Speaker 1: This is the stuff of life. I'm your host, Julie Douglas,
Speaker 1: and in this episode we take a look at desperation
Speaker 1: through the lens of art, war, and of all things,
Speaker 1: a survey one that gives us insight into what keeps
Speaker 1: Americans up at night. If there is any truism, it's
Speaker 1: that art isn't about art, It's about everything else, but
Speaker 1: it uses the language of art. That's artist Connor Everts,
Speaker 1: whose nineteen sixty three lithographs Studies and Desperation take on
Speaker 1: the themes of loss, longing, and despair. We talked to
Speaker 1: curator Tom Norris about how everts prints are potent reminders
Speaker 1: that what ails us humans today has changed a little
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty three, and it it may not be
Speaker 1: pretty to look at, but it's fair and it's a reality.
Speaker 1: The editor of Military History Now, Nathan Mallett, walks us
Speaker 1: through a few desperate times in history. They're sort of
Speaker 1: traditional way of fighting war suddenly was coming up short.
Speaker 1: So it was, you know, it was really let's get
Speaker 1: creative here and see if we can. You know what's
Speaker 1: gonna work, Let's try We'll try anything. And we talked
Speaker 1: to Dr ed Day from Chapman University about the two
Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen results of the Survey of American Fears
Speaker 1: and the story these fears paint about the current national mood.
Speaker 1: We are a very suspicious nation. But first a few
Speaker 1: other desperate times in history. In ninety three was a
Speaker 1: big year Ladies and Gentlemen, the Beatles, the year the
Speaker 1: first Beatles album came out. Dylan's second album, which had
Speaker 1: Blowing in the Wind, came out that year, UM, and
Speaker 1: it was also the year the Mona Lisa traveled to
Speaker 1: the National Gallery in d c Um. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, the Cuba Embargo was continuing, the Cold War
Speaker 1: was on, and um somewhat of a nuclear arms race
Speaker 1: was happening, and our involvement in the Vietnam War, the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement, and then at the end of nineteen
Speaker 1: three the assassination of JFK. Ryan Guide in our newsroom.
Speaker 1: There has been an attempt, as perhaps you know now,
Speaker 1: on the life of President of kendidate. He was wounded
Speaker 1: in an automobile driving from Bela Airport. So there were
Speaker 1: there was this sort of a transition, a duality of
Speaker 1: sorts going happening. In nineteen sixty three that's curatorial associate
Speaker 1: Tom Norris at Norton Simon Museum, which exhibited Studies and Desperation,
Speaker 1: a suite by the late artist Connor Everts, honoring the
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of nine lithographs Everts created in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: the year that ushered in a sea change for the
Speaker 1: United States. In a two thousand three interview, Everts reflected
Speaker 1: on his Studies and Desperation series, and what he said was,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the state of the world and
Speaker 1: the view of the world from the womb. What if
Speaker 1: someone looked out from the womb and decided not to
Speaker 1: be born until it was a better world? To capture
Speaker 1: the unraveling of society. The first lithograph depicts two figures,
Speaker 1: at first entwined, but as the series progresses unraveling and
Speaker 1: breaking down, and in the end they sort of find
Speaker 1: themselves in this circular sort of womb like feature, and
Speaker 1: there's bones and teeth and and phalluses and and fingers,
Speaker 1: and it's just kind of a jumble of um of parts,
Speaker 1: so to speak. And it brings it back to his
Speaker 1: quote about wanting to sort of go back into the
Speaker 1: womb in some way. Waiting it out until the world
Speaker 1: is a better place. With time and distance, it's easy
Speaker 1: to forget just how jarring John F. Kennedy's assassination was,
Speaker 1: Just how much Americans reeled in response to the cutting
Speaker 1: down of someone who represented all the ideals of a
Speaker 1: democracy that, in theory, should have prevented such a tragedy
Speaker 1: from happening in the first place, and by extension, would
Speaker 1: keep all sorts of random acts of violence at bay
Speaker 1: for everyone else. The assassination tore a hole in reality
Speaker 1: and efforts peered through it. It's the breaking down of
Speaker 1: these forms, these bodies is somewhat of an allegory for
Speaker 1: just however, it's his feeling the world is breaking down,
Speaker 1: with everything going on in the world around him, was
Speaker 1: sort of dissolving in his eyes, something that we can
Speaker 1: all relate to. Studies, I think would point to the
Speaker 1: idea that we're all finding our way and figuring it out.
