Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Taylor, and welcome to Forward Thinking, a podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says it's a long
Speaker 1: way to Tipperary. I'm Lauren Bocaba and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and today we're going to be starting the first part
Speaker 1: of a two part episode. Yeah, this is a topic
Speaker 1: so big it could not be contained within a single show.
Speaker 1: And really we just kept finding notes, Like right before
Speaker 1: we came in here and sat down, we were like,
Speaker 1: oh no, there's more, There's so much more. Well, it
Speaker 1: is a somewhat mind bending topic, quite quite epic and
Speaker 1: scope it turns out. But so to set the scene
Speaker 1: for what we're going to talk about today, I want
Speaker 1: to have a little, a little mind experiment. All right, Okay,
Speaker 1: think of yourself easy. I know it's easy for you
Speaker 1: on that, but who I mean, think about what you
Speaker 1: think When you think of yourself. There's sort of like
Speaker 1: a thing you have in your mind. It's your personality,
Speaker 1: your traits, the things that the ways you would describe
Speaker 1: yourself in your Okay Cupid profile. If you're being honest,
Speaker 1: I guess and if I'm no longer afraid of my wife.
Speaker 1: Okay um, But there's sort of a problem with playing
Speaker 1: this game because we like to think of ourselves as
Speaker 1: sort of dependable and unchanging, like we are who we are,
Speaker 1: and we think each of our personalities is sort of
Speaker 1: one fixed, eternal feature of the universe. There's there's Jonathan,
Speaker 1: and he's who Jonathan is. But deep down we sort
Speaker 1: of all know it's not really like that, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: human thought and behavior is sometimes disturbingly malleable. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: to some extent, we can change what kinds of people
Speaker 1: we are. You can form new habits and break old ones,
Speaker 1: and experiences you know, can change the way you would
Speaker 1: react in any given situation. We can take steps to
Speaker 1: change ourselves, and it's easy to see how since we
Speaker 1: can change ourselves, we could probably also take steps to
Speaker 1: change other people or have other people change us. Exactly right,
Speaker 1: And so, like most other measurable phenomena in the world,
Speaker 1: deliberate methods of changing human thought and behavior are things
Speaker 1: that can be studied scientifically, and right now we might
Speaker 1: not know a whole lot about this field, but we
Speaker 1: will probably know more and more as time goes on.
Speaker 1: So that brings me to today's topic, mind control. Yeah,
Speaker 1: will it be a thing in the future? Is now
Speaker 1: how reliable will the science of controlling human thought and
Speaker 1: behavior become? Is this a thing that's good or bad
Speaker 1: for humanity? I mean, obviously the sort of implication is
Speaker 1: that it's bad. But what what are all the ways
Speaker 1: we could look at it? Um? And how's it going
Speaker 1: to play out? Yeah? And this is something that I
Speaker 1: really enjoy reading about in science fiction because obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: so many novels that warn us against this kind of stuff, right,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them are that really good dystopian
Speaker 1: sort of novel that's just so much fun to read. Yeah. Well, right,
Speaker 1: because that's the ultimate type of oppression that's imagined in
Speaker 1: in these dystopian futures. Right, It's not just that you
Speaker 1: are sort of physically constrained and imprisoned and threatened. It's
Speaker 1: that your very sense of self is through. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the state. The state changes who you are, right, Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's that you're physically constrained and you're happy about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you don't know not to be happy about it,
Speaker 1: or why you would ever be unhappy about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So says some examples as obviously anyone who has delved
Speaker 1: into science fiction would be aware of these, but Orwell's
Speaker 1: is a great example. Oh yeah, yeah, And this is
Speaker 1: said in a society that is so steeped in propaganda
Speaker 1: that that its citizens are trained in the art of
Speaker 1: double things, holding two contradictory thoughts at the same time,
Speaker 1: also double belie and believing them both. And double think
Speaker 1: actually has a couple of different um um uses in
Speaker 1: the book. But for example, you might be told, uh that,
Speaker 1: let's say that war means peace. Let's that's a simple example.
Speaker 1: And in the classic sense of double thing, not only
Speaker 1: would you think that war means peace, but that eventually
Speaker 1: the concept of war would completely change, so that when
Speaker 1: you think the word war, you're thinking what of the
Speaker 1: concept piece that that takes on the brand new meaning,
Speaker 1: and that it becomes the reality from that point for word.
Speaker 1: So really it's about how this uh, this this despotic
Speaker 1: government really is defining reality and enforcing that reality among citizens.
Speaker 1: And if you don't play along, you get in trouble.
Speaker 1: And most people play along because you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: what they're told to do. They're they're kind of you know,
Speaker 1: they're kind of just just cogs and a wheel at
Speaker 1: that point. And in fact there's also a UM and
Speaker 1: a manufactured disparity between the highest of the highs and
Speaker 1: the lowest of the lows, where they're very small percentage
Speaker 1: of people are very very small percentage of people in
Speaker 1: the upper class, a slightly larger but still pretty small
Speaker 1: percentage of people in the middle class, and then everyone
Speaker 1: else and the main characters in UM sort of the
Speaker 1: the the upper class in a sense like kind of
Speaker 1: the in the middle class slash upper class area UM.
