Speaker 1: Get ready for.
Speaker 2: Twenty second day of August twenty twenty four. Allegedly, according
Speaker 2: to that thing we call a calendar, I have not
Speaker 2: been live in a while. The reason is, first, I
Speaker 2: was sick, and I got a long story to tell
Speaker 2: you about the succession of events that took place that
Speaker 2: kept me off air has now kept me from producing podcasts.
Speaker 2: I had to miss an o'kelli in the Greek. All
Speaker 2: kinds of mess going on here, and I'll tell you
Speaker 2: all about it, but not until I get to finally
Speaker 2: somebody who I've been trying to get on the show
Speaker 2: for a couple of weeks. Between me being down and
Speaker 2: him being out of town, we couldn't get it done.
Speaker 2: But I gotta tell you, I'm always interested to hear
Speaker 2: what Mike Swanson has to say. Okay, and he's the
Speaker 2: author of two great books that I highly recommend, but
Speaker 2: many other books. He's authored, Why the Vietnam War, First
Speaker 2: of all, you hear ads for that on this show
Speaker 2: and The War State, which I've recommended now for over
Speaker 2: a decade to people as required reading if you want
Speaker 2: to understand modern contemporary American history, and of course the
Speaker 2: post Cold War era if you want to understand it
Speaker 2: all got to include the war state, which is that
Speaker 2: red book you see on the sidebar of my website. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Mike also has a newsletter or all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Maybe you can explain to people how they can still
Speaker 2: sign up for that if they want, because you got
Speaker 2: the substack right, I'm not sure if you're doing that,
Speaker 2: you can explain it, Mike. But we also have some
Speaker 2: other stuff coming up. An article you wrote and a
Speaker 2: little discussion about the upcoming conference in Dallas, Texas, which
Speaker 2: you'll be guess when November twenty second to the twenty
Speaker 2: fourth of this year, you know, exactly, lining up perfectly
Speaker 2: with the historical events surrounding the assassination of the thirty
Speaker 2: fifth president. Coincidentally, that's what the conference is about. I'm
Speaker 2: making jokes, so JFK Lancer November in Dallas. Michael Swatson
Speaker 2: will be a presenter there. Anyway, another fat of me, Mike.
Speaker 2: We haven't heard from you in a while. How are you.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm doing great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really am looking forward to that conference, and
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, I've been traveling quite a bit the
Speaker 3: past couple weeks now. We'll be doing that in September
Speaker 3: but I'm taking time right now to catch up on
Speaker 3: a lot of reading.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mention if we get to it.
Speaker 3: I mentioned what I'm reading at the moment because it
Speaker 3: is JFK related. But in October, I'm gonna put together
Speaker 3: a presentation. You know that I'll be presenting at the
Speaker 3: November conference, and people should go to it, and then
Speaker 3: they not only can get the presentation, but they can
Speaker 3: meet us in person. You too, You're gonna be there
Speaker 3: and some of your other people who've been guests on
Speaker 3: the show or researchers people know about. It's gonna be
Speaker 3: a good event. But what I'm gonna do is I'm
Speaker 3: going to in October put together a presentation full of
Speaker 3: documents no one's used in books, information that isn't in
Speaker 3: books yet either that one day I'll put into a book,
Speaker 3: but that could be published now for a couple years,
Speaker 3: you know the way it takes time to write these things.
Speaker 3: But regardless, it's gonna be about whether the assassination was
Speaker 3: about trying to keep get the Vietnam war going or
Speaker 3: to start a war in Cuba. And again it's gonna
Speaker 3: be I'm going to have documents and two people that go,
Speaker 3: they can look up the documents for themselves, right, and
Speaker 3: it'd be a lot of new information frankly, that I
Speaker 3: don't see anywhere.
Speaker 1: It's not really anywhere else.
Speaker 2: Well, you've done this before again, the two books that
Speaker 2: I recommend Why the Vietnam War features information that people
Speaker 2: have not put out before. You know, in the war
Speaker 2: state at the time you released it, I believe had
Speaker 2: information in it that had not been seen by others.
Speaker 2: You do that, and your skills are great in that
Speaker 2: you find stuff that other people maybe have missed or
Speaker 2: have not included in their arguments before about particular things
Speaker 2: regarding this situation, you know, outside of Dealey Plaza and
Speaker 2: in Lee rby Oswald and forensics and all that. You know,
Speaker 2: how about the motivation? How about the biggest question, why
Speaker 2: this happened? What was the purpose of it? If indeed
Speaker 2: it is not just a lone nut who just one
Speaker 2: day woke up and said, let me just go do this,
Speaker 2: which is apparently the big contention here. You know, he
Speaker 2: didn't have much time to planet or anything, if you
Speaker 2: believe the official stories. But the deal is, you know,
Speaker 2: how about the motive? Then, why the Vietnam War? Well,
Speaker 2: you're almost asking that question here in the JFK case, Right,
Speaker 2: was the Vietnam War and the fact that it was
Speaker 2: definitely eagerly pursued by Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy's death, Is
Speaker 2: that part of the motive? This is something that I've
Speaker 2: contended since I don't know, probably for the past twenty
Speaker 2: five years. Is the key element to the case is
Speaker 2: that that is one of the biggest things that the perpetrators,
Speaker 2: if you will, were interested in, is making sure that
Speaker 2: the Vietnam War would become well, not quite what it became,
Speaker 2: but would be even a thing I think it would
Speaker 2: have ended had Kennedy remained in office. I'm one of
Speaker 2: those guys, and I solidly believe that.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm not asking you to argue that today, Mike, I'm
Speaker 2: just saying that that, to me is one of those
Speaker 2: key elm woman's here about the motive, about the why,
Speaker 2: about what would cause you know, people that should have
Speaker 2: been on the side of protecting the president, the people,
Speaker 2: the elected officials, the will of the people even should
Speaker 2: have been respected by anybody who was involved here if
Speaker 2: there were so sort of insiders involved. Right, So this
Speaker 2: is a key issue, and I can't wait to hear
Speaker 2: about that. And as you said, if people come to
Speaker 2: the conference, they'll be able to see us in person.
Speaker 2: We can hang out a little bit even, you know,
Speaker 2: depending on who you are. I'm not speaking for Mike,
Speaker 2: but I'll hang out with people if you come by.
Speaker 2: And it's great to see brand new researchers. There's going
Speaker 2: to be some young people there as well, some of
Speaker 2: the old you know, some recurring names, maybe even some
Speaker 2: surprises that have not been announced by the way, going
Speaker 2: to be added to the bill. And it's a great
Speaker 2: time to learn, to interact, to enjoy and get the
Speaker 2: new looks at books and all that stuff. And in fact,
Speaker 2: in Mike's case, we're looking at something that isn't even
Speaker 2: a book yet but might be one in the future,
Speaker 2: So this will be great anyway. I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker 2: But I also want to get to this article that
Speaker 2: you published, and why is that relevant. Well, tell me
Speaker 2: a little bit about this article and we'll go back
Speaker 2: to the Kennedy thing in a few minutes. But if
Speaker 2: you wouldn't mind kind of give people the bullet points
Speaker 2: on this article I have in front of us, which
Speaker 2: I'll include the link in the chat at ochelly dot com.
Speaker 2: And also I'll include it with the show notes, but
Speaker 2: would you mind telling us a little bit about it?
Speaker 3: Well, the title of it in it's own Wall Street window.
Speaker 3: And yes, how people can get my newsletter just if
Speaker 3: they tape in Wall Street window, It'll take them to
Speaker 3: a place to opt in. And I've got it set
Speaker 3: up now where people basically have to opt in and subscribe.
Speaker 1: To see the future articles.
Speaker 3: But anyway, this one is titled Google study reveals how
Speaker 3: social media mimetic engineering has altered the human brain for
Speaker 3: the worst.