Speaker 1: No one knows the correct path, and we're all studying
Speaker 1: to try and find that. One path to finding our
Speaker 1: way is to examine our past, something history professor and
Speaker 1: editor Nathan Mallett does on his site Military History. Now.
Speaker 1: There's so much of military history when you read it
Speaker 1: is about you know, this well known general in this
Speaker 1: well known battle, and you know or this well known
Speaker 1: you know, tank or airplane or something. Everyone knows that stuff.
Speaker 1: These are the things that people might have missed. And
Speaker 1: that's really the objective of this. Here's some things you
Speaker 1: never really thought of before. Here's the story you know
Speaker 1: you've never encountered, or kind of the footnotes do it
Speaker 1: and some of them are just really intriguing. Once story,
Speaker 1: in particular is what's known as the Business Plot. In November,
Speaker 1: the following rather chilling article appeared in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: It concerns the discovery of a plan coup that could
Speaker 1: have altered the course of American history, yet today hardly
Speaker 1: anyone knows anything about it. In the Military History Now
Speaker 1: article the Business Plot did American billionaire's plan a fascist coup?
Speaker 1: Nathan writes about wealthy Wall streeters, in corporate big wigs
Speaker 1: the one per centers of their time. They were worried
Speaker 1: about the victory of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. They felt
Speaker 1: his New Deal programs would usher in communism. The idea
Speaker 1: of the Business Plot was to overthrow FDR and install
Speaker 1: as Nathan described in his article quote an ultra nationalist
Speaker 1: and business friendly regime modeled after Lussolini's Italy plot of
Speaker 1: Wall Street interest to overthrow President Roosevelt and establish a
Speaker 1: fascist dictatorship backed by a private army. You have half
Speaker 1: a million ex soldiers and others appeared before the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives Committee on Unamerican Activities, which began hearings on
Speaker 1: the charges. Fast forward eighty years later to the year
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve, right after the reelection of Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: similar sentiments were brewing about Obama ushering in an era
Speaker 1: of communism with a loss of liberties to follow, and
Speaker 1: one of today's most famous one per centers tweeted, quote,
Speaker 1: we can't let this happen. We should march on Washington
Speaker 1: and stop this travesty, and we should have a revolution
Speaker 1: in this country. The author of the two thousand and
Speaker 1: twelve tweets Donald Trump, any chance we have the sort
Speaker 1: of shine delight on something that's a little different that
Speaker 1: you might have missed, and also if we can link
Speaker 1: it to um, to thing that's happening currently. Why is
Speaker 1: this important, Why does this story matter, and why does
Speaker 1: the story matter? Now? As we know saber rattling can
Speaker 1: become concrete policy, and concrete policy based on desperation tends
Speaker 1: to fail. Like one infamous US military conflict, the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: other types of sort of unconventional counterinsurgency tactics being used
Speaker 1: in Vietnam would be uh. I would say that the
Speaker 1: efforts to wipe out or knock out the ho Chi
Speaker 1: Min Trail. Nathan's referring to a specific point in the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War when the US tried to close down a
Speaker 1: main artery of supplies and munitions, the Ho Chi Min Trail.
Speaker 1: This north south running route was of such tactical importance
Speaker 1: that from seven to nineteen seventy two, the US military
Speaker 1: ran a secret weather manipulation program called Operation Popeye, meant
Speaker 1: to extend the monsoon season and flood the ho Chi
Speaker 1: Min Trail by seating class silver iodide and lead iodide
Speaker 1: inducing rainfall. And that is just one of several extreme
Speaker 1: attempts to move the needle of war to wipe out
Speaker 1: the trail itself. Um, they came up with some interesting ideas. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were very effective, but they were interesting. One of
Speaker 1: them was to drop industrial strength soap flakes onto the
Speaker 1: ho Chiman Trail during the rainy season, so that the
Speaker 1: soap would interact with the water and then foam up
Speaker 1: and it would literally wash the trail away, or would
Speaker 1: make it sort of a very sort of a soupy,
Speaker 1: sticky mass that nobody could pass through. Stories like this
Speaker 1: matter now, because you could argue we'd live in a
Speaker 1: time or hope is in short supply. There's handwringing over
Speaker 1: the economy of culture, over climate and resources. There's a
Speaker 1: palpable desperation, and we can learn from our past, and
Speaker 1: more importantly, we can study our present. And one of
Speaker 1: the ways to do that is to examine the underlying
Speaker 1: fears that drive our thoughts and actions. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen, I interviewed Dr ed Day of Chapman University
Speaker 1: about Wave one of the survey they had just conducted,
Speaker 1: the American Survey of Fears. I asked him what his
Speaker 1: fear was. I am absolutely petrified of heights. Put me
Speaker 1: on one of those swinging foot bridges and I get
Speaker 1: vertigo immediately, and there's no there's no rationale behind that.
