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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome

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Speaker 1: back to the show. My name is Matt, my name

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Speaker 1: is Noel. This just in they call me Ben. You

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Speaker 1: are you? And that makes this stuff they don't want

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Speaker 1: you to know? And we're broadcasting today from an active

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Speaker 1: tornado zone. No kidding. Yeah, tensions are high in the

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Speaker 1: office right now. People are staying away from windows. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of fun and scary. Thankfully, the podcast studio is

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Speaker 1: a tiny windowless box, so we are actually in the

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Speaker 1: safest possible location for this SORDI. Actually, yeah, except we

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Speaker 1: do have to windows. Well, I was just trying to

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Speaker 1: at and then they let the facts stand in the

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Speaker 1: way of a good story, Ben. And also, you're right,

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Speaker 1: these are interior windows, they're not exterior, which is totally different.

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Speaker 1: Uh I. I would say that that still passes as actual.

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Speaker 1: But yes, the rumors are true. Tornadoes were cited. Tensions

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Speaker 1: already running high in the office are amplified by our

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Speaker 1: meteorological circumstances. Speaking of not letting the facts stand in

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Speaker 1: the way of a good story. What are we talking

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Speaker 1: about today? Yeah, I was gonna ask as a way

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Speaker 1: of lead, and where do you uh we're talking about news.

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Speaker 1: Where do you guys go for your news? Your two

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Speaker 1: of the smartest people I know. Apparently my method of

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Speaker 1: getting news is flawed. Iich, we'll talk about today. But

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Speaker 1: I get it from the Facebook feed and I subscribe

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Speaker 1: to things, and um, I kind of find that the

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Speaker 1: things that I want to read pop up pretty often

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Speaker 1: and I don't really have a problem with it, and

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Speaker 1: I don't really have to venture much farther than my

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Speaker 1: my Facebook feed. Yeah. Yes, for me, it's in the

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Speaker 1: car generally, so listening to National Public Radio or Georgia

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Speaker 1: Public Broadcasting here in Atlanta, or various subredits. So essentially

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Speaker 1: social media. I guess that's what Reddit is. World news news.

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Speaker 1: There are so many of them. I do a lot

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Speaker 1: of scrying myself. Uh, goat and trails, stuff like that

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Speaker 1: can be a little bit vague. Um. Yeah, I'm a

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Speaker 1: fan of a lot of internet news. Like most people

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Speaker 1: in our generation, I tend to get a lot of

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Speaker 1: news online. I don't currently. I was subscribed to the Economist,

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Speaker 1: which got a little bit expensive for my taste. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and I do, and I do read um print when

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Speaker 1: I don't think they'll run me out of the UH

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Speaker 1: news agents or the Barnes and Noble. But if you

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Speaker 1: are like most people, UH, then you also get your

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Speaker 1: news from some form of social media. And I would argue,

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Speaker 1: I would argue that Reddit counts as a form of

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Speaker 1: social media. I think it is. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: it's like a really elaborate forum, right, yeah, yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: But we have some statistics so it's not just you know,

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Speaker 1: the three of us talking about this. We have some

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Speaker 1: statistics from the Pure Research Center about how news watching

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Speaker 1: breaks down and percentages over the US population. Well, to

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Speaker 1: begin with, sixty of United States adults get their news

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Speaker 1: from social media. And that's all of them. That could

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Speaker 1: be Facebook, that could be Twitter or whatever you're using, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: insert your favorite app here. And eighteen percent of that

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Speaker 1: population does this on a frequent basis. I mean, for me,

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Speaker 1: the Facebook feed is crack. I mean it's I'm sad

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Speaker 1: to say it, but I I look and refresh that thing,

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Speaker 1: even knowing that nothing new is gonna come up. It's

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Speaker 1: a it's quite a compulsion, and I share with I

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Speaker 1: think many others in my generation. I'm not proud of it,

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Speaker 1: but for the our purposes here, I'm willing to come clean.

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Speaker 1: You're an honest man, and you know what, I will

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Speaker 1: also follow your lead here. I was lying earlier. I

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Speaker 1: get most of my news from tender and it's yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: because you can't read the whole story unless you swipe

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Speaker 1: the headline. You realize those are all bots, right, then, well,

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Speaker 1: they do have a lot of They do have a

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Speaker 1: lot of bot related news. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know

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Speaker 1: where else to go with this joke, So let's go

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Speaker 1: to two thousand and twelve when posters used a slightly

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Speaker 1: different question than the Pew Research Center used, and then

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Speaker 1: they found that forty of adults reported seeing news on

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Speaker 1: social media other than getting it just seeing it. Oh

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Speaker 1: it was there, I'm pretty sure, right, which is a

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Speaker 1: little bit weasily. Uh. Since Facebook is the largest social

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Speaker 1: site it reaches slightly more than two thirds of US adults,

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Speaker 1: it means that the Facebook users who get news their

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Speaker 1: equals about forty percent of the population. So almost half

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Speaker 1: of the population is getting news from Facebook. What are

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Speaker 1: users do that? And thirty one of Tumbler users And

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Speaker 1: we should also mention YouTube here because that's one of

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Speaker 1: the places where where we thrive, and that reaches about

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Speaker 1: forty eight percent of the US population, But only about

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Speaker 1: one five of the viewers on YouTube say they get

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Speaker 1: news from that site, which makes it about ten percent

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Speaker 1: of the U s population overall, so quite a bit smaller,

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Speaker 1: and that was surprising to me. I feel like I

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Speaker 1: end up watching a lot of news on YouTube. Well

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Speaker 1: you're you're an exceptional person. Well, I think I'm just

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Speaker 1: I think we're on there all the time just because

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Speaker 1: of our job, so maybe I see it more. You

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Speaker 1: just sit there and watch your own videos all day,

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Speaker 1: don't you. Man, Yeah, I get my own news from

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Speaker 1: me preaching to the choir. What's interesting here though, There

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Speaker 1: isn't a whole lot of overlap, which which is interesting,

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Speaker 1: but to me, not that much of a stretch. The

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Speaker 1: majority of people get their news from only one site.

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Speaker 1: But like I said at the top of the show,

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Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people, that one site

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Speaker 1: is like an aggregator like Facebook, and you might be

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Speaker 1: looking at things within that site, but it's all content

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Speaker 1: from other sources that then being pulled together into this

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Speaker 1: singular feed, and sometimes they'll be versions of something that

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Speaker 1: exists in other places, that's tailored just for that Facebook experience.

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Speaker 1: So you are still getting your news from other sources,

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Speaker 1: it just happens to be pulled together in this one

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Speaker 1: like mega site that, as we're going to talk about,

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Speaker 1: gives a lot of power to certain right, And that's

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Speaker 1: an excellent point about aggregation. So one thing that I

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Speaker 1: don't really care for in the world of print readers

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Speaker 1: is people who will say what I you know, I

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Speaker 1: was scriptur in to the New York Times. I'm not

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Speaker 1: the soul who gets their news from the Internet or Facebook,

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Speaker 1: because Facebook is not necessarily bad in that way. You know,

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Speaker 1: like you could subscribe to the BBC page and the

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Speaker 1: Al Jazeera page and and whatever other media you want,

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Speaker 1: and you would get you could probably get or hopefully,

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Speaker 1: in theory, get these opposing viewpoints and you can always

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Speaker 1: visit their pages to see what they've published about a thing, right,

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Speaker 1: And that doesn't I think it's unfair for people to automatically,

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Speaker 1: um dismiss that as a legitimate source of begetting news,

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Speaker 1: especially when darn near half of the US population does

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Speaker 1: that primarily, you know, but what happens in see that

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Speaker 1: sponsored post that pops up and says Donald Trump gives

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Speaker 1: birth to devil baby. Right. What do you do then? Well, uh,

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Speaker 1: I would say the first part is to check the sources,

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Speaker 1: make sure you knew where you were nine months ago

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Speaker 1: or how long. It's never that justation takes just in case,

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Speaker 1: I mean, just like listic contingencies. But nely you raise

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Speaker 1: a really great point because not all of these news

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Speaker 1: sources are created equal, even if they seem to be

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Speaker 1: displayed equally in a news feed. And of course I

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Speaker 1: was being a little bit over the top with that headline,

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Speaker 1: but uh, in that same little sponsored spot, you may

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Speaker 1: well see a headline that has some seems to have

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Speaker 1: some merit, or maybe it even aligns with an opinion

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Speaker 1: that you already have and you kind of coming from

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Speaker 1: that place where you want to believe it. You maybe

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Speaker 1: even want to share it without checking into its veracity.

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Speaker 1: Of course, you've got stuff to share, your your moving

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Speaker 1: and stick and in the in the ever hungry world

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Speaker 1: of social media, you don't have time to do the

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Speaker 1: uh the source research. Uh, but just in case you do,

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Speaker 1: let's go ahead and lay out what what are the

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Speaker 1: basic rules of research we talked about before? A quick

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Speaker 1: and dirty version. You guys, know, I know, always verify

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Speaker 1: source information, multiple sources if possible. It doesn't matter if

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Speaker 1: just the Washington Post or the Denver Citizen or whatever

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Speaker 1: said something happens. See if other places, preferably with typically

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Speaker 1: opposing perspectives, also have the same thing. Learn about the

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Speaker 1: source presenting the information, like knowl the devil baby thing? Uh?

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Speaker 1: Who published it? If that comes out weekly world news,

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Speaker 1: weekly world news? Right, so weekly World News, no one

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Speaker 1: saying it's a bad paper. They have a bit of

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Speaker 1: an agenda, right, Most places have a bit of an agenda. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And you know, look for sources that claim to has

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Speaker 1: proved the info you're examining. That's the most difficult part

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Speaker 1: for a lot of us, right. Uh. And if I'm

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Speaker 1: convinced that something is real, like if if I'm convinced

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Speaker 1: the Simpsons will objectively be the best cartoon in human history,

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Speaker 1: or that Arkansas was originally pronounced Arkansas, then what I

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Speaker 1: should be doing is looking for someone who believes The

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Speaker 1: Simpsons was objectively the worst cartoon in history, and then uh,

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Speaker 1: looking for someone who believes there was always Arkansas and

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Speaker 1: asking them why they think that. But that's a very

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Speaker 1: hard thing. To do because it means that we are

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Speaker 1: escaping our bubble, and escaping the bubble was once the

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Speaker 1: once the prized skill set of UM A dying, a

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Speaker 1: dying race of humanity called investigative journalist. WHOA. I've seen

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Speaker 1: those in a museum one member member journalists member a number.

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Speaker 1: We've probably heard people lament the death of journalism, and

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Speaker 1: while it's not completely extinct, it's certainly in poor health. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: When I was a journalism minor back in school, newspapers

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Speaker 1: were seeing still as the hallmarks of what journalism could

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Speaker 1: and should be. Integrity, Yeah, absolutely, integrity, Truth being objective finding,

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Speaker 1: finding the facts and leaving out opinions one of the

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Speaker 1: things we try really hard to do on this show.

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Speaker 1: But I guess what, guys, those newspapers they're going away,

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Speaker 1: at least the print versions and the jobs of journalists.

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Speaker 1: They are nowhere near as secure as they once were, right, Yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: So we have some statistics on this as well. So

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Speaker 1: compared with print, nearly twice as many adults UM get

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Speaker 1: news online, and that's thirty eight percent of adults either

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Speaker 1: from news websites or apps like a proprietary you know, app.