Speaker 1: And things do not go well for him. But then
Speaker 1: we also have Anthony Burgess's clockwork R. Right, So there
Speaker 1: you've got this kind of sense of at least seemingly
Speaker 1: benevolent mind control. Right. It's implemented as a crime reduction initiative. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they take a young man who is by all accounts
Speaker 1: not a nice guy, so he is truly reprehensible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they do some techniques on him. I think it's
Speaker 1: a combination of of drugs and then behavioral conditioning. It's
Speaker 1: a version therapy to force him to have a very
Speaker 1: visceral negative reaction to any form of violence. Yeah, Essentially,
Speaker 1: all the things that he absolutely adored when he was
Speaker 1: on his own, uh, and could be the free, willing
Speaker 1: sociopath that he was have now turned into triggers to
Speaker 1: make him feel feel violently ill, even so, going so
Speaker 1: far as the music that he used to love, which
Speaker 1: is actually that's kind of the breaking point for him
Speaker 1: is not so much the violence as his inability to
Speaker 1: choose to be violent, but the music has been taken
Speaker 1: from him as well. And Uh, what's interesting to me
Speaker 1: about this book is that the American version, for the
Speaker 1: longest time, left off the final chapter um chapter one,
Speaker 1: so it into a chapter twenty where the main character,
Speaker 1: Alex regains his ability to make choices to be a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible person. And so it's kind of left up to
Speaker 1: the reader to one wonder whether or not it was
Speaker 1: better to remove his ability to choose to be evil, thus,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of removing part of his humanity. Uh.
Speaker 1: And no, or and that way he could not commit wrong,
Speaker 1: Or was it better to allow him the ability to
Speaker 1: commit wrong, knowing that that was a potential outcome. Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that old question of whether without the capacity to
Speaker 1: to do evil, anyone can ever truly be good? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so chapter one negates that question. Chapter twenty one,
Speaker 1: Alex grow was up and essentially Burgess at this point
Speaker 1: was kind of like, you know, people grow out of it.
Speaker 1: You know, you can be a sociopathic teenager, but eventually
Speaker 1: you mature and then you realize, oh, I was kind
Speaker 1: of a jerk, and so I don't know if you
Speaker 1: grow out of just driving around murdering people. That's what
Speaker 1: that's what chapter one says. Well, that's that's why I
Speaker 1: kind of prefer chapter the one that does not have
Speaker 1: chapter twenty one in it um And because of that reason,
Speaker 1: and uh so then we've got Altis Huxley's Brave New World.
Speaker 1: And the reason I group these three togethers all three
Speaker 1: deal with a world in which the government is trying
Speaker 1: to impose a particular order in the world. And in
Speaker 1: this case, you've got a government that I'm actually an
Speaker 1: entire society that's evolved to the point where everything is
Speaker 1: predetermined for everybody. So as soon as as you have
Speaker 1: a fertilized egg, then genetic test determined where that fertilized
Speaker 1: egg is going to end up within that society, whether
Speaker 1: it will be a uh in their cast system, whether
Speaker 1: it will be in the upper casts or lower casts.
Speaker 1: Lower casts are actually genetically and chemically altered so that
Speaker 1: they have a limit to the amount of intelligence that
Speaker 1: they can have. Their their physical capabilities are limited as well,
Speaker 1: and so it's a very restrictive world. And uh and
Speaker 1: again we the the character's journey is one of discovery
Speaker 1: about how the world that they didn't know was oppressive,
Speaker 1: how oppressive it actually was. Yeah. So yeah, the main
Speaker 1: characters in Brave New World that they might live a
Speaker 1: very sort of like placid and comfortable existence in a way,
Speaker 1: but that it could be seen as without having the
Speaker 1: true vitality of life. And they sort of discover the
Speaker 1: romantic worldview, right right, the passion of being able to
Speaker 1: completely mess yourself up. Yeah. Yeah, but of course we
Speaker 1: don't have systems like this in the real world. I mean,
Speaker 1: you might get some people out there saying, like, no, man,
Speaker 1: we're living in nineteen eight four. Come on, open your eyes, people. Well,
Speaker 1: we don't really have like like full mind control methods
Speaker 1: bearing down on us, especially not ones that are deliberately
Speaker 1: controlled and studied. We we have culture, and one could
Speaker 1: in fact look at culture as an elaborate mind control method,
Speaker 1: but it's something that arose naturally out of you know,
Speaker 1: just human behavior over hundreds of years, not not a
Speaker 1: deliberate and scientifically informed attempt to control how people in
Speaker 1: various regions of the world would think. That's what our
Speaker 1: vampire overlords want you to think. Well, there's also, of course,
Speaker 1: the the the attempts to manipulate that culture, to actually
Speaker 1: leverage elements of that culture in order to get public
Speaker 1: opinion thinking one thing or an other. So it's it's
Speaker 1: while it's true that the uh, the cultural element is
Speaker 1: is certainly more prevalent than any kind of science fiction
Speaker 1: attempt to control people on individual basis, that cultural element
Speaker 1: is something that not only are we aware of, but
Speaker 1: we try to exploit and by we I mean various
Speaker 1: various humans, not just not not just me. Now, there
Speaker 1: are whole fields of study outside of Jonathan Strickland that
Speaker 1: are devoted to figuring out, you know, how to influence
Speaker 1: actions and decisions, either to to make the stuff that
Speaker 1: we have more efficient for us to use, or to
Speaker 1: you know, profit businesses that want to sell us stuff yep,
Speaker 1: or profit governments that want to sell us ideas well.