Speaker 1: I had a chance to follow up with Ed on
Speaker 1: what is now Wave three of the study, released in
Speaker 1: October of and I asked him if his own fears
Speaker 1: have changed since two thousand and fourteen. Now, when I
Speaker 1: look good things like the how people react to conspiracy theories, um,
Speaker 1: how suspicious they are of a government that they themselves elected,
Speaker 1: I worry about the state of democracy. We'll get to
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theories in a minute, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: is a new and very important data point to the survey.
Speaker 1: But first a quick explanation of how the survey works. First,
Speaker 1: it's a weighted random sample of the American population over
Speaker 1: the age of eighteen. We're talking about people of all
Speaker 1: walks of life. This is something that appeals to science geeks.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it appeals to anyone else. Um.
Speaker 1: But when we did the original survey, um as we
Speaker 1: were piloting ideas, as we were doing sort of more
Speaker 1: qualitative textual interviews to find out what people would be
Speaker 1: afraid of and what we should be putting on the survey.
Speaker 1: We we used the natural language that people used, UM
Speaker 1: and and that really boiled down to some things were few.
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, you know, crime related stuff, things where
Speaker 1: people said they weren't afraid, but they were concerned, or
Speaker 1: they were worried, so we used that language in the question.
Speaker 1: We had a bunch of questions about what are you
Speaker 1: you know, are you afraid of this? Other questions would
Speaker 1: that are you concerned of this? Other questions which said
Speaker 1: are you worried about this? And we thought that gave
Speaker 1: us our best initial shot. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: we couldn't directly compare questions where we asked are you
Speaker 1: afraid with questions where we asked are you concerned? Um
Speaker 1: and And starting with Wave two, we said, okay, we've
Speaker 1: got that snapshot with the natural language. Now let's rephrase
Speaker 1: the questions so we're asking how afraid are you of everything?
Speaker 1: And then we can do direct comparison. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen, the top five years were number one walking
Speaker 1: alone at night to becoming a victim of identity theft,
Speaker 1: three safety on the internet for mass shootings, and five
Speaker 1: five public speaking. In contrast, Top five is fully stocked
Speaker 1: with a number of despair fueled fears. The first is
Speaker 1: government corruption, the second, terrorist attacks, three not having enough
Speaker 1: money for general terrorism, in five restriction on firearms and ammunition.
Speaker 1: This feels a little paranoid and a little desperate. I
Speaker 1: do think You're right that it reflects a sort of
Speaker 1: of desperation among people. And yes, I think it's definitely
Speaker 1: media driven um but concerned with corruption officials popping up
Speaker 1: in that's right when the primary season, you know, we
Speaker 1: do the survey in the spring. It was right when
Speaker 1: the primary season was cranking up, and then we did
Speaker 1: it was in full swing, and you basically had our
Speaker 1: national leaders telling our population that our government is corrupt
Speaker 1: and no good. Probably not a surprise that Americans have
Speaker 1: believed them. One of the starkest examples of this is
Speaker 1: the number ten fear on this survey. It was not
Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act that wrote number ten, It was Obamacare.
Speaker 1: We asked the question about Obamacare. People respond differently to
Speaker 1: when you ask them about the Affordable Care Act and
Speaker 1: when you ask them about Obamacare, they don't realize that
Speaker 1: they are the same thing. And that's where you can
Speaker 1: really see the media effect. As Obamacare, you know, that
Speaker 1: term being a pejorative term that was applied across many
Speaker 1: media that has affected people, and so if you ask
Speaker 1: them about that term, you will see that they're more
Speaker 1: afraid of it than they would be about the Affordable
Speaker 1: Care Act. Even though that's the exact same thing, And
Speaker 1: in January broadcast of Jimmy Kimmel Live on the Street,
Speaker 1: interviews illustrate that many people are still confused or misinformed
Speaker 1: about the a c A. We decided to ask this
Speaker 1: question again to see if Americans have learned any thing
Speaker 1: over the last three years. And well, let's see if
Speaker 1: we have. We're talking to people about healthcare today. Do
Speaker 1: you support Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act Affordable Care Act?