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Speaker 1: Version of the new York Times, for example, on social

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Speaker 1: media's eight or both. And you know, one of the big,

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Speaker 1: really big problems with these online versions of newspapers is

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Speaker 1: that I've just experienced it before we came in here.

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Speaker 1: I looked at ten New York Times articles this week,

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Speaker 1: and now I can't look at any more New York

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Speaker 1: Times articles unless I subscribe. Same thing with the Washington Post. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And why don't you just subscribe? Well, I know, and

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Speaker 1: I should subscribe, And I keep thinking I should just subscribe,

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Speaker 1: but thinking about giving a dollar a month or you know,

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Speaker 1: whatever tiny amount it is, it's hard for me to

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Speaker 1: to justify that when I can get roughly the same

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Speaker 1: thing from free sources somewhere else. I'm just playing Devil's

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Speaker 1: advocate here, but I mean to me, it's just a

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Speaker 1: matter of like it's too much, Like what am I

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Speaker 1: going to get a subscription to the Times and the Post?

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Speaker 1: And like when I can get it all from like

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Speaker 1: an aggregator or like get the high points from different

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Speaker 1: different sources like we talked about like with Facebook and

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Speaker 1: you know, um Twitter. Yeah, there's a pattern that occurs

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Speaker 1: when people are when people are getting something online. Let's

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Speaker 1: just be frank it's the ideas, there's all this other

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Speaker 1: free stuff that purports to have this information, why should

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Speaker 1: I pay for article eleven? Just like you said, Nolan,

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Speaker 1: you know, there's another place probably that I can find

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Speaker 1: basically the same thing. And one of those big ones

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Speaker 1: is of course television, which I can't believe we haven't

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Speaker 1: talked about yet. Turn that news on, yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: especially with some of the bomb bass that was being

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Speaker 1: thrown around on TV news during this most recent election.

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Speaker 1: The ratings are up for TV news and it continues

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Speaker 1: to be the most widely used news platform of United

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Speaker 1: States adults getting TV based news either from local TV

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Speaker 1: cable or network television or some combination of the food. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that pattern emerges when people are ask not just

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Speaker 1: where they get news, but what kind of platform they prefer.

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Speaker 1: So TV is still at the top, despite all the

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Speaker 1: cord cutting that's happening. TV just had such a lead

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Speaker 1: that it's just less in the lead, but it's still

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Speaker 1: number one. I wonder how they how they count streaming

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Speaker 1: a TV news like a network TV news. Oh wow, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a it's a huge disaster because who gets responsibility

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Speaker 1: for the numbers or maybe a quagmire is a better

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Speaker 1: room for it. And then second will be the web.

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Speaker 1: Radio and print are trailing behind. The one thing that's

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Speaker 1: really saving radio would be online radio, of which podcast

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Speaker 1: or apart arguably. And then you know the fact that

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Speaker 1: most cars have a radio that plays free broadcast stuff

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Speaker 1: inundated with commercials or in NPRS case, today was brought

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Speaker 1: to you by this organization and our listeners. So what's

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Speaker 1: replacing journalism? Then that's that's the thing that you've probably

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Speaker 1: heard a lot about in the news recently. Right, Facebook

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Speaker 1: got deemed for it. Various people purporting to be reputable

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Speaker 1: organizations get deemed for it. What is fake news? And

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Speaker 1: we'll get into that right after a quick word from

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Speaker 1: our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy, but not really,

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Speaker 1: because what do we mean when we say fake news?

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Speaker 1: It's like news that's fake. Nailed it, nailed it. So

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Speaker 1: so we live in a world now where everyone is

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Speaker 1: battling to get your eyeballs and your fingers to click

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Speaker 1: on a tiny little section of a screen somewhere. That's

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Speaker 1: that is the major battleground in our world right now.

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Speaker 1: How do I get you to click my thing that's online? Gosh,

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Speaker 1: that sounds dirty, but it's not. It's just like my

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Speaker 1: thing that's online dot com. Well, it's clear, it's literally

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Speaker 1: clicked my picture that has a couple of words below it, right,

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Speaker 1: That's all it is, click me and and because what

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Speaker 1: happens then is if you do click on that, somebody

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Speaker 1: gets paid somewhere down the line just for you viewing

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Speaker 1: that and clicking on that, because of the ads that

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Speaker 1: will be adjacent to that or will pop up on there.

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Speaker 1: And what ends up happening is that when everything is

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Speaker 1: kind of crammed into this format like a Facebook feed

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Speaker 1: for example, everything's kind of exists side by side, so

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Speaker 1: things tend to visually kind of carry the same weight. Right,

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Speaker 1: So if you see exactly if you see like a

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Speaker 1: news feed that has you know, um, maybe CNN or

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Speaker 1: BBC or New York Times or what like Scientific American

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Speaker 1: or something like that, and then uh in the Economist,

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Speaker 1: and then you see sandwiched in between them there's something

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Speaker 1: for like, you know, stop the Welsh dot org and

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Speaker 1: it's like it's like, you know, the sheep genocide continues

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Speaker 1: unreported in Wales and on that and especially if people

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Speaker 1: already have something against the Welsh or yeah, I guess

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Speaker 1: this is a bad example, but then you know, it's

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Speaker 1: just like Noll said, it has kind of the same

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Speaker 1: credibility that there's like a an osmosis of credibility that

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Speaker 1: occurs when you see these things displayed in the same

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Speaker 1: format on the same page, which with only an icon

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Speaker 1: separating them. So we've we've seen this um in there.

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Speaker 1: There's a great article in a place called Vox, which

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Speaker 1: I'm sure if you like this show, you've heard of

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Speaker 1: box where they they report on what's called the fake

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Speaker 1: news problem. Right, that's that's that's a big thing that

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Speaker 1: and it popped up quite recently. But it's a practice

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Speaker 1: that you know, as you point out, the format is

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Speaker 1: is old. It's so much it's older than the Internet,

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Speaker 1: you know. And Mark Zuckerberg originally said, well, less than

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Speaker 1: one percent of the content on the site could be

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Speaker 1: called fake news or a hoax, you know. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: devil Baby stuff is a very is a very small minority.

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Speaker 1: But pundits and self appointed policy walks and experts are

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Speaker 1: raising kine about it because they are convinced, some of them,

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Speaker 1: that it it directly influences people's opinions by exploiting their

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Speaker 1: reasoning ability and their solid psychological science behind how you

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Speaker 1: could get your rational thoughts sort of circumvented. But let's

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Speaker 1: be honest, the reason they're saying that is because of

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Speaker 1: the election in the US. Yes, it was a big

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Speaker 1: deal in the election, because you could be a third

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Speaker 1: party site that doesn't actually have news, but has some

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Speaker 1: story that you want to tell, and you can buy

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Speaker 1: an ad. Let's say for Facebook, if we use that

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Speaker 1: as an example of what Zuckerberg's talking about, you pay

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Speaker 1: enough money into Facebook and then your your fake news

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Speaker 1: or your whatever it is, Your ad is going to

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Speaker 1: go out to X number of people and it's usually

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Speaker 1: in the thousands, if not tens of thousands or more.

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Speaker 1: And so let's say you happen to hit the one

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Speaker 1: in five people who say they change their political views

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Speaker 1: due to social media. Then what happens is, uh. What

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Speaker 1: happens is maybe maybe an article comes out that says

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Speaker 1: candidate A is responsible for the uh, the double homicide

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Speaker 1: being covered up of the FBI agent and their spouse.

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Speaker 1: And the problem is for people who read the article

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Speaker 1: that it turns out this place only post bad things

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Speaker 1: about Candidate A. And then the weather that they pulled

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Speaker 1: from another site. Sure, and that turns out the homicides,

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Speaker 1: uh weren't homicides because you can't actually kill fixed old

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Speaker 1: characters and the FBI people or the FBI family never existed.

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Speaker 1: But for people who see that they go, oh wow,

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Speaker 1: I don't want to support this kind of thing. Then

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Speaker 1: that's that's the argument, and I'm not I'm not even

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Speaker 1: applying it specifically to this election. I'm saying the argument

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Speaker 1: there is that people can be so easily swayed because

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Speaker 1: our analytical and our emotional parts of our brain don't

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Speaker 1: work very well. At the same time, it was interesting

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Speaker 1: to me about the way Zuckerberg reacted. Um, it was

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Speaker 1: kind of a too little, too late kind of scenario

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Speaker 1: where you know, it's clear that these fake news sites

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Speaker 1: did gain some traction on Facebook, and you know, while

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Speaker 1: it's not clear that they necessarily played a huge discerning

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Speaker 1: part in the outcome of the election, there's no doubt

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Speaker 1: that it was a tool used by some. And you know,

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Speaker 1: Facebook and Google in the past have basically shut down

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Speaker 1: sites and types of sites from using their ads or

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Speaker 1: of us for much less, you know, for for supposedly

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Speaker 1: having quote unquote, you know, low quality content or like

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Speaker 1: some of these click farms that have kind of like

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Speaker 1: they just farm out a bunch of writers to write

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Speaker 1: these kind of a little short click baity articles that

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Speaker 1: give you like ten ads to half a paragraph per page.

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Speaker 1: And you know, Facebook and Google have changed their algorithms

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Speaker 1: to kind of deal with those sites. Just is baffling

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Speaker 1: to me that it took after the election for them

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Speaker 1: to actually do something about this, because there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of money involved there. For Facebook, I just have to

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Speaker 1: say that they're they're getting add dollars right there. They're

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Speaker 1: getting ad dollars using, of course, your personal information. And

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Speaker 1: the the strange thing is, yeah, Google did some good

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Speaker 1: work to restrict what they would consider that what what

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Speaker 1: did you what term did you use? No, I really

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Speaker 1: like to low quality or low value just low yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean low quality content. I guess in terms of

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Speaker 1: like it being not particularly robust and it's a scholarship. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: here's here's a little bit, a little bit behind the

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Speaker 1: scenes inside baseball and some of this stuff. So the

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Speaker 1: phrase that we used earlier there, the click farm is

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Speaker 1: just like was described, uh, bunch of ads on a

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Speaker 1: page that has a short amount of text or actual

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Speaker 1: information and has ten steps? What got me? And I'll

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Speaker 1: go ahead and say it, although I don't usually mention

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Speaker 1: specific names on here. It's like those eHow articles man

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Speaker 1: where where they'll have this very strange thing that you

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Speaker 1: don't really need information on, like how to how to

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Speaker 1: tie your shoes five different ways? But then they're twenty

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Speaker 1: I'm making this example up, by the way, But then

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Speaker 1: there are twenty five slides and every fifth one is

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Speaker 1: just an advertisement, not counting the ads are on the page,

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Speaker 1: which refreshed every time you click to the next, which

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Speaker 1: refresh continually. Yeah, and so there's there's a clear financial

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Speaker 1: motivation for this for some people. But also that financial

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Speaker 1: motivation is in competition with a site like Google, which

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Speaker 1: wants to be known for giving you the best answer

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Speaker 1: right in the most efficacious way. However, that as as

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Speaker 1: we see this ability to control what search generates is

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Speaker 1: very much a ring of power situation. Well, before we

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Speaker 1: get to that, what are what are people when when

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Speaker 1: we hear the phrase fake news? What are these people

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Speaker 1: talking about? What? What are the categories of fake news?

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Speaker 1: So I've seen this summed up and parsed out by

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Speaker 1: several different sources, but one that was a little surprising

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Speaker 1: was uh to see that CNN made a little list

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Speaker 1: of the different types, So let's go through. Let's go

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Speaker 1: through that list as an example, the first one would

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Speaker 1: be called fake news, straight up fake news. Uh, fake news.