Speaker 2: Now quite a mouthful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, the phrase mimetic engineering, that's something I never
Speaker 3: heard of before until maybe six months ago, and it's
Speaker 3: come up in a couple I subscribe to the Bookings
Speaker 3: Institute newsletter, which is a defensive think tank, and they've
Speaker 3: done multiple articles using this phrase. And basically what it
Speaker 3: means is using social media memes as propaganda to manipulate
Speaker 3: people into, you know, figuring one thing or the other.
Speaker 3: And frankly, social media is you know, the Facebook feed,
Speaker 3: the Twitter feed and so forth. That's what most of
Speaker 3: the content it really is. It's if it's simply advertisements,
Speaker 3: you know, half the stuff or A good portion of
Speaker 3: it is simply advertising, using memes to to make you
Speaker 3: click or buy or whatever. In politics, you know, the
Speaker 3: Twitter tweet is a meme. Memes are now something that
Speaker 3: you know, we're all used to. But another story came out.
Speaker 3: It was a Routers story a couple of months ago
Speaker 3: that the Pentagon had set up a unit that is
Speaker 3: doing this UH propaganda MI medic engineering campaigns, not in
Speaker 3: the United States but in other countries.
Speaker 1: In the article talked about how.
Speaker 3: They did one in the Philippines a couple of years
Speaker 3: ago during the COVID outbreak that was directed against China.
Speaker 3: But what I stumbled upon a month ago was a
Speaker 3: Google study about how so called it Generation Z and
Speaker 3: that's people born after nineteen ninety five, so they're basically
Speaker 3: thirty or under, and how they're consume news on the Internet,
Speaker 3: and how it's actually different, different than what they expected
Speaker 3: to see. Now, these people are the first, this is
Speaker 3: the first generation to come alive when the Internet, you know.
Speaker 1: Was there. They're born online.
Speaker 2: If they were Okay, so, if you're born in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, the internet existed, it didn't exist in you know,
Speaker 2: the forman exists today, but in nineteen ninety five, you're
Speaker 2: born into that world. If you're a millennial or Generation Z,
Speaker 2: however they define when this begins, But if you start
Speaker 2: at nineteen ninety five or whatever, it works. Right there
Speaker 2: you go. The Internet was out there in public in
Speaker 2: ninety five. It really was out there in the early nineties,
Speaker 2: but I got into it in the midnight. The key.
Speaker 3: The key is, I think they were basically ten years
Speaker 3: old in the two thousands, right, So in two thousand
Speaker 3: and five, they'd be about ten years old. They were,
Speaker 3: you know, the nine to eleven happened when they were chill,
Speaker 3: you know, really young.
Speaker 2: Is a very early childhood memory.
Speaker 1: See.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I've talked to you about this a lot
Speaker 2: over the years. Honestly, if you think back to the
Speaker 2: conversations we've had, I told you about Look, you know,
Speaker 2: these kids grew up in a reality. I was calling
Speaker 2: them the Homeland Generation for a while because I said,
Speaker 2: they grew up in a reality where the constant surveillance,
Speaker 2: whether you go to a store, or you're on the
Speaker 2: street or anything else, is completely normal. Cameras are everywhere, right,
Speaker 2: And I talked about this with social media. I've often
Speaker 2: referred to it as anti social media. This is almost
Speaker 2: like our conversations that you and I have been having
Speaker 2: over the past ten years or jeez, yeah, ten years
Speaker 2: coming into you know, into the visual spectrum of everybody
Speaker 2: now where it's like the stuff that we were talking
Speaker 2: about is exactly this now. I've often argued that it
Speaker 2: was about the compartmentalization, how people become isolated, and nobody
Speaker 2: talked about that until COVID hit, But I think there
Speaker 2: was a psychological isolation already occurring, you know. And again
Speaker 2: this is not me reading the Brooking studies or any
Speaker 2: of this stuff that you did. This is just my observation.
Speaker 2: This did. And if you change the circumstances by which
Speaker 2: somebody lives their environment in a you know, their ecosystem completely,
Speaker 2: certainly you're going to change the way their brain works.
Speaker 2: We're adaptive creatures, right, We adapt to our environment. We
Speaker 2: adapt to the conditions that are just a given when
Speaker 2: we're flung into them one way or another. And we're
Speaker 2: especially adapted to those situations if we were born into them.
Speaker 2: So social media existed right away for these ten year
Speaker 2: olds you're talking about, because Facebook emerges in what two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven something like that. So your social media
Speaker 2: sort of as it exists today, began right there, even
Speaker 2: though it had its roots earlier, I know. But all
Speaker 2: of this is relevant in that this is the way
Speaker 2: that people are connect or are collecting their views of
Speaker 2: the world. And that's what these studies are about, is now,
Speaker 2: here's the results, right after all this time, and what
Speaker 2: have you found in scanning through these different things? What
Speaker 2: is the overall Is there an overall consensus? Is there
Speaker 2: a particular sort of zeitgeist that we can draw from
Speaker 2: just this element of society, how it's interacting online and
Speaker 2: how that's changed people, you know, in the real world.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this study is very new.
Speaker 3: It's a Google study and it's just on the people
Speaker 3: in this age group and what it what they studied
Speaker 3: is how they're looking at news on the internet in
Speaker 3: their news feeds. And one thing they dispel is.
Speaker 1: Over the past couple of years, you know, this idea
Speaker 1: of people aren't able.
Speaker 3: There there's an assumption that a lot of people, a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff on the internet isn't real. You know,
Speaker 3: it's bullshit or excuse me, it's it's it's it's false information,
Speaker 3: and it's you know, flooded with this false information, and
Speaker 3: there's been kind of a fear that younger people they
Speaker 3: didn't grow up in newspapers, so they're flooded with false information,
Speaker 3: and therefore their news illiterate, so to speak, and they
Speaker 3: won't be able to tell the difference between what's real
Speaker 3: and what isn't real. And frankly, people you know that
Speaker 3: in all the time, like now we have an election,
Speaker 3: you can see on Facebook or whatever you're looking at.
Speaker 3: People who are Democrats will think the Republicans fall for
Speaker 3: fake news and vice versa. Well, what they found the
Speaker 3: Google study by examining this these younger Peopleeole dispelled that
Speaker 3: they found that by questioning them about the things that
Speaker 3: they're looking at, that they could determine what was real
Speaker 3: and what isn't that they didn't really have any problem
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 1: What the study found was something.
Speaker 3: Surprising, and that is that it isn't so much that
Speaker 3: they can't tell what isn't real and what isn't it's
Speaker 3: that they don't care.
Speaker 1: They share stuff without care if it's real or not.
Speaker 3: And the way older people would look at stuff is
Speaker 3: that issue is important to them. They will say, oh,
Speaker 3: this is a fake story. Some people at times will
Speaker 3: dig a little deeper to try to disprove something and
Speaker 3: argue with people, whereas the younger people don't even.
Speaker 1: Bother to do that.
Speaker 3: Instead they do is the first thing they look at.
Speaker 3: If I'm just use Facebook as an example, Uh, are
Speaker 3: the comments made about a story? And then they see, oh,
Speaker 3: do the people agree with me? If they don't, then
Speaker 3: they then they pass judgment on them, or they'll say,
Speaker 3: well maybe I'm wrong, and then only then well they
Speaker 3: dig a little deeper, but usually they just want to
Speaker 3: scroll the comments and say and and see what side
Speaker 3: of the comment, you know, what's the majority opinion appeared
Speaker 3: to be it doesn't match their opinion, uh, and then
Speaker 3: pass a judgment. That's mostly usually what they're doing. And
Speaker 3: that is some sort of form of stimulation and an excitement.
Speaker 1: Or whatever. I don't know if it's exciting the past time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I know. What you're getting at is that,
Speaker 2: you know, just like when we looked at the study
Speaker 2: of the like button and how that was created purposely,
Speaker 2: you know, not as a way to go, look, this
Speaker 2: is a way of expressing yourself. Oh no, this was
Speaker 2: a way of doing something entirely different. We looked at
Speaker 2: that a couple of years ago, and fact is this?