Speaker 1: And why is that? Well, I mean, I'm not the
Speaker 1: biggest fan of Obama, so I don't support him in
Speaker 1: the Obama things that he's got going on him. I'm
Speaker 1: actually really excited for President elect Donald Trump's tom right,
Speaker 1: So you don't like anyth Obama does, and you prefer
Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act? Absolutely? Do you support Obamacare or
Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act? I support Obamacare. So if you
Speaker 1: were a Senator and you could vote today, you would
Speaker 1: vote to keep Obamacare instead of the Affordable Care Act. Yes.
Speaker 1: Do you support Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act? I
Speaker 1: guess affordabacare Affordable Care Act? And why do you prefer
Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act over Obamacare? I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: My girlfriend that supports Trump, so I go with whatever
Speaker 1: she goes, whatever she says. What is the main difference
Speaker 1: between Obamacare and the affordable when is you you you pay,
Speaker 1: and then the other one is Obama pays. The survey
Speaker 1: of American fears bears out consequences of this kind of
Speaker 1: half baked knowledge being flouted is fact. And this is
Speaker 1: where the survey on conspiracy theories comes in. We asked
Speaker 1: about what we thought were the nine most common conspiracies,
Speaker 1: you know, and we just asked whether people believe the
Speaker 1: government was concealing information about's well in order nine eleven,
Speaker 1: the jfk assassination, alien encounters, global warming, plans for a
Speaker 1: one world government, Obama's birth certificate, the origin of the
Speaker 1: age virus, the depth of Supreme Court justice scalia, because
Speaker 1: that had happened and been in the news a lot
Speaker 1: in the moon landing. What we found is that out
Speaker 1: of those nine, roughly three out of four Americains think
Speaker 1: the government's concealing information about some at least one of
Speaker 1: those things. One out of ten people believe the government's
Speaker 1: concealing information about all of that. We distrust the government
Speaker 1: and grasp for explanations about things that seem mystical or
Speaker 1: scary on some level is unfortunate, but the study reveals
Speaker 1: something far more treacherous about how paranoia and desperation affect
Speaker 1: our ability to think clearly. Example, one, almost of Americans
Speaker 1: believe that the government's concealing information about alien encounters. But
Speaker 1: then when we go back and we look at our
Speaker 1: paranormal belief questions, we see that, uh, it's only about
Speaker 1: of people that believe aliens have recently visited the earth.
Speaker 1: So people are more you know, they're more willing to
Speaker 1: believe that the government is hiding information about aliens than
Speaker 1: actually believe lands have been here, And that to me
Speaker 1: really points to the level of dysfunction we now have
Speaker 1: as citizens versus our government, that that we believe they're
Speaker 1: hiding things about things that we don't believe actually happened.
Speaker 1: Here's another example. We wanted to know just how likely
Speaker 1: people are to believe in conspiracies period, So we also
Speaker 1: asked about one that doesn't exist that we made up.
Speaker 1: We called it the North Dakota Crash, and we said,
Speaker 1: you know, do you believe the government is hiding information
Speaker 1: about the North Dakota Crash? And we had almost one
Speaker 1: out of three saying that, yes, the government is hiding
Speaker 1: information about this thing that never happened. So it just
Speaker 1: shows that right now a huge part of the population
Speaker 1: is willing to believe anything that gets offered up as
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory because we have that much distrust of
Speaker 1: our government. And if you think that this kind of
Speaker 1: paranoia isn't being exploited, think again. Counselor to the President
Speaker 1: in Conway yesterday used false information to defend the President's
Speaker 1: executive order on immigration. I bet there was very little coverage.
Speaker 1: I bet. I bet it's brand new information to people
Speaker 1: that President Obama had a six month ban on the
Speaker 1: Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country,
Speaker 1: were radicalized, and there were the master masterminds behind the
Speaker 1: Bowl and Green massacred, when most people don't know that
Speaker 1: because I didn't get covered. There is no Bowling Green massacre.
Speaker 1: What Kelling in Conway is tapping into is not just
Speaker 1: a distrust of our government, but a deep distrust of
Speaker 1: each other. If we asked about selected social groups together,
Speaker 1: the sense of where Muslims would fall into this distrust
Speaker 1: of the other. So we asked about, yeah, how trustful
Speaker 1: are you regarding strangers, Muslims, Atheists, people in general, police officers,
Speaker 1: and Christians, And it was in that order. Muslims were
Speaker 1: second only to strangers in terms of who Americans tend
Speaker 1: to distrust. When you're looking at islamophobia, I think you
Speaker 1: see a clear impact of the media. Because the fact
Speaker 1: is less than one percent of the US population is Muslim.
