Speaker 1: Get value. You can't argue with at Tesco with their
Speaker 1: amazing club card prices. Serve up something special with our
Speaker 1: finest meal deal for two starring one main, two sides
Speaker 1: and dessert for only sixteen euro like succulent board, be
Speaker 1: approved virus shinned to strip loin steaks with peppercorn butter
Speaker 1: or delicious iris chicken Parmesana served with creamy potato gretam
Speaker 1: and our mix of rainbow root vegetables and enjoy Goozillionaire
Speaker 1: or Soldier caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop in
Speaker 1: store or online Tesco. Every little helps available the most
Speaker 1: doores prices, very inn express.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's that little wooly caterpillar you just picked
Speaker 2: up and moved off the sidewalk. Who's like, hey, thanks
Speaker 2: for looking out for my thick bristly behind. Sorry ipe
Speaker 2: Alli Ward back with the most stupid questions ever packed
Speaker 2: into a smart episode, because today we are exploring the
Speaker 2: topic of not just ignorance, but willful ignorance, just intentional misinformation, doubt, controversy.
Speaker 2: Oh well, evil, But before we examine our own just
Speaker 2: lingering stupidity, let's thank the focus at Patreon dot com
Speaker 2: slash Ologies for all their great questions they submitted, and
Speaker 2: for supporting the show for as little as a dollar
Speaker 2: a month. You two can join if you like. Thank
Speaker 2: you to everyone who subscribes and rates, and of course
Speaker 2: reviews to keep the show up in the charts. This
Speaker 2: week's Fresh Pick is from Hoodie Girl five five five,
Speaker 2: who says they listened every night wearing their Ology sweatshirt.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening, Thank you for wrapping with Anology study.
Speaker 2: Everyone who left reviews, I've read them, I loved them.
Speaker 2: I thank you. Okay, Agnetology, we're going to get into it.
Speaker 2: Agno comes from the Greek for unknown, and according to
Speaker 2: the originator of the word agnetology, it is the study
Speaker 2: of ignorance and it seeks to answer why we don't
Speaker 2: know what we don't know. And the person who coined
Speaker 2: the phrase, I'm sure you're like, was it a long
Speaker 2: dead philosopher, Was it a quippie war nurse? Was it
Speaker 2: a child wise beyond her years? Nope, it's our guest today,
Speaker 2: that is correct. The biggest cheese in the agnetology world
Speaker 2: is here to talk to you, and he edited the
Speaker 2: book Agnetology, The Making and Unmaking of ignorance, and approximately
Speaker 2: ten million of you have tweeted and emailed me begging
Speaker 2: to have him on. He's been on my list for years,
Speaker 2: so this was a huge get to have him sit
Speaker 2: down during a pandemic and chat via computer. He got
Speaker 2: his bachelor's degree in biology and then went to Harvard
Speaker 2: University to get his master's and his PhD in the
Speaker 2: history of science. He is now a professor at Stanford
Speaker 2: University teaching the history of science. And I'm going to
Speaker 2: warn you up top if you do not enjoy political
Speaker 2: discourse or scientific facts versus religious mythology, or how industry
Speaker 2: favors profits over health, or the topic of equity for
Speaker 2: marginalized groups, this episode may not be for you, or
Speaker 2: rather it might be perfect for you. We're living a
Speaker 2: very uncomfortable, very polarized, scary times in so many ways.
Speaker 2: People are screaming at each other about masks in Costco
Speaker 2: and it pains me to see the divides because I
Speaker 2: feel like there's so much a place psychologically underneath these
Speaker 2: sometimes violent differences of opinion. So we get into all
Speaker 2: of that, and I was very curious and excited to
Speaker 2: talk it out with someone who studies ignorance and the
Speaker 2: comfort of ignorance for a living agnetologist doctor Robert doctor.
Speaker 2: Everyone has told me I need to hunt you down
Speaker 2: to talk about what you study, and you are, technically
Speaker 2: speaking an agnetologist.
Speaker 3: I guess so, yeah, that's one of the things I do.
Speaker 3: I do a lot of different things. I'm my title
Speaker 3: as I'm Professor of the History of science at stant University,
Speaker 3: where I'm also a professor by courtesy of pulmonary medicine.
Speaker 3: But I work on a lot of different things, including
Speaker 3: the history of ignorance.
Speaker 2: And you've studied also the history of science. How did
Speaker 2: it dovetail into the history of ignorance? At what point
Speaker 2: did a light bulb go off and you thought, oh,
Speaker 2: I want to study that well.
Speaker 3: I was always interested in puzzles and mysteries and illusions,
Speaker 3: even from being a kid. I remember in high school
Speaker 3: trying to figure out the moon illusion. Why does the
Speaker 3: moon appear large on the horizon? And I basically I
Speaker 3: think figured it out. It's you know, we live in
Speaker 3: a low dome cosmology where the sky we figure is
Speaker 3: about two or three miles high and the horizon is
Speaker 3: about ten or twenty miles high, so it makes sense
Speaker 3: that if something appears the same above you and on
Speaker 3: the horizon, it will actually in effect create an illusion
Speaker 3: of being much larger on the horizon. So that's kind
Speaker 3: of the popular cosmology we live in, because if a
Speaker 3: bird is overhead, it's closer. If it's on the horizon,
Speaker 3: it's farther, and we normalize that and that creates the
Speaker 3: moon illusion. So I was always interested in puzzles and
Speaker 3: Martin Gardner type of mysteries.
Speaker 2: Oh and for more on those moon illusions see the
Speaker 2: Selenology episode with rock Hell Nuno. Also side note, Martin
Speaker 2: Gardner was a popular and beloved mathematics columnist. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: made math cool. And he was a founder of the
Speaker 2: skeptics movement, starting way back with his early nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. So
Speaker 2: this guy was the original MythBuster, the founder of the
Speaker 2: debunking of flim flammery.
Speaker 3: And I remember noticing learning things that I thought were
Speaker 3: true that turned out not to be true. I remember
Speaker 3: as a kid thinking that we would eat chicken hearts.
Speaker 3: I grew up in South Texas and we would eat
Speaker 3: chicken hearts, So I thought my heart was the size
Speaker 3: of a chicken heart. Still, when I think of my heart,
Speaker 3: I kind of think of like a little tiny chicken heart.
Speaker 3: And I remember thinking that every country was the same
Speaker 3: size and the same shape, and that I remember puzzling,
Speaker 3: how can it be that a refrigerator is hot at
Speaker 3: the back and that it's the heat at the back
Speaker 3: that makes the cold in the front.
Speaker 2: One day, we're going to figure this out in a
Speaker 2: thermotechnology episode for y'all. I promise that day is not today.
Speaker 3: You know. So I was a curious child, and when
Speaker 3: I went off to graduate school after majoring in biology
Speaker 3: and chemistry, I didn't know what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3: And I started noticing that basically all what I was
Speaker 3: supposed to learn was all of this great science Darwin
Speaker 3: and Einstein and the double helix. And I thought, you know, well,
Speaker 3: what about you know, the things people don't know? And
Speaker 3: what about all the people who don't believe in evolution
Speaker 3: and don't understand cosmology? What about them? And that was
Speaker 3: uninteresting to my Harvard professors, and so I thought, you know, hey,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, a lot of people don't believe evolution.
Speaker 3: Why don't we study that? Yeah? You know, and so
Speaker 3: that's kind of one of the things that got me
Speaker 3: going on ignorance And.
Speaker 2: What about the word itself agnetology? Where did that come from?
Speaker 3: I started. I got involved with some radical science groups
Speaker 3: at Harvard University, where I was studying with Stephen J. Gould.
Speaker 2: Stephen J. Gould side note, was known as someone who
Speaker 2: challenged the scientific theories he found to be rooted in racism,
Speaker 2: among studying a lot of other things. So this work
Speaker 2: toward dismantling misinformation goes way back.
Speaker 3: And we were studying things like how the chemical industry
Speaker 3: lies about chemicals, and how the tobacco industry lies about cigarettes,
Speaker 3: and the sugar industry as its own set of deceptions.
Speaker 3: And so I was saying, you know, you know, this
Speaker 3: is kind of a big deal. You know, Harvard was
Speaker 3: taking all this money from the sugar industry and creating ignorance,
Speaker 3: and I could see it around me, and I said,
Speaker 3: you know, we need a word for the creation of ignorance.