Speaker 1: Exactly right. I think that's one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: if you're looking at the most old fashioned forms of
Speaker 1: mind control and sort of the science of influencing behavior
Speaker 1: and thought and emotion and opinion, one of the first
Speaker 1: places to look is advertising and propaganda. And really the
Speaker 1: two are so hand in hand related, I mean in
Speaker 1: many many ways. So propaganda will will start with that,
Speaker 1: and that's defined as usually biased or misleading information used
Speaker 1: to sway public opinion on a matter. It's not necessarily misleading,
Speaker 1: like could it be propaganda if it if it doesn't
Speaker 1: say any facts that aren't true, it could certainly be
Speaker 1: propaganda by presenting true facts but not presenting all the facts,
Speaker 1: I mean propaganda misleading It can't You could argue it's misleading, yes,
Speaker 1: And you could argue also that biased doesn't necessarily mean nefarious,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that there is. You don't use
Speaker 1: propaganda for an unbiased reason. That the bias is why
Speaker 1: the propaganda exists in the first place. Right, you're selling
Speaker 1: an idea, and in order to do that, that means
Speaker 1: that you have a side already. Right, You're not like
Speaker 1: war might or might not be good. You decide that's
Speaker 1: not propaganda or least not effective propaganda. Wouldn't that be
Speaker 1: great if that was like how all the campaign commercials
Speaker 1: worked as it was, like, you know, here are some candidates,
Speaker 1: I don't know, make up your own mind now I
Speaker 1: want apparently beautiful. It could be great to have a
Speaker 1: parallel universe where everything, like everything when it comes to
Speaker 1: public relations and and propaganda and all that sort of
Speaker 1: stuff is just incredibly unbiased and mediocre. Just see how
Speaker 1: far that world gets along at any rate. Uh, this,
Speaker 1: this idea has been around for a while, guys. It's
Speaker 1: not the word propaganda really got got going in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, but the concept of using this means
Speaker 1: of communicating to a people that have a common base
Speaker 1: of knowledge and a common set of interests dates back
Speaker 1: to ancient times. Yeah. Well, I mean, look at any
Speaker 1: ancient Mesopotamian carving or something you know, like or depicting
Speaker 1: like one of the rulers of ancient Egypt or something
Speaker 1: like that. It's propaganda. It's there to show you how
Speaker 1: powerful and glorious this leader is, sure and not necessarily
Speaker 1: there to give you an accurate recounting of the facts
Speaker 1: of history. Well, and to be fair, also, you know
Speaker 1: you're not going to find this on a lot of
Speaker 1: civilizations that didn't have that common set of knowledge. If
Speaker 1: the peoples were scattered so much, then it just the
Speaker 1: communication to the people was something that was necessary for
Speaker 1: propaganda to work. Right, Well, you don't need propaganda if
Speaker 1: you don't have a centralized body of government. That's that's true.
Speaker 1: But you also don't need propaganda if I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't have propaganda if you can't directly, in some way
Speaker 1: communicate with your people. So ancient Greece is a great example.
Speaker 1: The Athenians were subjected to propaganda and things like theatrical
Speaker 1: productions or religious festivities. Also even just athletic games, the
Speaker 1: things like the Olympics could become propaganda for Greece. But
Speaker 1: beyond the ancient world, you know, we get into kind
Speaker 1: of a more oh, I don't know, deliberate a aproach
Speaker 1: to propaganda then simply hey, we're great, and those other
Speaker 1: guys over the hill over there, they're not so great.
Speaker 1: You get to the time of Philip the second of
Speaker 1: Spain and Queen Elizabeth of England. They had a little
Speaker 1: propaganda war about thing called the Spanish Armada. Spain was like,
Speaker 1: look how awesome our armada is, and never actually said
Speaker 1: by the way, we were completely defeated in that totally,
Speaker 1: you know they were. They never acknowledged it in Spain
Speaker 1: at the time anyway, whereas in England, in fact, I
Speaker 1: think it was Sir Walter Raleigh who later on wrote
Speaker 1: that he was disgusted by how Spain had presented the
Speaker 1: Spanish Armada to the Spanish population as if the defeat
Speaker 1: and had never happened. Whereas I'm thinking, like, you know,
Speaker 1: come on, Queen Elizabeth, she was pretty savvy on the
Speaker 1: ways of communicating to the English public as well, so
Speaker 1: gone the other way, I'm pretty sure the England would
Speaker 1: be like, oh, we totally whatever, he has a little tiff,
Speaker 1: would you? Would you argue that at some point like
Speaker 1: like Shakespeare was a propagandist, you know, he certainly was
Speaker 1: in a way because the reason he wrote the Scottish
Speaker 1: play was we're not in theater you can you can say,
Speaker 1: all right, all right? When he wrote the Thane of
Speaker 1: Cawdor's play, um, when he wrote Macbeth, he he made
Speaker 1: sure to do a couple of things. First of all,
Speaker 1: that's when James the First was now King of England.
Speaker 1: He wanted to make his line look good. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: in the line of King's presentation in Macbeth. The Last
Speaker 1: King was thought, at least in scholarship, to have held
Speaker 1: up a mirror and pointed it toward King James, to
Speaker 1: suggest that James himself is the descendant on this line
Speaker 1: that ends up taking over for Macbeth. Also, the play
Speaker 1: was very short compared to most of Shakespeare's plays, partly,
Speaker 1: at least according to scholarship, due to the fact Shakespeare
Speaker 1: had heard that James the First had a short attention span,
Speaker 1: and also it had which isn't it which James the
Speaker 1: First was really interested in? So in many ways it
Speaker 1: was probably or I can't tell if you're kidding, Is
Speaker 1: this a known thing? James the First was into witches.
Speaker 1: He was into which is probably the wrong way of
Speaker 1: putting it. He was very much against them, fascinated by them.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you could say terrified. Perhaps it's another way. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, this is a very early part of James
Speaker 1: the First reign. And he wasn't into witches like I'm into,
Speaker 1: which now he was. He wasn't watching the craft at
Speaker 1: two am every night. Okay, it's not like you, Joe, Okay, sorry, man,
Speaker 1: I almost thought that James and I had something going there. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: so when we think of propaganda these days, obviously our
Speaker 1: our opinions are very much influenced by what that meant
Speaker 1: in the first half of the twentieth century. World War
Speaker 1: one and two in Europe. Yeah, great in Britain in particular,
Speaker 1: forged to the modern idea of propaganda during the early
Speaker 1: months of the Great War as it was called then,
Speaker 1: or World War One as we know, the war to
Speaker 1: end all wars accepted totally didn't accept it, did not
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah. The Uh, the British government first cut
Speaker 1: off Germany's oceanic communication cables, meaning that they would lag
Speaker 1: behind in in getting news and and to press and
Speaker 1: supporters over in the United States, which was huge. Um.
