102 | Edward Bernays (The Father of Propaganda)

What if your thoughts and opinions were engineered? Let's dive into a propaganda rabbit hole. How propaganda (aka public relations) and algorithmic incentives hijack emotion, flatten nuance, and train us to spread messages for free. Starting with Aristotle’s ethos, pathos, and logos, we explore how Edward Bernays retooled persuasion into a system that borrows authority, attaches positive symbols, and weaponizes social proof. From WWI slogans to Torches of Freedom, from 'bacon and eggs' to the Department of Defense rebrand, we unpack the campaigns that quietly rewired our culture.

But this rabbit hole goes even deeper. Edward Bernays is the reason there is fluoride in our water and it's not for the reasons we were told. Drawing on historical records and declassified research, we consider how industrial incentives, selective expertise, and language framing shaped public belief. Even if you disagree with parts of the case, the deeper point remains...consent requires clarity, and 'trust the experts' only works when the experts’ incentives are transparent. Along the way, we map the science of REM sleep and the pineal gland, and why compromised sleep can ripple into mood, memory, and stress regulation. The goal here isn’t panic, it’s proportion and discernment.

You’ll leave with a practical checklist to spot manipulation. Watch for emotional jolts, heroes-vs-villains framing, repeated talking points, borrowed authority, glittering generalities, and bandwagon pressure that turns identity into obedience. We also draw a line between empathy and emotional intelligence. Caring without drowning. Helping without enabling.

Want more nuance and less noise? Hit play, subscribe for new rabbit holes, and share this with a friend who loves a good deprogramming. If it challenged you, leave a review and tell us which rabbit hole you want us to dive into next.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6309358/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6902325/

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2024-12-06/map-fluoride-in-drinking-water-by-state

https://www.gaia.com/article/the-actual-truth-about-fluoride?render=details-v4Chose

https://fluoridealert.org/content/mullenix-interview/

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jun/08/lifeandhealth.health

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Edward_Bernays

https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/fluoridation-capitalist-plot/

https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html

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Transcript

Welcome And Rabbit Hole Setup

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Are you ready?

SPEAKER_04 1:03

I'm ready. Fuck me up.

What Propaganda Is And Why It Works

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Welcome back to see you on the other side. This is, let's call this like part one of our rabbit hole series. Oh, I love that. And this kind of ties into our episode on critical thinking because this is about propaganda. I know that that's like a word we use and we all kind of know what it means. But when I started digging into the history of it, because that is what I do, I ask all the questions. Like my new Instagram bio, which I changed a while ago, is just like one thing about me is I want to know why. I didn't know you changed it. I love that. I question everything. So I was like, oh my God, why does propaganda override our critical thinking? What is it about it? So I'm gonna give you this rabbit hole of propaganda, why it is, what it is, and how it, why it works so well. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 2:04

And for the listeners, I know nothing.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Like she is just it has been so hard to me today, too. To find out a piece of information and not immediately text you right away because I'm like, nope, nope, nope, stay for the episode. Okay, so let's get into it. The history of manipulation, I mean propaganda. Oh. Propaganda is designed to shape your beliefs, your emotions, and your behaviors towards a specific goal. It is often political, religious, or ideological. It is not always lies, but it is truth with a spin and with an intention and with selective storytelling. There is some emotional manipulation in there, and it is designed to bypass critical thinking by definition. But it is not just telling people what to think, but it is guiding them to think that anyway, so it makes it seem like it's their idea. Oh shit. So it is like manipulation 101. I don't know if you've ever heard this saying, but I've seen it floating around. So Mark Twain said this. He said it is easier to fool people than to convince them that they've been fooled. Oh shit. And I think we're all being fooled right now. This isn't again, this is this is the rabbit hole series, not the conspiracy theory series. That was like a mouthful.

SPEAKER_04 3:44

Well, and I think about with like the critical thinking episode, that one side thinks that the other one is susceptible to propaganda and vice versa, when in it is in fact we all. All of us.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

It's kind of like when you think you would never join a cult. You're like, I'm too smart for that. But then, like, you know what I've always been afraid of? Like, you know how they have Scientology churches? Like, I'm curious about the process, but I am so scared I'm gonna go in there and like be convinced to join because they're so good at it.

SPEAKER_04 4:19

Yeah. Do we know somebody who like went and asked questions and they almost joined, but they they went in like being a skeptic.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

I feel why do I feel like I know that story?

SPEAKER_04 4:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

I I feel like did we watch a documentary?

SPEAKER_04 4:39

I don't I feel like somebody told us that, and I can't remember who.

Aristotle’s Persuasion vs Modern Spin

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Interesting. Anyway, I feel like I remember that too, but I don't remember who it was. If that was you, tell us. But basically, what we believe, like our beliefs, make it difficult to convince us that we're wrong, even when there is evidence, and we do that to protect our ego and pride. So I'm gonna take this back to 300 BC. Motherfucker. Okay. Because this is where persuasion, like Aristotle, do you know who Aristotle is? He taught persuasion through three different modes. There's ethos, pathos, and logos. And ethos is credibility or authority, which is basically trust the experts. Pathos is emotional appeal. And this is where it's like this will make you feel safe or powerful or free or whatever. Tie any emotion to that. It's supposed to pull on your heartstrings a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Okay.

Bernays Rebrands Propaganda As PR

SPEAKER_02 5:50

And then logos is logic and evidence. So it's like, here are the facts and the evidence to support what I am saying. His modes of persuasion are still used in marketing and advertising and propaganda today, kind of propaganda. We'll get to that in a minute. But they were meant for like persuasion grounded in truth and integrity and reason. His thought was persuasion works better when logic and integrity earn your emotional trust. So this isn't new, this isn't a new method. It's just kind of like, okay, we've learned these things really help persuade people. So what can we do with that information? And then the Catholic Church in the 1600s started wanting to spread information about Catholicism. They created the Congregation of the Propagation of Faith. And this was a group of people who were meant to propagate ideas to persuade people to join Catholicism. So that's where the word propaganda came from. Propaganda came from. Okay. It even back then didn't really have the negative connotation that it does now. All right. And then we get to the 1900s. Do you know who Edward Bernays is? No idea. Only from what I've said. Only from the little things that you have said. He is like the most famous man no one has ever heard of. Oh shit. Okay. Because he has shaped the way propaganda is used today in so many ways. He was named the father of public relations in the 1900s, early 1900s. Um he was a PR guy. Well, no. Okay. He was a propaganda guy. Oh shit. Like that's actually what his job was. He wrote a book called Propaganda. Oh shit. I would like to call him the father of propaganda, but like if you Google him and what he is now, people would say he's the father of public relations. He came up with the word public relations. Even after he wrote the book about propaganda, because propaganda got a bad reputation after World War II. Okay. The word propaganda was taboo because of its association with Germany. They started using propaganda. And so people were like, oh, that's a bad word. So he literally rebranded propaganda as public relations. He made that up. And I need you to think about PR firms, like what they do. They're literally propaganda to make their client look 100% or do damage control 100%. It is, and this is like something that I never fucking knew. Like I love that this is already blowing your mind because this is exactly how I felt going down this hole. Like I'm getting THO.

SPEAKER_03 9:02

So much fun. Got a titty heart on? Yeah, it did. I didn't know that that's what THO meant. Yeah. Just starting crowd.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

Because I'm so excited. Um, so he rebranded it as Jason Public Relations. And they also call it information operations, psychological operations, which even that right now has a negative connotation because that's what a PSY-OP is. Oh shit. Like, have you seen a lot of conspiracy theories will say like it's a PSY-op, right? It's it's a psychological operation to like deter you from this that's happening over here.

SPEAKER_04 9:41

Well, they say that a lot of things that are happening in the world when they're like, okay, the Charlie, I saw the Charlie Kirk thing happened, so you wouldn't pay attention to the Epstein files.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:53

I'm like, maybe. Maybe I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

That that is gonna be my takeaway for everything today. Like, I hope everybody comes out of this thinking, maybe, maybe I don't, yeah. Shit. Oh my god, maybe. Yeah. Because another thing, this is something I just thought of. Do you remember when there was like a press conference? Because they were gonna come out and talk about the UFOs that they have at Area 51 and it was like a big deal. Like, yay, this is recently, I think maybe a year or two ago. I don't know. But Jason, my husband is super into aliens and shit. So he's like, you know, ready for this information. And it comes out and it's so like nothing. And then after a few days, everybody just stopped talking about it. And so people are like, it was a psy-op. They were trying to distract us, like from what I don't fucking know. There's always something. Um, but another thing that he called it was strategic communication. So again, he didn't invent persuasion or propaganda, but he modernized it with a dark psychological twist. And you just wait till you find out who this guy is and who his family was. He believed that by understanding and appealing to the irrational desires and subconscious of the public, this is his words, you can influence behavior, taste, and ideas. So he took Aristotle's formula of persuasion, the ethos, pathos, and logos. That was done kind of with good intention. Right. And he created a psychological science of control with three different pillars. And it is authority, association, and social proof. So it is try to follow me here. The logos in the ethos pathos logos is logic, but he took the logos out. So it is basically authority without logic and emotion without logic.