Speaker 3: There's something called epistemology, which is this study of knowledge,
Speaker 3: how we know what we know. What are the methods, empiricism, rationalism,
Speaker 3: you know, the sources of knowledge that was heavily studied,
Speaker 3: and what I noticed is everyone was ignoring ignorance.
Speaker 2: He says this was salient to him because he comes
Speaker 2: from the Deep South and his beliefs didn't match those
Speaker 2: of a lot of his relatives.
Speaker 3: Again, it was sort of like, what about them, you know,
Speaker 3: and what about these big corporations lying about tobacco or
Speaker 3: lying about chemicals? And so I said, well, we need
Speaker 3: a word. And so this was in the early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 3: I was writing a book on cancer. I'd already written
Speaker 3: a book on Nazi medicine, because that's another thing I
Speaker 3: write about Nazi science. But I was writing a book
Speaker 3: on what causes cancer, and I needed a word for
Speaker 3: all of these efforts to create ignorance. And so I
Speaker 3: asked a linguist friend of mine, a brilliant linguist by
Speaker 3: the name of Ian Bole, and he came up with agnatology.
Speaker 3: And originally we spelled it differently. It was agna and agnatology,
Speaker 3: and we got protests from the people who studied jawless fish,
Speaker 3: which is agnathology, and so I changed it to agno.
Speaker 3: So there's a cognate with, you know, agnostic and agnostic
Speaker 3: and that sort of thing. So that was sort of
Speaker 3: how it came up. I needed a word to described
Speaker 3: the deliberate production of ignorance, the kind of things we
Speaker 3: now associate with climate denial or fear of vaccines or
Speaker 3: you know, the denial of the HIV eediology of AIDS,
Speaker 3: things like that.
Speaker 2: And what is the difference between creating willful ignorance and propaganda?
Speaker 2: Is there a difference, or as propaganda just another word
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 3: Well, they are slightly different. Both involved deception, but not
Speaker 3: necessariarily and not in every case. For example, I think
Speaker 3: the Nazis really believed their own propaganda. In other words,
Speaker 3: propaganda is kind of like an extreme word for education,
Speaker 3: and it's bad. If it's bad education, it's good. If
Speaker 3: it's good education, it rear least used to be. And
Speaker 3: so you can believe your own propaganda. But agnetology is
Speaker 3: maybe a little more subtle. Because the tobacco industry they
Speaker 3: knew that cigarettes caused cancer, and their whole goal was
Speaker 3: to create ignorance, to stave off people learning the truth
Speaker 3: by creating doubt, by throwing the smoke screen, by throwing
Speaker 3: sand in the gears.
Speaker 4: Playing tag with the waves a refreshing way to take
Speaker 4: a walk at the beach. How can you add to
Speaker 4: it with a mental cigarette.
Speaker 3: And they were able to instrumentalize science by doing that.
Speaker 3: So by funding genetics, by funding the study of viruses,
Speaker 3: they created all these blind alleys and false ideologies for disease.
Speaker 3: So it's a much more diabolical thing. Propaganda I think
Speaker 3: of as more ham handed. It's just brainwashing really, Whereas
Speaker 3: the tobacco industry was much more clever in creating out
Speaker 3: by emphasizing uncertainty, and they become really engines of uncertainty
Speaker 3: by saying, there's two sides to every question.
Speaker 4: There are two sides to a story.
Speaker 3: You know, there's so they set up the whole Tobacco
Speaker 3: Institute to promote these non tobacco causes of cancer. It's
Speaker 3: a kind of giant misdirection campaign, and that's much more
Speaker 3: subtle than just the you know, browbeating of propaganda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my mom told me a story that when she
Speaker 2: was trying to loose some weight after her first baby
Speaker 2: in the early seventies, that her obstrician recommended taking of smoking.
Speaker 3: You know, that's I'm so glad you brought that up,
Speaker 3: because until the nineteen eighties, doctors were more likely to
Speaker 3: recommend that pregnant women's smoke than to recommend against it. Ah,
Speaker 3: it was the It was called the smaller babies theory,
Speaker 3: and the tobacco industry ran with it. They funded the
Speaker 3: people pushing for this theory. The theory was that yes,
Speaker 3: it makes a smaller baby if you smoke, but they're
Speaker 3: just as healthy and it's more pleasant to just have
Speaker 3: this nice small baby. And so I've talked to several
Speaker 3: women whose doctors told them to take up smoking during pregnancy. Again,
Speaker 3: that was part of that whole you know, the sunny
Speaker 3: side of nicotine that was pushed by the tobacco industry.
Speaker 2: Just a quick side note. In nineteen thirty seven, Philip Morris,
Speaker 2: tobacco giant, ran an ad in a Saturday Evening post
Speaker 2: depicting a child bell hop offering up a silver platter
Speaker 2: of cigarettes with the information when smokers change, to Philip Morris,
Speaker 2: every case of irritation of the nose and throat caused
Speaker 2: by smoking cleared completely or definitely improved. Then there are
Speaker 2: TV gems too.
Speaker 4: Time out for many men of medicine usually means just
Speaker 4: long enough to enjoy a cigarette.
Speaker 2: So as an agnetologist, he clearly covers smoking, but His
Speaker 2: book also includes chapters on military operations and c literal orgasms,
Speaker 2: issues with indigenous paleontology, racial ignorance and injustice, and of
Speaker 2: course commerce. What are some of the other historical, especially
Speaker 2: in America, campaigns of doubt and ignorance that have kind
Speaker 2: of been waged on our collective intelligence.
Speaker 3: Well, there's so many in Washington, d c. There's fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred trade associations, you know, the Beer Institute, the Sugar Institute,
Speaker 3: the Methyl beautle Ether Task Force, Salt Institute. Basically, every
Speaker 3: product that might cause harm has an institute or a
Speaker 3: trade association designed to diminish that harm or to cast
Speaker 3: out on that harm. So there are basically every thing
Speaker 3: that causes harm, whether it be asbestos or food dies
Speaker 3: or Coca cola through the Beverage Council or whatever it's called,
Speaker 3: there are these organizations whose job it is to rescue products.
Speaker 3: And you know, some of the more dramatic ones are
Speaker 3: things like the Lead Institute, which years ago, going back,
Speaker 3: you know, into the twenties, thirties, forties, they would promote
Speaker 3: lead and just you know, call cast doubts on the
Speaker 3: hazards of lead, and the Asbestos Information Association did the
Speaker 3: same thing. The Calorie Control Council. Coca Cola was funding
Speaker 3: some of these things, trying to rescue the reputation of sugar,
Speaker 3: and these things often were interrelated. So the Sugar Research
Speaker 3: Foundation president in the early nineteen fifties actually goes to
Speaker 3: work for the tobacco industry, saying that he could use
Speaker 3: the same techniques that they'd use to rescue the reputation
Speaker 3: of sugar to rescue the safety of tobacco. So there's
Speaker 3: an interlocking. There are even trade associations of trade associations,
Speaker 3: see their whole buildings. I remember one, I think it
Speaker 3: was in Atlanta, where there's a whole building full of
Speaker 3: these trade associations and they share tricks, and it's a
Speaker 3: little bit like that great scene and thank You for Smoking,
Speaker 3: where there's the gun lobby and what is it sugar
Speaker 3: or tobaccos. We call ourselves the mod Squad, mod merchants
Speaker 3: of death. We're lobbyists for the tobacco, alcohol, and firearms industries.
Speaker 3: How many alcohol related that's a year, well a thousand,
Speaker 3: that's what two hundred and seventy a day tragedy. So
Speaker 3: these groups sometimes even work together as engines of uncertainty,
Speaker 3: engines of ignorance, and.
Speaker 2: Does that change for you? I imagine how you just
Speaker 2: live your day to day life. Do you kind of
Speaker 2: see things with like an infrared vision that maybe other
Speaker 2: people don't like when you walk down the soda aisle
Speaker 2: in your store, or see flashes on social media or
Speaker 2: the news.
Speaker 3: Well, sure, yeah, you always want to know who's funding it.
Speaker 3: I remember I had an ant who worked for I
Speaker 3: think it was some kind of dairy council or chicken
Speaker 3: counsel herself, even in my own family, and there was
Speaker 3: an issue on the ballot about whether to require certain
Speaker 3: minimum square footage for chickens, you know, And I remember
Speaker 3: her raising this to her and she said, oh, chickens
Speaker 3: hate to run free, you know, they'll just peck themselves
Speaker 3: to death. And so she had kind of been bought in,
Speaker 3: had sort of bought into this mythology of you know,
Speaker 3: chickens actually like their confinement. So I see it all
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. See the oft sided twenty fifteen study put out
Speaker 2: by the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply. They're like justice, man,
Speaker 2: These chickens love cages the side of its shoe box.