Speaker 1: And then in September of nineteen fourteen, remember that war
Speaker 1: had only broken out in July of that year. Uh,
Speaker 1: the British government set up Wellington House, which was the
Speaker 1: secret organization that called upon journalists to write things that
Speaker 1: were sympathetic to the British cause and also published its
Speaker 1: own newspapers, eventually in eleven different languages, with a circulation
Speaker 1: of like five hundred thousand copies per issue. Crazy amounts
Speaker 1: of stuff being put out there. The Chinese language version
Speaker 1: is credited by some historians as influencing public thought enough
Speaker 1: that that China was able to declare war against Germany
Speaker 1: and not have a revolt on its hands. And the
Speaker 1: general idea of Wellington House was was to create publications
Speaker 1: that seemed like they were grassroots not governmental, um Like
Speaker 1: they were published by local commercial publishers instead of government
Speaker 1: owned presses, and and the materials were circulated not by
Speaker 1: government officials but by like local opinion makers. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: see this come up again and again, not just in
Speaker 1: in government propaganda, but in other means of trying to
Speaker 1: sway public opinion. And one of the big ones is
Speaker 1: let's try and make sure it looks like it's coming
Speaker 1: from quote unquote real people and not not a voice
Speaker 1: of authority. That way, it doesn't seem authoritarian. It seems
Speaker 1: like a genuine ups you know, upwelling support for whatever
Speaker 1: idea it happens to be. It's like, why, you know,
Speaker 1: an advertiser might want to give some of their stuff
Speaker 1: to a celebrity to where instead of like having a
Speaker 1: spokesperson say you should wear our product, Yeah, if you give,
Speaker 1: if you give Michael Jordan's your shoes. Then suddenly kids
Speaker 1: like the shoes. Well, it looks like he's just authentically
Speaker 1: enjoying these shoes, which maybe he is. Maybe he's holding
Speaker 1: the shoes up to his face and going, I really
Speaker 1: enjoy these. Yeah, you know, but that certainly is exploiting
Speaker 1: something that they perceived about the way we form opinions
Speaker 1: like that, that they picked up on the fact that
Speaker 1: people are less likely to have their mind influenced by
Speaker 1: something that they recognize as coming from a government source. Right,
Speaker 1: And and you would still get information from government sources
Speaker 1: as well, and like posters, things and songs, all this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that would be either uh sponsored by
Speaker 1: the government or promoted through the government. And that wasn't
Speaker 1: just in the u. K. Over in the United States.
Speaker 1: On we had our own version of the Wellington House.
Speaker 1: On April thirteen, nineteen seventeen, President Woodrow Wilson formed the
Speaker 1: Committee on Public Information. That sounds so innocuous and boring.
Speaker 1: Its to be like it sounds like it it almost
Speaker 1: is like two steps away from one of the departments
Speaker 1: in Yeah, it really does. The Committee on Public Information
Speaker 1: that would be called like the Committee for Public Truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I said two steps away right. Uh. So he
Speaker 1: put George Creel in charge. And Creel was a journalist.
Speaker 1: Some called him a muckreaker. Um, he was also a
Speaker 1: proponent of free speech. He said, you know, free speech
Speaker 1: was really important, and obviously censorship from public uh sources
Speaker 1: like government sources was completely wrong, and he did he
Speaker 1: disagreed with it. However, since he was then put in
Speaker 1: charge of this department, it became kind of his job
Speaker 1: to at least filter stuff, if not outright censor it.
Speaker 1: In effect, there were quite a few times where they
Speaker 1: would tell people like, you should really not publish this story.
Speaker 1: It would look bad, and they were trying to drum
Speaker 1: up the government was trying to drum up support from
Speaker 1: the American public to get involved in World War One,
Speaker 1: which was not a popular idea at the time, to
Speaker 1: send people overseas to fight someone else's war, which would
Speaker 1: become another issue went during World War Two. So part
Speaker 1: of it was this idea of let's publish the stories
Speaker 1: that are going to help support public opinion to get
Speaker 1: involved and downplay the ones that would not support it.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that came out about this
Speaker 1: is kind of the idea that we see over and
Speaker 1: over again with propaganda, which is, if you can control
Speaker 1: the flow of information to a people so that they
Speaker 1: only get one side of the story, then obviously it's
Speaker 1: going to be easier for you to sway a public
Speaker 1: opinion in support of that. If they're not, if not
Speaker 1: getting the full story, then any decision they make is
Speaker 1: going to be based upon a limited set of information. Sure,
Speaker 1: that's ostensibly why countries like like China don't allow full
Speaker 1: access to the Internet, or North Korea, which is probably
Speaker 1: I would say North Korea has got this down pat
Speaker 1: with with as far as propaganda goes. Yeah, But one
Speaker 1: thing we can say about propaganda in this period, and
Speaker 1: even a lot of propaganda today, is that a lot
Speaker 1: of it is still not what I would call necessarily
Speaker 1: scientifically informed. It's in a lot of cases, I don't
Speaker 1: think that they researched, like what would be the most
Speaker 1: effective way to get people to think the way I
Speaker 1: want them to think that they just kind of intuitively sense,
Speaker 1: like you don't want people hearing bad things about the leadership.
Speaker 1: What's funny is that a lot of research actually has
Speaker 1: gone into this, although from sources that would seem unusual.
Speaker 1: For example, one of the people who was working at
Speaker 1: the cp I was a guy by the name of
Speaker 1: Edward Burnet's. Yeah he was. He was really good people
Speaker 1: thinking what he wanted them to think. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: we should transition then to talking a little bit about
Speaker 1: Edward Burnet's and maybe the the overlap between propaganda and advertising,
Speaker 1: how how that creates this mass mind control effect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he was not just someone who worked in propaganda.