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Speaker 1: UM Jonathan Strickland and Josh Clark discovered at a KKK

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Speaker 1: rally disguised as uh jackalopes. Whoa that I want to

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Speaker 1: click on that? But it's it's These are the easiest

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Speaker 1: to debunk because they're just obviously from some kind of

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Speaker 1: sham site. It's designed to look like a real news outlet.

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Speaker 1: But then if you do a little more digging, um,

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Speaker 1: you just find that there's there's nothing here. There's gonna

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Speaker 1: be misleading photographs, some kind of headline that just makes

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Speaker 1: you dive headfirst into that thing. Uh it's you know,

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Speaker 1: at first read, it sounds like you could be real

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Speaker 1: right with a lot of this fake news, and the

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Speaker 1: name might sound similar, might sound something like it could

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Speaker 1: be plausible, you know, like the um, let's just make

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Speaker 1: one up like the Gwinnette pick a unit or something. Sure, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, and that that's not a real paper. I

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Speaker 1: hope editorial staff of Gwinnette Picky and I apologize if

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Speaker 1: I have offended you. But yeah, so that's that stuff

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Speaker 1: is pretty pretty easy. And then they might have uh

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Speaker 1: missmislean paragraph or photographs, but they're also designed not to

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Speaker 1: be read in their entirety. Yes, it's designed to hey,

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Speaker 1: look at this, share it like. Do you see this

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Speaker 1: picture that's a little misleaning. Do you see this catchy title?

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Speaker 1: Share it out with your friends right now? Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: then maybe there's a and then there's a second category,

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Speaker 1: which would be misleading news. This is a little bit

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Speaker 1: trickier to to parse, uh, as you said, Matt, because

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Speaker 1: this we could be something as simple as an out

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Speaker 1: of context quote. And oddly enough, this happens a lot

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Speaker 1: in fandom when people are trying to farm out spoilers

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Speaker 1: for their click bait stuff. Um but one example, if

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Speaker 1: we're if we're just making one up, one example would

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Speaker 1: be maybe Tom Cruise is in a daytime talk show interview,

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Speaker 1: and in his daytime talk show interview, he says that, uh,

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Speaker 1: he would never, um never tell a woman what to

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Speaker 1: do with her body as far as like carrying a

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Speaker 1: child to term or having an abortion. And then someplace

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Speaker 1: you know that names itself the Gwinette pickyun or whatever.

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Speaker 1: And again, I hope you're not real, but if if

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Speaker 1: you are, I apologize. Um, I'm sure you would never

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Speaker 1: do this, but you know, some fake news site would

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Speaker 1: take the context quote the phrase would never and have

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Speaker 1: that in quotation marks. And and he goes, Tom Cruise

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Speaker 1: says he would never save an innocent child's life, you know,

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Speaker 1: And that's not what he said. He said he wouldn't get,

428
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 1: you know, in the way of somebody else's decision. Also,

429
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:02,679
Speaker 1: celebrities don't have the authority to tell people what they

430
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:05,399
Speaker 1: can do. It was an interesting twist on that where

431
00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:08,639
Speaker 1: they are like localized versions of fake news stories. I

432
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:10,960
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys have seen these, but um,

433
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,960
Speaker 1: speaking of the Gwynette Picka Yune, maybe there's a story

434
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:16,879
Speaker 1: that comes up as from Gwynette Picka Yune dot co

435
00:26:17,040 --> 00:26:22,639
Speaker 1: dot biz and it says Miley cyrus Um helped a

436
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 1: poor stranded old lady change her tire in Madison, Georgia,

437
00:26:28,280 --> 00:26:31,040
Speaker 1: decides that she's gonna move there because it's just full

438
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:34,960
Speaker 1: of wonderful people. So you'll see that article, and if

439
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:38,400
Speaker 1: you google the text of it, you'll realize there's fifteen

440
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:42,440
Speaker 1: twenty other different ones that have all the same content,

441
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:46,800
Speaker 1: but the places are changed, so everyone wants to share

442
00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:49,399
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Miley Cyrus is moving to my community,

443
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:52,639
Speaker 1: you know, and so everyone will just share that blindly.

444
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:55,720
Speaker 1: And those are the kinds of stories where you'll see

445
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:59,160
Speaker 1: on facebooks someone comments and say, you know this is fake, right?

446
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:02,560
Speaker 1: Why people are so excited because they want to believe

447
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:05,439
Speaker 1: that they're you know, pop star crush or whatever is

448
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:08,919
Speaker 1: moving the little sleepy old Madison, Georgia. That reminds me

449
00:27:09,040 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: of another example, just the straight up click bait that's

450
00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:14,840
Speaker 1: just trying to get you to click on something, but

451
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:18,320
Speaker 1: to what end, for what means? I guess it's just

452
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:23,880
Speaker 1: getting those add dollars experts take them, yeah yeah, or

453
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:26,720
Speaker 1: the most oddly enough, when the most effective don't click

454
00:27:26,760 --> 00:27:30,800
Speaker 1: on this. I was so happy. I saw some stranger

455
00:27:31,200 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: on the internet who had replied and don't click on

456
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:38,639
Speaker 1: this thread and their reply was saying was okay, and

457
00:27:38,800 --> 00:27:40,720
Speaker 1: that was great. It's for the like the people who

458
00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:43,720
Speaker 1: here are intro on the show and decide to turn back,

459
00:27:44,359 --> 00:27:47,800
Speaker 1: you know, which has happened and I respect your integrity.

460
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 1: So another thing would be highly partisan news and this

461
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:55,600
Speaker 1: is you know, interpretation of a real news event where

462
00:27:55,600 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 1: the facts are manipulated to fit in a particular agenda,

463
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:03,720
Speaker 1: omitting facts or adding in a little extra opinion, so

464
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:06,679
Speaker 1: cherry picking. You know, here's what you have to do.

465
00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:08,879
Speaker 1: Now you have to figure out is this fake news?

466
00:28:09,119 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 1: The the article that you're reading that has the list,

467
00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 1: what's what's the what's the website? Right, we're getting a

468
00:28:18,840 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 1: little too meta here. No, this is no. This is

469
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:24,120
Speaker 1: what we are struggling with. Are we real people? That's

470
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:25,880
Speaker 1: what I mean? You guys are guys are freaking me out.

471
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:27,760
Speaker 1: Should we take an ad break so I don't totally

472
00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:30,960
Speaker 1: lose it? You get it together? Well, we have one

473
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: more thing and then we'll have an ad break. Satire. Well,

474
00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: I love satire. That's like the Onion and stuff. Well, yeah, exactly,

475
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 1: it's fun. It's the Onion. But we've seen examples where

476
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 1: an Onion article gets posted perhaps internationally by another country,

477
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:49,960
Speaker 1: and people believe it. So what are my favorite examples?

478
00:28:50,000 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: That Joe Biden is a legend on the Onion because

479
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:56,959
Speaker 1: of the way they portrayed him. He is a legend

480
00:28:57,120 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 1: and he has everyone's uncle Joe. The trade him as

481
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:06,360
Speaker 1: this uh burnt out you know, uh Night former like

482
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:10,520
Speaker 1: rock and roll ROADI concert roadie type, and they have

483
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:12,680
Speaker 1: all these articles about him trying to do things like

484
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 1: get Scorpion tickets or selling bad weed or bootleg Hillary

485
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 1: Clinton campaign t shirts. And one of these articles I

486
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 1: saw somebody who had posted it as though it were true,

487
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 1: and people who agreed with them were like, can you

488
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:33,040
Speaker 1: believe that that's the guy who's in office? Like, you know,

489
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: like our founding fathers would be rolling over their graves,

490
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:38,120
Speaker 1: And so I commented, and you know, I said, this

491
00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:43,840
Speaker 1: is a fake news website. It's pretty funny, it I was.

492
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 1: I was saying, like, yeah, look, man, I wish Joe

493
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:50,480
Speaker 1: Biden was doing stuff like that, but he's probably doing

494
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 1: more grown up plas. Yeah. I don't know if you

495
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:54,920
Speaker 1: guys remember these. It seems like I've been seeing fewer

496
00:29:54,960 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 1: of them recently, But there were a lot of fake

497
00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: news sites making the rounds that kind of purported to

498
00:30:00,920 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 1: be satire, but we're really just kind of poorly written

499
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:09,200
Speaker 1: fake news stories with some kind of punny name somewhere

500
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: in the body, but like it was, you know, a

501
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:15,360
Speaker 1: story that could be believed and was written in such

502
00:30:15,400 --> 00:30:17,479
Speaker 1: a way. Where where's the comedy there's there's really not

503
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:20,040
Speaker 1: much comedy going on here right right. What one thing

504
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:25,080
Speaker 1: that reminds me of, and this is related, is uh,

505
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 1: the prevalence of reality shows and things that purport to

506
00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:34,800
Speaker 1: be accurate depictions of one person's life for a certain

507
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:38,640
Speaker 1: moment or event or phenomenon and are clearly clearly faked

508
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: or as people in the industry like to call them produced.

509
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 1: I'm loving these air quotes by the way, you know what,

510
00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:47,800
Speaker 1: you know, I've been using them ever since we ever

511
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:51,239
Speaker 1: since you brought this in here. But but probably the

512
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:57,480
Speaker 1: most egregious example for us on this show was a

513
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 1: company that we were attached to one point, uh wanted

514
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:06,200
Speaker 1: to do this documentary, this mocumentary pretending that mermaids were real,

515
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:11,840
Speaker 1: and a bunch of people, you know, believed this organization,

516
00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 1: and we did put our foot down and refused to really,

517
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:21,240
Speaker 1: uh in any way support that because we don't under

518
00:31:21,320 --> 00:31:23,200
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't we didn't see a benefit in it.

519
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:26,520
Speaker 1: But the defense there, which was very tenuous, was going

520
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:30,360
Speaker 1: to be like, oh, well, this is clearly a documentary

521
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:34,200
Speaker 1: and this is clearly a satire, and it absolutely was not,

522
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it's it's kind of like viral marketing.

523
00:31:37,400 --> 00:31:40,240
Speaker 1: It's like trying to do what the Blair Witch Project

524
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:44,280
Speaker 1: did very cleverly, but you know, they established this whole

525
00:31:44,280 --> 00:31:47,280
Speaker 1: thing where, hey, maybe this is real, you know, and

526
00:31:47,320 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 1: like it makes you, it has this air of mystique

527
00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:51,520
Speaker 1: about it, and then it makes you want to share

528
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:53,320
Speaker 1: it with your friends because you're the one who knew

529
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:56,440
Speaker 1: that it was real. And that's the same impulse that

530
00:31:56,480 --> 00:31:59,240
Speaker 1: goes into sharing all these BS news stories. You want

531
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,120
Speaker 1: to be the one that that is right. You're want

532
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 1: to be the one that that disseminates it because it

533
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:07,520
Speaker 1: supports something that you want to believe, or something that

534
00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: you have espoused yourself on your page, on your Facebook page. Oh,

535
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:14,480
Speaker 1: this supports everything that I've been saying. Well, and also

536
00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:17,560
Speaker 1: there's another thing that's even more that I I totally agree,

537
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:20,520
Speaker 1: it's more dangerous because we all have this drive. It's

538
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 1: the human drive to be the authority in the room,

539
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:26,840
Speaker 1: the Prometheus bringing the fire, the Moses with the commandments,

540
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:29,360
Speaker 1: the Lucifer with the light, to be the one who says,

541
00:32:29,400 --> 00:32:32,480
Speaker 1: not only does disagree with what I believe, but look

542
00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:36,800
Speaker 1: upon me, my Internet friends, I have led you to wisdom.