Speaker 2: It's cozy as hell, man, actually bad news. Cage Free
Speaker 2: hens do not typically spend their days roaming rolling green hills.
Speaker 2: Though they're not out there chasing grasshoppers, singing Joni Mitchell
Speaker 2: songs into the Golden horizon. Cage free just means that
Speaker 2: they kind of hang out in a big warehouse, pooping
Speaker 2: on each other. Forgive me of robbing anyone of that
Speaker 2: willful ignorance. I had cage free eggs for burgmos. And
Speaker 2: what do you think the difference is between just straight
Speaker 2: up ignorance of not being exposed to something versus willful
Speaker 2: ignorance when you maybe have an inkling that you perhaps
Speaker 2: could be wrong about something, but you just don't want
Speaker 2: to believe it. Where's where does denial fit into that?
Speaker 3: Oh well, yeah, denial is key. There's all kinds of ignorance.
Speaker 3: There's there's native what I call native ignorance. So we
Speaker 3: all start off, you know, as embryos, we're ignorant, right,
Speaker 3: we have to come Each one of us comes into
Speaker 3: the world innocent and not knowing everything. We know we
Speaker 3: have to learn, and so all of us have a
Speaker 3: kind of innocent ignorance and then our very lives as
Speaker 3: as creatures, you know, it has a lot to do
Speaker 3: with evolution, because we evolved as predators. We have the
Speaker 3: forward looking eyes of the predator, which means we are
Speaker 3: highly focused. And what highly focused means we ignore almost everything,
Speaker 3: So we have the focus of the predator and not
Speaker 3: the eternal watchfulness of prey. A horse sees three sixty,
Speaker 3: but nothing in particular. They're out there on the watch
Speaker 3: for everything, but they don't focus on any one thing,
Speaker 3: and the biology of that is, you know, deep in
Speaker 3: our neural circuits.
Speaker 2: At this moment, I felt embarrassed for Robert because he
Speaker 2: clearly went one hundred and eighty degrees, because you know
Speaker 2: how people will say she changed her mind and did
Speaker 2: him three sixty, but you're like, well, technically that just
Speaker 2: means that they came full circle. I think you mean
Speaker 2: one eighty. And I looked it up and it read
Speaker 2: horses have a range of vision of about three hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty degrees what so he was totally right. Horses
Speaker 2: can see almost everything around them. I was ignorant of this.
Speaker 2: They could pretty much see everything but their own butts. Also,
Speaker 2: their I anatomy involves something called a nervous tunic, which
Speaker 2: sounds like something I would wear in a nightmare of
Speaker 2: me giving a ted talk. Anyway, human eyesight is more
Speaker 2: literally straightforward.
Speaker 3: We have a phobia which concentrates our perception and that's
Speaker 3: very different from a prey like a deer, and so
Speaker 3: even in our biology, it means that we have this
Speaker 3: intensive focus and we have to ignore everything. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you think about it, if you saw everything at once,
Speaker 3: you could see nothing, or if you remembered everything you've
Speaker 3: ever known, you would also know nothing. So a big
Speaker 3: part of learning is forgetting. A big part of focus
Speaker 3: is in attention. You know, you can't focus without defocusing
Speaker 3: at the very same time on most things that are
Speaker 3: around you. So that's another as specti bagnetology is actually
Speaker 3: looking at the creation of ignorance, even in the in
Speaker 3: the non human animal world. So the reason that deer
Speaker 3: have white bellies is that's how they create themselves as
Speaker 3: a non object. All objects in the world have a
Speaker 3: shadow on the bottom, and if you're prey, you create
Speaker 3: a white underbelly to dissolve yourself as an object into
Speaker 3: the surrounding. So that's a form of ignorance creation or
Speaker 3: creating the the invisibility or camouflage, and many many animals
Speaker 3: do that. So as long as there's been predation, there's
Speaker 3: been camouflage, and that's a kind of way of making
Speaker 3: yourself invisible.
Speaker 2: M So next time you see a deer or a
Speaker 2: frog or a lizard, just feel free to say that's
Speaker 2: called countershading. And then if you want, you can high
Speaker 2: five yourself. And what about what is say, happening on
Speaker 2: aationwide level the last few years in particular, do you
Speaker 2: have to use maps at all to study higher levels
Speaker 2: maybe of willful ignorance? Or how do you how do
Speaker 2: you parse out who is maybe more susceptible to believing
Speaker 2: certain things?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's it's true. There's a there's a geography
Speaker 3: of ignorance. So while it's true that basically everything that
Speaker 3: has been known has been forgotten, it's also true that
Speaker 3: many of the things that have been forgotten are known
Speaker 3: to some people. And in a way, that's what the
Speaker 3: whole field of history is is to recover lost lost knowledge.
Speaker 3: But education is very selective, right, people are well educated,
Speaker 3: they're poorly educated. There's a big geography of knowledge, and
Speaker 3: humorous deal with this very well. I remember Jay Leno,
Speaker 3: the comedian, used to do what he called jaywalking, and
Speaker 3: he would ask people how many moons does the Earth have?
Speaker 3: What is our galaxy? Call I am it's also a
Speaker 3: candy bar. I mean, it was kind of one of
Speaker 3: those who's buried in Grant's tomb kind of questions. But
Speaker 3: a lot of people don't know a lot of things.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the things I actually do in
Speaker 3: my classes is I do a kind of what I
Speaker 3: call an agnetology survey, where I, you know, ask people
Speaker 3: something else that's really how old is the Earth? And
Speaker 3: it's surprising. I remember when I did this at Harvard
Speaker 3: for the undergraduates about it turned out about fifteen percent
Speaker 3: of the biology majors at Harvard were creationists. I thought
Speaker 3: the world was six thousand years old, So it's In
Speaker 3: other words, I developed what I call agnometrics, the measurement
Speaker 3: of ignorance. And you know, there's lots of techniques for
Speaker 3: studying ignorance and surveys you can do, and yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 2: Agnometrics, by the way, isn't the only great word that
Speaker 2: you're going to learn today? Also consider agnogenesis, which is
Speaker 2: creating doubt for nefarious purposes, or agnometric generators, which are
Speaker 2: the forces generating the doubt. Now, why do some opinions
Speaker 2: seem so regional? What creates factors that are agnogeographical which
Speaker 2: is a word that I just made up. Is there
Speaker 2: something about perhaps the geography of being near a port
Speaker 2: city or a body of water that exposes people to
Speaker 2: say different cultures or different types of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that historically has been true. That's why a lot
Speaker 3: of the great early empires and intellectual centers are built
Speaker 3: on maritime commercial centers. You think of the ancient Greeks
Speaker 3: trading amongst the city states, or do you think of
Speaker 3: the river cultures either in Mesoamerica or ancient China trade.
Speaker 3: That's one of the old theories of actually the rise
Speaker 3: of modern science is that it's deeply connected with cosmopolitan trade.
Speaker 3: And so there definitely is something to isolation and the
Speaker 3: monkish life. You might say that's not conducive to intellectual discovery.
Speaker 3: Intellectual discovery involves the kind of mixing of ideas and
Speaker 3: that allows you to see yourself as a as a
Speaker 3: parochial agent.
Speaker 2: Oh ps. A parochial agent is someone who's narrow minded
Speaker 2: or doesn't know a lot, which is a humbling thing
Speaker 2: to have to google, but.
Speaker 3: It certainly is a that's part of the need is
Speaker 3: to you know, to get rid of parochialism, to ask
Speaker 3: why are we the way we are? You know, that's
Speaker 3: kind of the undergraduate experience.
Speaker 2: And what about social media or just the democratization of
Speaker 2: information in the digital age. Do you think that we're
Speaker 2: getting more brainwater more quickly or are we finally getting
Speaker 2: exposure to voices that have been systemically oppressed for a
Speaker 2: long time through large media channels. I'm learning a lot
Speaker 2: more about just how to word things and how to
Speaker 2: include people, But at the same time, it seems like
Speaker 2: we're distracted by stupid stuff.
