Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's the tea bag camped out in your
Speaker 1: garbage disposal. Alli Ward, here we are. It's February twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. We got a fresh, shiny new year. Now
Speaker 1: this is an updated encore, so we have gone through
Speaker 1: meticulously and added updated asides, extra asides, more references of articles,
Speaker 1: and even some news from the last few weeks for you,
Speaker 1: so you can please pass it on to everyone in
Speaker 1: the world, because today we are exploring the topic not
Speaker 1: just ignorance, but willful ignorance, intentional misinformation, doubt controversy, how
Speaker 1: populations can willingly swallow ladle folds of bullshit as if
Speaker 1: it's the truth. But before we examine our own lingering denseness,
Speaker 1: let's thank the folks at patreon dot com slash ologies
Speaker 1: for all their great questions they submitted and for supporting
Speaker 1: the show for as little as a dollar a month.
Speaker 1: You two can join if you'd like. Think you to
Speaker 1: everyone who subscribes and rates and of course reviews to
Speaker 1: keep the show up in the charts. And this week's
Speaker 1: hot pick from just a few days ago is from
Speaker 1: help h A E. L l PPP, who wrote, thanks
Speaker 1: Handsome heard from another podcast and hooked. Really enjoy passing
Speaker 1: on to friends. Help handsome is a compliment I will take.
Speaker 1: And everyone who left reviews, I read them all.
Speaker 2: I love them all.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Okay, onto this twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: update to agnetology. We're going to get into it. Agno
Speaker 1: comes from the Greek for unknown, and according to the
Speaker 1: originator of the word agnetology, it is the study of
Speaker 1: ignorance and it seeks to answer why we don't know
Speaker 1: what we don't know? And the person who coined the phrase,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're like, was it a long dead philosopher,
Speaker 1: Was it a quippie war nurse? Was it a child
Speaker 1: wise beyond her years? Nope, it's our guest today, that
Speaker 1: is correct. The biggest cheese in the agnetology world is
Speaker 1: here to talk to you, and he edited the book Agnetology,
Speaker 1: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, and approximately ten million
Speaker 1: of you have tweeted and emailed me begging to have
Speaker 1: him on. He's been on my list for years, so
Speaker 1: this was a huge get to have him sit down
Speaker 1: during a pandemic and chat via computer. He got his
Speaker 1: bachelor's degree in biology and then went to Harvard University
Speaker 1: to get his master's and his PhD in the history
Speaker 1: of science. He is now a professor at Stanford University
Speaker 1: teaching the history of science. And I'm going to warn
Speaker 1: you up top if you do not enjoy political discourse
Speaker 1: or scientific facts versus religious mythology, or how industry favors
Speaker 1: profits over health, or the topic of equity for marginalized groups,
Speaker 1: this episode may not be for you, or rather it
Speaker 1: might be perfect for you. We're living a very uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: very polarized, scary times in so many ways. We've got
Speaker 1: a lot of decisions being made that will impact generations.
Speaker 1: We've seen a rise in incredibly alarming ideologies and gestures,
Speaker 1: a lot of folks not talking to certain family members.
Speaker 1: Shit is fucked, and it pains me to see the
Speaker 1: divides because I feel like there's so much place psychologically
Speaker 1: underneath these sometimes violent differences of opinion. So we get
Speaker 1: into all of that, and I was very curious and
Speaker 1: excited to talk it out with someone who studies ignorance
Speaker 1: and the comfort of ignorance for a living agnetologist, doctor
Speaker 1: Robert Doctor. Everyone has told me I need to hunt
Speaker 1: you down to talk about what you study. And you
Speaker 1: are technically speaking, an agnetologist.
Speaker 3: I guess, so, yeah, that's one of the things I do.
Speaker 3: I do a lot of different things. I'm my title
Speaker 3: as I'm Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University,
Speaker 3: where I'm also a professor by courtesy of pulmonary medicine.
Speaker 3: But I work on a lot of different things, including
Speaker 3: the history of ignorance.
Speaker 1: And you studied also the history of science. How did
Speaker 1: it dovetail into the history of ignorance? At what point
Speaker 1: did a light bulb go off and you thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to study that.
Speaker 3: Well. I was always interested in puzzles and mysteries and illusions,
Speaker 3: even from being a kid. I remember in high school
Speaker 3: trying to figure out the moon illusion. Why does the
Speaker 3: moon appear large on the horizon? And I basically I
Speaker 3: think figured it out. It's you know, we live in
Speaker 3: a low dome cosmology where the sky we figure is
Speaker 3: about two or three miles high and the horizon is
Speaker 3: about ten or twenty miles high, So it makes sense
Speaker 3: that if something appears the same above you and on
Speaker 3: the horizon, it will actually in effect create an illusion
Speaker 3: of being much larger on the horizons. So that's kind
Speaker 3: of the popular cosmology we live in because if a
Speaker 3: bird is overhead, it's closer. If it's on the horizon,
Speaker 3: it's farther, and we normalize that and that creates the
Speaker 3: moon illusion. So I was always interested in puzzles and
Speaker 3: Martin Gardner type of mysteries.
Speaker 1: Oh and for more on those moon illusions see the
Speaker 1: Selenology episode with rock Hell Nuno. Also side note, Martin
Speaker 1: Gardner was a popular and beloved mathematics columnist. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: made math cool. And he was a founder of the
Speaker 1: skeptics movement, starting way back with his early nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. So
Speaker 1: this guy was the original MythBuster, the founder of the
Speaker 1: debunking of flim flammery.
