
00:42:23,880 --> 00:42:26,960
Speaker 1: that it currently is. Facebook used to be where conspiracy

755
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:30,839
Speaker 1: theorists gathered to post their weird boomer opinions, and now

756
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:35,560
Speaker 1: it's Twitter alongside just actual, useful, verifiable information, and now

757
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:37,840
Speaker 1: because these two platforms have kind of combined, how we

758
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:40,239
Speaker 1: have so much conspiracy content on Twitter. It also just

759
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:42,440
Speaker 1: damages the use of Twitter as a platform to look

760
00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:44,279
Speaker 1: for real information. And I think you can see the

761
00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:47,280
Speaker 1: same thing with TikTok, with its very loose content moderation

762
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:50,720
Speaker 1: policy regarding like factual information and the fact that people

763
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:53,719
Speaker 1: use TikTok as its own search engine, creating its own

764
00:42:53,840 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 1: ecosystem of misinformation, fully isolated away from the rest of

765
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:01,800
Speaker 1: the Internet. And this project to like wear down collective

766
00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:05,600
Speaker 1: reality is a long term project by the right. You

767
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:07,520
Speaker 1: could look at the John Birch Society and other anti

768
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:11,319
Speaker 1: communist groups from the fifties who used to deliberately put

769
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:15,080
Speaker 1: out fake articles about communists infiltrating Fox News, and a

770
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:17,880
Speaker 1: whole bunch of conservative mass media like talk Radio was

771
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:20,720
Speaker 1: created at least in part as a reaction to Nixon

772
00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: being forced of office, and a lot of the same

773
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:26,120
Speaker 1: people funding right wing media are also pushing for charter

774
00:43:26,239 --> 00:43:30,000
Speaker 1: schools and attempts to destroy public education. Like it's all

775
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:34,000
Speaker 1: an intentional effort to make people's media literacy go completely

776
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: down the toilet and propagate entire false versions of reality.

777
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:40,839
Speaker 1: In service of a few rich people, and that's what

778
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:43,440
Speaker 1: our current situation is right now. And I don't know

779
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:45,120
Speaker 1: if this way to stop it. As you heard in

780
00:43:45,120 --> 00:43:49,080
Speaker 1: that clip from MSNBC, like fact checks don't work anymore,

781
00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:50,840
Speaker 1: because that's not like the point of any of this.

782
00:43:51,040 --> 00:43:53,359
Speaker 1: It's not meant to actually persuade people. It's only meant

783
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:56,359
Speaker 1: to reinforce what they already want to believe. So what

784
00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 1: do you do in a world post fact checking? I

785
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:02,880
Speaker 1: don't know, and we're gonna have to find out. I

786
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:04,919
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, do you do you have any

787
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:05,760
Speaker 1: closing thoughts?

788
00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:06,239
Speaker 4: You know?

789
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:07,920
Speaker 2: I will say, one of the few things I've ever

790
00:44:07,960 --> 00:44:10,400
Speaker 2: seen that's gotten someone out of something like this is

791
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:13,560
Speaker 2: just sometimes it doesn't always work like this, but every

792
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:15,880
Speaker 2: once in a while, you could have an experience that

793
00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:20,520
Speaker 2: is so cognitively shattering to everything that you'd believed that

794
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:22,320
Speaker 2: it just implodes.

795
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:27,240
Speaker 1: So me, you're advocating to dose your Republican family members

796
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:28,680
Speaker 1: with LSD? Is that what I'm hearing?

797
00:44:29,280 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 2: Well, No, what I'm advocating is that the people who

798
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:34,360
Speaker 2: think that China is a socialist state be sent to

799
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 2: China and have to interact with members of the Chinese

800
00:44:36,680 --> 00:44:38,080
Speaker 2: Communist Party, because I have.

801
00:44:38,160 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 4: Seen this work.

802
00:44:39,520 --> 00:44:42,799
Speaker 2: It does work, it can I've seen it happen. You

803
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:44,800
Speaker 2: can't talk to these people for more than five minutes.

804
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 2: But I mean, you know, a sort of more serious note,

805
00:44:47,239 --> 00:44:50,760
Speaker 2: I mean, this is something that you know, you're trying

806
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 2: to fight emotions on a sort of intellectual level, and

807
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:57,399
Speaker 2: so like, if you want to deal with this, I don't.

808
00:44:57,600 --> 00:45:01,400
Speaker 2: I think you have to kind of be working on

809
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:06,160
Speaker 2: a sort of like emotional actfective register. And that sucks

810
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 2: because it's you know, it's effectively the abandonments of politics

811
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:14,960
Speaker 2: as politics. It's arguably just a complete retreat into fascism.