Speaker 2: It actually again supports stuff I've been saying, sentimentality above substance. Right,
Speaker 2: So the younger group finds that they want to match
Speaker 2: with senses sentimentality. Does this work with the stuff I
Speaker 2: already think?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Like, it's not about am I going to get new facts?
Speaker 2: Is there some new information that doesn't matter? Does it
Speaker 2: agree with the direction I'm going in already? And if
Speaker 2: it doesn't, let me see why and see what other
Speaker 2: people's reactions and impressions are. Not what the facts are,
Speaker 2: but let me see how other people are reacting. Maybe
Speaker 2: I'll switch sides if I see something that convinces me
Speaker 2: in others opinions. So it's weird it's this.
Speaker 1: If not, you could dismiss those others as idiots or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah it.
Speaker 2: Is, you know, But but again, it's about the sentiment.
Speaker 2: If it goes. If the sentiment goes the right way,
Speaker 2: then great, I support it, doesn't matter if it's real,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter anything else. I support it if the
Speaker 2: sentimentality works for me. If it doesn't, then I can
Speaker 2: attack it or I can ignore it because it doesn't
Speaker 2: go with me. See, that's the thing I was talking
Speaker 2: about with even podcasts. They they don't want to hear
Speaker 2: new information. They want you to echo back the stuff
Speaker 2: they already you know, believe. They want you to reinforce.
Speaker 2: They're looking for, you know, acknowledgment. They're looking for what
Speaker 2: do you call that? You know what I mean? When
Speaker 2: somebody says, no, you know what you're you're right, you're correct,
Speaker 2: they give you, you know, approval, right, what do you
Speaker 2: call that? It's it's like knowledge, but it's not acknowledgment.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm talking about here.
Speaker 1: I can't think of that. I know what you're saying.
Speaker 2: You know. What I'm getting at, though, is what approval?
Speaker 1: Approval?
Speaker 2: It is approval, but it's something else. It's like, Uh,
Speaker 2: I want to be you know, vindicated. Verified there's another
Speaker 2: word still. But it's not about any It's not about
Speaker 2: can I learn something new? Is there a fact that
Speaker 2: changes the way that I see something or the way
Speaker 2: something actually is? Uh, it's not about the facts. It's
Speaker 2: about God. I'm trying to think of what a validation
Speaker 2: that's the word I'm looking for. They want validation. So
Speaker 2: if you make their pre existing, their prejudice, really, if
Speaker 2: you make their prejudice. Stand up and you validate their prejudice.
Speaker 2: Winner doesn't matter what you said, doesn't matter. If there's
Speaker 2: facts in it, they're gonna share it, they're gonna support it,
Speaker 2: they're gonna agree with it, even if it doesn't make sense,
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. It validates their opinion, It validates their feeling
Speaker 2: about the way things are. You know, it's sort of like.
Speaker 1: With it's being in a herd and feeling comfort in.
Speaker 2: That it's herd mentality. But it's even worse than that.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like the economy. Remember we've talked about
Speaker 2: the economy many times, and how many times have we
Speaker 2: had to say that, You know what, here's the thing
Speaker 2: they tell you something like, generally speaking, people feel that
Speaker 2: the economy is going bad. Therefore they insist the economy
Speaker 2: is going bad even if the numbers don't support that,
Speaker 2: and vice versa. Things are going bad, but they believe
Speaker 2: things are going in the right direction. Right. It's like
Speaker 2: it's like everybody has joined a presidential campaign where it's
Speaker 2: like it doesn't matter what the numbers say. We're telling
Speaker 2: you that we feel this way, that's the way it is,
Speaker 2: and literally that will drive economies in certain directions, right,
Speaker 2: Like you'll see the market react to that, where it's
Speaker 2: not that anything's wrong yet, but people think that it's
Speaker 2: going wrong or it's gonna go wrong, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, or vice versa. It's like, well, I think
Speaker 2: everything was going great, so therefore it was and it
Speaker 2: does change things in the real world, even though the
Speaker 2: numbers don't change. Like it's hysterical. It's like, my business
Speaker 2: is doing bad, but your business isn't, you know, failing.
Speaker 2: You're not losing money yet, but it's doing bad because
Speaker 2: they have that attitude. They insist that that's the way
Speaker 2: it is. This sounds confusing to somebody who uses logic
Speaker 2: and wants support, you know, in facts and figures and
Speaker 2: real hard evidence, right, But it's just sort of like
Speaker 2: people have decided in this group their sentimentality is the
Speaker 2: important thing and that's all there is to it. Right.
Speaker 2: But if you step away and you go to Generation
Speaker 2: X or the baby boomers or whatever, we're sitting here
Speaker 2: with a different mentality because our minds are not trained
Speaker 2: the same way with all this, you know, with all
Speaker 2: the added comments on top of it, right after the
Speaker 2: thing is out there. It's not like you know, we
Speaker 2: wait two weeks for a letter to the editor to
Speaker 2: show up for a newspaper, right, you know, proclaiming that
Speaker 2: a story is BS or whatever. But they're used to
Speaker 2: the instant gratification of people pushing back against the news article,
Speaker 2: a post, an ad, even right right away. There's reactions
Speaker 2: that we can observe. So this changed the way people
Speaker 2: operate in gathering information entirely. Does any of this make sense, Mike,
Speaker 2: or do I sound like I'm talking.
Speaker 1: About No, That's exactly what I'm trying to argue.
Speaker 3: However, I suspect that, yes, that this study is focused
Speaker 3: on this generation Z right, and it's not studying other people.
Speaker 3: And I would suspect that this is now becoming widespread,
Speaker 3: that this has happened to them first, because you know,
Speaker 3: this is what they were born into, this system, but
Speaker 3: it's now you know, become the dominant way most people
Speaker 3: get news too. Very few people are subscribing to newspapers,
Speaker 3: news sites, and news sites themselves are you know, shrinking
Speaker 3: in terms of traffic, and more and more people are
Speaker 3: getting their news, local, national, from social media feeds. You know,
Speaker 3: I mean, I know that's a fact or apps. You know,
Speaker 3: the news break app or whatever, you know, different things
Speaker 3: like that, But you.
Speaker 1: Know what is true.
Speaker 3: So I think most people are getting their news this
Speaker 3: way already. I think these younger people are just the
Speaker 3: vanguard of these changes. In fact, I was getting not
Speaker 3: going to do it, but for a few years I
Speaker 3: was studying the local news industry and I subscribe to
Speaker 3: a media publication just for the news industry. And you know,
Speaker 3: they do these studies, you know, how do we survive
Speaker 3: or what can we do?
Speaker 1: And one of the things that.
Speaker 3: Has been studied is this again the same sort of thing,
Speaker 3: different study that's Generation Z people is that multiple studies
Speaker 3: have shown that that they are getting their news from
Speaker 3: TikTok and YouTube more than even Facebook.
Speaker 1: And I'm not doing that.
Speaker 3: But an argument that this news industry publication is making
Speaker 3: is that this is act this, this is going to
Speaker 3: be the future. If you're gonna want a viable news organization,
Speaker 3: you're going to have to do these short form videos
Speaker 3: and integrate that to attract people like they've got a way.
Speaker 1: If you organize.
Speaker 3: If you look at how these people are finding information,
Speaker 3: younger people, they're going to TikTok, YouTube and then if
Speaker 3: they really want to dig deep into something. They'll follow
Speaker 3: a person on there that they find and then if
Speaker 3: they have books or recommend them to other sources, then
Speaker 3: they'll go down deeper, you know, say on a topic.
Speaker 3: But let me ask you this. When I wrote this,
Speaker 3: it's not that long, but I thought about this phrase
Speaker 3: the medium is the message and that, and then I
Speaker 3: looked up, you know, that's a phrase I've heard of before.
Speaker 3: But then I looked up where it came from and
Speaker 3: so forth, and it dates back to nineteen sixty four
Speaker 3: and it was mainly being applied.
Speaker 1: It was being applied to television.