Speaker 1: He worked in public relations. You could argue that it's advertising,
Speaker 1: but really it was pr He his job. He saw
Speaker 1: it as he would be hired by companies to help
Speaker 1: them do whatever they did more effectively by convincing the
Speaker 1: public that whatever that company did was awesome. Sure. Sure,
Speaker 1: he was born, let us say, in Vienna, in although
Speaker 1: his family did move to the United States when he
Speaker 1: was just a baby. I think he was like one
Speaker 1: year old. And his uncle, interestingly enough, was one Sigmund Freud. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not that interesting an uncle. I saw where you
Speaker 1: were going a mile away and I approved, sir. Yes.
Speaker 1: So Freud obviously very influential to to Berne's. Bernice's was
Speaker 1: Depending upon whom you read, Some people say, well, he
Speaker 1: was a genius because he was able to study psychology
Speaker 1: and sociology and then incorporate those ideas directly into a
Speaker 1: practical approach. When it came to pr other people said, no,
Speaker 1: he was more of a guy who could just cut
Speaker 1: and paste cool ideas that a lot of other people
Speaker 1: would come up with and just put them together in
Speaker 1: a new format that was really effective. So again, in
Speaker 1: my mind, that's still genius either way. He was real effective. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So here's some stories about ways he was able to
Speaker 1: change public opinion. And the first one is probably the
Speaker 1: most famous that he's associated with, which was getting women
Speaker 1: to smoke uh in public, specifically Lucky Strike Cigarettes. So
Speaker 1: Lucky Strike Cigarettes had hired him saying, we want to
Speaker 1: sell more cigarettes, and he was looking around at the
Speaker 1: potential markets, and one large untapped market was females. And
Speaker 1: it's because well, a couple of reasons. One the biggest
Speaker 1: one is the social stigma that was against women smoking
Speaker 1: in public. It was considered vulgar. Sure, sure, And and
Speaker 1: this I we should put in was in the nineteen twenties. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And uh. There's also, by the way, a series of
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to Know videos that explains
Speaker 1: all of the things that Bernet's got up to, which
Speaker 1: I highly recommend you check out. But the the the
Speaker 1: other issue, slightly more um frivolous, I would say, is
Speaker 1: that the color green, which is what the Lucky Strikes
Speaker 1: packaging was, it was the dark green color that it
Speaker 1: was not seen as fashionable, and therefore women were less
Speaker 1: likely to purchase them even if they did. I'll see
Speaker 1: that smoking in public Wasn't this this stigmatized activity. I
Speaker 1: don't quite get that there was a time when just
Speaker 1: green was out. Yeah, he just was not. It was
Speaker 1: not a thing. So he did, he did. His His
Speaker 1: attack was multi pronged. One of those was to get
Speaker 1: people to change their opinion about the color green, and
Speaker 1: so he started to He started to uh chat with
Speaker 1: some of his buddies who were fashion designers, people like
Speaker 1: people who were designing fashions in France and convincing them
Speaker 1: to add green into the fashion lines for the following season.
Speaker 1: So the Parisian fashions that were coming out were incorporating
Speaker 1: this color of green. So suddenly green was seen as
Speaker 1: a very fashionable color. But that still doesn't he still
Speaker 1: doesn't still doesn't address the other problem right about women's sing.
Speaker 1: But luckily there was this whole women's suffragate movement. There
Speaker 1: was the whole women's live thing you know that needed
Speaker 1: to that was picking up steam, and he thought, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm going to leverage this, this movement to work to
Speaker 1: my benefit. He ended up convincing several women who were
Speaker 1: involved in the women's liberation movement to organize a march
Speaker 1: while smoking lucky Strikes cigarettes as a way of saying
Speaker 1: they were they were. Um, there was like kind of
Speaker 1: an empowerment uh symbol, right, the idea that the women
Speaker 1: were the equals to men, that they could do the
Speaker 1: same things men could do, including smoking in public. Yes,
Speaker 1: do what you want to get cancer, whatever you want.
Speaker 1: And they were even calling them torches for freedom, that's
Speaker 1: what the cigarettes were being referred to as. And this
Speaker 1: domination really helped swing things so that women were buying
Speaker 1: cigarettes and smoking in public. And you could argue that
Speaker 1: in part it helped change some public perception of women.
Speaker 1: But and it got him smoking. So it's not like
Speaker 1: it's it's not like it's a win win all around. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's not the only thing he's responsible for. Like
Speaker 1: there are other big, big things, like big cultural level things.