543
00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: And that's a very dangerous thing. I remember feeling that

544
00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:43,239
Speaker 1: in my twenties hard. Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's how

545
00:32:43,280 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 1: I feel every time a celebrity dies, and I want

546
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:48,280
Speaker 1: I want to be the one that breaks the news.

547
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:53,160
Speaker 1: You want to I'm kidding you, guys. Just before we

548
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: get off the satire really fast, I'm on the Onion

549
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:57,720
Speaker 1: dot com and here I'm just gonna read one of

550
00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: their headlines because it fits this so perfectly. It longtime

551
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:05,320
Speaker 1: reader of lib slaves dot info, sick of mainstream bias

552
00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: on sites like Wide Awake patriot dot com. I love it. Yeah,

553
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:14,880
Speaker 1: that's the thing. It goes, It goes both ways. And

554
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:21,400
Speaker 1: I found some interesting statistics about the percentages of I

555
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 1: guess the percentages of politically identified splinter sites doing this,

556
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 1: and they're distressingly high. Yeah. I feel like this is

557
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:31,440
Speaker 1: a pretty decent spot to take a quick break, how

558
00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:42,520
Speaker 1: about you, guys? Yeah, totally. And we're back, but we're

559
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:46,840
Speaker 1: not in the normal place that we were earlier. Nope,

560
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 1: changed changed spots here still in the windowless tornado shelter

561
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 1: bunker places, but mentally, mentally, now we were talking about something.

562
00:33:57,200 --> 00:33:59,520
Speaker 1: Now we're finally inside it, and you're in here with

563
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:03,240
Speaker 1: us for listen and you can hear the internet echo chamber,

564
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:06,080
Speaker 1: Chamber chamber. We got real metal while you were away,

565
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:09,080
Speaker 1: and now we are kind of like stacked inside of

566
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 1: each other like Matushka dolls, you know. And um, we're

567
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 1: going to communicate as one single organism from this point on.

568
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop saying check this out and start saying

569
00:34:17,080 --> 00:34:21,520
Speaker 1: click this. Uh yeah. So yeah. So here's the big

570
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 1: question though, we we we should definitely address why do

571
00:34:26,719 --> 00:34:29,560
Speaker 1: people make fake news? And there are a couple of

572
00:34:29,600 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 1: different reasons. Why do people do most things? Because they

573
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:37,040
Speaker 1: want to make money, They want to make a quick

574
00:34:37,080 --> 00:34:41,680
Speaker 1: book or entertain themselves or entertain themselves or others, you know,

575
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:45,239
Speaker 1: and get a quick book. Um, but I digress. Uh.

576
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:48,320
Speaker 1: NPR did what I thought was one of the coolest

577
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:50,000
Speaker 1: pieces of you know, we talked about the lack of

578
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: investigative journalism in our day and age, and I felt

579
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:55,600
Speaker 1: like this was a pretty fine example of that. So

580
00:34:55,640 --> 00:35:00,319
Speaker 1: a couple of NPR producers, um, with some assistance, trade

581
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:04,720
Speaker 1: some prominent fake news U r L s uh such

582
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 1: as and I love this because this is something you

583
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 1: can really see for yourself. If you're on Facebook and

584
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:12,320
Speaker 1: you see a suspicious site, check out what the actual

585
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:14,799
Speaker 1: u r L is. So they looked at the u

586
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:19,760
Speaker 1: r l's National report dot net, USA Today, dot com

587
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:25,000
Speaker 1: dot co, Washington Post dot com dot co, and all

588
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 1: of these u r L s all pointed to a

589
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 1: single rented server UM that's owned by Amazon, who does

590
00:35:33,560 --> 00:35:35,719
Speaker 1: a ton of web hosting and you know, high level

591
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 1: cloud storage and you know, things like that. And they

592
00:35:40,239 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: were able to find an email address. The NPR producer

593
00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:50,400
Speaker 1: Laura Sidell and UH an intern I believe UM went

594
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:54,840
Speaker 1: and found this person's address and knocked on his door,

595
00:35:55,120 --> 00:35:59,600
Speaker 1: and at first he answered but pretended he didn't know

596
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:01,520
Speaker 1: what about get out of here, Get out of here,

597
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:05,160
Speaker 1: Get out and UM they you know, I guess, slipped

598
00:36:05,200 --> 00:36:08,040
Speaker 1: a card under his door, and he had a change

599
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:12,920
Speaker 1: of heart and gave them a call and his reason

600
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:16,200
Speaker 1: for doing the fake news site. UM. He did talk

601
00:36:16,239 --> 00:36:18,919
Speaker 1: a lot about how he makes a decent living um

602
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:23,360
Speaker 1: somewhere between ten and thirty thousand dollars a month. Not

603
00:36:23,440 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 1: too bad. It was just him and his wife, you know,

604
00:36:25,640 --> 00:36:30,439
Speaker 1: in a suburban Los Angeles home. That's that's bad. That's

605
00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: not bad. Yeah, that's real good actually, because I mean,

606
00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 1: you know, they're paying freelance writers a pittance. I'm sure

607
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:41,439
Speaker 1: to turn out these stories and you know, a couple

608
00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:43,920
Speaker 1: of social media folks here and there, but not a

609
00:36:44,120 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: hugely costly operation in terms of overhead. So that's those

610
00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:50,120
Speaker 1: pretty good returns. Um But what did he say, Ben,

611
00:36:50,200 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 1: what was his reasoning behind besides in that cash? No,

612
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:56,000
Speaker 1: you're you're asking me on this one because you know

613
00:36:56,120 --> 00:37:00,279
Speaker 1: that I frankly don't believe it. Uh So he he

614
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:05,560
Speaker 1: claims that he had done this because he wanted to

615
00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:11,319
Speaker 1: out the essentially the credulity of people that he did

616
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:14,200
Speaker 1: not politically agree with. So a lot of the stories

617
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:16,480
Speaker 1: that were published on these sites were what you can

618
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:19,239
Speaker 1: think of as red meat, you know, stories where people

619
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 1: would say, oh, I always knew that Barack Obama was

620
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 1: a bad character, and now, like Prometheus, like Lucifer, like Moses,

621
00:37:28,560 --> 00:37:30,839
Speaker 1: I am the smartest in the room, I'm bringing you

622
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:35,080
Speaker 1: this knowledge online. And he said he doesn't believe in that,

623
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:37,360
Speaker 1: but he was amazed the first time he did it,

624
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:42,680
Speaker 1: how crazily well it worked because a completely fictitious story

625
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 1: that he made up went viral and then some uh

626
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 1: local legislature began to like put a bill out based

627
00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 1: on worries created by this story. One headline mentioned in

628
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:59,920
Speaker 1: the story was FBI agents suspected and Hillary email lead

629
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:04,719
Speaker 1: found dead and apparent murder suicide. Um Cohla admitted the

630
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:09,840
Speaker 1: story is completely false, but just the same was shared

631
00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:12,920
Speaker 1: on Facebook over half a million times. Jeez. There was

632
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 1: another one about people in Colorado using food stamps to

633
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:20,880
Speaker 1: buy weed and so and what actually happened in real life?

634
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:25,320
Speaker 1: A state representative in the House of Colorado, presume proposed

635
00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:28,640
Speaker 1: actual legislation to prevent people from doing I think that, Yeah,

636
00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:31,239
Speaker 1: I think that was the one I had heard. But

637
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 1: you know, that brings up another question. Maybe it's for

638
00:38:34,160 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 1: a different episode. But you can use food stamps to

639
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:41,040
Speaker 1: buy butter? Right, embt like trying to banking stuff. So

640
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:45,279
Speaker 1: my steak, Yeah, couldn't you buy couldn't you buy like

641
00:38:45,520 --> 00:38:51,239
Speaker 1: hemp butter or weed butter or whatever? They sat Colorado ben?

642
00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:54,719
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, not here, not here, obviously not here on

643
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:59,919
Speaker 1: the internet and in the echo chamber chambership. So yeah,

644
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:03,400
Speaker 1: that's that's interesting because that's a motivation for making the

645
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:06,839
Speaker 1: fake news. This guy, uh would have us believe that

646
00:39:06,880 --> 00:39:11,759
Speaker 1: he is more on a crusade of sorts or you know,

647
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 1: he's on a mission where money is nice but doesn't

648
00:39:15,160 --> 00:39:20,279
Speaker 1: completely compel it. However, there was another piece. This was

649
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:23,600
Speaker 1: by the New York Times. I know I've mentioned them

650
00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 1: several times in the show. Uh Luckily I I still

651
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:31,359
Speaker 1: have this article up without exceeding my ten because full

652
00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:35,160
Speaker 1: disclosure eye too. I am going to get a subscription

653
00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:39,440
Speaker 1: one day. Uh So in Blissi, Georgia, the country Georgia,

654
00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:43,920
Speaker 1: different Georgia across the Atlantic, a computer science student at

655
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:48,400
Speaker 1: the premier university there decided that he can make money

656
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:53,399
Speaker 1: from America's appetite for partisan political news. So he set

657
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: up a website and he posted stories that were gushing

658
00:39:56,640 --> 00:40:00,320
Speaker 1: stories about how great Hillary Clinton was, and he waited

659
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:04,400
Speaker 1: for ad sales to to soar, but it didn't work.

660
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:10,520
Speaker 1: So the student, whose name is Becca Labidze, was only

661
00:40:10,560 --> 00:40:12,239
Speaker 1: twenty two at the time, and he said, you know

662
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:17,439
Speaker 1: what does drive traffic stories that applaud Donald Trump while

663
00:40:17,520 --> 00:40:22,239
Speaker 1: mixing real and fake news. That's anti Hillary Clinton. And

664
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:29,239
Speaker 1: so he started making money from from that, and for him,

665
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:34,120
Speaker 1: it was entirely out of uh profit motive, you know

666
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:37,880
Speaker 1: what I mean. For national he didn't seem to apparent

667
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:40,160
Speaker 1: to really have a horse in the game for either candidate,

668
00:40:40,680 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: except insomuch as they might be an income source for him.

669
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 1: So he would get this, you guys, He would often

670
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 1: cut and paste, like not rewrite, not rephrase. He would

671
00:40:52,520 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 1: just cut and paste stuff he found other places and

672
00:40:55,040 --> 00:41:00,400
Speaker 1: then put it as a news uh news headline and uh.

673
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:05,080
Speaker 1: Then he ran into a guy named John Egan who

674
00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:08,799
Speaker 1: was in Canada, and he had a satirical site. And

675
00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:11,040
Speaker 1: maybe this is close to what we were comparing earlier.

676
00:41:11,200 --> 00:41:15,520
Speaker 1: He had a satirical site called the Bird Street Journal. Um,

677
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:20,960
Speaker 1: so it was not trying to fool anyone, in his opinion,

678
00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:23,400
Speaker 1: was satirical. He called it a gold mine. But this

679
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 1: guy in Georgia starts cutting name pasting the satirical stuff,

680
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:32,080
Speaker 1: put it with these real fake news things, and boom,

681
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 1: a monster has grown. And this this is happening so

682
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 1: often that it is if you are on Facebook, it

683
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 1: is statistically it's darned near impossible. It's very unlikely that

684
00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:50,880
Speaker 1: you have not seen one of these things, and you

685
00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:54,160
Speaker 1: shouldn't feel bad if you saw one and fell for it.