Speaker 3: No, for sure, I think we live in the golden
Speaker 3: age of ignorance. Ignorance spreads at the speed of light now,
Speaker 3: and with the rise of conspiracy theories, with the rise
Speaker 3: of denial campaigns, with the siloing of people into reinforcing
Speaker 3: like communities through Facebook or whatever, it's easy to find
Speaker 3: self reinforcing bubble worlds, and that's a huge problem.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: There's also the kind of the flattening of data and source,
Speaker 3: the sheer flatness of an iPhone. If you're getting information
Speaker 3: off that or a laptop, it doesn't discriminate by quality,
Speaker 3: and so that democratization has also been a kind of
Speaker 3: a dumbing down. I think a lot of media and
Speaker 3: it's very easy to circulate. If everyone can pop off
Speaker 3: anything they want on Twitter and that's all you read,
Speaker 3: there's no quality control there. So that is a big.
Speaker 2: Problem and I always think about you know, even when
Speaker 2: I was growing up, I grew up in near San Francisco,
Speaker 2: and everyone had to copy the chronicle, and that's where
Speaker 2: they got their news. You woke up in the morning,
Speaker 2: you read it when it was delivered, it during in
Speaker 2: the morning, whenever. And granted a lot of voices were
Speaker 2: probably stifled by not getting through to the press, but
Speaker 2: at the same time you probably had less disparate sources
Speaker 2: of information and maybe was there more collective trust.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, certainly in the pre Watergate era was more
Speaker 3: collective trust and all kinds of institutions.
Speaker 2: Oh, in the Watergate era case you're like, was in
Speaker 2: the mid nineteen seventies. So all you youngins who were
Speaker 2: born after the mid nineteen seventies, which technically is me
Speaker 2: FYI very young and cool.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's it's also another whole thing I
Speaker 3: look at is virtuous ignorance so not all ignorance is bad.
Speaker 3: That's another one of our myths. In fact, many of
Speaker 3: our forms of ignorance. You have to have the whole
Speaker 3: right to privacy, is a form of ignorance that you
Speaker 3: don't want other people to know everything about you your
Speaker 3: medical records or personal life or whatever. So we create
Speaker 3: ignorance about things all the time in order just to
Speaker 3: have a right to privacy. The same thing with all
Speaker 3: kinds of dangerous knowledge. Right, no science magazine will publish,
Speaker 3: you know, a recipe book on how to make aids airborne. Right,
Speaker 3: I mean there's all kinds of dangerous things that should
Speaker 3: not be known. And uh, there are all kinds of
Speaker 3: institutions that require ignorance. So juries must be ignorant of
Speaker 3: the particulars of a of a case before they go in,
Speaker 3: or or there's medical confidentiality. There's all kinds of virtuous ignorance.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's there's a mix in how things circulate.
Speaker 3: And the flatness is a big, big concern I have.
Speaker 3: But it's also important to realize, you we can it's
Speaker 3: easy to be a wash in information and as easily
Speaker 3: to be a wash and misinformation.
Speaker 2: And how do we know if we're ignorant or not.
Speaker 2: I mean, I understand people say ignorance is blissed. I
Speaker 2: don't know how you feel about that. But how do
Speaker 2: we know if we're the dummies who are misbelieving things.
Speaker 3: Well, for one thing, all of us are profoundly ignorant.
Speaker 3: You know. One of the things I work on is gemstones.
Speaker 3: You had an interesting episode on gemology, and that's one
Speaker 3: of the things I do, is I cut in polished stones.
Speaker 3: And what I fantasize about are all the gemstones on
Speaker 3: other planets. I call them exo agots, you know, and
Speaker 3: we'll never know about that, right, I mean, think of
Speaker 3: the infinity of beautiful gemstones on other planets. So each
Speaker 3: of us is profoundly ignorant.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: We walk through a tiny slice of life, and you
Speaker 3: know that's you know, Socratic wisdom is knowing the limits
Speaker 3: of what you know. So all we can do is,
Speaker 3: you know, scrape together a few things and hopefully those
Speaker 3: turn out to be true.
Speaker 2: Just a side note disclaimer. That Gemology episode was one
Speaker 2: of the first ever recorded, and it's a wild ride
Speaker 2: not just through minerals and rocks, but also exploring the
Speaker 2: gemologists' faith in crystal powers, which I discuss from a
Speaker 2: neuroscience perspective. The mechanisms of the placebo effect are very
Speaker 2: thrilling and interesting. So does having a point to gem
Speaker 2: in your bra cause you to alter your decisions throughout
Speaker 2: the day. Feel free to run the experiment yourself. Now,
Speaker 2: let's move on from my bra to the apocalypse climate change.
Speaker 2: So the top contributors worldwide to carbon emissions China and
Speaker 2: the US. So while many of us in industrialized nations
Speaker 2: are wringing our hands every day looking at climate data
Speaker 2: as a whole, there's actually a lot of shrugs. According
Speaker 2: to some gallop data, which is now admittedly ten years old,
Speaker 2: residents of the US and China are less worried about
Speaker 2: climate change and less likely to agree with do you
Speaker 2: think rising temperatures are a result of human activities? Less
Speaker 2: likely to agree In the nations with the biggest carbon
Speaker 2: emissions Latin America, European countries, they're like, hell yeah. But
Speaker 2: the Middle East is also like probably not because of humans. So,
Speaker 2: as you'll hear in my ignorant question coming up, I
Speaker 2: thought the US was more vocal and concerned, but no,
Speaker 2: oh no, we're not. It's just my little bubble because
Speaker 2: there we tend to have more resources but are the
Speaker 2: most maybe vocal in terms of combat and climate change,
Speaker 2: but we're the biggest contributors. How does anyone kind of
Speaker 2: grapple with that?
Speaker 3: Well, both those things are true in a way, we
Speaker 3: diagnosed the problem earlier than a lot of people because
Speaker 3: we're the ones making the problem, right, And it's exactly
Speaker 3: true that you say we're the biggest culprits and we're
Speaker 3: going to have to lead out of the mess that
Speaker 3: we've created. Now. Fortunately, you know, we do have a
Speaker 3: lot of critiques and tools that we can use to
Speaker 3: try to undo some of the ignorance the damage that's
Speaker 3: been done. But again, that's why I'm so interested in
Speaker 3: a lot of other people are interested in climate agnetology,
Speaker 3: because there are these dedicated bodies like the American Petroleum Institute,
Speaker 3: or these various fronts of oil producers whose job is
Speaker 3: dedicated to continuing the carbon world. And so that's what
Speaker 3: we've really got to expose and fight again. So it's
Speaker 3: just a big debate in our Senate at Stanford last
Speaker 3: week about whether to divest from carbon stocks, you know,
Speaker 3: big oil and so forth. So a lot of institutions
Speaker 3: have already done that. Harvard has done that, and a
Speaker 3: lot of other institutions. So there's going to have to
Speaker 3: be a reckoning and a break with this carbon world,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately things are heading in the wrong direction at present.
Speaker 2: Most of that comes down to, of course, greed. Now,
Speaker 2: what about how power is established or maintained through willful
Speaker 2: ignorance and hate? And what about racial justice? It always
Speaker 2: struck me even as a kid, reading the All Men
Speaker 2: Are Created Equal, which a left out women entirely and
Speaker 2: was written by slaveholders. What at what point do you
Speaker 2: think that this country might start to recognize its own
Speaker 2: ignorance and racism and correct course.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's what's what's been going on for years now,
Speaker 3: right is a slow study, you know, one step forward,
Speaker 3: several steps back sometimes. That was actually yet another prompt
Speaker 3: for ignetology. As I I I was studying science and
Speaker 3: wanted to go I thought about going to MIT out
Speaker 3: of high school, and I looked at it. It was ninety
Speaker 3: six percent male, and that wasn't going to go spend
Speaker 3: my best hormonal years at MIT around you know, ninety
Speaker 3: six percent guys. And I thought about going there for
Speaker 3: graduate school again, and it was still ninety two percent male.
Speaker 3: So I became aware of that very early. It's how
Speaker 3: I became a feminist and involved in feminist critiques of
Speaker 3: science early on. And I was amazed that no one
Speaker 3: was researching this, or that this was not a primary
Speaker 3: object of study. This was I'm talking about the late
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies now, and that again was like a gaping hole.
Speaker 3: Why is no one studying this? Why is there silence
Speaker 3: around that? The same theory with racial equality and inequality. Again,
Speaker 3: I came from the Deep South where I remember White's
Speaker 3: Only signs in the early nineteen sixties, late nineteen fifties,
Speaker 3: and why were people not studying that? And that's why
Speaker 3: I actually wrote two books on Nazi medicine, looking at
Speaker 3: how the American racial experience was actually used by Hitler
Speaker 3: and by the Germans and the Nazi regime to carry
Speaker 3: out their programs of racial destruction. That there was this
Speaker 3: bond between America and racialism and the racism of Nazi Germany,
Speaker 3: and people hadn't really written on that either, So that
Speaker 3: was another gaping hole. So we've got a lot of
Speaker 3: these holes. They have not been properly excavated or filled.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems a little bit. It seems that that
Speaker 2: is what's happening a bit with police brutality in Black
Speaker 2: Lives Matter, that's right.