Speaker 1: Are you saying Berne's is the reason that bacon isn't
Speaker 1: a sometimes food. Berne's is the reason that He's I'm
Speaker 1: not saying he's the reason that bacon has now become
Speaker 1: an all the time's food. That really has to do
Speaker 1: with Brooklyn, New York. No, it has to do with
Speaker 1: bumper stickers and stupidity. It started with hipsters and ended
Speaker 1: up kind of boiling out from there, So I'm going
Speaker 1: to the source there. But yeah, no, Bernie's. Bernie's was
Speaker 1: he was hired by a company that, among other things,
Speaker 1: produced bacon, and they wanted to be able to sell
Speaker 1: more bacon, so he ended up writing as as the
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know, episode says a
Speaker 1: carefully worded letter to about five thousand doctors asking what
Speaker 1: would be more healthy for people, a hearty breakfast or
Speaker 1: a light breakfast. As far as I know, he didn't
Speaker 1: actually use the word bacon in either of those. Then
Speaker 1: then he said, um where he launched a public relations
Speaker 1: campaigns in four thousand five posicians agree that a breakfast
Speaker 1: hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs is best for you,
Speaker 1: and ended up and creating this market for bacon to
Speaker 1: become a breakfast food in the United States. The reason
Speaker 1: that we eat bacon for breakfast here in the US
Speaker 1: is Edward Berney's. That's it. So the things he was
Speaker 1: that he started to do have become essentially the the
Speaker 1: like to do list for PR firms these days. So
Speaker 1: he actually sort of had a something approaching a more
Speaker 1: scientific methodology for figuring out how to change people's minds
Speaker 1: about I don't know what you eat for breakfast or
Speaker 1: when you should smoke cigarette. He was he was looking
Speaker 1: at things that tended that would tend to influence people
Speaker 1: and then try to leverage those so for things like
Speaker 1: an expert opinion that would be something that could end
Speaker 1: up influencing someone. So he would look for experts or
Speaker 1: spokespeople who would end up lending legitimates legitimacy to whatever
Speaker 1: claims he was making. Right, I'm sure you've seen those
Speaker 1: old commercials that some of them are on YouTube now
Speaker 1: with more doctors smoke camels Healthier for your Love. It
Speaker 1: just makes me think that that Burnet's would have like
Speaker 1: run circles around Don Draper. I mean, it's just like
Speaker 1: there was there would be no hope for Draper against Burns. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was. It was really so brilliant because he
Speaker 1: wasn't really marketing particular branded products or even particular brands.
Speaker 1: He was marketing opinions and feelings and urges and concepts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was creating word of mouth campaigns, which again
Speaker 1: goes back to what we were saying before with governments
Speaker 1: about the legitimacy seems to come from the fact that
Speaker 1: it's it's a grassroots approach as opposed to something that's
Speaker 1: top down. If it looks like it's bottom up, people
Speaker 1: tend to think, oh, well this, uh, this, this is
Speaker 1: something that people really do care about, something I should
Speaker 1: care about one way or the other. It's I think
Speaker 1: the same reason you see so many companies today trying
Speaker 1: to get like hashtags going on Twitter like get people
Speaker 1: to participate, and why that's so often is just a miserable,
Speaker 1: embarrassing failure. Yeah, it's so crude. Uh if if you're
Speaker 1: lifting it up next to next to what Bernese was doing,
Speaker 1: because if you say to someone, hey, be interested in
Speaker 1: our product with this keyword, then you're you're ruining the
Speaker 1: entire experiment. Yeah, yeah, you're showing your hands. It's it's
Speaker 1: very rare when a brand can go out there and
Speaker 1: and start using a hashtag effectively, it does happen, but
Speaker 1: it's far more common that we see these things rise
Speaker 1: up because maybe there are a couple of notable personalities
Speaker 1: who use it and then it spreads from there. Occasionally,
Speaker 1: it's an event that happens and then something that is
Speaker 1: uh directly tied to that event becomes like the zeitgeist
Speaker 1: for whatever that is. Um. Anyway, getting back to Burne's
Speaker 1: he actually wrote a book about his methodology. He called
Speaker 1: it Crystallizing Public Opinion, and um, it was reprinted back
Speaker 1: in I think, but he comes across as a little
Speaker 1: uh condescending, essentially saying that the public are dumb and
Speaker 1: they need to be led. I mean, really, it is
Speaker 1: very much in that are pretty dumb. What do we
Speaker 1: need to? Yeah, And I feel like if I were
Speaker 1: standing next to Edward Burnet's I would be like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm a more on crap. I don't know that i'd
Speaker 1: feel dumb, but I would certainly be like, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not even baking anymore. I haven't even baken in
Speaker 1: a long time anyway, But that's not the point. So uh,
Speaker 1: Apart from that one day. But that was a slip.
Speaker 1: So then there was also the the another book he
Speaker 1: wrote called Propaganda, in which he made the case for
Speaker 1: the manipulation of public opinion as a necessary component of democracy.
Speaker 1: Of democracy, but you can't have democracy unless you first
Speaker 1: tell the people what they need to vote on and
Speaker 1: why they need to vote that way, I'm oversimplifying. No, no no, no,
Speaker 1: but I mean, but I totally believe that that's okay,
Speaker 1: that's a thing. Well, you can look at it in
Speaker 1: a certain kind of way by saying, uh, a democracy,
Speaker 1: if it is working properly, is only as good as
Speaker 1: its people. And if you have people in a properly
Speaker 1: functioning democracy who widely hold very bad opinions, then you're
Speaker 1: going to end up with very bad government. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely a tricksy subject. Yes, but Bernet's was not
Speaker 1: the only person who is working in in this kind
Speaker 1: of sticky ideological matter around those times. Um, I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk for a moment about Diamond. I know, because
Speaker 1: you love talking about I do. I do. If you
Speaker 1: have either watched brain stuff or listened to stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to Nose podcast, then you may have
Speaker 1: heard me talk about diamonds before. But but basically so
Speaker 1: diamonds are the engagement ring stone of choice because of
Speaker 1: a marketing campaign created by de Beers, which is that cartel.
Speaker 1: If you so choose, you could say vertical diamond mining,
Speaker 1: slash accrediting slash distribution corporation. You can say monopoly, you
Speaker 1: could say monopoly. Any of those words are probably valid. Uh.
Speaker 1: Around around the nineteen thirties, the demand for diamonds was falling.