SPEAKER_03 11:54

Oh shit.

The Three Pillars: Authority, Association, Social Proof

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Because he didn't think that people used logic, so why bother? His theory was we should be using illusion instead. So he had the authority, which is this is like the three pillars of his way to psychologically convince people. Authority, uh so it's ethos, but it's manufactured. Make it appear endorsed by experts or into institutions or an authority figure. So just illusion, right? Association, which is the pathos or the emotional appeal, but through desire. So link the message to a positive symbol, even if the message is negative. So again, the the illusion of a positive thing. And then social proof is ethos and pathos combined using tribal instinct. So make it a movement, make it a social movement. If everybody believes this, then they'll believe it. If everybody's doing this, then they'll believe it. So just the same thing but different and evil, this is where it gets dark and twisted. He was Sigmund Freud's nephew. Sigmund Freud is known today as like the pioneer of modern psychoanalysis. His theories on the unconscious mind and ego and personality, identity, like those are all his theories. He was very like people talk about Sigmund Freud all the time all the time. He was, he basically studied human behavior, mental illness, and he modernized therapy by theorizing the unconscious, irrational forces that stem from childhood or repressed conflicts. And he believed that those are what guide us to do what we do, to do what humans do. We believe that, right? This is something we still believe. Those things that happened to you as a child are why you are putting up a protective mechanism now. And this is why you behave this way, and this is why you're an addict, and this is why you do this, right? That was his uncle. So he grew up listening to all of this stuff about psychology and the human mind and unconscious and conscious behaviors. So some of the books, and I didn't write all the books down because he's written like dozens of books. Okay. But these are just some of his most popular books. The first one Bernays. Bernays. Yeah. Let's no more Sigmund Floyd. I just thought that that was like a crazy piece of information because this guy fucking knows his shit about human psychology and human behavior and used it to do something psychologically evil, honestly. Yeah. Like it's fucked up. He used it to manipulate, not to heal. And I think that that happens a lot of times in like, let's say, human behavior. Like a narcissist will use somebody's empathy as a weapon and not for good. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 15:21

Like well, I what I keep going back to is I keep thinking about psychedelics and how the CI CIA realized how powerful they were and then used it for the MKUltra experiments. Yeah, used it to like manipulate people. Yeah, psychologically manipulate and abuse people. And knowing that like it was intentionally used for good and to help heal.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

Well, and this is where that whole thing about not everything is good and not everything is bad comes into play, because I believe the same thing with MDMA. I believe it's a very powerful tool for healing and it works because it kind of overrides amygdala, which is what where your fear lives. And so if you are able to shut your fear response off and talk about things in a way that is healthy and you're able to process them without being emotionally triggered, that's a very powerful healing experience. But it can also be used for bad because it shuts down someone's fear response. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 16:31

Well, and it's kind of what we talked about in the last episode where like intention with everything means it matters everything.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

And and there is good and bad in everything. So like anybody can take something good and turn it bad, turn it into something bad.

SPEAKER_04 16:46

Yeah, something can it's not good or bad.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

It's how we use it that's good or bad. Yeah. You can cook with fire, but you can also burn a house down. So whatever. Um, so his first one of his first popular books was written in 1923, and it's called Crystallizing Public Opinion. So this man knew his shit. Okay. Second most famous book in 1928, Propaganda. Literally the name of the book, propaganda.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Oh shit.

Freud’s Shadow And Psychological Control

Manufactured Consent And War Messaging

SPEAKER_02 17:13

So he studied this shit hard and people used his work. After World War II, when he changed the word propaganda to public relations, he wrote another book called Public Relations. So, like, oh my bad. Let's let's switch it up a bit. Yeah. Um, and then in 1955, he wrote a book called The Engineering of Consent, which sounds about as dark and twisted as you would could imagine. Yeah. I want to read something. This is gonna go back to like how people used to speak because I literally had to. I used Chat GPT to figure out what the fuck he was saying. Because I was like looking at some of the stuff that he said in his books. I'm gonna read this and you're gonna you might get lost. Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. This is from his book, Propaganda, by the way. Once he could read and write, he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are decimated on a large scale is propaganda in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine. Let me break that down. We thought that teaching everyone to read and write would make society more intelligent and self-governing, and instead it made them easier to program. So he's not saying that literacy is bad. Once you can read, you are open and susceptible to whoever controls the narrative, including your own algorithm. So, like that is like what he meant in that first part. All right, the rubber stamps metaphor. This one's like fucking crazy because it's kind of an asshole way of saying people don't think they copy. People feel informed because they consume information, but that information has been carefully curated by people with an agenda. So, you know, have you ever heard that thing, great minds think alike? Yes. I did tell you this when I came across it because it's one of those quotes that's misquoted. Great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ. So he's basically saying, so when he said, instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans. Each man's rubber stamp are the duplicates of millions of others. So you think it's an original thought, but it's been manufactured. And you are literally just putting these same ideas out here that you have consumed, and it is for a reason. They also want you. This is gonna go back to this like be careful what you're spreading because you're kind of part of this problem.

SPEAKER_04 22:02

Well, I just keep thinking about Our algorithms now because it's gotten even worse. Yes. Because of social media and the internet and the news and how everything is just so quickly in our in the palm of our hand.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

I would say that propaganda now is so much worse than it ever was 100% before. And I think we're part of that problem because we're we're working for them and we don't even realize it.

SPEAKER_04 22:36

Well, and also it gets to a point where they don't even really have to work.

unknown 22:41

Right.

SPEAKER_04 22:42

They have they do less work now. Right. Because we do a lot of work. We're doing it for them for them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

We're doing it for them. It's like fucking sick and twisted. And I don't think he ever realized that it would get to this magnitude. Yeah. How would you know? You know, like he lived till he was like a hundred, but like he no one could have known that like a lot of people.

SPEAKER_04 23:02

Why are all these evil motherfuckers living for a long time?

SPEAKER_02 23:05

Oh, I think it's because they don't have a heart.

SPEAKER_04 23:07

John Rockefeller also had a goal to live to a hundred years old. Did he? He lived to 98 or 99. I need to double check. He lived fucker lived for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

This dude lived 103 years. But I really think it's because like they have no heart. They have no empathy. I think that a lot of times what what kills us slowly is the amount of empathy that we have for people and the amount of stress we're under. These people don't fucking care enough to be stressed.

SPEAKER_04 23:37

Yeah. And think about that. Like if you if you do not care about other people, how much that takes off your plate.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:44

Yeah. You're not going to have a heart attack. It's very like nihilistic.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

It really is. Um, so then he said the part where he said the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinion of the masses is an important element in democratic society. This goes back to like the way that people used to talk. You can buy that book on Amazon right now. But like I think that even if you did, who's reading this shit? I would need a translator. Because we're not that smart anymore. We don't speak Latin. We don't speak this. Um, but what he's saying, let me dumb it down for you guys. What he's saying is if we don't guide the public's thinking, someone else will, and it won't be in our favor. So they're recognizing that we are very easy to manipulate. And if they don't do it, somebody else will. Somebody else is gonna do it. So he wrote this in his book, Propaganda in the 1920s, but I think since then, social media and news has started to present the same problem. We have universal access to information, but we don't have universal discernment.

SPEAKER_04 24:53

Yeah.

Smoking, Thinness, And Torches Of Freedom

SPEAKER_02 24:54

We're drowning in content, but we're starved for original thought. It is refreshing sometimes when I hear someone say something that I've never heard before. Yeah, because it's rare. It's very rare. So most people have like preinstalled belief systems, right? Whether you're you grew up liberal, you grew up conservative, you grew up Christian, spiritual, scientific, and we don't usually question them because that's what feels like disloyalty, and that's what also plays into our cognitive dissonance. Like it's plays into the tribal way that we are. But that's actually what the environment that like propaganda thrives in. It thrives in like self-policing. Oh God. Okay. And in an environment where there's conformity over consciousness. All right. So in his book, and I just wanted to touch on these things because this is just how like awful his ideas were, but how well they work. In his book, Engineering Consent, he said, democracy can only function if the public is guided by elites who understand how to shape opinion, which is basically a nice way of saying people are too emotional and irrational to think for themselves. So we need to steer them without them knowing it. This was the birth of manufactured consent. The idea is that public opinion isn't organic, it's manufactured. All right. So again, we know where he stands on that. This is who he worked for and some of his most famous work. And again, this is why I say like he's the most famous person you've never heard of, because you've probably heard of these things and had no idea he was behind it.

SPEAKER_04 26:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

So he worked for the CPI, which is the Committee on Public Information during World War I. And his job was to convince Americans to support the war and view it as a noble and moral cause. So he came up with the slogan, Make the World Safe for Democracy. And also the slogan, I want you for the US Army. With like Uncle S. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So they use celebrity endorsements and they used actors in films. This is also kind of when the government realized, again, this is like after World War I. So the government realized how easy it was to shape public opinion. So they started to use him more and to use his ideas more. And I need you to think about this because there are people that I'm going to talk about later who are the president of such and such public relations. And now every time I hear that word, I'm going to be like, so propaganda. So you're a master manipulator. Literally. Because that's what they're thinking about Lindsay from Summer House. How good she is at spinning information in her favor. I mean, she was like, she was in public relations, right?