Speaker 3: Well, And of course one glimmer of hope is that
Speaker 3: these things are being filmed.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: That's why body cams are so important, as we can
Speaker 3: actually get a record of this, this horror, and that
Speaker 3: makes it possible to address it. I mean, imagine how
Speaker 3: difficult it would be to prove something like what we
Speaker 3: saw with the George Floyd case thirty years ago, you know,
Speaker 3: before ubiquitous or so even.
Speaker 2: Now without video, even with video, you know, so imagine
Speaker 2: that without video, right, Yeah, do you get along with
Speaker 2: all your relatives in this house till or do you
Speaker 2: just not talking? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I get along with them. Yeah, I don't see them
Speaker 3: a lot, but yeah, I think we know we have
Speaker 3: different different points of view. But it is interesting because
Speaker 3: my mom, she didn't even know that her dad was
Speaker 3: in the Ku Klux Klan, and I could sort of
Speaker 3: tell by talking with him something like this was going on,
Speaker 3: and she was surprised to learn it from me that
Speaker 3: her own dad had been in the Klan. So some
Speaker 3: aspects of this get covered up it's getting part of
Speaker 3: the sort of psychological denial maybe that that you were
Speaker 3: bringing up earlier.
Speaker 2: Having studied this, I know that there's a difference between
Speaker 2: research and diagnosing versus prescription perhaps, but do any studies
Speaker 2: come up that show what is effective in changing ignorance
Speaker 2: in our in ourselves?
Speaker 3: Well, of course, that's what heedagogy is all about. That's
Speaker 3: why a lot of educators have become so interested in agnetology,
Speaker 3: because that's what education is all about. In a way,
Speaker 3: It's about overcoming overcoming ignorance. You know, there's no magic
Speaker 3: wand that you can waive. But the thing you can do,
Speaker 3: I think is, you know, try to get some of
Speaker 3: the big money out of politics to try to go
Speaker 3: after these institutions that create ignorance. And one of the
Speaker 3: things I do I testify against the tobacco industry as
Speaker 3: an expert witness. And that's one of the things we
Speaker 3: always talk about is how the hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 3: millions of dollars were spent to create this fantasy world
Speaker 3: of what was called alternative causation or the sunny side
Speaker 3: of nicotine, and so exposing that how that worked, diagnosing
Speaker 3: it and showing how it went to very high levels
Speaker 3: because what I found is that twenty five Nobel laureates
Speaker 3: have taken money from big tobaccos. So the corruption of science,
Speaker 3: that's one of the main things I'm interested in is
Speaker 3: how science itself can become corrupted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or
Speaker 4: not they could they didn't stop to think they should.
Speaker 3: Good science as part of these engines of ignorance to
Speaker 3: create distractions about wealth. Cancer is all genetic, it's your ancestry,
Speaker 3: it's all food dies, it's all you know, anything but cigarette.
Speaker 3: So once you understand how these powerful institutions work, that
Speaker 3: lets you understand you know how they might be dismantled.
Speaker 2: And side note, it's easy to look back on horrible
Speaker 2: ignorance and injustice and lies and say, of course that
Speaker 2: was wrong. How could people not know then? How could
Speaker 2: their intuition or moral compass be so skewed by outside
Speaker 2: sources from cigarette commercials to misogyny and more. Now what
Speaker 2: will future generations look back on now with utter mortification?
Speaker 2: What would they profess to build a time machine to
Speaker 2: come back and fight? How opioids are marketed and have
Speaker 2: led to an epidemic our daily dependence on oil, how
Speaker 2: we vaped on TikTok or America's love affair with cheeseburgers.
Speaker 3: Well, sure, and that's why you have these ag gag
Speaker 3: laws in so many states where you can't even film
Speaker 3: inside a slaughter house. There's a recognition that if people
Speaker 3: saw the horror of some of the ways we process animals,
Speaker 3: that this might give us pause. So there are a
Speaker 3: lot of things we do in life that are really
Speaker 3: made possible by a kind of invisibility, a kind of distancing.
Speaker 3: That's something that's important to realize, is that a lot
Speaker 3: of what we are able to see is only because
Speaker 3: we are allowed to see it. I remember when I
Speaker 3: was at Penn State, we were calling to arrange a
Speaker 3: lecture series and I called up and it was like,
Speaker 3: this is Department of Undersea Warfare. And this wasn't even
Speaker 3: the card in the catalog, the college catalog that we
Speaker 3: that we had whole section or division on undersea warfare.
Speaker 3: And so there are a lot of things that are
Speaker 3: kept from us. And again that's why I like to
Speaker 3: expose secrets. I like whistleblowing. You know, you have to
Speaker 3: see these things to let the sunshine in.
Speaker 2: And I have questions from listeners. Is it okay to
Speaker 2: pepper you with them?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: So many questions. And before we get to questions, some
Speaker 2: words from sponsors of the show, who make it possible
Speaker 2: to donate to a cause each week. And this week,
Speaker 2: while researching, I learned of a lecture our guest gave
Speaker 2: citing some extremely hurtful racist tobacco advertising in an effort
Speaker 2: to teach students about how big industries use systemic racism
Speaker 2: as a weapon, and he read off the names of
Speaker 2: a few of the brands that many people in attendance
Speaker 2: were deeply hurt to hear aloud, and later released a
Speaker 2: statement saying it was in effort to illuminate the wrongness
Speaker 2: of the messages, saying, quote, my whole career has been
Speaker 2: devoted to exposing, analyzing, and condemning racism and white privilege.
Speaker 2: And I wanted to support the National Black Law Students Association,
Speaker 2: who spoke out about the incident and educated so many
Speaker 2: on the pain that words can cause, even in historical
Speaker 2: and scholastic contexts. So this week I'm choosing that a
Speaker 2: donation will be going to them, and I support the
Speaker 2: shared goal of dismantling systemic racism, and I think organizations
Speaker 2: who work to keep us all less ignorant, especially when
Speaker 2: it comes to intentions versus impact, which is so important.
Speaker 2: Doctor Pructer also wanted to support Saving Black Lives dot org,
Speaker 2: which is the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council which
Speaker 2: educates the public about tobacco products and their effects on
Speaker 2: Black American and African immigrant populations. And he's been working
Speaker 2: closely with them for years. So a donation goes to them,
Speaker 2: and why not let's do a third donation. This is
Speaker 2: an important topic. It's going to go to the public
Speaker 2: health advocacy. They use the civil justice system to improve
Speaker 2: public health by focusing on litigation targeting tobacco industry products
Speaker 2: and unhealthy foods, and deceptive health marketing maybe jade eggs,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but deceptive gambling practices also all to
Speaker 2: advance public health and social justice. So a lot of
Speaker 2: great donations this week, and a lot of ignorance on
Speaker 2: all of our parts, But what's important is the willingness
Speaker 2: to learn. So those donations were made possible by sponsors
Speaker 2: who may hear about now get value.
Speaker 1: You can't argue with at TESCO with their amazing club
Speaker 1: card prices. Serve up something special with our finest meal
Speaker 1: deal for two starring one main, two sides and dessert
Speaker 1: for only sixteen euro like Succulent Board, be approved Virus
Speaker 1: shined a Strip, Looid Steaks with peppercorn butter or Delicious
Speaker 1: IRUs Chicken Parmegama served with creamy potato, great arm and
Speaker 1: our mix of rainbow root vegetables and enjoy Goozillionaire or
Speaker 1: Soldier Caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop instore or
Speaker 1: online Tesco. Every Little Helps available to most stores, prices
Speaker 1: very in express.
Speaker 2: Okay, now to your questions. Now, the first question is
Speaker 2: about willful ignorance and if it's related to the Dunning
Speaker 2: Krueger effect, in which the less you know, the smarter
Speaker 2: you think you are. Nicole Hawley, Joe Michello, l wink
Speaker 2: Ed Mastovek and first time question asker Phyllis wanted to know.
