Speaker 1: Meaning a man like this man letting butterfly flapping his wing.
Speaker 2: They've down in a force.
Speaker 1: Man, it gonna cause a tree fall, letting five thousand
Speaker 1: miles away.
Speaker 2: Man, nobody see nobody else. You mightn't see that. You
Speaker 2: don't need to know it. Man, you don't like you
Speaker 2: followed another story and you got back to feel like
Speaker 2: that's the win. Man. Don't like to nag on the panel. Man,
Speaker 2: Now you don't get no better man, no kind of anyway.
Speaker 1: Let's take it for granted that there is an attempt
Speaker 1: to control us. There are institutions, both cultural and political,
Speaker 1: that exists to shape the way you think, the shape
Speaker 1: the landscape of the cognitive war. The info war is
Speaker 1: one man once said, and it is an interesting thing
Speaker 1: that there's both a science and an art to it.
Speaker 1: Some of it is applying large numbers, while other parts
Speaker 1: of it seem almost like sorcery. The ability to spend narrative,
Speaker 1: the ability to give someone a reason that they think
Speaker 1: is completely legitimate for why they do what they do.
Speaker 1: And that's really what power is. The ability to convey legitimacy. Certainly,
Speaker 1: certainly some part of it its force. It is the
Speaker 1: ultimate form of power. I can make you do something,
Speaker 1: but once you're in you need that legitimacy. You need
Speaker 1: people to see you as the guy who ought to
Speaker 1: be in charge, or at very least the guy who
Speaker 1: is completely and totally in charge. And there are two
Speaker 1: broad types of leaders, as Machiavelli tells us, the lions
Speaker 1: who lean towards that force of arms men like Charlemagne,
Speaker 1: and the Foxes, those who rule through manipulation and narrative control,
Speaker 1: much more like our current elite. And because we are
Speaker 1: in a system of foxes, we are in a system
Speaker 1: of total narrative control. The whole thing is designed to
Speaker 1: change what you think, obviously about political events, but also
Speaker 1: well who you are, what you do, what a good
Speaker 1: person does, and so without ever having a commisar in
Speaker 1: the room, people will fall in line. There certainly is
Speaker 1: a threat, but so much of it is done through
Speaker 1: social signals. That's why I think this episode is interesting
Speaker 1: because when we're primarily talking about public relations, exactly that wizardry,
Speaker 1: the blending of statistical modeling and what we actually understand,
Speaker 1: and it's very easy to pick out, especially if you
Speaker 1: look further back in time, because it was less sophisticated
Speaker 1: at least from some perspective. You look at political radio,
Speaker 1: whether ours the German or the Russians from the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: and it's almost comically sincere. It's the sort of big
Speaker 1: brother stuff, big head on the screen, jingoistic music, and
Speaker 1: constant radio propaganda. But it's never gone away. Far from it.
Speaker 1: The form has changed, even if the underlying science of
Speaker 1: control is all the same. It's why I think that
Speaker 1: so much of the right wing dissonance sphere got its
Speaker 1: start in media analysis. That is one element of this,
Speaker 1: using Hollywood, using literature as a way to sort of
Speaker 1: like a spike protein, inject ideological material into your brain
Speaker 1: at a level that you might not even be conscious
Speaker 1: of it. It's one of those things that it's easy
Speaker 1: to dismiss as sort of tinfoil hat nonsense. You've seen,
Speaker 1: I'm sure the people who take this way too far,
Speaker 1: the idea that everyone on your television screen is an
Speaker 1: AI demon or a secret troon, you know, the overlay
Speaker 1: of course of the male and female skull over any
Speaker 1: person of any relevance whatsoever. It can drive you crazy.
Speaker 1: And there's a certain degree to which it seems designed
Speaker 1: to do exactly that. Designed to channel people into these
Speaker 1: sort of limited hangouts where their legitimate concerns can be
Speaker 1: safely contained, sort of like a pearl, almost rounded off
Speaker 1: within the organism and reduced to something ultimately harmless, at
Speaker 1: least the regime, but for conscious dissonance, right, for people
Speaker 1: who understand that they must sort of find their way
Speaker 1: through this cognitive landscape. An understanding of these tools right,
Speaker 1: how your mind is changed is important. Something I've been
Speaker 1: talking about is the algorithmic level, how social media can
Speaker 1: change what you think based off of what you're seen,
Speaker 1: but you're being shown. Obviously, you add a financial incentive
Speaker 1: to that. You know, people creating content will receive more money,
Speaker 1: less money, more viewership, less viewership for talking about certain topics,
Speaker 1: And it's not hard to look at it and see
Speaker 1: this sort of rainbow colored panopticon, you know, being built
Speaker 1: around you. But I think it's important to understand how
Speaker 1: we got here, right, the basis of this dark art
Speaker 1: figures like Edward Brenees, certainly, but there are many others
Speaker 1: we will reference. It's important to know how we got
Speaker 1: here because once you've picked up on the trend, once
Speaker 1: you've looked at an older version of propaganda something that's
Speaker 1: easier to identify. We've honed your skill, you're more perceptive.
Speaker 1: You can sort of see the lines running through it.
Speaker 1: And look, it's sort of the perfect time to talk
Speaker 1: about this after the Iran War, which seemingly is wrapping up,
Speaker 1: which I think is a good thing. But I don't
Speaker 1: think it was a good idea. I think it was
Speaker 1: started for stupid reasons, waged poorly, and now we're sort
Speaker 1: of scrambling for less than we had before. But it's
Speaker 1: a conversation for another day. One of the things that
Speaker 1: marked it, and you heard this in my coverage as
Speaker 1: well as my friends, you know, Darryl Cooper, Veris, Scott Horton,
Speaker 1: all saying that it's very difficult to understand what's happening.
Speaker 1: There's so much narrative, so much propaganda. It's very difficult
Speaker 1: to divine what's actually happening. Because one of the additional
Speaker 1: features of this propaganda system is it's completely and totally shattered.
Speaker 1: There are multiple different parties warring for your brain at
Speaker 1: all times. Sure, the lefties are wrong when they say
Speaker 1: that the Russians won the twenty sixteen election for Trump,
Speaker 1: but there's very clearly a Russian information opp there are
Speaker 1: Chinese information ops, certainly Israeli, an American, but many others
Speaker 1: as well. It isn't simply just one unified them. Although
Speaker 1: let's be honest, some figures appear more often than others.
Speaker 1: But this pr landscape is everywhere. You need to understand
Speaker 1: it or else you can't parse anything that's happening. I mean,
Speaker 1: even look at someone like Erica Kirk, who's someone amazingly
Speaker 1: fumbled her position into being widely reviled despite having you know,
Speaker 1: one of the most sympathetic stories imaginable, an example of
Speaker 1: course of how that can turn wrong. But there are
Speaker 1: many other figures, Bill Gates who successfully redeemed his reputation
Speaker 1: at least for some portion of the public, Politicians, Bills positions, whatever.
Speaker 1: This is how politics is waged. I think you'll enjoy
Speaker 1: this episode. It's a little more lighthearted. We get into
Speaker 1: serious stuff, but you know, a lot of it is
Speaker 1: kind of joking back and forth. And before I start
Speaker 1: it off, just like to thank you guys. As I've said,
Speaker 1: obviously we just hit five hundred episodes, but also this
Speaker 1: is the one year anniversary at least when I'm recording
Speaker 1: this on the eighteenth of me becoming a professional, full
Speaker 1: timer going for it, and the growth has been significant.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you guys for that. It's going well. Not
Speaker 1: a wealthy man by any means, but I can support
Speaker 1: myself largely due to you guys, and I can't thank
Speaker 1: you enough. If you're interested in supporting me well, for
Speaker 1: a few bucks a month, go to Patreon, Substack, or
Speaker 1: gum road get the episodes early and ad free. Can
Speaker 1: I start check out our sponsor, Axios, remote fitness and
Speaker 1: coaching service I use constantly. I've been using for years.
Speaker 1: It's a part of my routine and i'n't done the math,
Speaker 1: but I think a large percentage of the guys in
Speaker 1: Axios are there because I told him to and they
Speaker 1: stick around. It's a good service. It's worth your time.
Speaker 1: So head over there, and without further ado, here's the episode.