SPEAKER_04 27:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

They're very good.

SPEAKER_04 28:00

She owned a PR firm.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

I would almost go as far as to say, and again, I not all, but almost, if it almost feels like if you're in public relations, you're a narcissist. We we all know how we feel about Lindsay from some well, they don't know how we feel. You and I know how we feel.

SPEAKER_04 28:20

Well, it kind of makes me want to add another Bravo take because I'd thought of it. So you don't watch the show. It's Real Housewives of Miami. Okay. And my number one favorite housewife, Nicole Martin, like sis has got money. Sis is a doctor. Her husband has a ton of money. She's not even married, which I love that about her even more. She's has a fiance. They've been together for like a decade, but they're not married. They have two kids. She's successful on her own. Her husband's successful on his own. And then they're successful together. And she's like, you know, she's an awesome housewife because she's smart. She's whatever. And she is probably one of the most logical housewives on the franchise. Like most people love her because she's intelligent and she's like You're kind of making me want to watch this. Stable. I need you to watch it because I have been quoting the reunion that just aired. And there's a part, because they're like, I would thrive on this show, okay? You you would. I would thrive because it is so unseri. It's so unserious. It feels like I'm watching an SNL skit of Housewives, and I just cackle. But I've been saying this quote all week. She was cheating on Martina with a Haitian mortician. And she bought him a coffee maker. I don't know. It's a whole thing. You should watch it. You really should. But, anyways, this new season, Nicole chose, she was like one of the most popular housewives. She chose not to come back because she said that there was a housewife that hated her so much they hired a private detective to like stalk her. And the housewife she is insinuating did this is somebody who owns a PR firm. And I do believe it. Like I genuinely do believe it. Cause I'm like, she's rich, honey, she's smart, she's a doctor, she's logical, she's got the body, she's got the face. Like, you know, she's she's the total package. And I understand why other housewives would hate her and not want her on. And so that's what they did.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

I mean, well, that is kind of like what PR is. It's and and propaganda, it's it's spinning something to fit a different narrative. It's like the same information, but like spinning it in such an inconspicuous way that you believe it.

Making Green Fashionable To Sell Cigarettes

SPEAKER_04 30:51

Well, and I kind of think about when you were talking about how they use like celebrities to like help promote war. Yeah, and this was like in the 1920s. Right, right. But I think about now. So I th I think about like with the election, and I think about how there were people who I know who canceled me, but then they posted a picture of Taylor Swift with her cat, and they're like, Queen says she's voting for Kamala, you know what to do, guys. And I'm like, oh, the billionaire celebrity, you don't even fucking know. You just like her songs. I'm like, you're willing to exile a friend because they don't agree with you, but you think you've really flexed on it because you like Taylor Swift is voting for Kamala? And let me be very clear, I don't give a fuck what celebrity is voting on what side. I don't care if Meg the Stallion is twerking on stage. That's not gonna change my vote. But it shouldn't. But that's where I was like, why are they doing this? Yeah. Why are they doing like, and also, why am I gonna listen to what a celebrity says about who I should vote for while you're sitting there taking a fucking private jet to, you know, we're not even in the same time being on it for 15 minutes. Like, why are we taking what they say seriously? And I do think that a lot of celebrities now feel pressured to be on a side or say who they are. And I don't, I don't, I don't want that. I don't want your opinion. I don't like it.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

I don't want to be swayed into thinking outside of my own thoughts. Right. Like I don't want my thoughts to be manufactured or bought.

SPEAKER_04 32:44

And they don't even relate to you in the slightest of like how they live. Right. Right. But also on the other end, like we get mad at celebrities if they don't say who they're gonna vote for.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Right. We're like, speak up or you're getting canceled, which is also crazy. Um, okay, so in his 1928 book, Propaganda, he said, understanding the group mind, it's possible to manipulate people's behavior without them realizing it. And to test this, he launched one of the most famous public relation campaigns. Like you've probably even heard this. Maybe you have, maybe you haven't, where he convinced women to smoke. Did you know this? No. He's the reason women smoke because it used to be just a man's thing. Women didn't smoke, they were the stay-at-home housewives. Men would smoke. It was like a status thing. And so he worked for this company called Chesterfield. Um, it was a cigarette company. And he was so good when Lucky Strike saw how good he was, they paid him to work for them instead. So Lucky Strike, you know who Lucky Strike is, right? The cigarette company. It's a cigarette brand.

SPEAKER_04 33:56

Okay. I've never smoked cigarettes. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

I I don't smoke either, but I didn't know. Yeah. We're not smokers. So this is crazy. So the first thing he did was like he needed to persuade women to smoke cigarettes. So he did this by promoting the idea of thinness.

SPEAKER_04 34:16

That's what cigarettes came from?

SPEAKER_02 34:18

Well, no, no, no, no. He was like, if you smoke, you'll lose weight. So this is like what I mean by like manufacturing these ideas that make you think a certain way, but aren't necessarily factual. So he hired models and he promoted this beauty in women by like um like promoting that if you smoke cigarettes, you were thin. Or how about instead of like eating sweets, you pick up a cigarette instead? So he like manufactured all of these ads to promote smoking by making you think that you were getting skinnier if you did it.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

So holy shit.

Doctors, Bacon, And The Hearty Breakfast

SPEAKER_02 35:03

He even found doctors who promoted cigarettes over sweets. So he was the experts. Yeah, right. Trust the experts. So eventually, housewives were convinced that keeping cigarettes on hand helped them stay thin. That was such a success. And Lucky Strike was like leading in the industry, but they were like, but they're not smoking in public. We need them to smoke in public. How can we do that? So he came up with this campaign called The Torches of Freedom. He planned a march, a women's march in the streets, and he paid all these models and actresses to show up to this march. And it was planned that at the same time they would pull out cigarettes and light them and start smoking them. And he also planned for photographers to be there and newspapers to be there. And so on the front page of the newspaper is this women's march with women smoking, and the campaign was torches of freedom.

SPEAKER_04 36:15

And it was like a rebellious yes. I'm a rebel, look at me smoking in public.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

Literally. Holy shit balls. It gets worse. So, like, these are all the ways that he like used this manipulation. So women started smoking more, and then they started smoking in public. But one of the things that they said the most is that they didn't want to buy Lucky Strike cigarettes because they were green. The package was green. And at the time, green was not considered like a feminine color. So that was like their only feedback to this cigarette company. So he was like, Well, we should change the packaging on the cigarettes, is what Edward Bernay said. And the owner of Lucky Strike at the time was like, No, we're not doing that because we spent millions on marketing and packaging, and you need to come up with something else. So, guess what he does?

SPEAKER_04 37:11

What?

SPEAKER_02 37:12

He plans a green ball, like a gala in Manhattan at the Waldorf, which is like a famous Right, right. Like all the celebrities go there. It was like called the Green Ball. And for months and months and months, all these socialites and celebrities are like planning for this ball. So they're going and they're having dresses made in this specific color, and he runs ads. Like he he people are like writing articles about how all of a sudden green is the color of the season. And it was for this ball that he fucking planned.

SPEAKER_04 37:48

It's and it's also crazy because it's like celebrities maybe don't even realize it, but they're just used as pawns.

Words That Launder Policy: Defense Not War

SPEAKER_02 37:56

They have so much influence. You're right. Like it's like But they're a pawn. They 100%. They're also pawns in this game. So are we. So are we. Like, like it's crazy that he was able to not only convince women to smoke, but to convince women to smoke outside of the house and also convince them that green was a cool color. That is nuts. To smoke. So yeah, these are these are the people that we're trusting right now. All right. Something else that he did. He argued that the covert use of third parties was morally legitimate because those parties were morally autonomous actors. Basically, if you can influence the leaders with or without consent and with or without their cooperation consciously, you can automatically influence groups. So I I'm gonna explain that. It's kind of what you're saying about the celebrities being like a pawn. Whether they know they're being used or not, if you can convince these celebrities to do one thing, they do all the work for you.

unknown 39:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

That's what he's saying. But also in authority. So there, this is crazy. He was hired by Beech Nut Group, which was like a food company. They had all this bacon and they didn't know how to sell it. So they hired Bernays to come up with a campaign to sell bacon. So he wrote a letter to 5,000 doctors and he questioned the the way he questioned it was like it was very smart the way he did this. It was basically like with your expertise, would you say that a hearty breakfast is healthy or a light breakfast is healthy? And out of these 5,000 doctors that he put these letters out to, 4,500 came back and they said, Well, of course, a hearty breakfast is healthier. And so this is what he did. He took this survey and he publicized it. And the headline was 4,500 doctors recommend a heavy breakfast like bacon and eggs. So they said nothing about bacon, right? Nothing. But he used what they did was actually like they actually did recommend that a hearty breakfast was better for you. But they didn't they didn't consent to the bacon part.