Speaker 3: And the idea behind the phrase is that every media technology,
Speaker 3: whether it's printing presses which creates newspapers, books, speech, have
Speaker 3: a form to them which impacts the way people view
Speaker 3: the world in their thicking processes, which is what we
Speaker 3: just applied to social.
Speaker 1: Media now.
Speaker 3: In what I'm put in the article as well, if
Speaker 3: the medium is the message when it comes to memes,
Speaker 3: it's us for them, you know, and can and conforming
Speaker 3: being used to group thinking. And I believe this is
Speaker 3: really compatible with authoritarian structures of society.
Speaker 1: Well, sure it is, you know, it is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, this causes the escalation of the ability to
Speaker 2: control people because everything is done in a shorter, more convenient,
Speaker 2: more punchy with less information attached to it. And just
Speaker 2: you know, look, if all you have to do is
Speaker 2: push sentiment and you only need a sentence or two,
Speaker 2: that's great. You don't have to write a whole script.
Speaker 2: You don't have to write a book to propagandize people.
Speaker 2: None of that, right, and is the media of the
Speaker 2: message in a way, it is as the technology has
Speaker 2: evolved and you're able to reach more people with shorter experiences,
Speaker 2: shorter forms of information, of shorter forms to get your
Speaker 2: messages across. Right, You don't need to write a giant
Speaker 2: book anymore to get a point across. You don't need
Speaker 2: to go to the trouble of getting a broadcast together,
Speaker 2: creating a radio broadcast, right, that's nice and clear and
Speaker 2: the signals are done, or TV or okay, maybe we
Speaker 2: should put it out on videotapes and make a publication
Speaker 2: and go through the trouble of distributing that. All of
Speaker 2: these things as it's become you know, much faster and
Speaker 2: much more compact over time, means that yes, indeed, the
Speaker 2: way people are receiving the messages has been altered. I'll
Speaker 2: tell you a funny thing is I just popped open
Speaker 2: X real fast while I'm talking to here, thinking to
Speaker 2: myself because X is behind the time. See, Facebook is
Speaker 2: more for older people at this point. Mike, okay, sure.
Speaker 2: Like a few years ago, it was like, oh, you're
Speaker 2: you're like a grandpa if you're watching TV. You know,
Speaker 2: you actually watched TV. Remember that became very trendy. Though
Speaker 2: I don't watch television anymore. You know, nobody watches TV. Uh,
Speaker 2: that's kind of passe, it's outdated. That's for older people, right.
Speaker 2: And while people were watching TV, it was like nobody
Speaker 2: reads the newspapers anymore. So on and so forth. Always
Speaker 2: as people, as new technologies emerge, the younger people grab
Speaker 2: up the new technology and that becomes their new way
Speaker 2: of receiving information. Lagging behind them is the previous generation.
Speaker 2: We are generation X, right, and we're before these, you know,
Speaker 2: generation Z and obviously in the alphabet right, you know,
Speaker 2: the idea was that our brains were getting eaten up.
Speaker 2: The way that we were receiving information are a spans
Speaker 2: were being taken away, not by the Internet but by television. Right.
Speaker 2: TV broke things down into quick news segments. TV broke
Speaker 2: things down into you know, simple presentations in an hour.
Speaker 2: They would try and tell you about something that maybe
Speaker 2: you would have had to take in a class for
Speaker 2: six months to learn about, uh, if you were looking
Speaker 2: at educational stuff. Plus there was the junk food of
Speaker 2: it too, you know, the junk food with a break.
Speaker 1: TV was called a vast wasteland.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a vast wasteland, an intellectual wasteland because it was
Speaker 2: destroying us, right. It was like, TV is gonna make
Speaker 2: you stupid. I mean you heard these things growing up,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Well, I tell you, I mean, I didn't put this
Speaker 3: in there, but there's yeah i Q there's IQ test Okay.
Speaker 1: That I didn't. I've just read this couple of days ago.
Speaker 3: The average IQ a person went up two points from
Speaker 3: nineteen forty five to about fifteen years ago, and it
Speaker 3: peaked and it's now gone down two.
Speaker 1: Points across the entire world.
Speaker 3: Right, So I guess the TV didn't dumb people down,
Speaker 3: but the social media has.
Speaker 2: The Internet has definitely because Luke, what is but notice
Speaker 2: the echo here? Because what has happened? Your attention span
Speaker 2: has dropped off even more now with the internet, right,
Speaker 2: we started out and gigantic podcasts used to get done.
Speaker 2: At one point there was no podcasts, but then there
Speaker 2: were podcasts, right, and podcasts would be hours and hours long.
Speaker 2: Nowadays people release podcasts that are real short. There are
Speaker 2: some people out there making whole podcasts that are ten
Speaker 2: minutes long when they do them right, and that's their
Speaker 2: whole thing. They have ten and fifteen minute long presentations
Speaker 2: boom bom boom bom boom, and they're meant to be
Speaker 2: concise and entertaining and all that stuff. But no longer
Speaker 2: do you have the half hour or one hour TV
Speaker 2: show or whatever, or the two hour podcast or the
Speaker 2: four hour radio show. Talk shows used to be four
Speaker 2: hours long on the radio. If anybody still listens to
Speaker 2: talk radio, even though everything's been shortened. I've even shortened
Speaker 2: my own show in the past two years. But everybody
Speaker 2: has shortened their stuff. Why because nobody's got the attention
Speaker 2: span for it. I think, finally, yeah, this may have
Speaker 2: succeeded in really truly creating a global siphoning away of
Speaker 2: intelligence because no longer is there a texture. There's not
Speaker 2: a lot of information in the information age, right, But anyway,
Speaker 2: when I popped open X. I found it ironic because
Speaker 2: as we're talking, Elon Musk decides to do one of
Speaker 2: these you know, black graphics with white lettering, which is
Speaker 2: meant to be very it's very carefully constructed psychologically. When
Speaker 2: you take a bloak and you put white lettering on it. Okay,
Speaker 2: look it up. You know, I'm not asking you to, Mike.
Speaker 2: I'm saying for the listener, look it up. There's a
Speaker 2: specific reasoning behind doing this. But he created a meme.
Speaker 2: And this is a guy who owns Twitter, right, X whatever,
Speaker 2: and he's branding everything X. I told people about that,
Speaker 2: and they're just starting to see it this week too,
Speaker 2: where it's like I told you everything's going to be X.
Speaker 2: But anyway that's happening. He put out one of these
Speaker 2: black memes with just white lettering, and what does it say?
Speaker 2: Propaganda isn't just about creating fake news, period, It's also
Speaker 2: about hiding real news. Now, is he right or wrong?
Speaker 2: I would say that no, propaganda is certainly you know,
Speaker 2: when you push propaganda out there, obviously you want to
Speaker 2: hide the things that are actually news, that actually treat
Speaker 2: you to information inform you. You do want to hide
Speaker 2: the truth, and you do that by usually obfuscating, by
Speaker 2: by placing some of the truth and blending it with
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of bs, and then you create new
Speaker 2: narratives out of it. But like you said here, you know,
Speaker 2: everybody got that phrase fake news, fake news. They loved it.
Speaker 2: Trump was screaming it, you know, et cetera. And it's
Speaker 2: still a very popular sort of phrase that people just
Speaker 2: love to toss around. And propaganda and fake news are
Speaker 2: not the same thing, by the way, but it says
Speaker 2: right here propaganda isn't just about creating fake news, isn't
Speaker 2: just about that. It's also about hiding real news. I
Speaker 2: just find it ironic that Elon Musk is the guy
Speaker 2: putting this out, you know, not not because he's a
Speaker 2: right winger and he's clearly, you know, in support of Trump, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, you see the interview with him and
Speaker 2: Trump on you know that that.
Speaker 3: Was put out on that some of it, some of it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't watch the whole thing or listen to the
Speaker 3: whole thing.
Speaker 2: Interesting discussion in the subtext there, not the stuff that
Speaker 2: the mainstream media pointed out to you. But it is
Speaker 2: very interesting to watch this interplay in that. Here's two
Speaker 2: people that I guarantee you the you know, millions upon
Speaker 2: millions of people that did watch this downloaded whatever experience it.