Speaker 1: All right, Aaron Clowntown Chronicle, How you doing man?
Speaker 2: I'm good man. It's a little rainy here. I don't
Speaker 2: know what it's like all the way out there, but
Speaker 2: it's hot.
Speaker 1: The answer is hot. I live in the South. The
Speaker 1: answer is always hot. It's just is it hot and
Speaker 1: raining or hot? And you wish it were raining. There's
Speaker 1: really nothing in between.
Speaker 2: I spent a lot of time in Texas, and I
Speaker 2: don't think I understood heat until I live there, because
Speaker 2: I spent most of my life and am currently in
Speaker 2: the Midwest, where it's not that bad. I mean, it
Speaker 2: does get hot. It also gets very cold, but not
Speaker 2: Canada cold, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I've just determined that wherever you pick
Speaker 1: to live on the North American continent, you will be
Speaker 1: miserable for at least six months of the year. And
Speaker 1: really the only thing you get to pick is which
Speaker 1: six months or all of them.
Speaker 2: Right, and which what kind of misery you want to
Speaker 2: live in for those six months? You know? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like you can pick fire right where there's the
Speaker 1: whole state burns, you can have enter or you can
Speaker 1: just live on the Gulf coast and get flooded by
Speaker 1: hurricanes and then shot to death. Uh and I guess
Speaker 1: that's the local weather.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean this is this is like a
Speaker 2: very very Newsy show, now, isn't it. Since we're talking
Speaker 2: about the weather to started off, do you want to
Speaker 2: go into sports next?
Speaker 1: See Aaron I am on a month's long crusade to
Speaker 1: purge relevance for my podcast. So you know what I
Speaker 1: think if we started doing a weather segment, uh, it
Speaker 1: would It would accomplish two goals, which is one, keep
Speaker 1: me from talking about anything real and two drive my
Speaker 1: audience crazy. Oh and so uh yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: seems like there's a big stormfront coming in from Boise today.
Speaker 2: Oh lord, here we go. You know, it's funny speaking
Speaker 2: of weather. I was just doing a stream with my
Speaker 2: buddy Newsfist. We do a stream called clown based life
Speaker 2: Forms once a week. It's all.
Speaker 1: I just saw a Newsfist not that long ago. He
Speaker 1: was at the same conference I was in Tennessee.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He uh, he's in the States and he's very
Speaker 2: very happy to be here. But our last stream, I
Speaker 2: almost got blown away by a tornado and I didn't
Speaker 2: even know it.
Speaker 1: That would be a great way to sign off, just
Speaker 1: just like loud rushing noises and the mic goes dead.
Speaker 1: Just just make sure you don't respond to a DM
Speaker 1: for like two three weeks to really freak people out.
Speaker 2: Well, what's funny is, so the power went out and
Speaker 2: I was like, ah, man, I didn't think that this
Speaker 2: storm was that bad. And so, you know, I'm bitching
Speaker 2: and complaining on my show on the stream. Like when
Speaker 2: I finally get back in through my phone, I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just a bad storm. I guess that's
Speaker 2: the Midwest. It wasn't until the next day that I
Speaker 2: went out that I realized there were two tornadoes, one
Speaker 2: to the south of me and one to the north
Speaker 2: of me, and they just skirted right around my little
Speaker 2: bug hovel up here in the apartment center of somewhere Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: But well, here's the I think, is someone with the
Speaker 1: podcast Aaron, Yeah, you have to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: how you're gonna do it, Like, what's your dB Cooper
Speaker 1: style solution to exit the game after you've embarrassed yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, ruined your life. And I've long said what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do is, uh it just you know, start
Speaker 1: a live stream, can carry on like normal, and then
Speaker 1: just fire a gun out the window and never record
Speaker 1: another episode again, which I realized I may have now
Speaker 1: spoilt the secret. So if I am killed by agents
Speaker 1: of Masad mid live stream, no one will care because
Speaker 1: they'll assume it's just part of a practical joke. Have
Speaker 1: you put thought into.
Speaker 2: This have I Uh, well, see, I had one podcast
Speaker 2: before called We talked About Dead People, which was a
Speaker 2: history podcast combined with like a comedy sketch podcast, which
Speaker 2: was probably the craziest thing I ever did that one
Speaker 2: about seven years and the way we ended it was
Speaker 2: my co host had children.
Speaker 1: Ah, yeah, that's the classic. That's the classic end to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So then I just disappeared into the wilderness until
Speaker 2: I started Clowntown Chronicle, which is somehow a more serious podcast.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's crazy, history can be weird.
Speaker 1: Well, we're not entirely here to talk about faking our
Speaker 1: own deaths on the internet and the weather, although I
Speaker 1: assume we'll get back to it. But uh, you're a
Speaker 1: mass communications guy, and I'm going to put you on
Speaker 1: the spot because I've given you exactly one bill O'Reilly
Speaker 1: giff of context for what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1: And look, I'm I'm I have no idea about communications,
Speaker 1: public relations, or anything, but I can tell when it
Speaker 1: breaks down. I can tell when it breaks down pretty
Speaker 1: obviously it's clear. And again, this may not be your expertise,
Speaker 1: so I may just be asking you, as as a
Speaker 1: fellow podcast american, what in the world is going on
Speaker 1: with Erica Kirk.
Speaker 2: Well, first off, she's a I'm informed by an AI
Speaker 2: video I saw of Elden Ring that she's a boss
Speaker 2: called the Kabbalistic Witch. Okay, I don't know if you
Speaker 2: saw that.
Speaker 1: So that was I mean, that's where I source all
Speaker 1: of my news anyway, So I mean we're going straight
Speaker 1: to the horse's mouth.
Speaker 2: Erica Kirk is a victim of bad PR, which is
Speaker 2: to say, I think she's also a client of what
Speaker 2: was it Stormy was talking about the Adelman or at
Speaker 2: least is it the Adelman Firm? I forget what they
Speaker 2: call themselves. I discovered that like three years ago, and
Speaker 2: I remember looking into it being like, wow, look at
Speaker 2: this list of clients.
Speaker 1: I can't believe the craziest guy on poll was entirely correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly. So when I see a thing like
Speaker 2: Erica Kirk and like the destruction of her PR campaign,
Speaker 2: I look for a few things that, you know, see,
Speaker 2: I'm not like Encyclopedia brown guy, where I can like
Speaker 2: pull up references right out of my brain. I'm not
Speaker 2: that kind of smart, right, But what I am good
Speaker 2: at doing is detecting patterns of cringe.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is, Aaron, you're a wizard.
Speaker 2: I think we talked about it before the air. I'm
Speaker 2: a wiz tard.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, Aaron, that's the best. What you do
Speaker 1: is you make a joke that's funny to you and me,
Speaker 1: but the audience is left confused and angry, and that
Speaker 1: prolonged experience of just simmering rage, that's what you want
Speaker 1: to cultivate with an audience. I found.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's true, so let me ruin it for you.
Speaker 2: I was telling Jay before the show that when you
Speaker 2: study mass communications, you get ninety five percent retards who
Speaker 2: kind of like movies and television, and then you get
Speaker 2: five percent who are basically wizards. They understand a realm
Speaker 2: of communication and mask mind control that is indecipherable from
Speaker 2: black magic. Does that clear that up, everybody? I just
Speaker 2: ruined the show, Jay, Oh you did.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm going to have to redirect the masad hit
Speaker 1: team who's going to ruin my fake death to your
Speaker 1: apartment in Wisconsin, and either them or the weather engineers
Speaker 1: are going to send this time three tornadoes. Because clearly
Speaker 1: was not enough to punish you for ruining this show.