SPEAKER_04 40:34

Well, and that's what I've like learned about propaganda. Who did I see saying this? I don't know, but they said like 90% of it it could be true. Yeah. It's that 10% where they just like spin it a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

That's literally what I said on the first page. It's like not necessarily untrue all the time. Right. But it's it's manufactured in a way to make you think a certain thing. It's crazy how how it works. Right. So immediately you're like, well, the experts say this. So he believed in the positive spin on words. He's the reason. This is funny because this is coming up, this has come up recently. Uh the Department of Defense used to be called the Department of War. And he's the reason they changed it to the Department of Defense because he said war has a negative connotation and defense makes it feel like you're doing something good. So it's come up recently because I think Pete Hegsworth has said we should change it to the Department of War, and people are losing their ever fucking loving minds. And I'm like, that is it's the same thing, though. It's just a word, and you're attaching a meaning to that word, but like the overall department is exactly the same and has always done the same thing.

SPEAKER_04 41:57

You know what I think about? What? D E I.

SPEAKER_02 42:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 42:02

Because I feel like it has a very Very positive connotation, but I have some opinions about it.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

I think that goes with a lot of things that you think like they do this with writing laws. They'll like write a law and the name of the law makes it sound really good. And like it's a morally good thing to like agree with this. But then when you like start actually reading into it and you know how to read law, which is a really not everybody can do, you're like, wait a minute. This is an act, this is like there's a little bit of good in here, but like there's probably more bad than good. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 42:37

Yeah, but people like the name, people like the way that it sounds.

Fluoride, Industry, And Buried Research

SPEAKER_02 42:40

Yes. So he also there was, I can't remember which president he worked for when this happened, but there was a committee for unemployment, and they changed the name to the President's Emergency Committee for Employment and for employment. So it's really crazy how you can take like a single word and change it to mean something positive. So this is also when he changed the name propaganda, the word propaganda to public relations, but let's not get it twisted. It's the same thing, right? This is where this rabbit hole got so fucking dark for me. I feel I feel like we're getting through this.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

So we're doing good.

SPEAKER_02 43:19

Okay. He's the reason fluoride's in our water. Shut the fuck up. Why? This is gonna blow your mind because I was like, hold the fuck up, hold up, hold up. This sent me on two pages of notes of another rabbit hole because I was like, wait a second. Fluoride is a carcinogen that is generated as waste by aluminum factories, nuclear bomb factories, and fertilizer plants. In the 1930s, is when the first research came out that fluoride is specifically advised against exposing children to it. It used to be sold as a rat and insect poison. And it is a byproduct of these factories. It is basically chemical waste from these factories that produce aluminum and fertilizer and nuclear bombs. And there's probably other factories in there that is like this is like a byproduct of their chemical waste. Okay. This research was buried, but it was declassified in like the 1990s, so not that long ago.

unknown 44:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 44:36

So this is not conspiracy. The information is out there if you want to find it. There's actually a book that a guy wrote, and maybe I'll link it in the show notes. But there is a book that this guy wrote, maybe I wrote it down. I hope I wrote it down, um, where he unhe discovers these declassified papers and is like, holy shit. And he talks about fluoride in the water. But I think that nowadays, if you talk about fluoride being in the water and how it's not good for you, you're labeled as like fucking wack-a-doodle.

SPEAKER_04 45:08

Oh, I've I've had like arguments with, you know, um, my dental hygienist because I'm like, I don't think I want to use fluoride. And she's like, oh, it's in, you know, it's in small that's yeah, that's that's fake news. It's in small doses, you know, right.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

It would have to be in a large dose to have any effect on you. Well, I've had this argument with Jason because I don't know if you know this, but Louisville has like some of the cleanest water. Like apparently everybody fucking comes to Louisville and they love our faucet water. I won't drink faucet water. And he's like, it's good water. And I'm like, I don't care what's in it. I don't want all the fluoride. And he's like, Oh, you're so that's not even a thing. Well, a couple years ago, he's like, RFK is trying to get fluoride out of the water. I was like, Yeah, hmm. You used to think I was crazy because I didn't want to drink the fucking fluoride in the water, and now you're on my side. But like, it's like if you say something like that, you're immediately labeled as crazy. But if you do the research and you do the digging and you use your critical thought to go down these holes and look at the information that's out there, there is so much more out there against it than there is for it. So use your own discernment. So let me explain why he put it in the water. So in 1955, there are this group of farmers in Oregon, and they took Reynolds Metal, which was a company at the time, to court because of the harmful fluoride emissions that were leaking into their crops, into their water from this factory, and they won because they were able to prove that this fluoride coming from this facility was destroying their crops and making them sick. So they were able to prove that it was an enzyme poison and it also displaces iodine in the body, which leads to thyroid dysfunction. So that's what was happening to some of these farmers and their families, all right? This is where Bernays comes in. Alco stands for the Aluminum Company of America. It is still around. It is like one of those big corporations. And they knew that this was going to be an issue moving forward because people were going to realize that like these factories were causing harm with their emissions. So they hired Bernays. And the proposed solution that he gave was to dilute the amount of fluoride. If you can dilute it, I can get experts to say that fluoride is healthy. So let's go that angle. So it is Bernays who reached out to dentists. And of course, this is one of those things, like, yes, fluoride is good for your teeth and your bones, but I will I'm not arguing that it isn't. It is, but in small amounts. It is not a lie that it is good for your teeth and your bones. But let me just that is what they took and they ran with. It's healthy, see? If we put small amounts of it in our water, it's good for us, right? So like they they are the reason that most of the US is fluoridated today. Now, it gets crazy because he was like, if his thought was like, if you can get any idea accepted by a doctor, people are gonna believe it. Regardless of how much this doctor actually knows or doesn't know. So by getting this dent these dentists to say, yeah, it is good for you, what they left out was like, um, but not in the water. It is good for you in toothpaste. Like, I know you have a young child, but toddler toothpaste is fluoride-free because they are not supposed to use toothpaste with fluoride in it until they know how to spit. There is like a toxic label warning on all toothpaste.

SPEAKER_04 49:24

Is that why you can't swallow toothpaste? You're not supposed to swallow it.

Thyroid, IQ, And Pineal Gland Concerns

SPEAKER_02 49:28

You are not the warning is on the boxes. You are not supposed to swallow it. And if you are under six years old and you swallow it, you have to call poison control. And it I'm talking a small amount, like a pea size amount is toxic to a child. So I'm just thinking, even if they fucking diluted it, imagine how much you're getting in your bloodstream when you're drinking it daily. Now, I am not saying fluoride isn't good. Again, too much of a good thing can also be a bad thing. Right. But we shouldn't be fucking ingesting it. Period, point blank. Holy shit. So there was research, and this is what was declassified by this guy who wrote the book. I wish I oh, I did write it. Okay. It's called The Fluoride Deception, and it's by Christopher Bryson. You can Google him, you can Google his work. There is, there are articles where he talks about this, but if you want to read his book, it's called The Fluoride Deception. 70 years later, there's been this information and research that was declassified where it was either suppressed or hidden because it went against what they were saying about fluoride. I'm gonna go on a like a little fluoride tangent. This is where this took me. One of the doctors reported that his research suggested fluoride supplements produce negative side effects in pregnant women. He stopped receiving funding. So, like, that was one of the studies that ended up not getting finished, being buried. He stopped receiving funding when he realized that this was not good for pregnant women because it affects your fucking thyroid. This is crazy. Some studies have shown that fluoride interferes with the central nervous system and is also linked to the rise of ADHD. All right, so let's go back to this. Fluoride displaces iodine in the body. Iodine is essential for normal functioning of the thyroid gland. So if fluoride inhibits thyroid activity, it leads to weight gain and obesity. Thyroid function is like huge. That's what I was texting you about earlier. Like I take, I eat two Brazil nuts a day because it helps with thyroid function. But here's another thing about like too much of a good thing. If you eat five Brazil nuts a day, it could lead to toxicity, like selenium toxicity. Selenium is the chemical that creates like good flow to your thyroid.

unknown 52:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 52:06

But two a day, no more. This is where it gets even crazier. Iodine is essential for brain development. There have been epidemiological studies that link fluoride exposure with low IQ levels. There was a neurotoxicologist from Boston. Her name is Dr. Phyllis Mullinex. She had this work carried out on rats. She had the study that showed that fluoride led to lower IQs. She was fired. And the study was buried. Again, declassified now, but at the time buried. Most countries don't fluoridate their water. Who?

SPEAKER_04 52:47

Do you know?