Speaker 1: They were seen as a luxury that the average person
Speaker 1: didn't need, and they were no longer a true rarity
Speaker 1: since the discovery of really huge deposits of them in
Speaker 1: South Africa. UH. Only about ten percent of engagement rings
Speaker 1: around that time. Moore Diamonds and so Beers, which had
Speaker 1: all of these diamonds, was like, hey, n w A
Speaker 1: or ad agency, can you launch us a multimedia campaign
Speaker 1: that will push diamonds onto the fingers of some of
Speaker 1: brides in the United States By the two thousand's, that's
Speaker 1: actually probably not what they said, but that's what ended
Speaker 1: up happening. Um the uh uh. And we are not
Speaker 1: the only country where that occurred. You know. Back in
Speaker 1: the early days, there were fashion columns that were written
Speaker 1: by an agency representative that we're not reported as being
Speaker 1: written by an agency representative, that we're pushing diamonds. They
Speaker 1: had these these loner programs to get jewelry onto the
Speaker 1: rich and the famous for big socialite events where these
Speaker 1: photographs would be published in newspapers or uh, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever Marilyn and Row was wearing diamonds in a movie,
Speaker 1: they were probably loaned to her from de Beers. M Simultaneously,
Speaker 1: they started educating the public to increase the demand for
Speaker 1: more expensive diamonds. Those four cs are completely a de
Speaker 1: Beers and w Air collaboration. Um. Simultaneously, they were also
Speaker 1: propagating the idea that diamonds should never be resold. Thus
Speaker 1: they were maintaining the demand for new diamonds. Um. It's
Speaker 1: completely insidious. And if you would like to hear a
Speaker 1: very long history on that, well done, very long. I
Speaker 1: mean it's long enough, it's long enough to cover the territory.
Speaker 1: It's you can check out stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to to nose. A podcast episode from February seventeen of
Speaker 1: this year being it's a good podcast, uh looking ahead
Speaker 1: because now we've you know, obviously World War two propaganda
Speaker 1: was huge. And obviously we live in an era of
Speaker 1: advertising today where we are constantly surrounded by ads, whether
Speaker 1: it's in billboards or in video or an audio, or
Speaker 1: on our clothing or yeah, there's it's it's everywhere, to
Speaker 1: the point where actually their entire people whose whose jobs
Speaker 1: depend upon How can we get over advertising blindness where
Speaker 1: people have developed an immunity to certain types of advertising
Speaker 1: They just don't even it doesn't even register with them anymore. Uh,
Speaker 1: Looking ahead, like what's the future of propaganda? I found
Speaker 1: an interesting interview with a guy named Sean Gorley who
Speaker 1: did a TED talk back in two thousand nine, and
Speaker 1: his sense talked about this couple of times. Um, he's
Speaker 1: a data analysis expert, and it was talking about in
Speaker 1: the future, we'll see governments participate in propaganda through social
Speaker 1: media conversations, which makes perfect sense. We're just talking about
Speaker 1: how the approach of you know, making this a grassroots
Speaker 1: kind of approach benefits the adoption of certain ideas and
Speaker 1: whether you're trying to sell, you know, a line of
Speaker 1: clothing or sell the idea of a big political policy.
Speaker 1: Oh well, it totally makes sense. I mean you will
Speaker 1: see politicians that, for example, have a Twitter account or
Speaker 1: a Facebook account. I mean pretty much all of them
Speaker 1: do now, at least in the United States that I'm
Speaker 1: whereof it. It's rare that you encounter a politician who
Speaker 1: doesn't have those things, um. And then they have followers,
Speaker 1: of course, who are people who they can count on
Speaker 1: to be ideologically and perhaps even just culturally or socially
Speaker 1: uh in line with them, and then they can selectively
Speaker 1: report the things they want to report on their feed
Speaker 1: on Facebook and say like, hey, here's a news item
Speaker 1: that's flattering to me and the things I support, and
Speaker 1: then they know that their followers will share that with
Speaker 1: their friends and comment on it positively. It's a very uh,
Speaker 1: it's a very productive venue, we might say, right. And
Speaker 1: it gets even creepier than that, because gord Lee's point
Speaker 1: was that we can use data analysis to identify trends
Speaker 1: before they really take off. So let's say, for example
Speaker 1: that Lauren, you're a politician, and let's say that the
Speaker 1: data analysis has shown that there is an uh a
Speaker 1: growing but not huge public opinion that is counter to
Speaker 1: your strategies, it's counter to your philosophy. What am I
Speaker 1: going to do about it? And through it that analysis
Speaker 1: you discover the best ways to create counter stories, to
Speaker 1: insert them into the conversation and thus head this off
Speaker 1: before it becomes a big trend. So it's the same
Speaker 1: idea as creating counterintelligence or counterpropaganda that has dated back
Speaker 1: ever since we started talking about propaganda, but doing so
Speaker 1: on a on a scale that's much more um precise
Speaker 1: in the sense that you are you're detecting these things
Speaker 1: before they even become noticeable on a wide scale basis.
Speaker 1: So you're actually talking about using big data to examine
Speaker 1: things like public opinion and be able to try and
Speaker 1: influence it before it becomes like a conscious part of
Speaker 1: the public conversation. Yeah, and because so much of our
Speaker 1: activity takes place on platforms that are largely public, not
Speaker 1: all of us do obviously, but if you happen to
Speaker 1: have a publicly readable Twitter feed or a publicly readable
Speaker 1: Facebook page or some other social platform, then that information
Speaker 1: can be gleaned by a device that really like a
Speaker 1: web crawler that's looking for keywords to start doing things
Speaker 1: like data analysis to see what kind of opinions are
Speaker 1: coming up and how best to either either encourage those
Speaker 1: opinions or suppress them. You know, another thing, I can
Speaker 1: see very much is personalized propaganda like so like personalized
Speaker 1: advertising exactly. Yeah, I mean yeah, much the same way
Speaker 1: that the ads you get on Facebook or determined by
Speaker 1: what some kind of algorithm has figured out you might
Speaker 1: be interested in. Boy, are they way off too. They
Speaker 1: can probably also figure I've gotten some really I've gotten
Speaker 1: some bizarre ones that I've gotten some very sharp ones
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, but I'm sure that they will be
Speaker 1: able to also figure out, Hey, you know, we can
Speaker 1: do some tests and figure out that people who have
Speaker 1: these same seven interests that you do are much more
Speaker 1: strongly affected by X type of propaganda than by Y approach. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be, you know, especially like they look at activity.