Speaker 1: But honestly, man, I know exactly what you're talking about. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't have a ton of experience, but I have
Speaker 1: read my Burns, and you read enough Edward Burnees and
Speaker 1: you come to the conclusion that, Wow, this guy is
Speaker 1: a genius. And also he's a psychopath. Yes, right, yes,
Speaker 1: And then you read into the history of him basically
Speaker 1: getting every woman in America to smoke because he was
Speaker 1: getting paid by Philip Morris. Oh yeah, and you're like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: clearly he can do it. Thankfully he never used those
Speaker 1: tools again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, see, that's the thing is Edward Burnees was
Speaker 2: a was a bit of a thief, right, so a
Speaker 2: lot of his techniques he actually stole from people who
Speaker 2: preceded him on most of his research, and just sort
Speaker 2: of like film, there's a category of people who see
Speaker 2: a tool and try to think to themselves, how can
Speaker 2: I use this for the worst things possible? And then
Speaker 2: there's autistic people who first discover the tool and become
Speaker 2: interested in it, and they write all the good stuff
Speaker 2: that those other guys just steal thirty years later. So
Speaker 2: Brene's got a lot of his crap from a guy
Speaker 2: named Gustave Lebon who wrote a book in eighteen ninety
Speaker 2: something I think called The Crowd, which was a study
Speaker 2: of crowd psychology, and I ended up just reading the
Speaker 2: entire friggin thing for my Patreon because I'd never read
Speaker 2: it before. And you have to understand that this book
Speaker 2: was basically a disintegration or breakdown of how's psychology worked
Speaker 2: before the advent of mass media control. Right, So the
Speaker 2: closest thing we had at the time was basically the
Speaker 2: early days of telegraphy and the newspaper, and before that
Speaker 2: we had like smoke signals and town criers. But this
Speaker 2: is an interesting dovetail, actually, because my interest in history
Speaker 2: revealed a lot of things about our past. Number One,
Speaker 2: it's actually more interesting than everyone gives it credit for.
Speaker 2: Just because they didn't make a movie about it doesn't
Speaker 2: mean it's not movie like or interesting. And that was
Speaker 2: a lot of my work, and we talk about dead people.
Speaker 2: But the other thing is how much history actually changed
Speaker 2: when mass communications came on the scene. Because because we
Speaker 2: live in a world where all of that stuff is
Speaker 2: ubiquitous and everybody carries a camera in their pocket, they
Speaker 2: don't understand that there was a before time, right where
Speaker 2: you couldn't just record everything or stream everything or write
Speaker 2: anything down when you wanted to. There was a before
Speaker 2: time when the only form of communication that you had
Speaker 2: was basically letters and talking to people. So you think about,
Speaker 2: for example, the one of the one of those moments.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've ever done this, but have
Speaker 2: you ever been reading something and then it's just like
Speaker 2: you lean back in your chair and it's like that
Speaker 2: meme where the lights start shooting out of the guy's brain.
Speaker 2: Have you ever ever seen one of those? Yeah? Have
Speaker 2: you had one of those moments yourself when you're reading? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I can think of a couple where
Speaker 1: you can just like feel your brain exploding. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: it's a novel, but Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, which is
Speaker 1: like truly and totally indescribable, Like I think I was
Speaker 1: nineteen when I read it, and I could physically feel
Speaker 1: my brain getting bigger and like splitting apart. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the biggest, the biggest moment I ever had
Speaker 2: where I literally saw into the ether was when I
Speaker 2: read the transcript. I think of the first telegraph that
Speaker 2: was ever sent from coast to coast in the UK.
Speaker 2: Have you heard this story?
Speaker 1: No, no, I haven't.
Speaker 2: So the first the first telegram that was sent. I'm
Speaker 2: going to mess this up some autists in the comments.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be like that was actually the one that
Speaker 2: was sent from Scotland to English. I don't care man
Speaker 2: long distance telegraph. The first thing ever sent was what
Speaker 2: half God wrought? Yeah? Is that a bit fretty ominous? Yeah,
Speaker 2: So you think about that, it's like, okay, So the
Speaker 2: realization when that kind of thing starts coming out is
Speaker 2: that we can now instantaneously communicate lies across entire countries.
Speaker 2: Now we can do it instantaneously across the entire world
Speaker 2: with video, AI generated video and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: We can say anything that we want. And so our
Speaker 2: understanding of information gathering and narrative construction is rapidly changing
Speaker 2: in the modern day just because of the amount of
Speaker 2: technology that we have.
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean one hundred percent. And you see this
Speaker 1: interacting with older people, right, people who grew up in
Speaker 1: kind of the before times that they are. It's almost
Speaker 1: like the Dodos, you know, where they're not evolved for predation,
Speaker 1: and so they're just getting absolutely brain blasted by this
Speaker 1: sort of like desert of the real. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I think about this. I was over at an older
Speaker 1: family member's house and we were just talking and he
Speaker 1: had the TV on, and I realized he was watching
Speaker 1: an AI generated documentary about World War two. Oh and
Speaker 1: sure it was about like a logistics team or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it was so clearly all made up. It was
Speaker 1: just like AI hallucination. And the guys just sitting there
Speaker 1: watching it like nothing. You know, I thought's on the TV,
Speaker 1: it's got to be even if it's not true, it's
Speaker 1: got to at least be, you know, in some way
Speaker 1: related to the facts. And it was kind of ominous.
Speaker 1: You're like, no, you were just listening to machine hallucinations
Speaker 1: over like six figured images of like a diverse group
Speaker 1: of American gis in France, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so yeah, that's exactly right. And actually I
Speaker 2: did a stream recently with news Fist about this, talking
Speaker 2: about boomers getting one shot at about AI with AI
Speaker 2: videos about secret books of the Bible, with the yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: have you seen this yourself.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen this, but I'm in no way surprised.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so boom boomers catch a lot of shit, and
Speaker 2: I understand it, but you have to understand, this was
Speaker 2: the first generation that actually grew up with a mass
Speaker 2: communications system already in place, and they grew up with
Speaker 2: people like Carson on the TV, people who looked like
Speaker 2: you and me and who sounded like your friends and
Speaker 2: interviewed famous people and that sort of thing. How on
Speaker 2: earth were they supposed to know that that was a weapon, right, So, like,
Speaker 2: I have to give Boomers a little bit of a
Speaker 2: pass there because gen z is really funny. They think
Speaker 2: that because they sort of inherently figured it all out,
Speaker 2: and they know that this stuff is already fake, like
Speaker 2: from cradle from the cradle, they figured this out. That
Speaker 2: they have a hard time conceptualizing the idea that perhaps
Speaker 2: there was a time and it's it's not because they're stupid,
Speaker 2: it's because there's there's a difference between knowing things and
Speaker 2: realizing them. They have a hard time conceptualizing of a
Speaker 2: time in history, which was all of known history where
Speaker 2: people didn't have an insane, electronic crazy uncle who overstayed
Speaker 2: his welcome in your living room and has gone from saying, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, the world might freeze or it might burn up,
Speaker 2: but definitely you need to be worried about nukes and
Speaker 2: hide under your desk is the best strategy. Like they you,
Speaker 2: younger people really have a hard time conceptualizing I talk
Speaker 2: like I'm old, but younger people have a hard hard
Speaker 2: time conceptualizing that. There didn't use to be a giant
Speaker 2: voice box that squatted in your living room all day
Speaker 2: long barking orders at you. And now we all notice
Speaker 2: it because it's so offensive. It's just all day long.
Speaker 2: It's like a super negative, narcissistic person just saying all
Speaker 2: of the meanest things that can think of, all the time.
Speaker 2: And so naturally, young people just never watch TV obviously
Speaker 2: it's stupid, but older people still watch it. And the
Speaker 2: reason they fall for AI generated documentaries is because they're
Speaker 2: not listening for the information so much as they're listening
Speaker 2: for the sounds that it makes. You ever see the
Speaker 2: I think it's the logo for RCA? Was it RCA?
Speaker 1: I think I know what you're talking about?
Speaker 2: With a dog?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah Nipper the dog, so like, I
Speaker 1: don't think you could say that.
Speaker 2: Oh whoops, yeah, sorry, that was his name though, Nipper.
Speaker 2: He's on the logo because after his master died, there
Speaker 2: was a record player that played his voice and the
Speaker 2: dog would sit by it for comfort, and so that
Speaker 2: was put on the That was basically put on the
Speaker 2: logo because it was like, Oh, isn't that sweet. It's
Speaker 2: his master's voice. I am going on a tear here,
Speaker 2: so I apologize to.
Speaker 1: Keep going, keep going.