SPEAKER_02 52:48

Uh, I didn't want to list them all. Okay. Um, but in the United States, there have been 18 states that stop fluoridating their water supply. And the first to ban it was Utah. And this just happened in May of this year, May of 2025. Utah is the first state to ever ban water fluoridation. So a lot of these states, they don't fluoridate their water supply, but but they're not, they don't ban it either. Right. So we're getting there. They can say that it leads to lower tooth decay or to tooth decay in people. And I think that that's been like a rebuttal. But these studies that have shown that have also shown that tooth decay improves over time and it had nothing to do with the fluoridation of water. It was because people had access to better foods and healthcare. There's also a map that you can look at if you look at like the amount of fluoride in your state. Kentucky is one of the most fluoridated states, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 53:44

So we were like Louisville was supposed to have like the cleanest water, but it's one of the most fluoridated.

SPEAKER_02 53:49

Yes. Like 100% of our state is fluoridated. Wow. And so I this map you can look it up. And then it also, right below where it shows how much water is fluoridated in your state, right below it is the amount of like cavities that they found in children. And it doesn't correlate. Like, you know what I mean? Like lower fluoride in the water does not mean that these children have more cavities. So this is fucking crazy that we were manipulated into thinking that this was good for us.

SPEAKER_04 54:22

Well, and also, like, if this is one of the first rabbit holes we've done this season, think about how many rabbit holes we are going to go down where there is propaganda to make us dumber, more emotional, like unhealthier, more mentally ill. And it's subtle.

SPEAKER_02 54:47

That's what I'm subtle about like what we know about medication. Yes.

REM Sleep, Mental Health, And Calcification

SPEAKER_04 54:54

Because it's not it's it's not old. To me, it's new. It's so new. And so I'm like, you know, you die on like you, you see these doctors, and it's like, like, they're so on this, like Tylenol or SSRIs, or, you know. I know we've talked about this, but we we, I don't, I don't know if you guys know. Oh gosh, hopefully I don't butcher her name. I think her name is Lindsay Clancy. Um, she is a she's was a mom. She had three children. Um I think she was struggling with postpartum depression. It's it's a big case right now. It's a big case right now, but she was struggling with postpartum depression. She goes to psychiatrists and doctors because she is struggling with her mental health after having her third baby. And again, experts. Let me be clear. Experts. And I was just reading about it the other day. She was on benzos, two different SSRIs, Ambient. I don't know what else. I think she was on 12 different medications. And her husband went to go run an error, and he was gone for less than an hour. And when he came back, all three of his children were dead. And she had cut her wrist and cut her neck and then jumped out of, I think they're like second floor window, and she's become paralyzed because of because of it. But she lived. And people are demonizing this woman and demonizing the husband. Like, oh my God, why would you leave her alone when she's like not doing well? And I'm like, um, because they were both going to experts and trying to get help, and our they failed her. Our mental health care absolutely failed her. Multiple doctors absolutely failed her. She went to multiple doctors. She wanted begging for help. Help. He got to the point where he was not like sitting in on these sessions. And then he started to sit on these sit in on these sessions. Her husband? Yes, because he wanted to learn. He wanted to help her because he he's getting a lot of flack because he's saying this is not who she is. She is not a murderer. She is not a monster. And people are getting so upset about this. And I'm like, think about the way that we have normalized these medications to the point where both of us have had experiences where we've gone to an OBGYN and just said, hey, we're sad without question, without, you know, asking, you know, how it's going to react with our body, what medications we're taking, what trauma we have, what stress, are we going to therapy? How are we eating? Our sleep, our, you know, all of these. What does your support system look like? What I think would be it should be the standard before you put somebody on a medication like that, specifically two different SSRIs, a benzo and ambient. You're not asking, you're just giving. And he's the husband said that.

SPEAKER_02 57:55

And that's just like a handful of the 12 that she was on.

SPEAKER_04 57:58

Right. And he said that in the telehealth, he kind of started to like doubt it because she would just say she was sad and they'd be like, okay, we need to upper your dose. Or okay, we'll just switch your prescription. Oh, okay, we'll just, you know what? We'll just, you're not, you're having one of the symptoms to this SSRI is insomnia. You know what? Let's give you some ambient. We'll just give you some ambien on top of that.

SPEAKER_02 58:20

Never mind the side effects of that.

SPEAKER_04 58:22

So to sit here and gaslight people, because that's what I think it is, to say, you're not an expert. What do you know? Look at the experts we have and look at what they've learned. Not saying, like, I think, I think, you know, Western medicine, it can definitely be very needed. Like if I'm gonna go get surgery, you know what? I'm gonna go to a Western medicine doctor. But if I'm feeling sad, if I'm struggling with depression, if I'm struggling with my mental health, more times than not, I don't think that the way that we do things is the way to do it. I think, and I think that's what has been one of the contributing factors that has led to our mental health crisis and it's not getting better. And at what point are we gonna be like, okay, yeah, I know these are the experts, but they also didn't learn anything outside of that, Western medicine.

Algorithms, Identity, And Echo Chambers

SPEAKER_02 59:15

And um well, and are you really gonna discredit the experts who don't believe in that? Like that too. Though there have been doctors who have left Western medicine and gone to more holistic practices because they have life experience that have proved that other things work, but their industry doesn't subscribe to that idea. So, what's interesting though, and we talked about this, you sent me this article. We talked about this two years ago when it happened. Remember when I was like, holy shit, did you see this story? And now it's like coming up because I think she's going to trial. Um, the article that you sent me was reframing the whole thing to be like, and this is what uh postpartum psychosis looks like. And I'm like, this is not a psychosis issue. This is not a postpartum issue. Yes, she was struggling, but do not blame postpartum psychosis on what happened. It was the medication.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:14

Well, if I were taking a medication, I would probably be going through psychosis as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:20

They don't want to say that though. Nobody wants to tell you how much these medications alter your brain chemistry. They they don't, especially like switching back and forth like she was doing. Like that is not no one should be doing that. No one should be doing that. And it's it's it's she was failed.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:40

Oh, her husband was failed, her children were failed. And it is that is what has become so normalized. I know, you know, 12-year-olds who are taking ambient. I know kids who are on antidepressants, and I'm just like, what are we? It's a very slippery slope. Yeah, what are we doing here? And, you know, it's what's crazy, and when you brought up the like people who were in Western medicine and they left, um, there's a doctor that I do talk to. She's um like a family doctor, and she's gone more the holistic side. She gets called a grifter. Yeah. She gets called a quack. And so it's it's crazy because it it is. It's like this medicine is really, it's new. Holistic medicine, that used to be medicine, and that's old. The indigenous medicine, that shit's old, and it works. And it fucking works.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:38

Yeah, no, it's crazy that like though they're vilified. So the yeah, I think about that all the time. Like, trust the expert. I'm like, okay, but which experts? Because there's experts all over the place when with their opinions. So how are we supposed to know which ones to trust? I'm using my own discernment to go with who I believe is more on the side of what I what aligns with. I'm not saying like I'm only gonna believe doctors who align with me, but I'm just saying like I feel like they know more. Right. Right. They were kind of forced into knowing more. So yeah, no, this is it's crazy to like trust the doctors who told us that fluoride in our water was good.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:19

And it's also crazy that that has been for so long, to the point, like the last time I went to the dentist, we were having a fluoride conversation. And I felt like I was getting dismissed a little bit because it's like she's the dental hygienist. She knows what she's talking about. Right. And and I think too, that's that's where a lot of people struggle is like advocating for themselves because we have been brainwashed to be like, I'm the expert, you're not. Like, what do you know? And I think it's okay to be like, I don't care if you think I'm a grifter. I don't think I don't care if you think I'm anti-something. I don't care if you think I'm a quack. Um, I don't feel comfortable with this. Or, you know, it is honestly too, it is a little bit on the experts to learn about other modalities, I think, as you are more into your field and expertise to know that what you're saying and the information you're giving and the medications you are giving are really truly the best for your patients.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:20

Yeah. That's not common practice anymore, though, either.

unknown 1:03:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

But I need to reiterate and say this like fluoride for your teeth and bones is not necessarily a bad thing, but you should not be ingesting it. Period. Point blank. That is written right on the label. Like it is, it is not, we are not, I am not saying you should tell your dentist no to fluoride, although I do, because I have it in my toothpaste. I'm good. Thank you very much. But just use this fucking information and do with it what you want. Okay. Let me, I'm gonna go into the science of this a little bit because I'm still on this fluoride. Fluoride causes calcification of your pineal gland. It's not the only thing that causes calcification of your pineal gland. Um, environmental factors also contribute to that. Age, um, I'll get to that in a second. But your pineal gland's job is to produce and regulate melatonin and regulate your sleep-wake cycle and your REM sleep. Do you know how important REM sleep is? Um, I'm guessing you're gonna say super important. And I started looking into this when we got our aura rings because it tracks your REM cycles. Um, it is basically your brain's reset every night. It's like your nightly reboot, your emotional detox phase. It helps boost your memory and learning. It helps down-regulate your fear response so you wake up less reactive.

unknown 1:04:52

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:53

Okay.