686
00:41:54,200 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: Before you know. I I have read stuff before where

687
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:00,680
Speaker 1: I caught myself at the headline, or I caught myself

688
00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:04,960
Speaker 1: at the by line and said, hang on, hang on,

689
00:42:06,320 --> 00:42:11,399
Speaker 1: who is Ben Bulan stinks that blog spot dot org?

690
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:21,279
Speaker 1: I just that somebody you might want to bag. So

691
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 1: how does this echo chamber work? We talked about this

692
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:31,239
Speaker 1: a little bit before, But what what's happening when when um,

693
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 1: let's say, Nolan, I am Matt share a story that

694
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:40,439
Speaker 1: that is true. Let's say we have a true one.

695
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:45,600
Speaker 1: So many social media sites uh, and enterprises like Hulu

696
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 1: or some other cable providers, they want their users to

697
00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:51,320
Speaker 1: have a good time, to be highly engaged, click and

698
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:55,120
Speaker 1: left and right, and you know also click click, hit, hit,

699
00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 1: wink wink, nudge nudge cough cough to buy stuff when

700
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:00,800
Speaker 1: you're hanging out with them. So they know, for example,

701
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:07,120
Speaker 1: what's like a random person's name, real or fake? Random person? Okay,

702
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 1: what's Gregory's last name Trumble? Okay? So so they know,

703
00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 1: for example that Gregory Trumbull tends to click on stories

704
00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:21,200
Speaker 1: that concerned puppies Russia underwear or whatever, and so they'll

705
00:43:21,200 --> 00:43:23,920
Speaker 1: tend to display other stuff or prioritize that in their

706
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 1: algorithm related to that, uh, you know, puppies Russia underwear

707
00:43:28,760 --> 00:43:33,440
Speaker 1: or whatever. But they'll also find other users who like puppies, Russia,

708
00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 1: underwear or whatever and say, well, what do they like

709
00:43:36,760 --> 00:43:39,239
Speaker 1: And if it turns out that they also like I

710
00:43:39,239 --> 00:43:44,800
Speaker 1: don't know, big league chew or custom, um, what's something

711
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:54,120
Speaker 1: dumb cut custom beach snowshoes and sand shoes. Yeah, and uh,

712
00:43:54,160 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 1: And then he'll just start getting ads for those and

713
00:43:56,040 --> 00:43:59,080
Speaker 1: you might be like, why is this happening? This gets

714
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: dangerous when it's brought to bear on topics other than

715
00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 1: cute animals or consumerism, so it's touched on world news, politics,

716
00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: protections of science, and so on. It can put some

717
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:13,719
Speaker 1: serious limits on the scope of our world views. I mean,

718
00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:18,120
Speaker 1: I'm sure that my worldview is is relatively limited just

719
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:24,440
Speaker 1: because I largely I overwhelmingly read the Internet in English,

720
00:44:24,520 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 1: read things online in English rather than other other languages.

721
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:33,480
Speaker 1: And I probably have some some pretty crazy viewpoints that

722
00:44:33,560 --> 00:44:35,919
Speaker 1: just seemed normal to me. That's the other thing. That's

723
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 1: the mind blowing thing. It's completely possible. It's completely possible

724
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:42,879
Speaker 1: and completely like you said, normal to you. So you

725
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: are going to have a hard time knowing that you're

726
00:44:46,080 --> 00:44:49,160
Speaker 1: inside this bubble, right, or at least see you can't

727
00:44:49,200 --> 00:44:51,800
Speaker 1: see the bubble. Yeah, I might be thinking something odd,

728
00:44:51,920 --> 00:44:54,440
Speaker 1: like I might be very offended by the fact that

729
00:44:54,480 --> 00:44:58,399
Speaker 1: goats don't wear pants, and in my world, because I've

730
00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:01,000
Speaker 1: spent time looking at that and they've built this profile

731
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:04,759
Speaker 1: of me, they'll they'll be like, look at you know,

732
00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:07,239
Speaker 1: I'll have fake news articles about it or something. And

733
00:45:07,320 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 1: even in like a Facebook situation, you know, sometimes people

734
00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:14,719
Speaker 1: will kind of call their friends list if they start

735
00:45:14,840 --> 00:45:18,240
Speaker 1: seeing too much stuff that exists outside of that bubble. Which,

736
00:45:18,680 --> 00:45:21,840
Speaker 1: let's be honest, sometimes we've we've got some relatives maybe

737
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:23,359
Speaker 1: or some friends we haven't seen in a long time

738
00:45:23,360 --> 00:45:25,719
Speaker 1: that we're Facebook friends with to post some things that

739
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:29,880
Speaker 1: we find offensive, maybe like we're just kind of stupid.

740
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:31,800
Speaker 1: Maybe we want we don't want to see that anymore.

741
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 1: So maybe you don't unfriend them, but you can kind

742
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:36,520
Speaker 1: of hide those posts. But then sometimes we do it

743
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:40,520
Speaker 1: when faced with things that directly oppose our own viewpoints,

744
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:42,279
Speaker 1: and maybe that's not such a good thing. Yeah, I'm

745
00:45:42,280 --> 00:45:45,279
Speaker 1: guilty of that. Yeah, I think you know, we saw

746
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:49,680
Speaker 1: that happening a lot recently in in the US. We

747
00:45:49,760 --> 00:45:51,879
Speaker 1: think we know better, though, is the issue we think

748
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 1: we don't need this because we know what we believe.

749
00:45:55,360 --> 00:45:58,480
Speaker 1: I got it figured out, guys, I gotta figured out,

750
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:02,520
Speaker 1: all right. But that that's And imagine ladies and gentlemen,

751
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:05,680
Speaker 1: imagine a world we're liking an article by Al jazeerra

752
00:46:05,880 --> 00:46:08,759
Speaker 1: the nation. In the world, we're liking an article by

753
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: Al Jazeera and the nation. Perfect means that you will

754
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:16,280
Speaker 1: only see articles relating to that publication or the interest

755
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 1: that people who like that publication. You're going to be

756
00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:21,080
Speaker 1: less and less likely to understand the other side of

757
00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:24,799
Speaker 1: a story or opposing perspective or maybe even here about it,

758
00:46:25,080 --> 00:46:28,880
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So there's the problem is

759
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:34,120
Speaker 1: that there's proven psychology behind this. There's an excellent thing

760
00:46:34,280 --> 00:46:39,319
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about called the backfire effect. So

761
00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:43,239
Speaker 1: there's this misconception that when confronted by information that challenges

762
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 1: our existing views, we as human beings, will incorporate this,

763
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:51,520
Speaker 1: will learn from it, we'll move forward, and we'll be

764
00:46:51,520 --> 00:46:54,319
Speaker 1: better prepared to confront the world around us. Because we're

765
00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 1: all smart, right, yeah, we're all uh, we're we've all

766
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 1: pretty much got it, got it figured out. Like Fox Molder.

767
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:04,080
Speaker 1: We all search for the truth. We want that over

768
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 1: we want an ugly truth over a pretty lie. However,

769
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:13,400
Speaker 1: that's incorrect. Yeah, we want to believe that the Socratic

770
00:47:13,520 --> 00:47:15,600
Speaker 1: method is alive and well and we all use it

771
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 1: and we're good to go. Right, But no, no, no,

772
00:47:17,600 --> 00:47:20,920
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, no, my friends, what actually happens when

773
00:47:20,920 --> 00:47:25,640
Speaker 1: we see something that uh contradicts our worldview, the one

774
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:29,000
Speaker 1: that we hold true and dear and close to our hearts. Well,

775
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:36,600
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, we double down. Yeah, we go, not a brother,

776
00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: I know what's what. We take our opinions and we

777
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:43,760
Speaker 1: turned them into a delicious sandwich made of too deep

778
00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 1: fried chicken Cutlets just check out the YouTube comments on

779
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 1: our flat Earth video. Yeah, do you remember the double down? Right? Yeah?

780
00:47:52,560 --> 00:47:54,560
Speaker 1: I love the double down. I've never had it. I

781
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:56,560
Speaker 1: never had the pleasure. I have this problem where I

782
00:47:56,640 --> 00:47:59,560
Speaker 1: fall in love with ideas of things instead of actual things,

783
00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 1: and I was obsessed by the idea of the double down.

784
00:48:02,760 --> 00:48:04,960
Speaker 1: This is here. Here's the worst part, you guys know,

785
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:08,279
Speaker 1: I don't really talk about in personal life. One time,

786
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:11,239
Speaker 1: after after we had recorded a bunch of stuff and

787
00:48:11,239 --> 00:48:13,520
Speaker 1: I was almost by myself in the office, I printed

788
00:48:13,560 --> 00:48:16,279
Speaker 1: out a picture of a double down and like to

789
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:20,400
Speaker 1: take it with me. You should print on another picture

790
00:48:20,560 --> 00:48:26,240
Speaker 1: of the cheetos covered chicken fries from Burger King. Doesn't

791
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:31,560
Speaker 1: that sound delicious? Derito tacos as well, let's turn it

792
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:39,160
Speaker 1: into a different show. Yes, yeah, we we do. We do.

793
00:48:39,280 --> 00:48:42,960
Speaker 1: We we take the we take the double down approach,

794
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:48,000
Speaker 1: which is not healthy in any sense of the word. Uh. So,

795
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:53,000
Speaker 1: for instance, you know, if I, um, if if I

796
00:48:53,040 --> 00:49:00,319
Speaker 1: believed that mineral water caused yeah, if I believe that

797
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:05,200
Speaker 1: mineral water caused some sort of strange cancer. Uh and

798
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:09,120
Speaker 1: I was convinced it did. And then my relatives so

799
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:11,359
Speaker 1: much as crazy, and they sent me this thing that said,

800
00:49:11,440 --> 00:49:17,240
Speaker 1: here's a study that objectively proves that there's no carcinogenic

801
00:49:17,360 --> 00:49:22,239
Speaker 1: material in there. Uh. Then I would instead say I

802
00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:26,200
Speaker 1: would find a problem with it, like you're the Oh

803
00:49:26,239 --> 00:49:28,400
Speaker 1: they were in the pocket of big Perry A. You

804
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:33,840
Speaker 1: scientists are paid son exactly. And we've got there was

805
00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:36,920
Speaker 1: a great there was a great article on this backfire

806
00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:39,200
Speaker 1: effect from a website called You Were Not So Smart,

807
00:49:39,880 --> 00:49:41,880
Speaker 1: which is not the nicest name, but it gets some

808
00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:44,279
Speaker 1: great stuff in there, and we'd like to read an

809
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:48,080
Speaker 1: excerpt from it for you. In two thousands six, Brendan

810
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:51,839
Speaker 1: Nihan and Jason Riefler at the University of Michigan and

811
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:55,879
Speaker 1: Georgia State University. What what Sorry, I'm just calling out

812
00:49:55,920 --> 00:49:59,160
Speaker 1: where I went to school. Created fake newspaper articles about

813
00:49:59,200 --> 00:50:03,279
Speaker 1: polarizing political issues. The articles were written in a way

814
00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:06,719
Speaker 1: which would confirm a widespread misconception about certain ideas and

815
00:50:06,800 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 1: American politics. So as soon as a person read a

816
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:14,960
Speaker 1: fake article, researchers then handed over a true article which

817
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:18,840
Speaker 1: corrected the first one. For instance, one article suggested that

818
00:50:18,880 --> 00:50:23,000
Speaker 1: the United States found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,

819
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:25,840
Speaker 1: the next said the US never found them, and that

820
00:50:26,000 --> 00:50:30,640
Speaker 1: second one was the truth. Those who opposed the war