Speaker 2: Okay. So, so boomers are listening to things that make
Speaker 2: them feel comfortable. They're used to the sound of the
Speaker 2: official man, as we call him on Cowtown Chronicle. We
Speaker 2: lifted that from somebody doing a very in depth stream
Speaker 2: about this walking through some foreign country. He said, people
Speaker 2: just wait to hear the official man. They don't They
Speaker 2: don't really listen for the content. They listened for the
Speaker 2: soothing sound of the official man, which is where that
Speaker 2: sort of news caster. You know. Nipper was a dog
Speaker 2: from England. He is best known as the subject of
Speaker 2: his Master's voice painted pust You.
Speaker 1: But you know that kind of stuff, Yeah exactly, what
Speaker 1: you mean, the kind of like attitude of assumed authority.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. I yes, So I can go on really
Speaker 2: crazy tears about this sort of thing. But I think
Speaker 2: you see what I'm driving at, which is that the
Speaker 2: world has changed with how people consume information. Gen Z
Speaker 2: is mostly interested in true things that are grounded in reality,
Speaker 2: and the older generations like Gen X and boomers, they
Speaker 2: barely know any different because they've been living in a
Speaker 2: mass media simulation for most of their lives.
Speaker 1: Well, and to be honest, right, there's kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: multiple elements to this where look, they lived in a
Speaker 1: much more unified media atmosphere than we do, yes, where
Speaker 1: if you've only got three sources, right, like the big
Speaker 1: three networks and okay, you've got radio as well, but
Speaker 1: they all say roughly the same things, and you see
Speaker 1: people acting calmly rationally in what debate there was was
Speaker 1: sort of tightly constrained. Well, okay, you're not really hearing
Speaker 1: anything else. Like, sure, I realized there was counterculture, there
Speaker 1: always was, but like, that's a unified media atmosphere. And
Speaker 1: then you know, you turn on the Internet, where it
Speaker 1: is every extremist position on any issue blasted into your
Speaker 1: eyeballs at all moments, and you simply could not come
Speaker 1: to that conclusion. There would be no way to. And
Speaker 1: so you know what, I get that, I certainly share
Speaker 1: that sympathy, and I think it's also a popular misconception
Speaker 1: that people view a lot of the things that people
Speaker 1: attribute to boomers are actually the fault of either the
Speaker 1: silent generation or the greatest generation right too, before them
Speaker 1: and the boomers did not invent advertising. They were merely
Speaker 1: the first generation that was born into it, at least
Speaker 1: in that way, because you can you can look at
Speaker 1: how advertising changed before and after. Burne's like, it's almost
Speaker 1: kind of charming to look at like turn of the
Speaker 1: century advertisements. It's like, by our soap, it's the best soap.
Speaker 1: Here are all the things about the soap, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like incredibly informational. Whereas Brene's ushered in this new
Speaker 1: sort of identity and emotion based system of that basically
Speaker 1: thought control. So I mentioned, of course the was it
Speaker 1: the freedom Torches campaign with Brenees? Is that correct? That's
Speaker 1: right where he basically tied smoking into women's liberation, right,
Speaker 1: the Suffragette movement, that young hot women were at protests
Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes, you know, tying that to both an identity
Speaker 1: right and in that of being a liberated woman, and
Speaker 1: also attaching attaching social cachet to it. Right, This is
Speaker 1: what the you know, the upper echelons are doing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You want to be like them, don't you? And Okay,
Speaker 1: sure it took a while to kind of become ubiquitous.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you when you also consider the
Speaker 1: explosion of wealth in the country when the Boomers were born,
Speaker 1: and also the time that you know, advertising was able
Speaker 1: to be entrenched, and also the boom of public media.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you could even go back to FDR's
Speaker 1: fireside chats to see the way in which, like mass
Speaker 1: media became a tool of political propaganda. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's no shock, they came out a little weird, like
Speaker 1: it's almost a miracle.
Speaker 2: They're not worse right, right, you know, And actually that's
Speaker 2: a really good point. Burnet's in all of his studies
Speaker 2: and even Gustave Lebon, who I mentioned earlier, they were
Speaker 2: studying a people who were unaffected by mass media culture.
Speaker 2: So all of their techniques seem primitive and primordial in
Speaker 2: a way because they're working on people who are completely
Speaker 2: unprepared for what's coming. Right. So, like you said, boomers
Speaker 2: and older generations were born into a world that suddenly
Speaker 2: had advertising, and then they adjusted to it. And do
Speaker 2: you watch any ads? I mean, I don't browse the
Speaker 2: Internet without an ad blocker. I was disturbed to find
Speaker 2: out two out of three people still browse the Internet
Speaker 2: without ad blockers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I will see advertisements, but you know,
Speaker 1: I use many ad blockers. I haven't like watched other
Speaker 1: than sports. I don't think I've seen an ad on
Speaker 1: a screen in forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the ad structure and the way they used
Speaker 2: to be were like, here's the soap, here's the qualities
Speaker 2: of the soap, here's the size of the soap, and
Speaker 2: here's why it's better than our competitors. All very fact based,
Speaker 2: very and not really connected so much to status until
Speaker 2: they figured that one out, and then everything became about status.
Speaker 2: And as we sort of worked our way through that,
Speaker 2: through that trust that was built from, you know, a
Speaker 2: society that was homogeneous, where everyone walking down the street
Speaker 2: wore a hat and read the newspaper on the train
Speaker 2: and they're the bus on their way to work. That
Speaker 2: sort of capital that they had to work with has
Speaker 2: now been spent. So now we live in a world
Speaker 2: where everybody is sort of atomized and already suspicious of
Speaker 2: external messaging that's sort of overt And what's interesting is
Speaker 2: you hear people, you know, yearning for the times when
Speaker 2: movies weren't obviously trying to manipulate you. Oh so you
Speaker 2: mean like the nineteen tens, maybe maybe nineteen twenty. You know,
Speaker 2: you look at you so like you look at how
Speaker 2: people use photography. Way back in the early days. What
Speaker 2: did they take pictures of. They took pictures of people
Speaker 2: that just looked ordinary. They didn't have a facial expression,
Speaker 2: they were just sort of blank faced. They would take
Speaker 2: pictures of the lake. Sometimes they take pictures of their cats,
Speaker 2: like normal people things. And you can go through any
Speaker 2: antique store in Wisconsin and you'll find just a treasure
Speaker 2: trove of old timey photographs that all look the same.
Speaker 2: And then people got bored of the medium. It used
Speaker 2: to be a fast thing to see a camera. You
Speaker 2: can see these video they're not videos, but you can
Speaker 2: see these film strips of people stopping and just staring
Speaker 2: at cameras in the early days. And then it became
Speaker 2: well known, and so the people who were basically working
Speaker 2: in film started to wonder if that there was if
Speaker 2: there was more that they could do. And it's just
Speaker 2: it's just one of those weird things where almost immediately
Speaker 2: when people realized that they could do trickery and film
Speaker 2: and they could create illusions in film. They went as
Speaker 2: far out as they could possibly go with what was
Speaker 2: available to them at the time. Now, you have to remember,
Speaker 2: there's a there's a popular story about uh an early film.
Speaker 2: I don't remember what it was called, but it was
Speaker 2: a It was a camera that was sitting on a
Speaker 2: train track and the train was coming toward the camera,
Speaker 2: and they played it in a dark, little, you know,
Speaker 2: theater back in the day. And there's all these people
Speaker 2: who hear this story, and again, I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's true, but there's something about it that rings true.