812
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:17,800
Speaker 2: But you know, if you take the sort of understanding

813
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:20,120
Speaker 2: as one of the elements of it, as fascism is

814
00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:21,680
Speaker 2: reducing all politics to aesthetics.

815
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:21,920
Speaker 9: Right.

816
00:45:22,560 --> 00:45:27,680
Speaker 2: But we've hit this point where there's no centralizing viewpoint,

817
00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:31,239
Speaker 2: like central reality tunnel that most people are in. And

818
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:34,279
Speaker 2: that's largely partially because of these people trying to destroy it,

819
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:36,920
Speaker 2: and partially because the people who were running the mainstream

820
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:40,680
Speaker 2: media blew themselves up by lying about I Rock and

821
00:45:40,719 --> 00:45:44,640
Speaker 2: then by spending thirty years insisting that like neoliberalism was

822
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:46,520
Speaker 2: the greatest economic system ever and then two thousand and

823
00:45:46,520 --> 00:45:50,400
Speaker 2: eight happening, and so, like you know, we're in this

824
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:54,080
Speaker 2: position where the people who had built the guardrails blew

825
00:45:54,120 --> 00:45:55,759
Speaker 2: it up in order to make money and push your

826
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:57,719
Speaker 2: political jenas, and now a bunch of other people who

827
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:02,000
Speaker 2: want to just destroy everything inside those rails are just

828
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:07,320
Speaker 2: like detonating bombs inside of all of our like psychological concies.

829
00:46:08,680 --> 00:46:10,800
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the guy who was talking about

830
00:46:10,920 --> 00:46:15,160
Speaker 1: his stepdad in Asheville is correct. It is a cult,

831
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:17,520
Speaker 1: and you have to treat it like you would treat

832
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:19,560
Speaker 1: a cult. You can't fact check them out of this.

833
00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:24,480
Speaker 1: You have to treat them like your friend just joined scientology.

834
00:46:24,560 --> 00:46:26,520
Speaker 1: Some people might just choose to completely cut the person

835
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:28,840
Speaker 1: off because they find it too dangerous, and that's fine,

836
00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:31,279
Speaker 1: but I think there should be others that remain as

837
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:33,719
Speaker 1: a lifeline to the person. Right if they ever one

838
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:35,960
Speaker 1: day realize, oh no, I'm in a cult and I

839
00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 1: need help, there needs to be a way for them

840
00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:40,280
Speaker 1: to get out. Yeah, there needs to be a lifeline

841
00:46:40,280 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: for them to escape. And this is the only way

842
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 1: that like quote unquote, cult deprogramming has worked. You can

843
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:49,200
Speaker 1: point to like people who've gotten out of the QAnon

844
00:46:49,239 --> 00:46:53,120
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory, like this is the only tactic that actually works.

845
00:46:53,640 --> 00:46:57,240
Speaker 1: It's reliant on the courtesy of others, right, It's reliant

846
00:46:57,320 --> 00:46:59,160
Speaker 1: that you have to put yourself in a degree of

847
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 1: danger by maintaining contact with this person that is kind

848
00:47:02,680 --> 00:47:05,520
Speaker 1: of dangerous because they are in this like very volatile cult.

849
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:08,440
Speaker 1: There needs to be some lifeline for them. And I

850
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:10,880
Speaker 1: think that's really the only way that I know of

851
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 1: right now that shows a degree of success in getting

852
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:17,880
Speaker 1: people out of this like fucked up conspiracy matrix. And

853
00:47:17,960 --> 00:47:21,280
Speaker 1: it sucks, and it's not easy, and most people promoting

854
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:25,640
Speaker 1: like cult deprogramming are hacks with pseudoscience. And it turns

855
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:28,440
Speaker 1: out like this is just a very emotional problem and

856
00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:33,040
Speaker 1: it requires unfortunately emotional solutions that a simple Reuter's fact

857
00:47:33,080 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 1: check will not suffice. So anyway, that is my rundown

858
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:39,719
Speaker 1: on what's currently going on with the hurricane misinformation. It's

859
00:47:39,760 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: really bad. Yep, it could happen here.

860
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:49,440
Speaker 8: It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

861
00:47:49,480 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 8: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

862
00:47:52,600 --> 00:47:55,160
Speaker 8: cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the

863
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:59,239
Speaker 8: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,

864
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:02,279
Speaker 8: find sources for it could happen here, listed directly in

865
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:04,520
Speaker 8: episode descriptions. Thanks for listening,