Atrocity Propaganda And The Gulf War Case

SPEAKER_02 1:04:53

So it's basically like your body's internal processing system for emotional regulation. It helps restore neurotransmitter balance, um, especially dopamine and serotonin, but you're supposed to be getting like three to six REM cycles a night. And so when I got my aura ring, I started tracking like how often I'm getting into a REM cycle because it is basically your body's, your body's repair system, your internal repair system. And so if your pineal glands are what is keeping your REM sleep and your melatonin production healthy, and you're drinking something on a regular basis that's like calcifying that, or eating things that are calcifying that, or not getting enough sleep, or like you're doing all these other things that are contributing to this. It is not good for your mental health, period. It is not good for your physical health. It is not good for your cardiovascular health. It is not good for your hormone regulation to not get enough REM sleep. Like REM sleep is extremely important. It's also linked to lack of REM sleep is linked to depression, anxiety, lack of focus, motivation. So it's kind of crazy how all of these things are connected. Like earlier when in the episode before, where I realized SSRIs deplete dopamine. And then so then you start showing signs of ADHD. And so then you take a stimulant to increase dopamine. And it's like you're on this endless cycle. So it's like when you are aware of what medications actually do, would you willingly do that to yourself? Or your child? Or your child. That's the crazy one for me. So, like sleep is like so important, and that's the science of it. So other things that can cause calcification is like, like I said, aging, environmental exposures, phosphates, um, uh circadium rhythm disruption. So, like artificial light exposure, poor sleep quality, uh, oxidative stress, your diet, inflammation can affect your pineal gland. On the spiritual side of that, in some cultures, the pineal gland is considered your third eye, which is the energetic center for intuition and inner wisdom.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:16

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:17

So have you ever heard someone say, like, your pineal glands calcified? Or like, I'm gonna go decalcify my pineal gland.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:28

I've not heard a one person say that. Wait, what? Really? Never, not once in my life.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:34

I like will sometimes say it to Jason, like, okay, your pineal gland's a little calcified. Cause like he has no, he like doesn't have the same intuition that I have. I'm like, your pineal gland's a little too fucking rough around the edges, man. Like, go get some. I've never heard that. Go get some sun. But it basically, like in the spiritual world, when they're saying that, they're basically saying, I feel disconnected from my spirituality, from my awareness, from my intuition. So there is like a scientific aspect to how a calcified pineal gland affects your body physically, and then there's the spiritual side of how it affects you spiritually and emotionally. It is also said that your pineal gland is where DMT is produced naturally, which we don't have to go into that. So, yeah, I'm gonna play devil's advocate here, like I already did. Even if fluoride is good for your teeth, too much of anything, even if it's a good thing, can be bad, just like the example that I gave of like the Brazil nuts. Right. So that's all the Edward Bernay stuff. You could go down so much of a rabbit hole with him. I picked out some of the bigger things that he has been a part of throughout our history. There have been several people who follow his work, like and who use it. I mean, it's still used today.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:55

Think about how much larger of a scale it's used because there's probably so many Bernayses out there.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:02

Yeah, because they've all studied his work.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:04

Well, yeah, and it's just like kind of the norm and what we're exposed to now.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:08

Right. Um so they've done these studies. This is kind of cool, like these psychological studies. And I kind of want to talk about this. Have you ever heard of the Ash Conformity experiment?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:19

Never.

Groupthink: Asch Study And Social Pressure

Numeracy Study: When Belief Beats Data

SPEAKER_02 1:09:19

Okay, so this was like in the 1950s. It's called the Ash Conformity, ASCA. So it was a famous psychology experiment to expose groupthink and social pressure. So these participants were told they were taking part in a vision test. Um, they were shown a card with one line and another card with three lines that were different lengths. So like A, B, and C. All they had to do was say which of the three lines matched the first one. The experiment, though, was that there was only one participant in the group. Everyone else was in on it. So everyone else was told to give the wrong answer. 75% of the actual participants conformed to the group, even though the answer was obvious. Only because everybody else did. And it was, it wasn't because they believed the group was right. Like later they said, like they admitted that they knew the group was wrong, but they didn't want to stand out. This study like basically revealed two powerful social forces. The first one was normative influence, which is the desire to fit in and not be judged. And then the second was informational influence, where it's the assumption that they must know better than me. Okay. This is not a study, but I'm gonna uh I'm gonna do it anyway. Okay. This is again, you can Google this. Um, Hill and Knowton Strategy strategies and the Hilton or Hill and Hill and Knowlton. Oh, Hill and Knowlton Strategies. Okay. It was it's a public relations company. American public relations firm. They have worked for Scientology. They have worked for the government, they have worked for lots of big names. They worked for Eli Lilly. Um, so again, it was propaganda. They created Prozac. So there's some big names out there who use these PR firms. Google Hill and Knowl's strategies and the Naraya testimony. This happened in the 1990s before the Gulf War. Naraya testimony N-A-Y-I-R-A-H. So in 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Naraya gave an emotional testimony before the U.S. Congress claiming she was a nurse and had witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators and leaving them to die during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Her story spread like wild fire. It was quoted by politicians, it was in the news. The president at the time, George Bush, quoted her story. Um, it was repeated in the media, and it was used to justify military intervention in the Gulf War. Two years later, it was revealed that her entire story was false. Not only was she not a nurse, but she was the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S. And her testimony was part of a public relations campaign. Helen Knowl was hired by the Kuwait government to help them. And her testimony became known now as a classic example of modern atrocity propaganda. Um, atrocity propaganda is the spreading of information about crimes committed by an enemy, which can be factual, but often includes deliberate fabrications or exaggerations. It can involve photographs, videos, illustrations, interviews, or other forms of information in presentation or reporting.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:02

Holy shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:04

So, what their take on this is in propaganda is patriotism is not enough to make people hate the enemy. Propaganda is necessary. Um, so there is this guy, Harold Laswell. He was an American political scientist. He served as the president of the American Political Science Association. He was honored as a master of social science, which do you know what social science is? Because I didn't know how to Google it. No. The study of humans and social relationships. And he wrote a thesis on the propaganda technique in the world war. And he put in there so great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing and murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about who the public is to hate. So basically, atrocity propaganda leads to real atrocities. It incites the enemy into committing more atrocities. And if you heat up passions, you increase the chances of one own side to commit atrocities. And then you're what you want revenge, basically. So it's like it's like a manipulation tactic.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:13

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:15

You know what it kind of makes me think of?

SPEAKER_04 1:14:17

What? 9-11.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:25

Yeah. And I think that that has happened so many times where there has been a manufactured atrocity that has been fabricated to make us want revenge. Because how can someone do something so atrocious?

SPEAKER_04 1:14:44

Right. And you know what makes a lot of money? War.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:47

War. I mean defense. Right. Defense.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:50

Sorry. And you gotta, you gotta get the people to get pumped up to go to war. Yeah.

How To Spot Propaganda In The Wild

SPEAKER_02 1:14:54

Yes. Nobody because nobody would do it if they felt like they didn't have like a moral obligation. And that's kind of the idea of like selling war. All right. There's one more study, and then this is it. This was done in 2013 by this guy named Dan Cahan. Um, I kind of want to call him Dan Cahan. But you can get, you can look this up. It's called the Motivated Numeracy and Political Belief Study. Um, he's a Yale law and psychology professor, so he understands how the human brain works. He's known for his research on cultural cognition and how our political and cultural identities shape what we think is true, even in the face of evidence against it. So, what he studies is motivated reasoning and our tendency to unconsciously twist facts, logic, or evidence to fit our existing beliefs. We don't reason to discover truth. We reason to protect our tribe and our sense of belonging. So he did this study. Participants were given a table that basically looked like this. One version showed data about skin cream and whether it worked to improve rashes. And then the other version used the same numbers, but framed the question as a study about whether stricter gun control laws reduce crime. So two different studies. Participants were asked to analyze the data and show what the results showed. When the data about the neutral topic, skin cream, was presented, people with strong math skills interpreted the numbers correctly. So they were able to look at the data and like put the numbers together and they all came to the same conclusion. But when the same numbers were framed around a politically charged issue like gun control, the accuracy dropped. So conservatives saw results supporting their beliefs, and liberals saw results supporting theirs, even though the data was identical. And they were just, it's not because like they were really, really smart and really good at math, but it was they were better at rationalizing their pre-existing beliefs than they were looking at the data. So the takeaway was that intelligence doesn't protect us against bias, but it can amplify it when identity is involved. Group identity is stronger than truth. We subconsciously care more about staying loyal to our side than admitting that data might alienate us. And reasoning becomes a tribal armor instead of a search for accuracy. So I thought that that was interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:25

I'm so excited for our listeners to watch this episode. Cause I think no matter what side of the fence you fall on, I think this is a very, very good episode for everyone.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:42

I will I do we do have time to do this. I'm gonna do it real quick and I'm not gonna read all my notes, but I'm just gonna give like how to spot propaganda.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:51

So this is like the overall take on all of this. Like we're all being propagandized, but how do you recognize it? Number one, it makes you feel before you think. It's hijacking your critical thinking. If it makes you mad or afraid, it's not information, it's persuasion. I'm glad you said mad or afraid. Demonizing, it gives you a villain and a hero. Propaganda loves a good versus evil, us versus them. It will always put you against somebody and it will always make somebody else the bad guy. Always. Real life is complicated and no one is all good or all bad, but propaganda does not like nuance. It discourages questioning. So when it says everyone knows this or the science is there, or trust the science, that should be your invitation to question it. It uses repetition instead of reasoning. You start to hear the same talking points everywhere, including in headlines, influencers. Have you ever seen that news clip?