Speaker 2: When the train got close enough to the camera that
Speaker 2: it looked life size, the people in the theater started
Speaker 2: to get up from their seats and try to get
Speaker 2: out of the way. Now you laugh at that, and
Speaker 2: you go a haha, those stupid people, don't they realize
Speaker 2: it's a film strip. And it's like, don't you realize
Speaker 2: that they're making a calculation based on what they know,
Speaker 2: which is I can get up and just avoid getting
Speaker 2: run over by this train if it's real, or I
Speaker 2: can sit here and have something to prove by not
Speaker 2: moving and get squished by a train. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Oh, one hundred percent, Because what you're doing is you're
Speaker 1: basically it's a novel circumstance, you know, and you have
Speaker 1: whatever the thirty years of your life plus however much
Speaker 1: kind of like real infused genetic memory you have, you know,
Speaker 1: all pushing you one direction, you know, and okay, they'll
Speaker 1: like the small rational part of your brain. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: well like five minutes ago, I bought a ticket. Is
Speaker 1: fighting up against the weighted experience, both personal and genetic,
Speaker 1: that tells you to get out of the way. And
Speaker 1: that's what kind of makes this so interesting is that
Speaker 1: all of these circuits abused by mass media mass control
Speaker 1: are very old. They made a lot of sense in
Speaker 1: a previous era, and now they are taken out of
Speaker 1: their ideal context and sort of distorted to new ends,
Speaker 1: if you see what I'm getting at, Aaron.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I did some studies in virtual reality and
Speaker 2: simulation in the early days of Oculus Rift when the
Speaker 2: thing still weighed thirty pounds, you know, the FOV was
Speaker 2: like two, you know, you couldn't see anything and it
Speaker 2: was blurry and people were somehow playing Minecraft in this
Speaker 2: sort of thing. And the studies we did prove that
Speaker 2: the brain was using the same pathways when it was
Speaker 2: in the Oculus rift that it used for real life experience,
Speaker 2: and there was something that I experienced when I took
Speaker 2: time off from this stuff, because it was quite frankly,
Speaker 2: I had a bad feeling about it. I came back
Speaker 2: in probably six seven years down the line and tried
Speaker 2: on a new VR headset, and it was the fidelity
Speaker 2: was much higher. And one of the reasons I didn't
Speaker 2: put one on again for as long as I possibly
Speaker 2: could was because when I was thinking about my time
Speaker 2: in the game, I was remembering it as if I
Speaker 2: was there, which is a big difference between remembering like
Speaker 2: watching a movie or playing a game on a flat
Speaker 2: screen or something. Oh, I was playing video games. When
Speaker 2: your mind starts forming memories with that kind of locational
Speaker 2: or local information, that sort of thing, it feels very
Speaker 2: very different. Now people become acclimated to this and they
Speaker 2: start registering those memories is within the simulation, but at
Speaker 2: first they their brain can't tell, which is a little
Speaker 2: scary when you think about it.
Speaker 1: Not to be well, and that's something Yeah, sorry, I
Speaker 1: just forgot to unmute my microphone. But it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where when we were talking about you know,
Speaker 1: violence in video games twenty years ago. What was the
Speaker 1: guy's name that we were all supposed to.
Speaker 2: Hate, Jack something I don't remember.
Speaker 1: But people sort of inoculated themselves to this argument of, hey, look,
Speaker 1: you know the pearl crutching. You know, members of society
Speaker 1: that are really worried about me playing Mortal Kombat. They're
Speaker 1: they're idiots. They don't have anything to their argument. And okay,
Speaker 1: fair enough. Maybe there's no direct correlation between enjoying, you know,
Speaker 1: a fighting game at the arcade and you know, sawing
Speaker 1: someone's head off, And I'm willing to accept that, But
Speaker 1: that core argument that your brain has a tough time
Speaker 1: differentiating between virtual and actual reality, that's simply a fact, right,
Speaker 1: And you see this all the time if you've ever
Speaker 1: interacted with someone who is chronically online, where you see
Speaker 1: that the online world has fully displaced their sense of reality.
Speaker 1: And yeah, sure it's fun to laugh at those people
Speaker 1: they ought to be really just mercilessly bullied and mocked.
Speaker 1: But like it's still happening to you, it just hasn't
Speaker 1: reached the level of mania. If you see what I'm
Speaker 1: getting at Airic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot there. I mean, first off, the
Speaker 2: thing I think of his study we did with people
Speaker 2: who had never seen a television show in their life.
Speaker 2: So like like ten year old kids who grew up
Speaker 2: in the in the sticks way way out there, never
Speaker 2: saw a television, weren't allowed to watch it, and we
Speaker 2: were like, hey, we'd like to pay you to come
Speaker 2: in here and watch a movie for the first time.
Speaker 2: And the same thing happened every single time. And I
Speaker 2: saw this happen a couple of times even personally, with
Speaker 2: people who just weren't exposed to expose to movies or
Speaker 2: media because they weren't allowed growing up. I was in
Speaker 2: the homeschool community. Growing up, there were a lot of
Speaker 2: kids you'd never seen movies. But when you put a
Speaker 2: person in front of a movie, or generally speaking, a
Speaker 2: ten to twelve year old in front of a movie
Speaker 2: who's never seen one, they have the same reaction. They
Speaker 2: just stop, they click off, and they just stare at
Speaker 2: this thing and actually pready common feature is their mouth
Speaker 2: drops open and you can see like stars dancing in
Speaker 2: their eyes, like WHOA, what is going on here? Because
Speaker 2: they're swept up into a story that's more vivid than
Speaker 2: anything they've ever seen. In their lives. That was sort
Speaker 2: of one of those zones. When I was in the
Speaker 2: you know, the retard section of before I was a
Speaker 2: full whiz tard, I was still.
Speaker 1: You hadn't started your journey, they haven't given you your wand.
Speaker 2: Yet Yeah, where I was, I was in the dumb
Speaker 2: ass section, going huh, how interesting. Let me write that down.
Speaker 2: And then you know, as I would think about it,
Speaker 2: I would be like, now, why did they all do that?
Speaker 2: Why did they all like respond to that flickering light
Speaker 2: the same way like a bug or a moth. You know.
Speaker 1: Well, and if you've ever gone down the deep dive
Speaker 1: on gone down the deep dive on video games, they
Speaker 1: understand this as well. I remember reading a paper when
Speaker 1: I was in college like ten years ago that was
Speaker 1: basically explaining that the developers called Duty had figured this out,
Speaker 1: that they were using the matchmaking in the game to
Speaker 1: engineer money out of you. So what they would do
Speaker 1: is they'd figured out, well, you know, we can predict
Speaker 1: player behavior, you know, on how good of a game
Speaker 1: they have. Right, they're matchmaking, and if we show someone
Speaker 1: you know, a new gun or a skin or a
Speaker 1: cosmetic or whatever that keeps beating them over and over again.
Speaker 1: This can be engineered, Well, they are x percent more
Speaker 1: likely to buy it, and after they buy it, well,
Speaker 1: what do we do? We reward them. It's Pavlovian conditioning, right.
Speaker 1: You can you associate buying the new thing with better games,
Speaker 1: so they are distorting, right, the actual game itself, which
Speaker 1: isn't really the product per se. You are the product, right,
Speaker 1: and the game is basically the game is poor choice
Speaker 1: of words, but that the con is basically how much
Speaker 1: they can socially engineer you to giving them your money.
Speaker 1: It's not just the sixty dollars on the box.
Speaker 2: Right, And when that kind of stuff was first being
Speaker 2: talked about, it sounded like a conspiracy theory. But now
Speaker 2: that we have you know, AI bots scraping all your
Speaker 2: data all the time and trying to create, you know,
Speaker 2: a holographic you that it can just advertise to consistently
Speaker 2: and changes based on your preferences and your stage in
Speaker 2: life and things that it predicts, and can even examine
Speaker 2: the content that you're watching pixel by pixel to make
Speaker 2: sure that you get more of that. Now it doesn't
Speaker 2: sound so conspiratorial anymore. And you know, we go back.
Speaker 2: I know you do streams and or maybe not streams
Speaker 2: of podcasts with people about movies and movies. When you
Speaker 2: go back and you look for the programming, and it's
Speaker 2: so obvious now, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Oh one hundred percent? And that's what I think is
Speaker 1: so interesting about media analysis, you know, is absent time,
Speaker 1: it's much easier to see it because you know, the
Speaker 1: correct dosage required to work on you or ey is
Speaker 1: so much higher in some ways, so much lower in others. Right,
Speaker 1: we're kind of we're good at picking out certain aspects
Speaker 1: of this that you can go back, You can jump
Speaker 1: back fifty years and it screams at you. You can
Speaker 1: see exactly you know what's happening, Like a great example
Speaker 1: of something like a dead Poet's side.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, you go into that and you're like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this movie is a giant It's a political op. I
Speaker 1: mean maybe literally. You know, I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: like they engineered Robin Williams at Area fifty one, although
Speaker 1: I could be convinced they definitely yet seen vertical format
Speaker 1: video over Elden Ring gameplay. But if someone makes it,
Speaker 1: I will believe it. I will quote Candice Owen's stake
Speaker 1: my entire online career on it. But right, it is
Speaker 1: so like saturated with political and ideological propaganda. Right, it
Speaker 1: is trying to change how you think and how you act.