Speaker 2: People are very excited at the topic, and some people
Speaker 2: asked about the Dunning Dunning Kruger effect and whether or
Speaker 2: not agnetology is related to the Dunning Kirger effect, where
Speaker 2: people who maybe think that they're more intelligent than they
Speaker 2: are are ignorant of what they don't know. Do you
Speaker 2: use that in research at all?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't use that specifically, but that's certainly true.
Speaker 3: Is there's a kind of I link it also to
Speaker 3: a kind of myopia of specialization. You know, the more
Speaker 3: expertise you often get in science, the more narrow is
Speaker 3: your focus, and that becomes a kind of tragedy because
Speaker 3: it's you don't see the forest for the trees, and
Speaker 3: I believe that the truth is in the hole and
Speaker 3: you have to see the big picture. I'm a big
Speaker 3: fan of what we call big history, and also the
Speaker 3: unity of what we know with what animals know, as
Speaker 3: well our unity of biological life in the course of evolution.
Speaker 3: That's one of the things I study also as human origins,
Speaker 3: how we became human. A lot of our deep biology
Speaker 3: is still expressed in our limitations today.
Speaker 2: Okay, quick question, because I am unwillingly ignorant. What is
Speaker 2: big history? Okay? I looked it up, and it's history
Speaker 2: taught from the Big Bang onward instead of just starting
Speaker 2: when us hairy humans meandered on the scene. So big
Speaker 2: history ends up being kind of multidisciplinary because in order
Speaker 2: to teach how the planets and the stars formed and
Speaker 2: the universe expanding. You got to go back and learn
Speaker 2: about physics and astrophysics. It's a bit of a hodgepodge
Speaker 2: of sciences, which is fun. And for more on that,
Speaker 2: you can enjoy the two parter on cosmology with doctor
Speaker 2: Katie Mack, wherein I get cosmic vertigo, which is a
Speaker 2: kind of horror at the scale of things. Now, speaking
Speaker 2: of fear, who asked about fear fueling ignorance? Turns out
Speaker 2: a lot of you. First time question asker Ethan Stoller,
Speaker 2: Aaron Maglisik Stutton, Taggart, Megan Walker, Zora Phoenix, Devan Robertson,
Speaker 2: Misty Don Bethmanico, Sam Coorea and Greg A few people
Speaker 2: had a question about whether or not fear plays into ignorance,
Speaker 2: and Emily Meridith Lewis is a first time question asker
Speaker 2: asks how much does vulnerability play into it versus entitlement.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a great question too. That's why we talk
Speaker 3: about homophobia. That's fairly new to talk about ignorance as
Speaker 3: a kind of fear, or fear as a kind of
Speaker 3: ignorance to not know what it really means to say
Speaker 3: the homosexual, for example, leads to a kind of alien misunderstanding,
Speaker 3: and that I think is a really important part just
Speaker 3: of human relations. Is the distancing of of people from
Speaker 3: one another allows stereotypes to develop, and stereotyping and blanket ignorances.
Speaker 3: It goes back sort of to your point about circulation
Speaker 3: and travel. Descartes used to say, there's three great principles
Speaker 3: for science, travel, travel, travel, because really knowing the other
Speaker 3: and walking in their shoes. That's why I talk about
Speaker 3: the importance of in the history of science of wonder, sympathy,
Speaker 3: and critique. You want to wonder like a child, but
Speaker 3: you also want to have sympathy and you want to
Speaker 3: have critiques. The sympathy part is you want to walk
Speaker 3: in the shoes of the past or in this case,
Speaker 3: in someone else's experience, to understand them so you don't
Speaker 3: fear them then, but then you still retain your humanity
Speaker 3: in your recognition there is right and wrong, and you
Speaker 3: can't you are free to critique, want to lose yourself
Speaker 3: in someone else's shoes, So you want to maintain principles.
Speaker 3: So those are three of the principles I operate with. Wonder, sympathy,
Speaker 3: and critique.
Speaker 2: Oh that's beautiful when it comes to the travel travel
Speaker 2: travel part. What if that causes more of a carbon footprint.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, that's that's part of the big problem.
Speaker 3: The world of the future is going to be very different.
Speaker 3: We're not going to have you biquitous travel, We're not
Speaker 3: going to have you know, cigarettes being sold, We're not
Speaker 3: going to have meat consumption the way we've had it,
Speaker 3: and hopefully we'll even have a lower population because that's
Speaker 3: also part of the problem. So the world of the
Speaker 3: future is going to have to be very different. We're
Speaker 3: we're kind of sailing away, as people like to say,
Speaker 3: running the Book of Genesis backwards, you know, and and
Speaker 3: creating this this unholy world, and that's going to have
Speaker 3: to change.
Speaker 2: I'm doing my part by being infertile. You're welcome. Now,
Speaker 2: did anyone ask about the demographics of climate science believers?
Speaker 2: Katas around He did, as well as Hannah Johnson. Also
Speaker 2: as a first time question, Asher asked if there have
Speaker 2: been research about the demographics of people who are more
Speaker 2: likely to be science deniers, like significant different differences across gender, education, level, income,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 3: Yes. Well, of course, of course, wealth is power. Power
Speaker 3: is wealth, knowledge is power. Wealth helps create knowledge wealth
Speaker 3: can also destroy knowledge, but of course there's huge, huge
Speaker 3: differences in that regard. There an interesting connection with climate
Speaker 3: science denialism is the whole evangelical problem, because a lot
Speaker 3: of climate denialists are evangelical Christians who don't want to
Speaker 3: confront a world where their God is abandoning them in
Speaker 3: a sense or allowing us to follow our own own nest.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's some problems even with the recency of
Speaker 3: the age of the Earth in that whole view, But
Speaker 3: there are some progressive evangelical critics of us fouling our net.
Speaker 3: And that's why we need to think very important metaphorically
Speaker 3: about what kinds of metaphors do we use to overcome denialism.
Speaker 3: Metaphors of the garden, of the steward, of the flock,
Speaker 3: and you know, the caring for our own life as
Speaker 3: for other people. So we're going to have to rethink
Speaker 3: our metaphors. You know, we can't just get away with
Speaker 3: polar bears and even the one two three degree threshold problem.
Speaker 3: That's not good enough. We've got to think much more
Speaker 3: creatively about how to bond people in the stories we tell,
Speaker 3: the allegories, the stories we tell about why we need
Speaker 3: to act differently from how we've acted in the past.
Speaker 2: And I did a little bit of research on this,
Speaker 2: and it turns out that evangelical Christians that just means
Speaker 2: Christians who want to spread the good news, and it's
Speaker 2: kind of been co opted a little bit to mean
Speaker 2: the christ wright. But there are a lot of evangelical
Speaker 2: Christians who do not find that the teachings of Christ
Speaker 2: align with certain political parties. Holy Holy with a w
Speaker 2: Amy Black is a professor of political science at Wheaton
Speaker 2: College and writes a lot about faith and politics. She
Speaker 2: wrote in twenty sixteen, because evangelical voters are an important
Speaker 2: voting bloc, politicians have many incentives to pander to them.
Speaker 2: In this time of rapid social change. Church leaders need
Speaker 2: to train people in the pews on how to respond,
Speaker 2: helping them understand and embody the core commitments of the
Speaker 2: Christian faith. Now, what about folks who do not have
Speaker 2: faith that the earth is round? A lot of you
Speaker 2: asked about flat earthers, including Dee B. Narverson, Mackenzie Campbell,
Speaker 2: Kate Stomps, Kayley Douglas, Cassidy Williams, science teacher, Karen Blaisdell,
Speaker 2: another science teacher, and first time question asker Chloe Chambers.
Speaker 2: First time question askers Kevin Biemer and Mara Rosenbloom and
Speaker 2: Ben Bignell, who says, I drive by a sign for
Speaker 2: flat Earth, Canada twice a day, five days a week
Speaker 2: and wonder every day why people can believe it is
Speaker 2: the road flat. Ben, think about it? Kind of asked
Speaker 2: along that line. Without the ability to connect with people digitally,
Speaker 2: do you think that there'd be fewer flat earthers, Like,
Speaker 2: when did we start believing the Earth was flat?
Speaker 3: No, that's actually a great question. One of the favorite
Speaker 3: gotchas or corrections historians of science like to make is
Speaker 3: actually most people did not think the Earth was flat. Say,
Speaker 3: in the Middle Ages, people knew the world was round.