Speaker 2: I mean, they had something like two hundred million views
Speaker 2: or something right away. You know, these people are not
Speaker 2: living in the same reality that you or I live in.
Speaker 1: Mike.
Speaker 2: This is a conversation between two people who are one thing.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying I'm not supporting Democrat, the Harris or
Speaker 3: whatever when I say this, Yeah, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: care for them either.
Speaker 2: But in the past, the only person you ever revealed
Speaker 2: that you voted for on the show, by the way,
Speaker 2: is is Donald Trump? Just for the record, but go ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's true. Actually, but that said that was Look
Speaker 1: what you know the show, their show had trouble getting started.
Speaker 2: You know, oh that was ironic too, is but the
Speaker 2: guy who owns the platform and is a tech genius
Speaker 2: and the other guy who's super stable genius in media savvy,
Speaker 2: the two of them get together and what do they
Speaker 2: have technical difficulties?
Speaker 3: That is this, guys, they're both billionaires. They can't get
Speaker 3: the show going. Billionaires.
Speaker 2: But not just billionaires, Mike, but a billionaire who owns
Speaker 2: a social media platform, this.
Speaker 1: Platform, it's supposed to be a genius.
Speaker 2: Who is a g a tech genius in Indian.
Speaker 1: But what struck me about politically? Politically?
Speaker 2: Politically?
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things is that I wasn't.
Speaker 2: Even talking about politics, by the way, but go ahead.
Speaker 2: Politically I didn't.
Speaker 3: I don't really know what you're referred to, but I'll
Speaker 3: just throw this out there first because I do.
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you're referred to. But they.
Speaker 3: They were bashing unions, yeah, and making making it funny
Speaker 3: to fire people because elon you know, which Politically I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't get it because Trump is you know, they
Speaker 3: got the JD.
Speaker 1: Vayans character. He's supposed to be for the workers.
Speaker 3: And they went the union vote in Michigan and there's
Speaker 3: battleground state. So what's the benefit of bashing unions on
Speaker 3: the show phiblically for Trump?
Speaker 1: And then he was doing along Musk.
Speaker 3: Musk was one who started, but Trump enjoyed it, you know,
Speaker 3: So I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't really get that.
Speaker 2: No, it's look those.
Speaker 1: I mean to come off, that's just stupid.
Speaker 2: Listen. I don't disagree with you, but there is Listen.
Speaker 2: They always tell you it's three D chess. You got
Speaker 2: to understand, Mike, there's a big, grand strategy to it.
Speaker 2: But the reason for this is exactly what I was
Speaker 2: bringing up. These guys are not connected to the real world.
Speaker 2: They live in a completely different reality because they're on
Speaker 2: a different level financially, they interact with people in a
Speaker 2: different way. The owners of corporations, believe me, have a
Speaker 2: different lifestyle than the guy who's mopping up the floor
Speaker 2: than the guy who's using their product. Okay, they're not
Speaker 2: connected to you or I the things that would make
Speaker 2: sense to you or I, like, i'd be upset. That's
Speaker 2: my job. If it's only numbers to them, then what's
Speaker 2: the big deal? Just like you know, Musk is closing
Speaker 2: his operations in Brazil right now, right you know, as
Speaker 2: of August seventeenth, I think, according to Reuters, excuse me,
Speaker 2: and he's just closing up Twitter in Brazil because they
Speaker 2: were trying to put some restrictions on him that he
Speaker 2: felt violated his free speech rights on a global level.
Speaker 2: I guess, you know, not in America, but his free
Speaker 2: speech rights. And he said, you know know what, I'm
Speaker 2: just going to close my Twitter operations in Brazil my
Speaker 2: office and all that. Nobody bats an eye at this.
Speaker 2: Nobody bats an eye at that he walked into Twitter
Speaker 2: and you know, paid billions of dollars for it and
Speaker 2: fired a whole bunch of people. They think that somehow
Speaker 2: this is a guy who's on the side of the people.
Speaker 2: You're right, But he runs corporations, and the way he
Speaker 2: runs his corporations, whether it's Tesla or this or anything else,
Speaker 2: take a look at his behaviors and tell me. This
Speaker 2: is a guy who is an advocate for most of you,
Speaker 2: who isn't really actually even an advocate for free speech,
Speaker 2: which is what I hear all the time. This guy
Speaker 2: is a great crusader and warrior for pre speech.
Speaker 3: Will Yeah, I'll tell you what I think that's really about.
Speaker 2: Okay, tell me.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: I'd never really thought of this too recently either, but
Speaker 3: where I live a couple there's a road, you know,
Speaker 3: four miles from me. There's a big building on this road,
Speaker 3: like a warehouse, buildings, concrete and big. And this guy
Speaker 3: was running a business there. It's like ten years younger
Speaker 3: than me, and he was making he was what I
Speaker 3: was told was he was selling vitamins on Amazon now
Speaker 3: and making millions, millions, and then he.
Speaker 1: Got busted and arrested.
Speaker 3: And it turned out what he was doing was buying
Speaker 3: steroids from and they're coming from China and he was
Speaker 3: selling them on Amazon well and running ads all over. Well,
Speaker 3: the thing about it is this had in a while ago,
Speaker 3: and you know, he made deals and didn't get in
Speaker 3: too much trouble. But I forget You know, that story
Speaker 3: now resonates with me because I now realize that when
Speaker 3: you put it all together, Facebook, Twitter, all these social medias,
Speaker 3: and JP Satilly I know when he was on your
Speaker 3: show mentioned this a couple of times. They are not
Speaker 3: They have a clause that they got pasted when Clinton
Speaker 3: was president, and a bill that makes them immune to
Speaker 3: the content that they're not responsible legally for the content
Speaker 3: on their websites.
Speaker 1: So Facebook can.
Speaker 3: Run ads, have people pay them, trying advertisements to buy
Speaker 3: illegal drugs, and if Facebook detects the ads and takes
Speaker 3: them down, that's fine, but there but if they don't
Speaker 3: and the ads keep running, or they run for months
Speaker 3: and someone buys the drugs and dies, they're not liable.
Speaker 1: However, if I put out a.
Speaker 3: Newspaper and did that, I would go to jail.
Speaker 1: Right, you know i'd be. So they're given a special munity.
Speaker 3: In speech to do things that you or I cannot
Speaker 3: do a newspaper can't do, a magazine can't do. You
Speaker 3: couldn't do in your radio show, you'd put in prison.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: No, they have a community, and that's the free speech
Speaker 3: that they're really protecting.
Speaker 2: Well, the funny thing is, even even on my my
Speaker 2: little show here just broadcast, there are broadcast standards, believe
Speaker 2: it or not, and I have to suffer both of
Speaker 2: them in in the US and in Europe that if
Speaker 2: I do certain things even on my little minor broadcast here, okay,
Speaker 2: online you have to go find it and everything. It's
Speaker 2: not on the airwaves. So the FCC has nothing to
Speaker 2: do with it. So I can curse and I can
Speaker 2: break lots of rules. But guess what, there's still rules,
Speaker 2: and some of those rules are I can be held
Speaker 2: liable for things if I did something that caused a
Speaker 2: criminal act to occur. Okay, if it's found that I
Speaker 2: was literally somebody who provoked, who facilitated a criminal act
Speaker 2: one way or another, whether I sold a product or
Speaker 2: you know, or or I or I encourage people to
Speaker 2: do something and they took actions, right, I can be
Speaker 2: held liable and there's really harsher laws for it in Europe,
Speaker 2: believe it or not. Oh yeah, So there are broadcast
Speaker 2: standards that you can be held to. But what Facebook
Speaker 2: and these other entities are not held to at all
Speaker 2: is not only the broadcast problem, because a lot of
Speaker 2: that stuff was through the FCC. You know, you couldn't
Speaker 2: advertise this, you're putting air that And look, the Internet
Speaker 2: doesn't go out on the airwaves. It's not on the
Speaker 2: public airwaves, so therefore it's not part of the FCC's responsibility,
Speaker 2: the Federal Communications Commission, by the way. But still there
Speaker 2: are rules in place anyway. There's a lot to this, Mike, Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the thing is.