Speaker 1: Let's take Facebook, for example, the things that you've hit
Speaker 1: like versus the things that you you know, you might
Speaker 1: have looked at but you didn't really Then that could
Speaker 1: end up giving more information. I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of data there. I mean, just assuming that someone Let's
Speaker 1: just take Facebook itself for example. Let's say that Facebook
Speaker 1: actually looks at how long things typically stay in your
Speaker 1: view when you are active on Facebook, which they do
Speaker 1: They know which which stories you are looking at versus
Speaker 1: which ones you're just scrolling past. They know how to
Speaker 1: serve that stuff up to you, and they know how
Speaker 1: long you're looking at your ex's profile they do. They
Speaker 1: know what there you've clicked through news articles, clicked through
Speaker 1: to news articles, I should say, And so this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff can shape how they present information to you.
Speaker 1: Everything from just making Facebook more effective, which you could
Speaker 1: argue is, oh, well, that's okay, because we want whatever
Speaker 1: we're using to be the best experience possible to presenting
Speaker 1: the kinds of stuff you are most likely to act
Speaker 1: upon in an advertising capacity. So the ways that Facebook
Speaker 1: would make money, you know, the the fact that you
Speaker 1: would be more likely to click on this stuff that, which,
Speaker 1: depending on your point of view, either benefits everyone or
Speaker 1: is super creepy, right, because it either means that you
Speaker 1: are going to not waste your time on stuff that
Speaker 1: doesn't matter to you and maybe you'll discover things that
Speaker 1: actually do matter to you. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, Facebook's telling me what I should like. Now. Ideally,
Speaker 1: I know that I'm always going to be encountering propaganda, advertising, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to avoid that, and it's not like
Speaker 1: that's going to go away. I don't think we're going
Speaker 1: to have a future where magically everyone says, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to try to get people to do
Speaker 1: the things I would like them to do. That's just
Speaker 1: that's not going to happen. So not unless you go,
Speaker 1: you know, totally off the grid, right yeah, yeah, if
Speaker 1: I end up getting a log cabin someplace and just
Speaker 1: cut ties with everybody, which I don't think I could do.
Speaker 1: I'm not good at chopping wood. So the the key
Speaker 1: here is that you want to get as much access
Speaker 1: to as many different sources of information as possible, knowing
Speaker 1: that everyone has their agenda, even if it's something like
Speaker 1: their agenda is to try and create an unbiased objective approach.
Speaker 1: We're humans, so sometimes that just doesn't happen, and not
Speaker 1: even on a conscious basis, But our ability to access
Speaker 1: as many different sources of information as possible at least
Speaker 1: gives us the opportunity to have as close to an
Speaker 1: objective view as possible. So that that's something that some
Speaker 1: of us have the luxury of because we live in
Speaker 1: a place where we can have understricted access to formation,
Speaker 1: and we furthermore have the type of lifestyle that allows
Speaker 1: us to spend time perusing that sort of information exactly.
Speaker 1: So we're doubly privileged in that sense. But then you
Speaker 1: also have to take into account that human beings can
Speaker 1: be really lazy, and since we're lazy, then it means
Speaker 1: that we also have a responsibility to overcome that laziness
Speaker 1: and seek this stuff out because it's it's it's just
Speaker 1: as possible to have a society a culture that has
Speaker 1: free access to all this stuff at least on you know,
Speaker 1: on one level, like a hypothetical level, but through practice,
Speaker 1: no one bothers to do it, and so you end
Speaker 1: up you don't have to worry about them accessing multiple
Speaker 1: sources of information. You can send out whatever messages you want. So, um,
Speaker 1: just something to keep in mind. I think I think
Speaker 1: most of our listeners are probably the type who goes
Speaker 1: seeking information from as many sources as possible just to
Speaker 1: you know, get a really good view of what's happening.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that you agree with all of them
Speaker 1: or any of them. Even I would be disturbed if
Speaker 1: you agreed with information from all of your sources. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be back to double think again. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I think we're we're pretty much wrapping it up for
Speaker 1: this first part here, but you should definitely tune in
Speaker 1: next time because next time we're going to get into
Speaker 1: the crazy territory of persuasive technology, moral enhancement. When is
Speaker 1: it maybe right to use mind control? What color makes
Speaker 1: you do things? Yes, all of that and more in
Speaker 1: our next episode. And yeah, it's some really interesting stuff
Speaker 1: that I did not know before I started researching for
Speaker 1: for these episodes about what specifically people are doing to
Speaker 1: use these are modern technologies to propagate propaganda. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: to just in some cases just try to make the
Speaker 1: world a better place, but that kind of that kind
Speaker 1: of approaches. Who's idea of better? Yeah? Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: not all not all pigs are equal? Wait what I
Speaker 1: guess all pigs are cool, but some are more equal
Speaker 1: than others. Which there you know, different orwell same idea? Sure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: why that wasn't What about bacon? Okay I'm getting confused?
Speaker 1: Or well, if you want to get in touch with this,
Speaker 1: you can s where I was gonna go. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can let us know. You can say us an email.
Speaker 1: Our address is fw thinking at how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop us a line on Facebook, on Twitter, or
Speaker 1: on Google Plus. A Twitter and Google Plus. We are
Speaker 1: f w Thinking. Just search fw thinking on Facebook we'll
Speaker 1: pop up. Do you have any suggestions for future episodes?
Speaker 1: You've got comments, you get questions, send those to us.
Speaker 1: We look forward to hearing from you, and you'll hear
Speaker 1: from us again. For more on this topic in the
Speaker 1: future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to
Speaker 1: you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,