Speaker 3: That goes back to antiquity. The actually myth that people
Speaker 3: used to think the earth was flat really arises in
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century in order to basically beat our own
Speaker 3: chest and say how much greater we are than the
Speaker 3: Middle Ages. There's a whole book about this about how
Speaker 3: in the eighteen thirties the myth of that people I
Speaker 3: used to think the world was flat arose Now obviously,
Speaker 3: if you go back far enough, I'm sure most people
Speaker 3: were flat earthers. But yeah, since we are in a
Speaker 3: world where misinformation disinformation circulates faster than ever before, I
Speaker 3: think your questioner is quite right. That's allowing some of
Speaker 3: this craziness to flourish, you know, and so there may
Speaker 3: be more flat earthers now than there have been in
Speaker 3: the last three hundred years.
Speaker 2: Just going to toss in real quick. If you want
Speaker 2: more info on this, watch the documentary Behind the Curve.
Speaker 2: I just saw the trailer for it, and wow, wow wow.
Speaker 2: Thank you to patron Nicole Thomas who wrote in quote.
Speaker 2: At first I was furious, but after watching that, I
Speaker 2: understand that people who operate on the fringe beliefs usually
Speaker 2: get further marginalized and isolated with their thoughts. And since
Speaker 2: no one is engaging them with the correct information and
Speaker 2: they've isolated themselves from everyone that has a different set
Speaker 2: of beliefs, it's really easy to retreat to the community
Speaker 2: bubbles that have the same belief set. Thanks for writing in,
Speaker 2: Nicole Thomas, good point. Indeed, you know. Francesca Huggins and
Speaker 2: Toby Krisnik seconded this question. Francesca just asked religion what gives?
Speaker 2: And I do wonder you mentioned evangelical Christians. It seems
Speaker 2: sometimes that there's a disconnect between the teachings of a
Speaker 2: certain religion and the actions of its most extreme promoters
Speaker 2: of the religion. Where is that disconnect where you're like,
Speaker 2: I don't think Christ would do that.
Speaker 3: That's for sure. I mean, you know, the Sermon on
Speaker 3: the Mound is very different from some of the craziness
Speaker 3: we hear in Omega Church nowadays. You know, there are
Speaker 3: good lessons, good principles in all religions, and there are
Speaker 3: moral aspects, there's ontological aspects, and so I think part
Speaker 3: of the problem is they become this commercialization of the churches,
Speaker 3: the merger of churches with the Tea party movement, which
Speaker 3: itself was created by big oil and big tobacco in
Speaker 3: order to fight taxation, in fact, fight governmental regulation. So
Speaker 3: you have to look at these things politically, in the
Speaker 3: political context and see how religions have bonded to these
Speaker 3: other powerful institution. And in many parts of the world
Speaker 3: you can be three religions. You know, in Japan, you
Speaker 3: can be Shintoist and Daoist and Confucian. There's no contradiction there.
Speaker 3: It's really kind of the for something strange about parts
Speaker 3: of the West that we feel we have to be
Speaker 3: either Jewish or Protestant, or Catholic or Muslim. That either
Speaker 3: or is part of the problem. We need to view
Speaker 3: these things as maybe more like a buffet of practices,
Speaker 3: sacred practices, and remember the sacred means that which you value,
Speaker 3: you know, that which cannot be touched in some negative way.
Speaker 3: And we need, I think, to revisit aspects of the sacred.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, you mentioned that kind of really
Speaker 2: stark dichotomy. And I always feel like everything from the
Speaker 2: colors to the mascots. Our political parties have become like
Speaker 2: opposing sports teams more and more. But do you think
Speaker 2: that a strong like third party or more political parties
Speaker 2: would would help see those kind of gray areas more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that would be because there is something
Speaker 3: weird about the binary world we're in where winner takes all.
Speaker 3: Some of the European systems I think are better in
Speaker 3: the sense of parliamentary representation, you know. So I think
Speaker 3: we do have some big problems in how we organize
Speaker 3: our binary world, and I think it's getting much worse.
Speaker 3: So I do worry a lot about that.
Speaker 2: And Jessica Kraver asked, is there a good way to
Speaker 2: handle talking with someone on a subject like refusal to
Speaker 2: wear a mask when any slight mentioned just makes them
Speaker 2: very angry and worked up and they are maybe incapable
Speaker 2: of hearing reason in times of pandemic and self preservation,
Speaker 2: any way to get through to people there's that denial
Speaker 2: be just out of fear.
Speaker 3: It is odd that something as simple as wearing a
Speaker 3: mask has become politicized. You know, basically it's something you
Speaker 3: just follow the rules, right, I mean just but I
Speaker 3: think people need to be just a little more chill,
Speaker 3: you know, as we say in California, don't harsh my mellow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they still call out.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 2: Kelsey's story had a health question and a lot of
Speaker 2: people secondedd this. They said, why are people so willing
Speaker 2: to believe in wellness therapies such as cleanses to remove
Speaker 2: toxins from our bodies thanks liver, but so resistant to
Speaker 2: facts from actual health professionals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's you know, there's a whether what's an idiot
Speaker 3: born every moment or something? A lot of my agnatology
Speaker 3: class I teach both an introduction to agnetology and an
Speaker 3: advanced agnatology class. We've had several students do interesting projects
Speaker 3: on food supplements and how people will pay hundreds of
Speaker 3: dollars for basically something which is basically additives without food.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's a lot of mythology surrounding what
Speaker 3: we eat. I'm a big fan of Michael Pollen. You know,
Speaker 3: eat simply. There's so many mythologies about what we put
Speaker 3: in our bodies. I think because we've had so many
Speaker 3: powerful trade associations promoting sugar or additives or salt or whatever,
Speaker 3: highly packaged processed food. So that's been part of the problem.
Speaker 3: Is that trade association problem I mentioned. I mean just
Speaker 3: one simple example of that. My granddad. Three of my
Speaker 3: four grandparents died from smoking. But my dad's dad, he
Speaker 3: died of a heart attack, and he had smoked two
Speaker 3: packs a day and died in his mid fifties. But
Speaker 3: the theory promoted by the tobacco industry at that time
Speaker 3: was that eggs are what kill you, and so the
Speaker 3: family story was always he died of eggs. So I
Speaker 3: was always terrified of eggs. And then when I finally
Speaker 3: realized by reading the industry's secret documents, the tobacco industry
Speaker 3: basically created that theory attacking eggs that in order to
Speaker 3: exonerate smoking. Oh my god, so you know we do live.
Speaker 3: A wash in mythology is about what.
Speaker 2: We eat, So so so many patrons ask this next question,
Speaker 2: almost fifty. It's the one question on literally all of
Speaker 2: our minds. So I'm just gonna read the names of
Speaker 2: the first time questions submitters who asked it. Another high
Speaker 2: school science teacher, Miranda Chavez, Susan Webb, Alloyd Johnson, scientist
Speaker 2: Courtney Malo, Emily Taylor, Kazio Wisnooski, Troy Langnek, Samantha Sonitch,
Speaker 2: and Kevin Lee He who is the second time question
Speaker 2: asker but forgot to say it was their first time
Speaker 2: last time. And also, you know all of us want
Speaker 2: to know. And one last question A lot of listeners
Speaker 2: had essentially like in Shirley Dark's words, as they say,
Speaker 2: I know others who seem to hold tight to their
Speaker 2: wrong ideas. What are some good steps to take to
Speaker 2: make sure you can maybe get through to people? And
Speaker 2: that that's also you're not clinging to false information. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think I just see, you know a lot of
Speaker 2: the fake news, a lot of of the the doubts
Speaker 2: cast on a lot of media. How do how do
Speaker 2: we correct that? What do we do?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, if it's one on one, of course, intelligent
Speaker 3: listening and sympathetic listening is absolutely crucial. You know. I
Speaker 3: think there's too much often too much talking, not enough
Speaker 3: listening and so and you know, view other people as,
Speaker 3: if nothing else, as anthropologically fascinating. You know, my own
Speaker 3: brother has become all right recently, and we've had many
Speaker 3: back and forth about that, but if nothing else, I
Speaker 3: still love him, and I'm still fascinated by how in
Speaker 3: the world this happened almost you know, in a medical sense.
Speaker 3: But you know, I think we need to be sympathetic
Speaker 3: and to listen and to learn from people whose views
Speaker 3: are very different from us. That's the kind of the
Speaker 3: anthropological ethnographic aspect of think of being a scholar or
Speaker 3: an ordinary person in the world is learning from others,
Speaker 3: however strange they they may seem.
Speaker 2: Is there a way to use empathy to kind of
Speaker 2: de escalate the denial that might come with ignorance.