SPEAKER_04 1:18:58

It's kind of freaky where they are all saying the same thing at the same time. It's just like clips of them with their, you know, a reporter with their news station in whatever city they're in, and they are all saying the exact same thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:14

They're reading a script. It's scary when you see it like that. Repetition creates familiarity, which creates a perceived truth. Our brains love a pattern and it loves consistency. So when we see that happening and everybody's saying the same thing, it feels true, even though it may not be. Virtue signaling, that's a big one. If it weaponizes morality, it's probably propaganda. Um, if you are saying this is crazy, like if you're good, you believe this. If you're bad, you believe this. Only bad people question this. If you question this, you're heartless. If you do this, you're part of the problem. Moral shame is a powerful control tool. And this is like manipulation 101. Like, make people feel shame and guilt for thinking something different.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:09

Yeah. And it's why so many people don't want to talk. Yeah, because they don't want to get shamed and assassinated for having an opinion that doesn't fit with whatever is our expected narrative.

Virtue Signals, Bandwagons, And Shame

SPEAKER_02 1:20:21

Yeah, but they have no problem shaming and assassinating other people. And I don't even mean assassinating in that way, but like that kind of fits. Like they have no problem putting shame and judgment and guilt on anyone who doesn't believe them or who doesn't believe what they believe. Right. They don't, they just don't want to feel it. Right. They don't want to feel it. Right. It hides behind authority. So anything that says, like the experts say, or officials warn, or the government has confirmed, authority can be real, but it can also be borrowed and it can be an illusion of authority. So I just think use your fucking judgment. It's not all for good. It's designed for virality, not depth, which is really good for our fucking algorithms these days. It fits really neatly into a meme or a slogan, and truth is usually messy and nuanced, it doesn't fit into 10 seconds of a clip. So um, it directs your attention away from systemic causes, which basically means it blames other people. So it blames individuals or small groups instead of the structures. It's the immigrants, it's the billionaires, it's the president, it's the this, it's the anti-vaxxers, it's this, it's that. Like if they're if it's directing your attention away from the system, it's probably propaganda because the propaganda is like it is the system. System is the propaganda. Um it uses bandwagon or identity signaling signaling. So it appeals to our social survival instinct. This is interesting, but if it feels like your team is all Always right, you might also be getting played. Didn't I send you something this morning? Hang on, I'm gonna read it. It says it's really not possible to point this out loudly enough, but when the media is behind your movement, you aren't the resistance. So that right there is like the bandwagon identity signaling. If everyone is talking about it, like you ain't it, babe.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:32

It ain't it.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:33

You might be getting played too. Um, the other thing is like you feel pressure to share it. If you feel pressured to share it, it is propaganda. It's like the black square. Yes. You don't have to do it, babe. It's not your job. Like, make Instagram food again. It doesn't have to be. Make make Instagram a picture of your shitty meal with an even shittier filter again. Like, urgency is a manipulation tactic. So even when we did the episode on like the autism stuff and me posting about it, the fact that I had to sit on it and post it and sit on it and delete it and sit on it, and like I was like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Okay, fine, I'm gonna post it. Like, I shouldn't have done that. Okay, I should have. But you know what I mean? Like the urgency in that, I should have sat with that for a minute. And I I feel like I did. I sat on that for like days before I posted anything. Propaganda spreads because people believe they're doing good by spreading it. So this is another thing. Like, if you feel pressure to share it, don't be part of the we don't be part of the fucking, don't be a pawn.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:39

Well, and it it goes back to um You're doing their work when you're not getting paid for it. Well, right. And it's like it goes back to kind of like this superiority complex and this moral righteousness of like, I posted about this, you don't even care. So apparently you want kids to get shot up in school. And it's like Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:55

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right. Like the extreme to jump to that conclusion.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:01

Well, and also you posting, what is that? Like we take that as like it's like social justice work. And so then if somebody doesn't and doesn't post about the things that we care about, they're not doing their social social justice work. And to me, I'm like, well, maybe they are, because maybe they're doing it with themselves.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:24

You know what it reminds me of me of? What? I'm gonna take this back to the narcissist thing because you know what a lot of narcissists do to make themselves look like good people is charity work. So And it's not because they are doing it because they can't they're like, look at all this good stuff I do. Like, that's what it reminds me of.

Celebrity Activism, PR, And Moral Theater

SPEAKER_04 1:24:44

So um I just want to get a give a little snippet of my John Rockefeller rabbit hole because he comes from a corrupt family. His dad was a con artist. I'll get into that later. Um, he did it in a much smarter, larger scale, but also much more covert way. And one of the ways that he was so covert about it is there was um a journalist who became a journalist because she had so much she wanted to expose John Rockefeller so badly, he ruined her childhood. And so she like had like this vendetta against him. Okay. And she was like, I'm gonna fuck you up. I'm gonna expose this motherfucker. She went undercover and went to his town, and he was like this celebrity in this town because what he would do is he went to church religiously. And what he did was he would always donate to the church, and then all he would always have wads of cash, and he would find people who looked like they need they needed it, and would give them just like a wad of cash. So people idolized him. So then the work he was actually doing went very unnoticed for a long time because people thought he was a good person because of the charitable work he was doing, and he was known to be a philanthropist. So if you're just googling John Rockefeller, it's going to say in it, a philanthropist. But it wasn't because he was come he was doing things from the goodness of his heart. It was because he was trying to cover up the bad things he was doing by saying, look, I donated money here, and I gave this poor, you know, dirty person money as well. Like that's was his whole like shtick, and she exposed it.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:52

Ooh, I love exposing a narcissist. Yes, and I was like, we love a baddie. Okay, I cannot wait to hear more about it because that is like ooh, I like I really like it.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:04

But so, you know, when there are a lot of like elites, so I think about I think about Leonard Leonardo DiCaprio with um being like this climate change, whatever. My thought now is like, what the fuck are you really doing? That's my thought. I think about Ashton Kutcher, how he was he started, I think he started a non profit, or he became the face of it, and it was for children, child sex trafficking. Meanwhile, he has very close ties to Diddy. And I'm not accusing them of anything, I'm just saying, like But also wasn't his best friend the dude who like went to prison for not only did he go to prison for like sexual assault and and rape, Ashton Kutcher and his wife wrote letters on his behalf defending him, defend him. And I'm like, you literally were like the face of this movement, this sex child sex trafficking movement where people were like, oh my god, look what Ashton Kutcher is doing. And again, I'm not saying like I know facts about this, but all I'm saying is I don't know. It looks fishy to me. And I just don't trust people when they are constantly talking about like the work that they are doing. And I think a lot of us do that on a much smaller scale with like, well, I'm a good person because I posted this on my Instagram story. I care.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:38

Well, and I want to talk about like the social pressure too, because like how many people got upset with Taylor Swift when she didn't talk politics? And how many people are like canceling um people now because they're like, we don't know where they stand on Palestine? I haven't seen them put a flag in their profile. And it's like this social pressure. And I would go as far as to say that like I think it's pretty badass that you don't post anything.

unknown 1:29:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:06

That you don't fall to the pressure, that you don't, that you don't fall into that trap of like having to say something. Because let me tell you right now, it's a fucking trap. Because you, if you put it out there that you are one side over the other, you are going to get canceled by half the population. I'm talking like celebrity-wise, but this also goes on a smaller scale too. Like, why do I have to put that out there? That's not who I am. That's not what makes me who I am. So why are you making me feel pressured to put it out there? Like I have to pick a side. I'm not falling for that shit.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:42

Well, and to add to that, the people who I felt pressure to post the black square, to post about this or to post about that. And again, I also pressured other people to do it as well, those are the those were the first people to cancel me.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:58

Yeah.