821
00:50:30,760 --> 00:50:34,120
Speaker 1: who had strong liberal leanings tended to disagree with the

822
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:38,200
Speaker 1: original article and accept the second. Those who supported the

823
00:50:38,239 --> 00:50:40,919
Speaker 1: war and leaned a little more towards the conservative camp,

824
00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:44,759
Speaker 1: tended to agree with the first article and strongly disagree

825
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:48,520
Speaker 1: with the second. And these these reactions, they shouldn't surprise you,

826
00:50:49,640 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 1: which would maybe give you just a little dash of pause,

827
00:50:52,560 --> 00:50:57,319
Speaker 1: is how conservatives felt about the correction. After reading that

828
00:50:57,360 --> 00:50:59,719
Speaker 1: there were no w n d s, they reported being

829
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:04,320
Speaker 1: even more certain than before there actually were w m

830
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:09,799
Speaker 1: d s and their original beliefs were correct. The double down, Yes,

831
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:12,399
Speaker 1: the double down, The dangerous double down. And look if

832
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:16,240
Speaker 1: you if you think of yourself as more conservative person,

833
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:18,759
Speaker 1: or if your political ideology is very important to you,

834
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:22,200
Speaker 1: don't feel attacked. This is an example of a mechanic

835
00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:26,839
Speaker 1: of a bio almost a biomechanical process, a neurocognitive process

836
00:51:26,880 --> 00:51:29,600
Speaker 1: that occurs to all people that really really left leaning,

837
00:51:29,600 --> 00:51:32,719
Speaker 1: the really really right leaning, the centrists, the people who

838
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:35,440
Speaker 1: don't care about politics. There's going to be something in

839
00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:40,239
Speaker 1: their lives that that makes them double down like this.

840
00:51:41,520 --> 00:51:44,200
Speaker 1: And what's troubling about this, What this means is that

841
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:50,760
Speaker 1: whether the talk is of farm animals wearing pants, whether

842
00:51:50,800 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 1: it's politics, whether it's perry A, despite our best intentions

843
00:51:55,040 --> 00:52:00,840
Speaker 1: and possibly self and possibly overinflated self regard, we don't

844
00:52:00,880 --> 00:52:04,200
Speaker 1: tend to fact check things that already agree with or

845
00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:09,720
Speaker 1: further our existing world view. And this happens when people

846
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:16,160
Speaker 1: move to like take them taken area like San Francisco

847
00:52:16,200 --> 00:52:19,040
Speaker 1: is a pretty liberal place, right, somebody moves from San

848
00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:22,960
Speaker 1: Francisco and lives in a very conservative area for a

849
00:52:23,000 --> 00:52:26,440
Speaker 1: certain amount of time, and slowly over time, their views

850
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:31,560
Speaker 1: tend to align. Just because there's some psychological part, some

851
00:52:31,600 --> 00:52:33,600
Speaker 1: tribal part of us that says, you gotta root for

852
00:52:33,640 --> 00:52:37,319
Speaker 1: the home team, and uh, it's a scary thing. Like

853
00:52:37,360 --> 00:52:40,480
Speaker 1: if you think Canada a and an election is already

854
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:44,640
Speaker 1: a thief, you're way closer to just get in slippery

855
00:52:44,680 --> 00:52:47,839
Speaker 1: sloped into a little worse and worsom worse stuff about

856
00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:50,919
Speaker 1: him until until all of a sudden one day you're like, oh,

857
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:55,520
Speaker 1: devil baby. Yeah, obvious that checks out. Obviously it all

858
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:59,680
Speaker 1: comes back around to the Trump devil baby. But just

859
00:53:00,160 --> 00:53:02,759
Speaker 1: until you see a story that you disagree with, you'll

860
00:53:02,840 --> 00:53:05,120
Speaker 1: fact check that bad boy to the moon and back.

861
00:53:05,560 --> 00:53:09,200
Speaker 1: Washington Post, what a propaganda thing. New York Times sort

862
00:53:09,239 --> 00:53:11,680
Speaker 1: of propaganda thing. Fox News, Well, you know they're a

863
00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:15,200
Speaker 1: bunch of shills, right and so on and so on. Um,

864
00:53:15,239 --> 00:53:18,280
Speaker 1: and we've seen these internet arguments when people don't do this.

865
00:53:18,280 --> 00:53:21,600
Speaker 1: This makes me think that we should mention, should make

866
00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:29,000
Speaker 1: an important distinction here between fake news and propaganda. Oh

867
00:53:29,080 --> 00:53:34,840
Speaker 1: the P word the other Are you done with? Opp Yeah?

868
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:37,520
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. That's that's why Bernes said.

869
00:53:37,520 --> 00:53:40,319
Speaker 1: He was famously quoted as saying, I'm gonna grab him

870
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:46,719
Speaker 1: by the propaganda. Ye. So, uh. The problem with propaganda

871
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:51,560
Speaker 1: is that it's everywhere, all all countries do it. You know,

872
00:53:52,600 --> 00:53:55,919
Speaker 1: Al Jazera does some solid research, but they'll get shut

873
00:53:55,960 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 1: down when they do stuff about Yemen. They're based in Yemen.

874
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:02,160
Speaker 1: You're not really going to hear the BBC doing its

875
00:54:02,239 --> 00:54:04,680
Speaker 1: due diligence. In my opinion on a lot of things

876
00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:10,000
Speaker 1: in British politics, uh, and Russia or Russian times I

877
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:13,719
Speaker 1: think now exclusively called RT is gonna be you know,

878
00:54:14,080 --> 00:54:16,440
Speaker 1: kind of slanted when it comes to stuff in the US.

879
00:54:17,680 --> 00:54:23,680
Speaker 1: But but the point here is that propaganda is meant

880
00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:30,080
Speaker 1: to persuade a larger segment of a population to support something,

881
00:54:30,280 --> 00:54:32,880
Speaker 1: whereas a lot of fake news is looking for a

882
00:54:32,920 --> 00:54:38,320
Speaker 1: specific thing. Right, Um, they know that Matt Frederick already

883
00:54:38,600 --> 00:54:48,080
Speaker 1: loves orange Fanta, so I do. But so that that

884
00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:49,879
Speaker 1: would be aimed, you know, a lot of the fake

885
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:53,719
Speaker 1: news is a little more specific in in its mindset.

886
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:59,160
Speaker 1: And Ron Paul came out recently and said that the

887
00:54:59,160 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 1: the US governed was responsible for a lot of fake news.

888
00:55:02,360 --> 00:55:06,600
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and that's that line between propaganda and fake news.

889
00:55:06,640 --> 00:55:08,880
Speaker 1: And where where does it lie? Where is the line

890
00:55:09,600 --> 00:55:14,359
Speaker 1: between fake news and advertorials that let's say CNN will

891
00:55:14,400 --> 00:55:17,439
Speaker 1: produce for a for a country. Why I can tell

892
00:55:17,440 --> 00:55:24,279
Speaker 1: you the line isn't. I mean, propaganda is basically state sponsored,

893
00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:27,719
Speaker 1: whereas fake news is a bunch of just individual kind

894
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:34,160
Speaker 1: of rogue Internet entrepreneurs trying to make some cash while

895
00:55:34,280 --> 00:55:38,520
Speaker 1: maybe steering an election. Well, propaganda can also be a

896
00:55:38,520 --> 00:55:42,600
Speaker 1: corporate sponsored that's true, Yeah, I think. I think it

897
00:55:42,719 --> 00:55:45,640
Speaker 1: being state sponsored though, is probably one of the bigger

898
00:55:45,680 --> 00:55:49,400
Speaker 1: definitions yet. And I like that you make that point.

899
00:55:50,160 --> 00:55:53,800
Speaker 1: And I've had this conversation before. A lot of people

900
00:55:53,800 --> 00:55:57,439
Speaker 1: are under the impression that the United States does not,

901
00:55:58,120 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 1: uh do domestic prop baganda. For a long time, there

902
00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:05,320
Speaker 1: was a law preventing them from doing that. That law

903
00:56:05,440 --> 00:56:08,839
Speaker 1: or that practice, that policy has since been repealed, abolished,

904
00:56:08,880 --> 00:56:13,280
Speaker 1: It's gone. So it is completely legal for the federal

905
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:19,320
Speaker 1: government to exercise propaganda domestically. Did they do it before, sure,

906
00:56:19,360 --> 00:56:23,520
Speaker 1: of course, of course, I'm sure. But are they doing

907
00:56:23,560 --> 00:56:27,839
Speaker 1: it now? Yeah? Man, now more than ever. I mean,

908
00:56:27,880 --> 00:56:30,960
Speaker 1: one could argue that like a communications director for a

909
00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:34,960
Speaker 1: particular branch of the government is essentially their head propagandists.

910
00:56:34,960 --> 00:56:37,320
Speaker 1: I mean, they're the ones that are writing the narrative

911
00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:40,680
Speaker 1: that they want to steer the story with. Now doesn't

912
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:43,759
Speaker 1: mean that they can control what journalists, right, But the

913
00:56:43,800 --> 00:56:46,399
Speaker 1: principle is still there. It's all about, like we want

914
00:56:46,440 --> 00:56:50,040
Speaker 1: to own the narrative of whether it's something bad, maybe

915
00:56:50,040 --> 00:56:52,080
Speaker 1: it's something good. Maybe it's something good they've done. But

916
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:54,600
Speaker 1: there's a detail they don't want people to know about

917
00:56:54,600 --> 00:56:56,879
Speaker 1: as much, so they don't put that. They bury the lead.

918
00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:00,440
Speaker 1: You know. I'm just saying that the machine is there.

919
00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:03,160
Speaker 1: It's just not it's it's a little more. You know,

920
00:57:03,280 --> 00:57:06,359
Speaker 1: we're living up a society of free press, and thank

921
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:11,400
Speaker 1: god for that. But a couple of clicks away, yeah,

922
00:57:11,719 --> 00:57:14,600
Speaker 1: we might not be there anymore. Yeah, that's a great point.

923
00:57:14,680 --> 00:57:17,480
Speaker 1: Like the same factories that make cars can be turned

924
00:57:17,480 --> 00:57:23,000
Speaker 1: into factories that make bombs or tanks. So the mechanism

925
00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:25,920
Speaker 1: is there. Just as you said, that's kind of spooky

926
00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:28,560
Speaker 1: when you think about it that way. We do know,

927
00:57:28,640 --> 00:57:31,280
Speaker 1: of course, going to open up those libel laws. Yeah,

928
00:57:31,480 --> 00:57:40,320
Speaker 1: open canny. Though the topic for another text is open

929
00:57:40,400 --> 00:57:44,160
Speaker 1: up again. Just in case I apologize to the Gwynette pickyune. Well,

930
00:57:44,160 --> 00:57:47,320
Speaker 1: technically i'd be doing slander, wouldn't I be committing slander?