Speaker 1: And the point of you know, bringing up the gaming
Speaker 1: stuff is like this isn't this is so much more
Speaker 1: advanced than you think. Right, it is so much more capable,
Speaker 1: not even down to like what symbols are used, or
Speaker 1: who's the good guys versus the bad guys in the
Speaker 1: video game something that you know is much easier to
Speaker 1: pick up on, but also even down to your experience
Speaker 1: in like interacting with the product is designed to shape you.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, actually, if you think about it. The reason
Speaker 2: they do, the reason this this mass media control through
Speaker 2: movies and television shows, et cetera, et cetera, seems so
Speaker 2: antiquated to us is because they didn't have the technology
Speaker 2: to literally get in your brain and cut it into
Speaker 2: the shape that they want. Right that you have to
Speaker 2: understand Hollywood doing this for one hundred years to several
Speaker 2: generations of Americans and basically everybody in the world that's
Speaker 2: them playing nice. They if they could just turn you
Speaker 2: into a perfect little slave where you just sat around
Speaker 2: and consume their bullshit all the time and never ask questions.
Speaker 2: They would do it. They with our current technological limitations,
Speaker 2: they can't it. So they do everything that they can
Speaker 2: to do that without direct manipulation of the brain. You
Speaker 2: know a book that I frequently reference, and it's actually
Speaker 2: kind of a meme on my show at this point
Speaker 2: is that Hideous Strength. Have you ever read that one?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a huge favorite of mine. Yeah, Frickin' great book.
Speaker 2: I read that the first time when I was when
Speaker 2: I was going through all this stuff in the first place,
Speaker 2: like training in this reading about it all the time,
Speaker 2: and one of the things that one of the nice
Speaker 2: members said it says in it when he's talking to
Speaker 2: Mark I think at the beginning of the book, he says,
Speaker 2: you know, we're going to start with like propaganda and
Speaker 2: all of that stuff, and then you know, if everything
Speaker 2: goes right, we'll move right into direct manipulation of the
Speaker 2: brain prior to birth. Okay, that's the that's sort of
Speaker 2: the practical way of looking at what it is that
Speaker 2: they want to do. There's an interesting thing that's that's
Speaker 2: happened with propaganda and propaganda. So currently I have my
Speaker 2: co host Adam he talks about this all the time.
Speaker 2: He calls it turning over every rock. So the media
Speaker 2: simulation or maybe not simulation is probably the wrong word
Speaker 2: to use to to explain exactly what the media environment
Speaker 2: that we've grown up in had a lot of areas
Speaker 2: that you were not supposed to look at. And you
Speaker 2: know what these are, because they're the types of things
Speaker 2: that can get you banned or arrested in other countries
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing. You're not allowed to investigate
Speaker 2: these things. But because everybody has traversed and navigated an
Speaker 2: entire century is worth of media, found all of the
Speaker 2: important bits and sort of drank from the fire host,
Speaker 2: so to speak. They're out of interesting content from that century.
Speaker 2: So what do they do. They start turning over other rocks,
Speaker 2: the rocks that the adults told you never to turn over.
Speaker 2: They start you know, what's in that cookie jar? After all?
Speaker 2: And so propaganda as we understand it, really, you know,
Speaker 2: as most people understand it, where it's like, oh, they hit,
Speaker 2: they hit a subliminal message in the movie or in
Speaker 2: the music. You know, this conspiracy theory is about like,
Speaker 2: you know, worship Satan in a Led Zeppelin song or
Speaker 2: something like that. Like that's all experimentation. They just they
Speaker 2: were trying to figure out what would work in the
Speaker 2: shadowy black box of human psychology. So there's this interaction
Speaker 2: that occurs between an audience and a speaker that they've
Speaker 2: been trying to dissect for about one hundred years, and
Speaker 2: the techniques that they end up using are the ones
Speaker 2: that are sort of timeless, which is why you see
Speaker 2: what's his name? Who's that guy? Just appeared on Joe Rogan?
Speaker 2: Dean Rayden. Have you heard of Dean Raiden? I haven't no.
Speaker 2: So he wrote this book that I'm currently listening to. Uh,
Speaker 2: let me pull this up here so I don't get
Speaker 2: it wrong, The Science of Magic, which is about how
Speaker 2: which is about how viewers and mass consciousness actually changes reality.
Speaker 2: Now these are topics that you know, CIA spokes have
Speaker 2: been looking into since like the days of MKL trend
Speaker 2: stuff like that. And this guy's connected to Project Stargate
Speaker 2: and all that crazy conspiracy sound and stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh you're you're speaking my language.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you heard of Stargates?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm way down that rattle.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'll put it this way. If one of your friends
Speaker 1: is bringing over a girl for the first time to meet.
Speaker 1: You do not bring up Project Stargate. It scares the hose.
Speaker 2: Sensing there's a story there.
Speaker 1: But you pretty much got it. It would about as
Speaker 1: well as you'd expect.
Speaker 2: What was it about men in leadership have a lot
Speaker 2: of hoe scaring beliefs or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the same thing. You know, women want a
Speaker 1: man who reads, until they find out that any man
Speaker 1: who reads as some of the most violet and extreme
Speaker 1: beliefs possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, did I run into that? But anyway, so
Speaker 2: this guy's hitting the popular scene and his whole thing,
Speaker 2: the science of magic. You think about how funny that is, right,
Speaker 2: Like science was supposed to eliminate this airy fairy stuff
Speaker 2: about magic and manifestation and that sort of thing. And
Speaker 2: now what are they doing. They're turning over that rock.
Speaker 2: Because perception is something that does have an effect on reality.
Speaker 2: And if you really want to put it into a
Speaker 2: sort of a materialistic zone, just imagine you're in a
Speaker 2: room of one hundred people and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: a screen pops up on the wall and says to
Speaker 2: those hundred people, Jay Burden in the corner is a
Speaker 2: spy and he's here to kill you, and if you
Speaker 2: don't tackle him right now, the bomb's going to go
Speaker 2: off and you're all gonna get poisoned or something. Now
Speaker 2: those people make the same calculation that the people in
Speaker 2: the theater made about the train. They go, well, better
Speaker 2: safe than sorry, and so they tackle you and they
Speaker 2: demand to know your donation information so they can send
Speaker 2: money to your show.
Speaker 1: See, I'm so glad that's where it ended. That's where
Speaker 1: all stories should end. Actually, And for less than six
Speaker 1: dollars a month, you can subscribe to j Martin, which,
Speaker 1: by the.
Speaker 2: Way, listen as a as a fellow podcaster, I respect
Speaker 2: the game. I understand that you need these kinds of
Speaker 2: things to help. So people, it's five bucks. It's like
Speaker 2: buying the Man of Coffee a quick trip like thank
Speaker 2: you Aaron one some month. Yeah, and I want you
Speaker 2: to know you'll be coming back on You've passed the test,
Speaker 2: which is killing for me. And if you get someone
Speaker 2: to shill for you and they find two friends, eventually
Speaker 2: everyone can have a podcast and we will achieved Utopia
Speaker 2: podcast America. They're never gonna let me back on the
Speaker 2: way this show's gonna end is there's gonna be just
Speaker 2: a gun shot in the background, and then sirens a
Speaker 2: few minutes.
Speaker 1: Later, and then the sound of three tornadoes approaching.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I'd be like that that video of the
Speaker 2: Florida man going out with a shotgun and be like,
Speaker 2: I ain't taken down. No tornado is gonna take me.
Speaker 1: The shotguns pointed the other way. The tornados will never
Speaker 1: take me.
Speaker 2: A lot.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's how that that guy that the Clinton got
Speaker 1: mad at shot himself two times in the back of
Speaker 1: the head.
Speaker 2: It was a tornado accident.
Speaker 1: He just threw his sig P three twenty into a
Speaker 1: tornado and it spun around so much it shot him twice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Death by age of mythology God power. Yeah, that needs.
Speaker 1: To be the new euphemism. Right, Oh have you heard
Speaker 1: about the Clinton body count? Don't you mean the age
Speaker 1: of mythology to God powered death? Sokka, it doesn't quite
Speaker 1: roll off the tongue, will workshop it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Uh oh man, that's funny.