Speaker 3: Yes, And that's why I have an idea I developed
Speaker 3: it called on surrogacy. Basically, when people deny evolution or
Speaker 3: climate change, they're really not so much dying, evolution or
Speaker 3: climate change. There's something usually that is behind that. So
Speaker 3: we need to understand a particular form of denialism as
Speaker 3: possibly standing for something else. If someone is doesn't believe
Speaker 3: in climate change, is that because they're worried economically that
Speaker 3: their way of life is going to disappear? Is their
Speaker 3: way about a threat to religion? A religious view that
Speaker 3: they might have. Is it, in other words, what stands
Speaker 3: behind these movements? Because a lot of this goes back
Speaker 3: to talk about fear. A lot of ignorance is really
Speaker 3: as you said, about fear.
Speaker 2: And so maybe we would have better luck having an
Speaker 2: open discourse by being empathetic to the fears that are
Speaker 2: behind that and addressing those, rather than to say with
Speaker 2: the people in our lives that we might see having
Speaker 2: viewpoints that are not super kind.
Speaker 3: I think that's exactly right. Yeah, you have to say
Speaker 3: what is at stake, who benefits? What are the alternatives?
Speaker 3: You know, and until you get behind those, than it
Speaker 3: could be just you know, shadow boxing or useless confrontation.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah. I think that, especially right now, it's imperative
Speaker 2: that white people in their lives have those conversations with
Speaker 2: people that they know. As the election approaches this fall,
Speaker 2: you may have friends from back home, cousins who live
Speaker 2: in a state that votes very differently than you, And
Speaker 2: of course it's easier to leave the tough issues unspoken.
Speaker 2: It's almost harder to speak up on a family group
Speaker 2: text than it is to post a lot of hashtags
Speaker 2: on Twitter to people who agree with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get out of your bubble.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah so and have those conversations you know, privately
Speaker 2: with people in your life as well as public ator
Speaker 2: the people who agree with you. Right and last questions.
Speaker 2: I always ask every guest what is the worst thing
Speaker 2: about your job or the thing that you dislike the most.
Speaker 2: What is something that sticks in your craw either from
Speaker 2: a philosophical or just from a practical standpoint, like filing.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I have a great job, which is
Speaker 3: being a professor. I get to interact with students. I
Speaker 3: do miss the personal contact because now it's all over zoom,
Speaker 3: and I miss the interaction in terms of artifacts. When
Speaker 3: I teach ignorance, or I teach world history, or I
Speaker 3: teach human origins, I bring in artifacts and it's not
Speaker 3: the same in the screened world. We already live obsessively
Speaker 3: in a screened world, and so I do miss the
Speaker 3: loss of the artifactual world. So I guess that would
Speaker 3: I would say, is the worst part of my job
Speaker 3: right at the moment. But I'm hopefully hoping that will change.
Speaker 2: What about the thing that you love the most? About
Speaker 2: what you do?
Speaker 3: Well? I love dealing with young people who are learning
Speaker 3: about the world. I love challenging my own views. I
Speaker 3: love finding out where I'm wrong, what I didn't know?
Speaker 3: You know, I wasn't so long ago. I learned there
Speaker 3: was a color called done. I never heard of the
Speaker 3: color done before. So I love learning new things. And
Speaker 3: if people can tell me something I didn't know that,
Speaker 3: I just what could be better?
Speaker 2: And that is what he is trying to do for us. Also,
Speaker 2: what color is done? How does one even spell that?
Speaker 2: Of course I looked at up for us, and it's
Speaker 2: a camely creamy kind of buckskin color. Du win. So
Speaker 2: a dune horse is like a pretty beige horse. So
Speaker 2: when in doubt, google a reputable source? What else? Any
Speaker 2: any places people can start to look if they want
Speaker 2: to make sure that they're dismantling their own ignorance.
Speaker 3: Well, they can always check any of these books that
Speaker 3: are coming out now about ignorance. There's there's a whole
Speaker 3: slew of them. There's a new one, Science and the
Speaker 3: Production of Ignorance, that just came out by a Janet
Speaker 3: Karini and Martin Carrier. Those are people who are agnetology.
Speaker 3: It is also being taught now in Europe. And there's
Speaker 3: the Oreskis Conway book Merchants of Doubt. There's our agnetology book,
Speaker 3: or you know, I've published a lot of other books
Speaker 3: on One is called the Golden Holocaust, which is about
Speaker 3: the use of science as a form of deception by
Speaker 3: the by the tobacco industry. You know. So there's so
Speaker 3: many great. I just finished as signing to students the
Speaker 3: Wallace Well's Uninhabitable Earth.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 3: And before that we did The Shock of the Anthropist Scene,
Speaker 3: which is such a great book. So you know, those
Speaker 3: are some of the hot topics that we like to
Speaker 3: explore in the Agnetology World.
Speaker 2: Great. I will put links to those in the show
Speaker 2: notes as well as to yours agnetology the making and
Speaker 2: unmaking of ignorance, so we'll make sure that we put
Speaker 2: that up to This was so amazing. I can't thank
Speaker 2: you enough for doing this. This is an episode people
Speaker 2: couldn't be more thrilled already for so.
Speaker 3: Great, that's very timely.
Speaker 2: It is indeed, so ask smart people stupid questions, because
Speaker 2: the only thing worse than ignorance is when you don't
Speaker 2: want to do anything to get rid of it. So, yes,
Speaker 2: that was doctor Robert Proctor. You can grab his book Agnetology,
Speaker 2: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, which was co edited
Speaker 2: with LANDA. Schibinger wherever books are sold. And Dude also
Speaker 2: came through with some bookres. So if you hit the
Speaker 2: link in the show notes to Aliward dot com slash
Speaker 2: ologies slash agnetology, there will be links to all of
Speaker 2: those books he mentioned, including his. So I hope you'll
Speaker 2: call a local bookstore and order those up. We are
Speaker 2: at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at ali Ward
Speaker 2: with one L. And if you need perhaps an ologies Sundvisor,
Speaker 2: a swimsuit of Beanie, maybe a T shirt, please don't
Speaker 2: hesitate to hit upologiesmerch dot com. You can tag photos
Speaker 2: of you in ologies Merch hashtagologies merch on Instagram. We'll
Speaker 2: repost you and thank you to Shannonfelds and Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 2: of the comedy podcast You are that for managing merch.
Speaker 2: Thank you to Aaron Talbert for admitting the wonderful Facebook group.
Speaker 2: Hello to all the Ologies redditors, and thanks to all
Speaker 2: the folks who support on Patreon at patreon dot com
Speaker 2: slash ologies, Thanks Emily White and all the ologies transcribers
Speaker 2: who are making these episodes accessible, and Caleb Patten for
Speaker 2: leaping them making him kids safe. Those are both available
Speaker 2: at allie dot com slash Ologies, dash Extras. There's a
Speaker 2: link to that in the show notes as well. Noel
Speaker 2: Dilworth keeps me on schedule and is amazing sleeper assistant
Speaker 2: edits and makes me popcorn when I'm sad. And thank
Speaker 2: you to Dinosaur and Kitty lobbyist Stephen Ray Morris, who
Speaker 2: hosts the podcast see Jurassic Rights and the per cast
Speaker 2: for being lead editor. And Nick Thorburn wrote and performed
Speaker 2: the theme music. And if you stick around to the
Speaker 2: end of the episode, you know I tell you a
Speaker 2: secret every week, And I know I've confessed to you
Speaker 2: in the past that I enjoy canned smoked oysters, but
Speaker 2: just hear me out. If you add a can to
Speaker 2: some black luster soup, it's pretty good. I mean the
Speaker 2: whole thing will taste like hot canned smoked oysters, but
Speaker 2: just toss them in your clamp chowder. Let me know
Speaker 2: how it goes. If you don't like it, it's not
Speaker 2: my fault. I mean it is, but it's my fault
Speaker 2: and I'm sorry. Okay, byebye.
Speaker 1: Get value. You can't argue with at Tesco with their
Speaker 1: amazing club card prices. Serve up something special with our
Speaker 1: finest meal deal for two starring one main, two sides
Speaker 1: and dessert for only sixteen euro like succulent Board be
Speaker 1: approved Virus shined the strip loin Steaks with pepper corn
Speaker 1: butter or delicious Firous Chicken Parmeshana served with creamy potato
Speaker 1: grattam and our mix of rainbow root vegetables. And enjoy
Speaker 1: Goozillionaire or Salder Caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop
Speaker 1: in store or online Tesco. Every little helps available the
Speaker 1: most stores, prices, very and express