931
00:57:47,480 --> 00:57:50,360
Speaker 1: And it's spoken, You're fine. I did several searches. The

932
00:57:50,400 --> 00:57:52,880
Speaker 1: closest thing I could find was the Times, pick Une

933
00:57:53,720 --> 00:57:57,919
Speaker 1: and a couple of small grenette papers that I won't mention. Well,

934
00:57:58,000 --> 00:58:00,760
Speaker 1: are there any papers that are not owned by Illumination

935
00:58:00,800 --> 00:58:05,280
Speaker 1: Global Unlimited? And what is a pick of units? Answer

936
00:58:05,440 --> 00:58:08,280
Speaker 1: so many questions, Well, we do want to point out

937
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:11,400
Speaker 1: just some other things here. Uh. So, yes, these are

938
00:58:11,400 --> 00:58:17,000
Speaker 1: not conspiracy theories. They're active conspiracists working online, either for themselves,

939
00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:21,880
Speaker 1: for personal profit, for their government, for their corporate overlord,

940
00:58:22,080 --> 00:58:24,240
Speaker 1: or just for laws or just for loals, just to

941
00:58:24,280 --> 00:58:31,080
Speaker 1: troll you a month, Yeah, Matt keeps thinking this place,

942
00:58:31,120 --> 00:58:33,400
Speaker 1: So we bring that up. But but our point being

943
00:58:33,480 --> 00:58:37,320
Speaker 1: that these people are trying to deceive you, to trick you,

944
00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:45,680
Speaker 1: to exploit a m to exploit a neurochemical, neurocognitive vulnerability

945
00:58:45,760 --> 00:58:50,560
Speaker 1: and every human brain. And it's not a it's not

946
00:58:50,640 --> 00:58:54,040
Speaker 1: a situation that's always easy to see, and it's not

947
00:58:54,080 --> 00:58:57,400
Speaker 1: a situation where the bad guys are the same people

948
00:58:57,440 --> 00:59:01,360
Speaker 1: every time. So we do know that some stories are

949
00:59:01,560 --> 00:59:05,080
Speaker 1: genuinely suppressed. Of course, Facebook got in trouble for actively

950
00:59:05,080 --> 00:59:07,960
Speaker 1: suppressing some stories. Uh. And then we do know that

951
00:59:08,000 --> 00:59:11,160
Speaker 1: there are stories that are advertised by their supporters as

952
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:14,800
Speaker 1: being suppressed, right, They don't want you to know the

953
00:59:14,840 --> 00:59:19,720
Speaker 1: truth about the flat earth. Here's a question, though, are

954
00:59:19,800 --> 00:59:25,440
Speaker 1: we entitled two complete and total freedom of expression on

955
00:59:25,480 --> 00:59:29,640
Speaker 1: the Internet? Like Facebook might get dinged, you know, from

956
00:59:29,640 --> 00:59:34,479
Speaker 1: a philosophical standpoint for suppressing certain stories, But who says

957
00:59:34,520 --> 00:59:37,760
Speaker 1: that they aren't allowed to do that, right if it's

958
00:59:37,760 --> 00:59:40,720
Speaker 1: a private sandbox too? And who says that they are

959
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:47,320
Speaker 1: required to not um like the Newer Times should be

960
00:59:47,360 --> 00:59:52,680
Speaker 1: required not to publish uh fake stories? Right? But Facebook

961
00:59:52,720 --> 00:59:56,320
Speaker 1: is very different. It's an aggregator. So what is their

962
00:59:56,400 --> 00:59:59,200
Speaker 1: due diligence? I think that's a very good question, you know,

963
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:03,160
Speaker 1: to what respect to them to define those parameters based

964
01:00:03,200 --> 01:00:07,480
Speaker 1: on how much ill will they think they're getting as

965
01:00:07,480 --> 01:00:10,240
Speaker 1: a result of the way they're behaving. It's a pr move, right,

966
01:00:10,240 --> 01:00:14,880
Speaker 1: And then ideally wouldn't they Ideally wouldn't history tell us

967
01:00:14,920 --> 01:00:18,560
Speaker 1: that if that doesn't work, a competitor would arise that

968
01:00:18,640 --> 01:00:23,840
Speaker 1: would have more curated powers or something, and then that

969
01:00:23,880 --> 01:00:27,240
Speaker 1: would have a backlash. I don't know. I think these

970
01:00:27,240 --> 01:00:29,280
Speaker 1: are great questions because we have we do have to

971
01:00:29,320 --> 01:00:33,240
Speaker 1: ask ourselves how much responsibility can we put on a

972
01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:36,200
Speaker 1: third party entity going to go out on the gonna

973
01:00:36,240 --> 01:00:37,800
Speaker 1: go out on a limb and say most of us

974
01:00:37,800 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 1: have not met Mark Zuckerberg, right, so how much of

975
01:00:41,160 --> 01:00:44,760
Speaker 1: that responsibility should be with our own action? I met

976
01:00:44,760 --> 01:00:47,680
Speaker 1: Bill Gates? You did meet Bill Gates. That's true, you guys.

977
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:51,840
Speaker 1: No Brown met Bill Gates. You you got to talk

978
01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:54,760
Speaker 1: with him, he said, it was cool in a tiny

979
01:00:54,760 --> 01:00:56,520
Speaker 1: little hotel room. I did. I went with Josh and

980
01:00:56,560 --> 01:00:58,800
Speaker 1: Chuck for stuff you should know, and I got to

981
01:00:58,840 --> 01:01:01,320
Speaker 1: set up audio stuff and uh, it was pretty crazy.

982
01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:04,000
Speaker 1: But I digress. No, But like no, I think the

983
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 1: burden of the burden should be only individual to use

984
01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:11,960
Speaker 1: their thinking nogging caps and say, hey, maybe I shouldn't

985
01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:14,960
Speaker 1: believe everything that I read on the Internet, especially an

986
01:01:14,960 --> 01:01:18,760
Speaker 1: aggregate like an aggregator like Facebook. Maybe I should do

987
01:01:18,840 --> 01:01:22,440
Speaker 1: my own research and not just sit back and have

988
01:01:22,520 --> 01:01:25,120
Speaker 1: this stuff just like wash over me and just believe

989
01:01:25,160 --> 01:01:27,560
Speaker 1: it because it makes me feel cool or it makes

990
01:01:27,560 --> 01:01:29,800
Speaker 1: me feel good that I'm the one who's sharing it. Yeah,

991
01:01:29,800 --> 01:01:33,560
Speaker 1: what do you think about? I think that kids should

992
01:01:33,560 --> 01:01:36,800
Speaker 1: be taught media literacy at a young age. And when

993
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:39,360
Speaker 1: we say media literacy, you know it goes beyond learning

994
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:41,280
Speaker 1: to read. It's the stuff we've been talking about, like

995
01:01:41,360 --> 01:01:46,040
Speaker 1: seeing the sources that people should check, having the personal

996
01:01:46,080 --> 01:01:49,680
Speaker 1: responsibility to say, like, again, I keep going back to

997
01:01:49,680 --> 01:01:54,640
Speaker 1: this example, but for me to say, like, yeah, you know, personally,

998
01:01:54,680 --> 01:01:57,360
Speaker 1: I think goats should wear pants, and that's normal for

999
01:01:57,440 --> 01:02:00,520
Speaker 1: people like me. But let me see what these goat

1000
01:02:00,600 --> 01:02:04,800
Speaker 1: nudists think, like to find these opposing viewpoints. And another

1001
01:02:04,880 --> 01:02:07,360
Speaker 1: thing we've talked about before, like the way people fall

1002
01:02:07,400 --> 01:02:09,920
Speaker 1: into buzzwords, the way we live in a world that

1003
01:02:10,000 --> 01:02:16,240
Speaker 1: wants it's explanations, simple, high level, quick, and most importantly

1004
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:20,680
Speaker 1: less than five minutes long. Dirty and dirty, simple, quick

1005
01:02:20,680 --> 01:02:26,040
Speaker 1: and dirty. Uh so uh we we also think another

1006
01:02:26,080 --> 01:02:29,520
Speaker 1: way to guard against fake news is to support journalism.

1007
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:33,640
Speaker 1: There's some great places like pro Publica, which are nonprofit,

1008
01:02:33,760 --> 01:02:38,280
Speaker 1: nonpartisan outfits. Yeah, and uh the thing is that the

1009
01:02:38,360 --> 01:02:43,600
Speaker 1: real hard nosed journalists you know them because they have

1010
01:02:43,960 --> 01:02:47,040
Speaker 1: a wealth of enemies on both sides of most stories,

1011
01:02:48,440 --> 01:02:51,800
Speaker 1: and Pro Publica, as you know, has not pulled punches

1012
01:02:52,080 --> 01:02:55,800
Speaker 1: where some other places would have. So I would recommend

1013
01:02:56,160 --> 01:02:59,280
Speaker 1: checking out some of their stuff if you're interested in

1014
01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:04,280
Speaker 1: supporting journalism. And of course, you know, if we want

1015
01:03:04,320 --> 01:03:06,160
Speaker 1: to be more preachy, would teld people to go out

1016
01:03:06,160 --> 01:03:08,440
Speaker 1: and support their local papers, but I don't know how

1017
01:03:08,480 --> 01:03:11,000
Speaker 1: you feel about that, Or subscribe to the New York

1018
01:03:11,080 --> 01:03:14,000
Speaker 1: Times well, and then other people will tell you that

1019
01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:16,439
Speaker 1: that the New York Times is worthless pennies a day,

1020
01:03:16,600 --> 01:03:20,720
Speaker 1: pennies a day, but people will tell you it's worthless, uh,

1021
01:03:20,880 --> 01:03:23,680
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's definitely more worthwhile when you have

1022
01:03:23,800 --> 01:03:26,440
Speaker 1: two different that you have two different sources to compare.

1023
01:03:26,600 --> 01:03:29,520
Speaker 1: I think with maybe is coming here is that we

1024
01:03:29,600 --> 01:03:33,400
Speaker 1: need a new model for journalism because you know, clearly

1025
01:03:33,400 --> 01:03:36,080
Speaker 1: people aren't paying because there they expect everything to be free.

1026
01:03:36,200 --> 01:03:37,960
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that's good. I think it's kind

1027
01:03:37,960 --> 01:03:40,880
Speaker 1: of crappy, but it just is. So what's the new model?

1028
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:43,320
Speaker 1: Maybe it is something like pro public are like NPR,

1029
01:03:43,400 --> 01:03:45,600
Speaker 1: where you have you know, contributors. Maybe you don't buy

1030
01:03:45,640 --> 01:03:48,200
Speaker 1: a subscription, but you do, you know, some sort of

1031
01:03:48,480 --> 01:03:50,840
Speaker 1: pledge drive. I don't know how you do it exactly,

1032
01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:54,120
Speaker 1: but I think important news as we know from NPR,

1033
01:03:54,960 --> 01:03:57,600
Speaker 1: the fact that they continue to exist and do interesting

1034
01:03:57,640 --> 01:03:59,680
Speaker 1: work and do all this podcasts and stuff in their

1035
01:03:59,680 --> 01:04:02,920
Speaker 1: complete you know, members supported or whatever. I want to

1036
01:04:02,960 --> 01:04:05,440
Speaker 1: actually ask you about this before you you have a

1037
01:04:05,480 --> 01:04:09,960
Speaker 1: thought you're going to finish, and I'm sorry, but I

1038
01:04:09,960 --> 01:04:12,360
Speaker 1: want to jump in because the NPR is not completely

1039
01:04:12,440 --> 01:04:17,440
Speaker 1: listeners supported. Okay, that's and their state they're the like

1040
01:04:18,000 --> 01:04:20,560
Speaker 1: the news of the state of the nation. That's true.

1041
01:04:20,720 --> 01:04:25,920
Speaker 1: But if we're talking about individual um regional branches of

1042
01:04:26,040 --> 01:04:28,919
Speaker 1: NPR and public radio, a lot of that does come

1043
01:04:28,960 --> 01:04:33,200
Speaker 1: from you know, listeners support, and they do receive a

1044
01:04:33,320 --> 01:04:36,560
Speaker 1: portion of their funding from NPR proper. But I mean

1045
01:04:36,600 --> 01:04:39,400
Speaker 1: it is you know, it's not completely self. It's more

1046
01:04:39,440 --> 01:04:42,320
Speaker 1: grassroots than than a lot of places. All those things.