Speaker 1: I got, I got really, I really torpedoed this. So
Speaker 1: you were talking about this hypothetical situation where you know,
Speaker 1: I was in a room, a screen popped up and said,
Speaker 1: you know, he's got a bomb in his coat, tackle
Speaker 1: him now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so mass manipulation sort of works that way
Speaker 2: as it forces people into uncomfortable situations where they have
Speaker 2: to make those kinds of calculations. So, you know, when
Speaker 2: I was first going to college, like, there was this
Speaker 2: thing going around called social experiments. Did you ever have
Speaker 2: some douchebag in your circle who like engaged in these
Speaker 2: social experiments?
Speaker 1: I was a little young for this, but yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: familiar with what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, like these fools would go out and like
Speaker 2: stand next to a building and just stare at the wall,
Speaker 2: and they would they would basically keep count of how
Speaker 2: many people came to look at what they were looking at.
Speaker 2: There was this other thing where they'd look up at
Speaker 2: the sky and they'd point and they'd write down how
Speaker 2: many people looked up in the sky to see what
Speaker 2: they were looking at.
Speaker 1: Example not too long ago of the guy taping the
Speaker 1: banana to the wall at the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So that's that's how a lot of this
Speaker 2: stuff works, is it's all influenced. They can't make you
Speaker 2: do it, so they just they just measure. You know,
Speaker 2: they're not hurting anything, just taking measurements. Nothing to see here,
Speaker 2: you know, perfectly harmless, and you know, it's it's hilarious
Speaker 2: on the internet and everybody watches these, you know, these
Speaker 2: TikTok shorts about people doing things like this, but social
Speaker 2: pressure and manipulating the mind of a of a sort
Speaker 2: of mass audience eventually turns into a situation where you
Speaker 2: start asking the questions that Edward Burnet's was asking, and
Speaker 2: Edward Burne's you know, like I said, he was sort
Speaker 2: of the guy who you know, saw fireworks and turned
Speaker 2: it into a gun, Like he was like, how can
Speaker 2: I use this to hurt people or make money or
Speaker 2: manipulate people and that sort of thing. And you know,
Speaker 2: there's no there's no need to go into the whole
Speaker 2: connection with Freud and all that stuff, but the psychoanalysis
Speaker 2: culture of the early twentieth century sort of ended up there,
Speaker 2: sort of like everything else. Like when we develop a
Speaker 2: new technology, it eventually gets turned into a weapon somehow.
Speaker 2: It's never you know, they say, if it's if it's free,
Speaker 2: you're the product, right, But if it's free, you're really
Speaker 2: the experiment. Most of the time they're tracking something that
Speaker 2: doesn't have anything apparently to do with what it is
Speaker 2: that they're testing, so there was this there was this
Speaker 2: attitude in the early days of like, how do we
Speaker 2: talk people into doing things that they that are against
Speaker 2: their best interest? Right? So the way they would do
Speaker 2: this is they'd have the official man come on the
Speaker 2: television and say, what you really want to do is
Speaker 2: you want to go to war with those horrible people
Speaker 2: over the sea and destroy them forever, because you know
Speaker 2: such and such and so, because they still had had
Speaker 2: they still felt like they had to convince you. Well,
Speaker 2: the way it developed around the same time that they
Speaker 2: were turning this stuff into a full blown weapon was
Speaker 2: instead of convincing individuals to come together and do this,
Speaker 2: how about we just changed the entire sea. What if
Speaker 2: we just changed everybody into, like I said earlier, the
Speaker 2: perfect slave who just listens to everything that we say.
Speaker 2: And so it went from how do we convince this
Speaker 2: individual out here to how do we change that individual
Speaker 2: into being what it is that we want? And I
Speaker 2: believe that's part of where the NPC phenomenon and meme
Speaker 2: comes from, is that through a combination of fear programming, repetition,
Speaker 2: and all that other spooky stuff that all the you know,
Speaker 2: those horrible COVID deniers accuse the government of doing. I
Speaker 2: sort of see that as sort of their approach to everything.
Speaker 2: The people in charge of these things are basically trying
Speaker 2: to terraform the human terraform Western consciousness altogether into being
Speaker 2: a subject people. And that sounds really big. So maybe
Speaker 2: I should pause. There might be a tornado head in
Speaker 2: my way for that moment.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think that you know that ability
Speaker 1: to set the null hypothesis right, the common received wisdom.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's really what power is, the ability to
Speaker 1: dictate the terms on which the argument happens. You saw
Speaker 1: this very successfully on the issue of immigration. I am
Speaker 1: not arch plan Truster, but I will say Trump broke that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whatever good or ill we could say of the man,
Speaker 1: but you saw this where there was one side, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, libtard central, which is basically, immigrants are awesome,
Speaker 1: we love them. And then the other side was, well,
Speaker 1: as long as they're legal, who cares. And that was
Speaker 1: the acceptable bounds of the debate. But if your goal
Speaker 1: is to transform the population of America, you're more or
Speaker 1: less fine with both halves of that. Right, you were
Speaker 1: still getting what you want done. Both sides of the argument.
Speaker 1: Ultimately serve your.
Speaker 2: End, right, That's exactly right. So the way to control
Speaker 2: the tree is to control the route. So if you
Speaker 2: can lay the ground for the preconceptions that an entire
Speaker 2: society has about who they are, what they believe, and
Speaker 2: what they will fight for, you control everything about them.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's probably a few other factors in there,
Speaker 2: like don't get me wrong, Like I said, I'm not
Speaker 2: encyclopedia Brown. I mostly just vibe cast I don't really
Speaker 2: do data anymore. I did all my research for we
Speaker 2: talk about dead people. But that is definitely what it
Speaker 2: feels like it does. It feels like what they're trying
Speaker 2: to do is get to the very root of society.
Speaker 2: And I think that's definitely why they go after religion,
Speaker 2: and they're trying to replace any form of structured spirituality
Speaker 2: with this sort of like hallucinogenic like hippie culture. Does
Speaker 2: any of that ring true?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, and I think that you
Speaker 1: see that with like the transcendent, where there's a once
Speaker 1: that once that stone is turned right, once we have
Speaker 1: entered that framework, the idea is to channel it into
Speaker 1: something the regime is completely and totally okay with, which
Speaker 1: is either you doing psilocybin in Ecuador, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's simply kind of a hallucination of your brain. You
Speaker 1: experience ego death whatever or alternately, right, the kind of
Speaker 1: like UFO stuff. And I think it's been really interesting
Speaker 1: to me how apparently comfortable our government is with UFOs
Speaker 1: and having that be an explanation, I'm gonna be honest,
Speaker 1: this is kind of a low IQ reading on it.
Speaker 1: But my thought is if there were anything to it,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't want us talking about it. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: you compare that to you know, the way that our
Speaker 1: government treats other expressions of spiritual belief. And I will
Speaker 1: leave it at that, right, the idea is to channel
Speaker 1: that inclination into something that is harmless and or beneficial.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, look at the relationship between you know,
Speaker 1: certain religious figures and prominent world allies, and understand that
Speaker 1: like that, in the same way that the inclination to
Speaker 1: heed the wisdom of the crowd is baked into the
Speaker 1: human I mean, just like can baseline human matter, that
Speaker 1: same instinct, the spiritual instinct, whatever you say about it,
Speaker 1: that is another vector of control. And I think the
Speaker 1: mistake is and you see this from a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of low rent analysis like look, I'm going through
Speaker 1: the moon is a harsh mistress behindlight, which is actually
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. It's fun to read recording an episode
Speaker 1: on it tomorrow, and okay, look, you know there's the
Speaker 1: kind of obligatory aside where the libertarians can't stop talking
Speaker 1: about age of consent. But also there is this idea
Speaker 1: that things that these things, the system of control are,
Speaker 1: anything they use as a weapon is inherently illegitimate because
Speaker 1: it is used as a system of control. And it's
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, no, you don't understand. That is a
Speaker 1: part of what it is to be human. That's how
Speaker 1: it works. Yes, Now to what end it is directed? Well,
Speaker 1: that's the battlefield, right, that's what actually matters functionally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting you bring up Hinhlan specifically that book.