Speaker 1: They tend to be located in urban areas. When you
Speaker 1: look at how Islamophobia is distributed in America, you see
Speaker 1: that it's more like, you know, people who are more
Speaker 1: suspicious of muslim They're older, they're white, they're less educated,
Speaker 1: and their rural and these are the people who are
Speaker 1: least likely to have met a Musliment of their opinion
Speaker 1: is coming from media portrayals of them. People are willing
Speaker 1: to bite onto you know, this is another. This is
Speaker 1: another we don't know. They tend to be portrayed as
Speaker 1: people who are dangerous. They must be dangerous. You could say,
Speaker 1: this kind of deep distrust is being reflect did back
Speaker 1: to the public and amplified, particularly with a newly established
Speaker 1: immigrant crime hotline. President Trump set up the Voice hotline
Speaker 1: that is for victims of immigration crime Engagement here's what
Speaker 1: he said in his joint addressed to Congress, announcing voice
Speaker 1: and we must support the victims of crime. I have
Speaker 1: ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office
Speaker 1: to serve American victims. The office is called Voice Victims
Speaker 1: of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to
Speaker 1: those who have been ignored by a media and silenced
Speaker 1: by special interests. In the midst of all of this,
Speaker 1: Ed wants to remind you of something. Well. The first
Speaker 1: thing is, I'd like to reassure people you're living in
Speaker 1: the safest time in history, in the safest place, So
Speaker 1: take a deep breath. And I also remind people that
Speaker 1: levels of fear matter. A little bit of fear is good.
Speaker 1: It can motivate you. Too much fear and you freeze
Speaker 1: and you don't do anything. If people are failing powerless,
Speaker 1: use the power that you have. In his book Consolations,
Speaker 1: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, poet
Speaker 1: David White writes about despair, the underlying condition for desperation.
Speaker 1: The antidote to despair, he writes, quote, is not to
Speaker 1: be found in the brave attempt to cheer ourselves up
Speaker 1: with happy abstracts, but in paying a profound and courageous
Speaker 1: attention to the body and the breath, independent of our
Speaker 1: imprisoning thoughts and stories, even strangely, in paying attention to
Speaker 1: despair itself and the way we hold it, and which
Speaker 1: we realize was never ours to own and to hold
Speaker 1: in the first place. The question then is can we
Speaker 1: allow despair to move through us without being warped by
Speaker 1: the paranoia inherent in it? And can we look past
Speaker 1: the grotesquery of our times and move forward? To find out,
Speaker 1: we'll need to take a trip through the haunted halls
Speaker 1: of our imaginations, and in the next episode we do
Speaker 1: just that, replicating one of the oldest stories we humans
Speaker 1: have been telling, the hero's journey. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: elements tied to going into a haunted house. In many ways,
Speaker 1: it's a rite of passage. It's the hero's journey, very
Speaker 1: primal um. There's something very exciting to go into a
Speaker 1: scary environment, to almost be struggling with the savage beast
Speaker 1: in a way, to have that adrenaline surge, but yet
Speaker 1: to know that you're safe. We'd like to thank Dr
Speaker 1: Ed Day from Chapman University for his insights into the
Speaker 1: American psyche, and we'd like to thank Nathan Mallett of
Speaker 1: Military History Now linking our past with our present. And
Speaker 1: finally thanks to Tom Norris at Norton Simon Museum for
Speaker 1: Walking is through the mind of an artist desperate to
Speaker 1: change the world. The Stuff of Life is written and
Speaker 1: executive produced by me Julie Douglas and co produced by
Speaker 1: Noel Brown. Editorial oversight is provided by contributing producer Dylan
Speaker 1: Fagan and Head of Production Jerry Rowland. This episode also
Speaker 1: featured music by Dylan Fagan, Tristan McNeil, Aaron Grubs, and
Speaker 1: Josh Boardman. You can find more of Josh's music at
Speaker 1: battle Tapes band dot com. Additional music is by the
Speaker 1: band Breathers. You can find more of their music at
Speaker 1: Breathers dot band camp. This episode also features the songs
Speaker 1: that Hopeful Future is All I've Ever Known, Stories About
Speaker 1: the World That Once Was, and Cylinder Eight. The songs
Speaker 1: are by Chris Zabrievsky and you can find more of
Speaker 1: his work at Chris Zabrievsky dot com. Find The Stuff
Speaker 1: of Life on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email
Speaker 1: us at the Stuff of Life at how staff works
Speaker 1: dot com, m