1047
01:04:42,360 --> 01:04:44,080
Speaker 1: I think people want that, and I just wonder what

1048
01:04:44,160 --> 01:04:46,760
Speaker 1: the model is to make that possible without it being

1049
01:04:46,800 --> 01:04:49,120
Speaker 1: a for profit model. I I don't know. Well, here's

1050
01:04:49,120 --> 01:04:52,000
Speaker 1: what here's what the model is now, if we're being honest,

1051
01:04:52,040 --> 01:04:54,360
Speaker 1: here's what it's trending towards. Now. It's trending toward a

1052
01:04:54,400 --> 01:04:57,560
Speaker 1: world where every single individual believes that they are somehow

1053
01:04:57,600 --> 01:05:03,520
Speaker 1: obligated to be continually reporting their lives. Right. We have

1054
01:05:03,560 --> 01:05:07,520
Speaker 1: become the surveillance state we were warned about for decades

1055
01:05:07,560 --> 01:05:11,640
Speaker 1: and centuries before. And the people, so every person in

1056
01:05:11,640 --> 01:05:14,120
Speaker 1: the world, where every person is kind of a journalist

1057
01:05:14,680 --> 01:05:18,640
Speaker 1: right with their own stance, you know, uh, protest breaks out,

1058
01:05:18,880 --> 01:05:21,000
Speaker 1: and then the first way you hear about it is

1059
01:05:21,040 --> 01:05:24,400
Speaker 1: through Twitter or Instagram with a bunch of people locally

1060
01:05:24,440 --> 01:05:30,080
Speaker 1: posting things. Then the folks who become the gatekeepers and

1061
01:05:30,160 --> 01:05:33,000
Speaker 1: the arbiters of what that information is that people are

1062
01:05:33,000 --> 01:05:36,680
Speaker 1: serving the higher level functions of a journalist or replacing

1063
01:05:36,680 --> 01:05:40,200
Speaker 1: it are those aggregators, the twitters, the facebooks and so on,

1064
01:05:40,720 --> 01:05:44,920
Speaker 1: and the way that they decide the display. I personally

1065
01:05:44,960 --> 01:05:48,680
Speaker 1: believe that's a very dangerous model because it leads to

1066
01:05:48,720 --> 01:05:50,680
Speaker 1: the suppression of stuff, you know what I mean. It

1067
01:05:50,720 --> 01:05:53,160
Speaker 1: can lead to suppression, and it can also lead to

1068
01:05:53,360 --> 01:05:57,840
Speaker 1: witch hunting and you know, not having all the facts gathered.

1069
01:05:58,560 --> 01:06:01,600
Speaker 1: And one more thing before we head out for the

1070
01:06:01,680 --> 01:06:06,160
Speaker 1: week to get back to our various non sketchy pursuits,

1071
01:06:06,480 --> 01:06:14,920
Speaker 1: shut up corners. First shout out today comes from Facebook. Hi,

1072
01:06:15,080 --> 01:06:16,920
Speaker 1: Matt and Ben and the rest of the crew. Dirk

1073
01:06:17,000 --> 01:06:20,040
Speaker 1: from Belgium here. Just to make clear, s tz w

1074
01:06:20,280 --> 01:06:22,560
Speaker 1: y t K is also popular across the Big Pond.

1075
01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:25,080
Speaker 1: That is really good to know. I love things across

1076
01:06:25,120 --> 01:06:27,440
Speaker 1: the Big Pond. First of all, thanks for the great podcast,

1077
01:06:28,200 --> 01:06:31,240
Speaker 1: big fan, he says, As you mentioned, you'd like to

1078
01:06:31,240 --> 01:06:34,160
Speaker 1: suggest some topics for podcasts below, or some curious stories

1079
01:06:34,200 --> 01:06:37,840
Speaker 1: that might interest your listeners. Number one Operation View Law

1080
01:06:38,080 --> 01:06:42,959
Speaker 1: and Underground anti Apartheid network and its story about secure communications.

1081
01:06:42,960 --> 01:06:45,920
Speaker 1: I don't know this one, do you, guys? Actually a

1082
01:06:45,960 --> 01:06:49,040
Speaker 1: lot of these are new and exciting to me. We've

1083
01:06:49,040 --> 01:06:51,840
Speaker 1: got Jack Barski and East German spy with a double

1084
01:06:51,960 --> 01:06:54,600
Speaker 1: family life trying to make his career in the US.

1085
01:06:55,640 --> 01:06:58,480
Speaker 1: Nothing gotta check this one out. And then finally we

1086
01:06:58,560 --> 01:07:02,080
Speaker 1: have Castle fur Sty or how a German WW two

1087
01:07:02,120 --> 01:07:05,240
Speaker 1: scientists built a castle to develop all kinds of technology

1088
01:07:05,280 --> 01:07:08,600
Speaker 1: with a curious postwar career involving intelligence services and the

1089
01:07:08,760 --> 01:07:11,040
Speaker 1: n s A. I hope this stuff might bring some

1090
01:07:11,120 --> 01:07:16,040
Speaker 1: inspiration for a future podcast. Keep up the nice work. Hey,

1091
01:07:16,080 --> 01:07:18,520
Speaker 1: thanks so much for thanks so much for writing in Dirk.

1092
01:07:19,000 --> 01:07:21,400
Speaker 1: A lot of we didn't read all of their topics,

1093
01:07:21,400 --> 01:07:25,320
Speaker 1: but a lot of these are pretty fascinating. He's got

1094
01:07:25,320 --> 01:07:30,400
Speaker 1: links attached to putting him on that Google calendar. Our

1095
01:07:30,480 --> 01:07:33,479
Speaker 1: next shout out is from Missy T. Misty says, looking

1096
01:07:33,520 --> 01:07:37,720
Speaker 1: around online for toothpaste that remineralizes enamel, I found that

1097
01:07:37,760 --> 01:07:42,960
Speaker 1: toothpaste containing novamen actually does that. Sincidine repair the protect

1098
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:45,600
Speaker 1: as the leading brand of many other countries. It contains

1099
01:07:45,640 --> 01:07:48,560
Speaker 1: no wamen, but it's also not allowed here in the US.

1100
01:07:48,920 --> 01:07:51,440
Speaker 1: The FDA made it nearly impossible to get into the

1101
01:07:51,440 --> 01:07:54,360
Speaker 1: country and only allow GSK to sell it in the

1102
01:07:54,480 --> 01:07:57,560
Speaker 1: US because the active ingredient have been changed from novaman

1103
01:07:57,840 --> 01:08:00,880
Speaker 1: to standus fluoride. I'd be interested to know what you

1104
01:08:00,920 --> 01:08:04,880
Speaker 1: guys could find out. Yeah, anything about floriade I'm interested in. Yeah.

1105
01:08:04,880 --> 01:08:07,800
Speaker 1: And also, I you know, years ago, I read this

1106
01:08:07,880 --> 01:08:11,480
Speaker 1: science fiction story, this dystopian thing about this guy who

1107
01:08:11,520 --> 01:08:15,400
Speaker 1: invents a um. They called it a dentificus and all

1108
01:08:15,440 --> 01:08:18,040
Speaker 1: you had to do was take it once and your

1109
01:08:18,080 --> 01:08:21,680
Speaker 1: teeth would be immune to decay for life. Well, it's

1110
01:08:21,680 --> 01:08:24,120
Speaker 1: the science fiction story, and it was. Yeah, it was

1111
01:08:24,160 --> 01:08:28,759
Speaker 1: about how essentially evil this evil group of dentists came

1112
01:08:28,920 --> 01:08:33,479
Speaker 1: to overthrow him and kill him and end spoiler alert

1113
01:08:33,560 --> 01:08:37,360
Speaker 1: with him pouring the dentifice down to sink. Excellent story. Um,

1114
01:08:37,400 --> 01:08:40,599
Speaker 1: but misty uh this this is a topic that would

1115
01:08:40,600 --> 01:08:43,760
Speaker 1: be a lot of fun to look into. Finally, we

1116
01:08:43,800 --> 01:08:48,800
Speaker 1: have a message from Charlie. Charlie says, hey, guys, absolutely

1117
01:08:48,920 --> 01:08:51,360
Speaker 1: love what you do, but there's a running sort of

1118
01:08:51,400 --> 01:08:55,879
Speaker 1: reference that's immensely intriguing to me, the implications of Ben's

1119
01:08:55,920 --> 01:09:00,160
Speaker 1: demonic heritage. It makes me wonder, though, are your co

1120
01:09:00,240 --> 01:09:02,200
Speaker 1: workers outside of Stuff they don't want you to know,

1121
01:09:02,280 --> 01:09:05,640
Speaker 1: aware of the potential danger. I envisioned maybe the co

1122
01:09:05,760 --> 01:09:09,840
Speaker 1: host of Car Stuff Scott Benjamin making a friendly bet

1123
01:09:09,920 --> 01:09:13,559
Speaker 1: or wager and having no idea the real ramifications of

1124
01:09:13,560 --> 01:09:17,040
Speaker 1: the deal, the possible motivations behind laying this sort of

1125
01:09:17,040 --> 01:09:20,759
Speaker 1: storyline sets the imagination of Flame as well. I imagine

1126
01:09:20,760 --> 01:09:24,320
Speaker 1: the sparse references and vague nature of the atmosphere being

1127
01:09:24,360 --> 01:09:27,800
Speaker 1: created as intentional. But I always end an episode with

1128
01:09:27,880 --> 01:09:32,400
Speaker 1: these references nearly salivating for more. I am desperate to

1129
01:09:32,479 --> 01:09:37,320
Speaker 1: understand the conclusion to these happenings. I hope this hasn't

1130
01:09:37,360 --> 01:09:40,080
Speaker 1: been as confusing to read as I fear it might,

1131
01:09:40,120 --> 01:09:43,559
Speaker 1: But I'm deeply curious about Ben's involvement with the topic.

1132
01:09:45,439 --> 01:09:50,439
Speaker 1: So Ben no comment? All right, Well that's the show.

1133
01:09:50,960 --> 01:09:53,200
Speaker 1: If you want to reach us on Facebook or Twitter,

1134
01:09:53,280 --> 01:09:55,400
Speaker 1: we are Conspiracy Stuff at both of those. You can

1135
01:09:55,439 --> 01:09:59,599
Speaker 1: find us on Instagram Conspiracy Stuff Show. If you want

1136
01:09:59,640 --> 01:10:03,800
Speaker 1: to watch our videos, go to YouTube Conspiracy Stuff. You

1137
01:10:03,800 --> 01:10:06,280
Speaker 1: can also check out our fake news side of conspiracy

1138
01:10:06,360 --> 01:10:09,439
Speaker 1: stuff and things dot biz, dot co, dot UK, dot

1139
01:10:09,520 --> 01:10:11,720
Speaker 1: c o CE. Again we have to make that now.

1140
01:10:12,439 --> 01:10:14,040
Speaker 1: But hey, a fake news isn't your bag and you

1141
01:10:14,080 --> 01:10:17,000
Speaker 1: want to send out something to us directly and we

1142
01:10:17,040 --> 01:10:20,559
Speaker 1: will see that thing. You can reach us by email.

1143
01:10:20,840 --> 01:10:40,880
Speaker 1: We are conspiracy how stuff Works dot com