Speaker 2: I actually started that sometime last year. I took a
Speaker 2: long journey into science fiction because in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: science fiction sort of set up and or supported the
Speaker 2: precepts for the twenty first century in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: like you know, nineteen eighty four people talk about it
Speaker 2: all the time, is like, oh, you know, it's not
Speaker 2: supposed to be an instruction manual, and yet it was
Speaker 2: what are you going to do about it? It did
Speaker 2: a great you know, it did a great job. Everyone's
Speaker 2: on nineteen eighty four is this super serious, important book,
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, we'll look at it. What does
Speaker 2: it depend on? It depends on sort of a universal
Speaker 2: technology called the screen that sits in everyone's apartment all
Speaker 2: the time. And one of the privileges of the elite
Speaker 2: is turning that off. Are they forcing you to keep
Speaker 2: your television show on, you know, or are you an
Speaker 2: elite and turn that friggin the thing off? Anyway, That's
Speaker 2: probably all I had to say about that. I probably
Speaker 2: lost your point, But.
Speaker 1: No, no, not at all. But I think that there's
Speaker 1: a mistake in pointing out these systems of control, to say,
Speaker 1: the underlying thing and of itself, whether that's you know,
Speaker 1: having a social constant conscience, wanting to get along with
Speaker 1: your neighbors, right, religion, whatever, as the problem in and
Speaker 1: of itself, and one if you set that up as
Speaker 1: your enemy, woo boy, you're gonna have a tough time
Speaker 1: fighting that. But also right, just because a system a
Speaker 1: circuit is being used to control you, does not mean
Speaker 1: that system or circuit is illegitimate. Like I mean, look
Speaker 1: like the human drive to reproduce is a phenomenal way
Speaker 1: to socially control people. But if we stop using that circuit,
Speaker 1: you know, we end up like the Shakers.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's that's a great point. There's one thing that
Speaker 2: I kind of want to point out about that because
Speaker 2: you're exactly right. People see this and they go, oh,
Speaker 2: they're controlling us. All control is bad. It's like, if
Speaker 2: you did enough studies on mass psychology and how people work,
Speaker 2: and a great book to start with is The Crowd
Speaker 2: by Gustav Lebon, you realize that the normies are going
Speaker 2: to be controlled by something. It's what they expect, and
Speaker 2: they should have somebody in charge of them who doesn't
Speaker 2: want to bilk them for everything they're worth, who doesn't
Speaker 2: want to trick them into going into unpayable debt to
Speaker 2: get a bigger car. Like the normies have incredible power
Speaker 2: as sort of a mass consciousness, hive mind kind of thing.
Speaker 2: The fact that it's been sort of left to these
Speaker 2: pirates in Hollywood to abuse them and train them to
Speaker 2: hate themselves and cheer for their own death. That's not
Speaker 2: the fault of the normy that because that's what they do.
Speaker 2: You know, there's no reason to get angry at them.
Speaker 2: And you know, red pilling normies is you know, I've
Speaker 2: heard some derision for that on some of your interviews
Speaker 2: as well, and I tend to agree. Normies are supposed
Speaker 2: to be able to clock in, clock out, enjoy their
Speaker 2: life and not think about losing everything because they said
Speaker 2: a naughty word on the internet. That's not for them, right.
Speaker 2: But the way that we've seated this ground of of
Speaker 2: you know, gently goating the normis or say the mass,
Speaker 2: the major mass of the United States, basically to swindlers
Speaker 2: and circus freaks. That's a major failure. But now that
Speaker 2: we have the technology, you know, Jay Burden, you're saving
Speaker 2: the world and people should totally donate to your show
Speaker 2: so you can keep doing all right, So I.
Speaker 1: Am specifically saving the world me personally. I know this. Yes,
Speaker 1: the men in my walls are talking to me. I
Speaker 1: have bugs under my skin and if you don't give
Speaker 1: me five dollars, three Israeli controlled cyclones are headed to
Speaker 1: the location right now. This is an actionable threat. I've
Speaker 1: contacted my friends at the Weather Department, the real one,
Speaker 1: not that not that one and you listener are in
Speaker 1: the target zone. This is a threat. I am threatening.
Speaker 2: You all are so actually hilarious. One thing that Newsfest
Speaker 2: says frequently is how shocked he is that they just
Speaker 2: let the podcasting world go like they just Isn't that crazy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean you you really, especially on like the audio platforms,
Speaker 1: you have to cause a stink to get them mad
Speaker 1: at you. Like I could think of, Okay, you've got
Speaker 1: Alex Jones, right, and then my friends at Blood Satellite,
Speaker 1: who I think are only banned on Spotify, and I
Speaker 1: have no idea why. I do know what they could
Speaker 1: have said many many things, but it's weird to get
Speaker 1: a band only on Spotify, right, Like you really have
Speaker 1: to create a stink?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Actually, the only two episodes I ever had
Speaker 2: banned from my history podcast we talk about dead people.
Speaker 2: Two of them they there was Donald Ewen Cameron, who
Speaker 2: was the Canadian psychologist who was basically one of the
Speaker 2: heads of mk Ultra, which I put out very angrily
Speaker 2: once the uh, once the beer bug had hit the
Speaker 2: entire planet. That one got banned, and the other the
Speaker 2: other one that got banned was the one on Nikolai Chauchescu.
Speaker 1: Oh really, that's surprising. That's kind of a deep cut
Speaker 1: for them.
Speaker 2: Isn't that interesting? So, Nikolaie Chauchescu. The reason I don't
Speaker 2: want to I don't want to pretend like there's some
Speaker 2: glorious story to this. They probably just banned it because
Speaker 2: I used the Hook soundtrack for a sketch. But I
Speaker 2: think they banned that one because the story ultimately is
Speaker 2: how a podcaster destroyed a dictator. Nikolai Chaoucheski. There were
Speaker 2: a lot of like shaky things that were happening around then,
Speaker 2: but the straw that broke the camel's back was a
Speaker 2: videotape made by a pastor in his basement, like a
Speaker 2: literal podcaster was one of the major things that broke
Speaker 2: that whole thing down.
Speaker 1: See, this is what I've been saying for a long time, Aaron,
Speaker 1: is that that podcasters are the heartbeat of America. We
Speaker 1: are a mass untapped natural resource, and we deserve at
Speaker 1: the very least six dollars a month for episodes early
Speaker 1: in ad free on Patreon, substack or coming.
Speaker 2: I knew you were going to do that.
Speaker 1: That was a layup man. Yeah, Like the funny thing
Speaker 1: is legitimately, I'm sponsored, and my sponsors are always getting
Speaker 1: on me for forgetting to shill for them or for me,
Speaker 1: and so I have corrected that by shilling ten times
Speaker 1: more than I ever will at one episode. But dude,
Speaker 1: this was a ton of fun. I have to have
Speaker 1: you on again. But uh, where can people find you?
Speaker 2: Man? So you can listen to my media analysis and
Speaker 2: slap analysis podcast, The Clowntown Chronicle on YouTube, Spotify and
Speaker 2: everywhere else the podcasts live if you want to access.
Speaker 2: We talk about dead people, be prepared. It is a
Speaker 2: history show designed for dum mass millennials who don't understand anything,
Speaker 2: so there's a lot of swearing on it. I know
Speaker 2: many people's christianiers have complained to me about it, which
Speaker 2: is fine. And you can also find me on x
Speaker 2: My handle is at CTC meme Cast. That's it. That's
Speaker 2: all I have to show. Also, Axios Fitness, you forgot
Speaker 2: to you forgot to do.
Speaker 1: Your Oh see look at that. I've streamlined this so much.
Speaker 1: Then I have guests come on to do my shilling
Speaker 1: for me. I mean, at this point, Aaron I should
Speaker 1: just train like a Claude bought to just like every
Speaker 1: five to ten minutes, say like, yes, that's interesting, carry on,
Speaker 1: and then just optimize this whole thing, like what am
Speaker 1: I doing? Actually working? This is one of the look
Speaker 1: you maybe out there in an oil field in a
Speaker 1: coal mine and you think you've got it tough. Try
Speaker 1: talking into a microphone for forty five minutes you ingrate? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we give you too much. Working men of America. You
Speaker 1: are you think think you make things? I talk for
Speaker 1: a living, Aaron Man, This was a ton of fun,
Speaker 1: and everyone at home, keep your head up like it
Speaker 1: last forever.
Speaker 2: Good Night,