Speaker 3: When they can run companies that are able to do
Speaker 3: things that legally no one else can do, that puts
Speaker 3: them in a situation where they're operating out kind of
Speaker 3: lawlessly or they're like outlaws. Yeah, and they're able to
Speaker 3: do it legally, you know, without any consequences. That puts
Speaker 3: them in a position where they're able to make money
Speaker 3: that no one else can make. It makes their companies
Speaker 3: more profitable than they would be if they didn't operate
Speaker 3: that way. So how much of their stock valuations, how
Speaker 3: much of you know, their profit margins are simply because
Speaker 3: they're allowed to operate in these gray areas where anyone
Speaker 3: listening to show.
Speaker 1: If they try to do, they'd be put in prison, right.
Speaker 3: And what you're looking at is people who say they're
Speaker 3: for free speech, like Elon Musk, while he downgrades or
Speaker 3: banishes people who criticize him or competitors.
Speaker 1: You know he did that with substacks.
Speaker 3: Take away substack links because I don't want substack because
Speaker 3: they might compete with me.
Speaker 1: That's freedom of speech.
Speaker 3: The freedom of speech they're trying to protect is these
Speaker 3: special privileges that they have.
Speaker 1: What they really are.
Speaker 3: That Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, they're monsters, They're human monsters, right,
Speaker 3: And what Elon wants to do is put chips in
Speaker 3: people's brains.
Speaker 2: Well, I can't say that. I know he wants to
Speaker 2: put gyps in everybody's brain.
Speaker 1: But now there we go.
Speaker 2: Now there's something that he does want to do. You know,
Speaker 2: he's willing to sell the chips if you can figure
Speaker 2: out how to make them. But here's the thing, just
Speaker 2: like with his cars, you might order him and not
Speaker 2: get him for three years because they're not ready. You know,
Speaker 2: that's that's a common problem with him. But you've struck
Speaker 2: on something very important here, which is that, yeah, there
Speaker 2: are people that are in particular positions, that are privileged
Speaker 2: where they can get away with doing certain things. Get
Speaker 2: ready because they're figuring out a lot of stuff that
Speaker 2: they can get away with. Let me let me tell
Speaker 2: you something else, strange fact that has come up in
Speaker 2: a couple of court cases and nobody will talk about it.
Speaker 2: And I'm almost not sure if I should say this
Speaker 2: on my show, but here's the thing. You know those
Speaker 2: cases where people have live streamed you know, murders, you
Speaker 2: know where people have turned around and you have Facebook
Speaker 2: takes it down and whatnot. But there is a case
Speaker 2: they can be made that if you are inciting a
Speaker 2: crime in certain jurisdictions, and I know this is a
Speaker 2: factual thing, if you incite a crime, all right, like
Speaker 2: you encourage someone to commit a crime, you can be
Speaker 2: held at least partially liable for that criminal act. So
Speaker 2: an argument could be made in a court you would
Speaker 2: think that says, you know, the reason why this guy
Speaker 2: did it is so he could stream it on Facebook
Speaker 2: and people did that on Facebook Live. The shootings and
Speaker 2: all kinds of things. Yeah, people did it because they
Speaker 2: were able to stream these things and they got away
Speaker 2: with it. And in some cases it took them a
Speaker 2: while to take it down and didn't come down like
Speaker 2: in five minutes. You know, like if you bootlegged I
Speaker 2: don't know, you know south Park cartoons, you know, they
Speaker 2: would knock you down in five minutes, right, the algorithm
Speaker 2: would catch it. But you know, that's protecting content. But
Speaker 2: some people might say that there have been crimes and
Speaker 2: there have been tortures that people have committed and put
Speaker 2: on Facebook Live where they kidnapped people and done things
Speaker 2: to them. There is a lot of wild cases out
Speaker 2: there that haven't gotten the big headlines. And some people
Speaker 2: could say, you know that this was encouraged because you
Speaker 2: could get a lot of clicks, You could get a
Speaker 2: lot of crazy people that want to watch this and
Speaker 2: believe it or not, these performances are encouraged by Facebook,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, because they pumped them full
Speaker 2: of violent content all day. Then they turn around to
Speaker 2: try and get the attention. They go decide to make
Speaker 2: a point because they you know, and in some cases
Speaker 2: this was high school kids turned around and captured some
Speaker 2: kid they were bullying and tortured them on Facebook live.
Speaker 2: There's like dozens of cases of this that I know about.
Speaker 2: Do you know about any of this.
Speaker 3: I don't know about the kids being tortured, but I
Speaker 3: mean vaguely I can. There's stories I've heard over the years.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't have them getting great in my mind.
Speaker 2: Well, the first first ones I found were these kids
Speaker 2: were high school students, like you know, juniors and seniors
Speaker 2: in high school that you know, decided to pick on somebody,
Speaker 2: so they tied them up, put them on Facebook Live
Speaker 2: and started burning them with cigarettes and beating them and
Speaker 2: all this other stuff. And the one kid died, you know,
Speaker 2: had suffered a heart attack in the midst of being tortured.
Speaker 2: They were, you know, putting gags in his mouth and
Speaker 2: doing all kinds of stuff, and he had some kind
Speaker 2: of I don't know, seizure or whatever and died during this.
Speaker 2: And that was one case. But here's the thing lawyers
Speaker 2: have tried to introduce. Maybe Facebook is liable because they
Speaker 2: encouraged this activity and allowed these people to live stream.
Speaker 2: You know, in some cases these things went on for
Speaker 2: hours online. It's crazy, and you know, and some people
Speaker 2: downloaded it later, which is why you know the I
Speaker 2: mean in some case these I'm just telling you this
Speaker 2: has happened. Now, if you were on a radio station, Mike,
Speaker 2: or if you and I you know, printed something on
Speaker 2: your website even and put out a newspaper or whatever,
Speaker 2: and or we were on this show right here, and
Speaker 2: we encourage people to do stuff. You know, what you
Speaker 2: should do is find this kind of person in your
Speaker 2: neighborhood and do X y Z to them, right we
Speaker 2: If somebody turns around and does it and they show
Speaker 2: that they were listening to this show, they could take
Speaker 2: us to court as what accessories. We encouraged it, We
Speaker 2: incited it, Okay, but see Facebook, you got all kinds
Speaker 2: of people randomly inciting it. You have a forum in
Speaker 2: which this was allowed to go on. There's nothing stopping
Speaker 2: people from doing it, right and all that. Plus they're
Speaker 2: being pumpable of all this other crap, which is getting
Speaker 2: their rage level up all day. You know, do you
Speaker 2: see the point I'm trying to make?
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly. And and the thing about is it's possible.
Speaker 3: You know that one day there will be growing awareness
Speaker 3: of this. And I think a lot of people already
Speaker 3: have a negative view of social media, and and you know,
Speaker 3: everyone knows stories of something bad that.
Speaker 1: Has you know, people have been influenced somehow from it or.
Speaker 2: Whatever, even in minor cases again, yeah.
Speaker 3: Just getting depressed or what you know, we'll get having
Speaker 3: trouble with your diet, or you know, wanting to be
Speaker 3: too girls get want to be become bohemiic or something.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Okay, the pure pressure and the bullying and the all
Speaker 2: that stuff is more minor than the murder and torture.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, but regard but everyone knows some stories
Speaker 3: of minor incidences.
Speaker 1: You know, but either way, either way, what.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to say is people know there's a bad
Speaker 3: stuff going on to this. Social media has bad impacts.
Speaker 3: Well you know, you look at the car industry.
Speaker 2: But here's the protection. Let me get to the protection
Speaker 2: part of this though, real fast, is that even in
Speaker 2: minor instances where people are saying and I'm not saying
Speaker 2: I agree that this is true or not, but in
Speaker 2: some cases people say, you know, look they're able to
Speaker 2: use this thing as a tool to bully and my
Speaker 2: kid was bullied. You got increased suicides, all these peer
Speaker 2: pressure things, right, these stories, Well, that is a crime.