Empathy vs Emotional Intelligence

SPEAKER_04 1:29:59

Those were literally the first people to exile me. They celebrated me and wanted to amplify amplify my voice when I was going with whatever narrative or outrage of the day that we were supposed to like post about. But the second I went against that narrative or went against that whatever, and I again held a middle of the middle of the road stance, they were the first ones to exile me. And it's it's it's I'm I'm glad that it happened because I'm like, you know, I I don't I don't want to subscribe to a group that's gonna cancel me or exile me or you know, automatically label me as a bad or racist person or a um minority who now like we don't care about your voice being amplified anymore. If like I have to walk on eggshells, if I have to censor myself, if I can't have like an authentic thought or an opinion or say something that you know no one said or is not popular, like then I don't want to be a part of that group. Like that's a cult to me. Sorry. Yeah. It's almost like it's cultish. It's cultish as fuck.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:16

Like, thanks for kicking me out. Yeah. I was gonna, I was probably gonna end up leaving anyway. Yeah. Okay, so then this is the last thing because I think that that pressure is like a big one. Like, I think a lot of us feel pressured to pick a side or to choose a stance or to post something so people know where we stand. We don't need to do that, guys. Yeah, you don't need to do that. Um, glittering generalities, and this is the last one, using vague, feel-good words that sound moral but mean nothing concrete. And this is exactly what Bernays was talking about when he started to use words attached to emotional ties like freedom, patriotism, justice, family values, democracy. Again, what he said. If you link the message to a positive symbol, no one can disagree with him, and that's kind of the point. You know my personal favorite.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:14

Well, I guess I just have more um empathy and I just have more morals than what you would have.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:21

Okay, okay. Well, according to Amanda last week, um, too much empathy is not a good thing, and I would rather have compassion than empathy.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:34

Well, and also if you are putting yourself on a pedestal to then shame somebody else without there being the ability to have like a conversation and some dialogue, I would argue that that's incredibly narcissistic. Sorry, I'm just better than you, and you just don't care about people.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:00

Sorry, I have the capacity to care more than you do. Do you know what my favorite is? And I'm I think I should do and we should probably touch on this in an episode because I did a lot of digging on this too. Empathy is not the same as emotional intelligence. It is not better than emotional intelligence. I would even argue that it is better to have emotional intelligence than it is to have an insane amount of empathy.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:36

I would agree with that.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:38

Because emotional intelligence also has empathy, but too much empathy without emotional intelligence is basically just it's it's not it's not sustainable, it's not healthy.

Boundaries, Self-Work, And Real Change

SPEAKER_04 1:33:51

Sometimes I think it's enabling. And I'm saying that so I am saying that as somebody who is I have been somebody who when like you are like somebody in my life when you are going through something, I have struggled with sitting in it with you. And it's literally work that I am currently working on is having compassion for people, but not sitting in it with them because that evades my own work and it is a form of enablement. Now, obviously, that is not my intention, but my work has been taking some self-responsibility of like if I am not in the space to like hold space for you, that's okay. It's okay that I don't sit in sit in it with you. It's okay if like I just can have compassion from you from a distance, because at the end of the day, like if I have too much empathy for you where I am just sitting in this with you, it is taking away from my healing and it is exhausting. It's so exhausting. And again, like in 2016-2020, where I like felt like I had to post about every, you know, tragedy and every opinion and um judge people who thought different than thought differently than me, and everything was so black and white, and I am like morally righteous, and you are evil. That was when I moved from such a wounded place. I I think a lot of what I did and said come came from a place of um projection. A lot of projection. And it was like I thought I was better and I thought I was doing the right thing and saving the world, and then realizing like, no, you're actually like contributing to your own suffering. Not only that, but you need to take some self-responsibility of like the energy you are putting into this world and like the work you need to do, and the work you need to do is not by what you say, it's by what you model and what how you live. It's not preaching down somebody's throat that they're wrong and they're evil and you're better. How many people, again, on social media where they're so dead set on their opinion, their side, how many people do they actually change? And that's kind of what it seems like their intention is. They're trying to persuade people to agree with them and believe what they believe and think that what they believe is like the right way to think. And I argue that it actually does the opposite. And you know, it's been so tense since 2016, and we still have people to this day, like you could s say something, they're like, well, try to move on, and I'm like, I think people are people are people are tired of that way of speaking to each other and that rhetoric. And maybe maybe some of us start to change that, change the way we talk to each other, change the way, like, okay, you can believe what you believe, but like, how are you putting it out there? Because, you know, there are Christians where I'm like, if you shove it down my throat, it's not gonna make me want to go to church. What's gonna make me want to go to church is by me watching the way that you live and the way that you treat people and the way that you treat yourself and the work that you do, and the way you show up in the world, the way you, yeah, the way you show up, how you hold yourself accountable, the light and the love that you give out, then that would be like, oh shit, you know, it's with with our partners. It's they didn't do a mushroom journey because we were barking down their throat to do a mushroom journey. They did a mushroom journey because they saw us change. And then it encouraged them to make whatever changes they needed to as well, and and and be open to that. And that, you know, Tony was somebody who, when you came to me and talked to me about mushrooms, and I went home and told him, he was like, I know people who've gone crazy. I know people who've had they have holes in their brain. They're not right. They're not right, Christine. They're like, I went to, I went to high school with a guy. He did mushrooms, and telling you, he's not all there. Like, that's where the conversation started. And, you know, we did research and then we're like, okay, like maybe this is not as bad as what you thought. And your, you know, your 50-year-old buddy Hank from high school. Maybe he was doing some other stuff. I don't know. And it took me changing and him watching me change in real time and be like, all right, I might do this mushroom journey, you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:56

I might be into whatever it is that you're doing.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:58

Yeah. I guess what I was trying to say is like, even with this, I don't want people to just take what we say and be like, okay, Christine and Leah said it. So that's that's what it means. I I encourage you to like reach out to me personally. I can handle it, where you're like, hey, I you said this and I don't necessarily agree. If you're willing to like have like a kind conversation and we can still disagree, I would love, I genuinely would love that and debate.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:32

I feel like I'm getting better at it.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:33

You're getting so much better. I just didn't say you because I didn't want you to, I don't want you to be breaking out in hives every day.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:39

But I don't think I'll ever get over that. That's just my boss.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:42

And I just, and I don't, it's like whether we're talking about this, we're talking about, you know, psilocybin, whatever it is, like, don't take our word for it. You do your own research. You, you come up with your own opinion. The the point of this is for not everybody to agree with us. Right. It's to maybe think outside the box or maybe question what your thought process is and what it where it comes from. And are you in an echo chamber?

Closing, Takeaways, And Patreon Invite

SPEAKER_02 1:40:10

Yeah. It's it's very much like when we do, when we do an episode on feminism and maternal feminism, like you are going to hear things that you've probably never heard before because we had never heard them before. No. And hearing them and resonating with maternal feminism and being like, wait a minute, why isn't this being talked about? Why is no one saying this? That's crazy. Like, it's just being open to new information and nuanced conversations. Yeah. I made this and I think that I should add it here because it's quick and easy, but like the empathy and emotional intelligence. Um, empathy is feeling deeply, but emotional intelligence is being able to handle the emotions, and that's not the same thing. Empathy is about feeling others and like what you were saying, like getting down in the trenches with them, like feeling so deeply that like you come home and cry for this other person, and it affects your mental health. Like, I am taking your pain on as my own. That's how empathetic I am. I care so much about what happens in your life that it is affecting my life. And this used to be an issue for both of us.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:24

But emotional intelligence, and I think we have both learned this over the last several years, is understanding and managing your emotions, yours and theirs. Empathy says, I feel your pain, but emotional intelligence says, I can feel your pain without losing myself in it. Ooh, love that. A lot of people consider themselves highly empathetic. I think that we used to be those people. And I think that like we still are, but with boundaries.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:57

Yes. And I'm and and it's this is still something that I struggle with, and it's something that I'm working on. I think it's it's it's almost coming phases. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:08

Um and it's well and when somebody is like extremely, extremely empathetic the in the way that we were, it's it's unboundaried and your emotions are flooded. Here's the it's not regulated.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:24

Yes. And here's the other thing that I wanted to add that I learned from um Amanda, the therapist that we interviewed. When you are somebody who is an empathetic person, you are going to attract takers. Yeah. So it's just something to be cautious about is, you know, remembering to take care of yourself first. There, there will be a tragedy today, there will be a tragedy tomorrow, but filling your own cup and doing your own work. And then if you're able to, then you can go out and do the work. That doesn't necessarily mean an Instagram story though. Right. And we're not meant to hold the pain of the rest of the world. No, we're not built for that. Our nervous systems have shown over and over and over again we are not built for that. I'm waiting for more of us to wake up, but I think more of us are. So I think that.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:16

So okay. I think we can end that on a positive note.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:19

That was wonderful, Leah.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:20

Oh, I can't wait to hear yours. I can't wait. I really hope you guys enjoyed that because that took weeks. Yeah. No, that was of research. Bravo. Again, I don't want to do this all the time, but I wouldn't mind it if the rabbit hole was good enough, you know? So if you're not on our Patreon, please join it.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:39

Okay, here's the other thing I want to say about Patreon really quick. Somebody thought that it was like a chat. And I'm like, no, babe. It is where you can go and get early access to our episodes. So not just that.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:53

If you are a member, you get to watch our videos. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:58

Non-members, you don't. Only audio.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:02

Yes. And now with Riverside, the platform that we are doing, if you have the time to watch the video, I would encourage you to do it because I do think that it makes the episode better because you're getting to see like more of our reaction. Reactions. Because you're getting a close-up of our faces and just our expressions. And yes, I do think it's it's worth it.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:27

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:28

So all right. Good job.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:30

Anything else to say? Thank you. Very good. Thank you. A plus. Bravo.

unknown 1:44:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:35

A plus A. All our listeners, thank you for listening. Um, be curious, stay open, use your critical thinking and stay away from propaganda. We'll see you on the other side. Bye.