Speaker 2: If somebody's harassing somebody like that, if somebody is intimidating them,
Speaker 2: you know, and using this. If you use a phone, indeed, okay,
Speaker 2: if you use a telephone, an old telephone. If I
Speaker 2: call you on a landline, you know from here, and
Speaker 2: call your landline and say I'm going to kill you, Mike. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know what I just did. I just made a
Speaker 2: threat to you, and actually I crossed state lines to
Speaker 2: do it. I've committed a federal offense. If they do
Speaker 2: this stuff on Facebook or on one of these social
Speaker 2: media platforms and they torture and bully somebody. They've tried
Speaker 2: to bring this into court too. And what did we
Speaker 2: end up with? Elon Musk, you know what testified before
Speaker 2: Congress if you remember, No, not Elon Musk. Excuse me,
Speaker 2: excuse Zuckerberg. I misspoke. Zuckerberg goes before Congress and they're like,
Speaker 2: do you think you have any responsibility here? And he
Speaker 2: said no. And guess what. Facebook has not been held
Speaker 2: accountable for any of this stuff.
Speaker 1: They can't be.
Speaker 2: They try and bring it into court and they are protected.
Speaker 2: But I'm telling you now, any other type of medium
Speaker 2: outside of these online forums like this are not protected.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of those things people just haven't seen.
Speaker 2: Nobody's making a big enough stink about it, you know,
Speaker 2: and then what do we do. We'll wind up descending
Speaker 2: into discussions about the dark web and this and that,
Speaker 2: which is a whole other problem. But I think it's
Speaker 2: more of an imagined problem than this one that's right
Speaker 2: in front of us every day, that's out in the open.
Speaker 2: And indeed, I think it's changed people, not just for
Speaker 2: the worst, but just for benign ways too. It is
Speaker 2: certainly altered the way people are gathering information and communicating
Speaker 2: with one another. And I've argued over and over again
Speaker 2: again pre pandemic that people were isolated and contained in
Speaker 2: these boxes and continue to remain to be there where
Speaker 2: their entire reality is fed to them by an algorithm
Speaker 2: that guess what Mike does exactly what people actually want, which,
Speaker 2: as we can see from those studies, they want their
Speaker 2: prejudiced belief. They want their preconceived notion fed back to them.
Speaker 2: Whether it's right or not, whether it's supported by facts
Speaker 2: is irrelevant. That's what they want, and that's what the
Speaker 2: algorithms do. You like violence, here's some more violence. You
Speaker 2: like history, here's some more history. The algorithms do this
Speaker 2: and keep you contained in a world where you'll be
Speaker 2: protected from new information. You'll be protected from things that
Speaker 2: don't you know, focus on your sentimentality, regardless of substance.
Speaker 2: You'll be fed. If you're gonna be fed substance, it's
Speaker 2: the substance you wanted now, so you know. And that's
Speaker 2: real helpful when you want a movie that's just like
Speaker 2: the last movie you watched. Oh, I like action movies.
Speaker 2: That's great for those kind of algorithms, But when it
Speaker 2: comes to being informed about the world, you're only getting
Speaker 2: what it is you already decided you want. It means
Speaker 2: that you do what you're stagnating intellectually. You're not being
Speaker 2: exposed to anything that you don't want to be. Really,
Speaker 2: it's like the ultimate safe space, and it's being done digitally.
Speaker 2: Or do you disagree with me? Tell me I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: No, I agree with what you're saying.
Speaker 3: I just wonder this really has only been around now
Speaker 3: for ten years or so, maybe even less than that,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe eight years, but we're going you know,
Speaker 3: no more than ten, and it's probably not going to
Speaker 3: be around forever. In its current form, It's only been
Speaker 3: around for ten years. If you look at like the
Speaker 3: tobacco industry, well.
Speaker 2: Don't you think it's been around for more like twenty years, Mike,
Speaker 2: Because I mean it began in the oh something's right,
Speaker 2: oh five?
Speaker 1: Like you know mysell, I really think like the social
Speaker 1: media's we know.
Speaker 2: It well again, Facebook started. Let me go look at
Speaker 2: when Facebook started. I think it was like two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven though, okay, okay, I mean I'm just saying
Speaker 2: I'm going to go look just to be sure. But
Speaker 2: I mean Facebook and even Twitter, I think, yeah, you're.
Speaker 3: Right that that law giving them all this immunity was
Speaker 3: made when Clinton was present.
Speaker 2: And that was made when Clinton was president. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the social media construct as it is today, I think
Speaker 2: started right then, right with the beginning of like say Facebook,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what's that two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm gonna go look right now. But I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm telling you if Facebook two thousand and five started
Speaker 2: when you know here I am asking my non Google machine.
Speaker 2: Quite honestly, it started now. It started initially in two
Speaker 2: thousand and four, okay, at Cambridge, right, and then it
Speaker 2: evolved from there. Remember at first it was just for
Speaker 2: the university there, and they got expanded.
Speaker 1: But Zuckerberg, well twenty years then, let's say twenty years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, almost twenty years now.
Speaker 1: But what I'm trying to say is you look at cigarettes.
Speaker 1: You know, they.
Speaker 3: Were one hundred and fifty year long industry until they
Speaker 3: started to get regulated. Basically the car industry. I don't
Speaker 3: think they had seat belts to like the late sixties
Speaker 3: or seventies mandated for all cars. So this can end
Speaker 3: up being regulated or change or maybe replaced one day
Speaker 3: with something people find better. It may take another twenty years.
Speaker 2: No, true enough, And look, I look at an article
Speaker 2: from twenty twenty two in USA today. If you don't mind,
Speaker 2: just read the first couple of sentences, just just to
Speaker 2: give you an idea about the beginning of Facebook. Facebook
Speaker 2: marked the beginning of a social media curve. Yes or
Speaker 2: orchit and MySpace existed before.
Speaker 1: Orc it okay or I don't remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you and me both. But Facebook was the beginning
Speaker 2: of sharing, live feed okay, posting on your friend's walls,
Speaker 2: and so much more. According to Status, Facebook is the
Speaker 2: most used online social network worldwide, boasting around two point
Speaker 2: nine three billion users around the globe as of the
Speaker 2: first quarter of twenty twenty two. Okay, while many might
Speaker 2: think Facebook's era is long over and serves as a
Speaker 2: nostalgia tool for millennials and early Gen zs, Facebook was
Speaker 2: the top social media platform on which American users spent
Speaker 2: the most time per day in twenty twenty one. TikTok
Speaker 2: and Twitter were close second and third, respectively. Let's see
Speaker 2: and you know, here we go? When was Facebook created?
Speaker 2: Launched on February fourth, two thousand and four, TheFacebook dot
Speaker 2: Com Facebook's initial title was made with the goal of
Speaker 2: creating a directory of information for college students, Chris Hughes,
Speaker 2: who will start TheFacebook dot com, told Time Magazine, But
Speaker 2: a couple of things were snipped away post launched the
Speaker 2: social media juggernaut, cut the from the name in two
Speaker 2: thousand and five, and lifted its college students only restriction
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six. So really, it became available
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six a step by step guide
Speaker 2: how to avoid blah blah. Okay, anyway, so it became
Speaker 2: available for everybody in two thousand and six. In two
Speaker 2: thousand and five, it was only available to college students.
Speaker 2: There was a time period there just college students, okay,
Speaker 2: but all this sharing and everything. They were the innovator,
Speaker 2: they were the vanguard. And like I said, in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, they claim two point nine to three billion
Speaker 2: users around the globe. That's pretty astounding, do you think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it's it's amazing.
Speaker 2: When you had that big of a chunk of the
Speaker 2: world's population somehow or other interacting with something.
Speaker 3: You feel, like I was saying before, it's all compatible.
Speaker 3: You know, it's countries all over the world, right, it's
Speaker 3: compatible with dictatorships.
Speaker 1: They operate just as well there as they do here.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing. How best to spread a message?
Speaker 1: Right now?
Speaker 2: You know, if I told you, look, I got a
Speaker 2: message I got to spread, where are you gonna go
Speaker 2: with it? If you just need to reach random people
Speaker 2: in as many places as possible, you're going to go
Speaker 2: to one of these platforms. I mean even today you
Speaker 2: want to sell stuff locally, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: some people might still use Craigslist or whatever, or remember
Speaker 2: the days of classified ads. Well, nowadays you go to
Speaker 2: Facebook and they got something called marketplace, and in the
Speaker 2: marketplace it goes locally, just to your area that you
Speaker 2: enter in, and people are basically selling their stuff like
Speaker 2: as if they would through the classified ads or Craigslist
Speaker 2: in the old days.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've got furniture, I've got I see cars on
Speaker 2: there everything, you know. So this serves a whole lot
Speaker 2: of purposes. But at the end of the day, think
Speaker 2: about the difference in information you're getting from it as
Speaker 2: opposed to having you had a newspaper and look at
Speaker 2: the class fids, you know what I mean, or you know,
Speaker 2: get old of something else and you can you got
Speaker 2: to go every day and get class fides from the newspaper, right,
Speaker 2: I mean it's wild, Mike, No, well it's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a little off topic. But I went,
Speaker 3: if you hear this hawk Girl. No, it's some viral
Speaker 3: social media thing and uh, it went some girl that
Speaker 3: went viral on TikTok or somewhere a month ago. Okay,
Speaker 3: And I went to the post office today and someone
Speaker 3: had a bumper sticker on their on their van floor.
Speaker 1: I just thought it was funny.
Speaker 2: No, I don't know anything about hawk Girl. Listen, Mike,
Speaker 2: I need to take a quick break here.
Speaker 1: And yeah, we were been on for a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I run you over time, so maybe
Speaker 2: I should let you go. What do you think?
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, you know, And I'll get.
Speaker 2: Into another segment after this, guys, but I need to
Speaker 2: take a quick break. I advise you to go sign
Speaker 2: up Wallstreet, Window dot com, sign up for Mike's very
Speaker 2: informative newsletter. And it's always great to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Mike.
Speaker 2: Are we gonna have you next week or the week
Speaker 2: after or what.
Speaker 1: I'll be here.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it won't be next week, but it'll be you know.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'll say we'll get back in.
Speaker 2: Touch right And as usual, I highly advise you go
Speaker 2: get The War State. You know, the book The War
Speaker 2: State or or Why the Vietnam War, both of them
Speaker 2: authored by Mike Swanson, and the links in the show
Speaker 2: notes for tonight's show. Anyway, I'll be back after this break, guys,
Speaker 2: stick around you the dot com radio network.
Speaker 4: If youse expressed my caller schools there anyone else who
Speaker 4: happens to get on the air of Jelly dot Com
Speaker 4: do not necessarily reflect the views little Jelly dot Com
Speaker 4: or job go Chilly, and we are not responsible for
Speaker 4: gay stupidity which mighty Sue.
Speaker 2: Thank you go ahead calling.
Speaker 5: The truth about the JAFA.
Speaker 2: Assassination right, Well, what do you want to know?
Speaker 6: Baker's wild claim Oswal girlfriends he knew, Ruby and Barry
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Speaker 6: Thank you for all the great in revelation through conversation
Speaker 6: in denial.
Speaker 5: Secret Wars with air Strikes and Tanks by Larry Hancock,
Speaker 5: Secret wars became a staple of US covert operations and
Speaker 5: are still happening today. Larry Hancock's book In Denial rips
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Speaker 7: Denial at Amazon dot com in digital or physical.
Speaker 8: Do you like history, Real history that you were never
Speaker 8: taught in schools? Why the Vietnam War, Nuclear Bombs and
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Speaker 8: five through nineteen sixty one. Get your copy today at
Speaker 8: Amazon dot com. Why the Vietnam War by author Mike Swanson.
Speaker 9: The War State by Michael Swanson explains the great national
Speaker 9: transformation that took place and put the Kennedy presidency in
Speaker 9: the context of the times, and reveals never before published
Speaker 9: information about the Cuban missile crisis. President Kennedy would not
Speaker 9: have been assassinated if he had been president two hundred
Speaker 9: years ago. His assassination took place in the context of
Speaker 9: the Cold War and the rise of the national security state.
Speaker 9: Before World War II, the United States was a continental republic.
Speaker 9: In the decade that followed, it became an imperial superpower.
Speaker 9: Generals such as Curtis LeMay not only wanted to invade Cuba,
Speaker 9: but knew that there were short range missiles on the
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Speaker 9: reveals why and will show you what President Kennedy was
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Speaker 2: For more information, The Warstate dot.
Speaker 6: Com revelation through conversation, Oh.
Speaker 8: Chilly dot Com, Oh Chilly dot Com, Let.
Speaker 2: Her know, let her know, let no got let.
Speaker 10: Know all Sharco Luck and care Rocks and from blight.
Speaker 1: Up the drug Show.
Speaker 2: I'm bringing all shot.
Speaker 10: I can care Rocks the blight at the Drag Show.
Speaker 10: But Moore, we just met that the world's worst professional
Speaker 10: Profoca tour. Tit them like it's two thousand something, and
Speaker 10: Becker's back on tour. You never really wanted me anyway.
Speaker 10: Alcohol turns me into the enemies. I'm go seventy Sam
Speaker 10: with some adnasy. I used to think that bottle was
Speaker 10: the remedy, picked it up once or twice after I
Speaker 10: let it go, but finally had.
Speaker 2: To let it be. I used to roll with the
Speaker 2: jack bitch she would give me and let tippers and literacy,
Speaker 2: I mean literally, I figure.
Speaker 1: I mean the letter.
Speaker 4: If you was expressed by callers, tools or anyone else
Speaker 4: who happens to get on the air of Jolly dot
Speaker 4: com if not necessarily repleted, he muses, jelly do, and
Speaker 4: we are not responsible for gainst comnity was Mighty Students.
Speaker 2: Dot Radio Ready segment number two on a Thor's Day,
Speaker 2: and uh, it's an interesting evening here thanks to Mike Swanson.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry I had to run real quick there, but
Speaker 2: I had to take care of something uh personal that
Speaker 2: was immediate in that moment. But so we don't have
Speaker 2: Mike with us now. I wanted to tell you a
Speaker 2: quick story about what's been happening, because you guys might
Speaker 2: have noticed there wasn't so many broadcasts lately. Well, first
Speaker 2: of all, I got ill for a bit, and okay,
Speaker 2: what else is new there? Chuck your ill a lot,
Speaker 2: I know, and I I didn't even want to spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time on this story. You know. What
Speaker 2: I wanted to do is cover the DNC this week.
Speaker 2: I want wanted to cover a whole bunch of things
Speaker 2: this week last week, But here's what happened on I
Speaker 2: think it was a Monday, no Tuesday. I was so
Speaker 2: fed up with a collection of ailments that I finally
Speaker 2: found my way to go see you know, to go
Speaker 2: to a clinic. And I went to the clinic and
Speaker 2: took care of that whole thing. And okay, I hate
Speaker 2: doing it, but there was too many things wrong with
Speaker 2: me that I couldn't quite figure out, and numbness in
Speaker 2: my hand. I was having serious problems with digestion. I
Speaker 2: was having other issues with getting my whole system either
Speaker 2: not moving or giving me problems. When it did, I
Speaker 2: was having fevers and dizziness, loss of my equilibrium, numbness
Speaker 2: and pain simultaneously in some of my limbs, and in fact,
Speaker 2: my right hand almost totally dead feeling wise. I could
Speaker 2: still move it, but I couldn't really feel it, and
Speaker 2: I couldn't pick up things trying to, you know, pick
Speaker 2: up things when you can't feel, and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and horrendous pain plus back pain plus all these things
Speaker 2: were going on, and I felt like I was just
Speaker 2: falling apart