Speaker 3: And I remember noticing learning things that I thought were
Speaker 3: true that turned out not to be true. I remember
Speaker 3: as a kid thinking that we would eat chicken hearts.
Speaker 3: I grew up in South Texas and we would eat
Speaker 3: chicken hearts. So I thought my heart was the size
Speaker 3: of a chicken heart. Still when I think of my heart,
Speaker 3: I kind of think of like a little tiny chicken heart.
Speaker 3: And I remember thinking that every country was the same size,
Speaker 3: and the same shape, and that I remember puzzling, how
Speaker 3: can it be that a refrigerator is hot at the
Speaker 3: back and that it's the heat at the back that
Speaker 3: makes the cold in the front.
Speaker 1: One day, we're going to figure this out in a
Speaker 1: thermotechnology episode for y'all. I promise that day is not.
Speaker 3: Today, you know. So I was a curious child, and
Speaker 3: when I went off to graduate school after majoring in
Speaker 3: biology and chemistry, I didn't know what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3: And I started noticing that basically all what I was
Speaker 3: supposed to learn was all of this great science Darwin
Speaker 3: and Einstein and the double helix. And I thought, you know, well,
Speaker 3: what about you know, the things people don't know? And
Speaker 3: what about all the people who don't believe in evolution
Speaker 3: and don't understand cosmology? What about them? And that was
Speaker 3: uninteresting to my Harvard professors, and so I thought, you know, hey,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, a lot of people don't believe evolution.
Speaker 3: Why don't we study that? Yeah? Yeah, And so that's
Speaker 3: kind of one of the things that got me going
Speaker 3: on ignorance.
Speaker 1: And what about the word itself agnetology? Where did that
Speaker 1: come from?
Speaker 3: I started I got involved with some radical science groups
Speaker 3: at Harvard University, where I was studying with Stephen J. Gould.
Speaker 2: Stephen J.
Speaker 1: Gould side note, was known as someone who challenged the
Speaker 1: scientific theories he found to be rooted in racism, among
Speaker 1: studying a lot of other things. So this work toward
Speaker 1: dismantling misinformation goes way back.
Speaker 3: And we were studying things like how the chemical industry
Speaker 3: lies about chemicals, and how the tobacco industry lies about cigarettes,
Speaker 3: and the sugar industry as its own set of deceptions.
Speaker 3: And so I was saying, you know, you know, this
Speaker 3: is kind of a big deal. You know, Harvard was
Speaker 3: taking all this money from the sugar industry and creating ignorance.
Speaker 3: And I could see it around me, and I said,
Speaker 3: you know, we need a word for the creation of ignorance.
Speaker 3: There's something called epistemology, which is this study of knowledge,
Speaker 3: how we know what we know. What are the methods, empiricism, rationalism,
Speaker 3: you know, the sources of knowledge. That was heavily studied.
Speaker 3: And what I noticed is everyone was ignoring ignorance.
Speaker 1: He says this was salient to him because he comes
Speaker 1: from the Deep South and his beliefs didn't match those
Speaker 1: of a lot of his relatives.
Speaker 3: Again, it was sort of like, what about them, you know,
Speaker 3: and what about these big corporations lying about tobacco or
Speaker 3: lying about chemicals? And so I said, well, we need
Speaker 3: a word. And so this was in the early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 3: I was writing a book on cancer, a book on
Speaker 3: Nazi medicine, because that's another another thing I write about
Speaker 3: Nazi science. But I was writing a book on what
Speaker 3: causes cancer, and I needed a word for all of
Speaker 3: these efforts to create ignorance. And so I asked a
Speaker 3: linguist friend of mine, a brilliant linguist by the name
Speaker 3: of Ian Bole, and he came up with agnatology. And
Speaker 3: originally we spelled it differently. It was agna and agnatology,
Speaker 3: and we got protests from the people who studied jawless fish,
Speaker 3: which is agnathology, and so I changed it to agno.
Speaker 3: So there's a cognate with, you know, agnostic and agnostic
Speaker 3: and that sort of thing. So that was sort of
Speaker 3: how it came up. I needed a word to describe
Speaker 3: the deliberate production of ignorance, the kind of things we
Speaker 3: now associate with climate denial or fear of vaccines, or
Speaker 3: you know, the denial of the hiv idiology of AIDS,
Speaker 3: things like that.
Speaker 1: And what is the difference between creating willful ignorance and propaganda?
Speaker 1: Is there a difference, or as propaganda just another word
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 3: Well, they are slightly different. Both involved deception, but not
Speaker 3: necessariarily and not in every case. For example, I think
Speaker 3: the Nazis really believed their own propaganda. In other words,
Speaker 3: propaganda is kind of like an extreme word for education,
Speaker 3: and it's bad. If it's bad education, it's good. If
Speaker 3: it's good education, it rear least used to be. And
Speaker 3: so you can believe your own propaganda. But ignetology is
Speaker 3: maybe a little more subtle. Because the tobacco industry they
Speaker 3: knew that cigarettes caused cancer, and their whole goal was
Speaker 3: to create ignorance, to stave off people learning the truth
Speaker 3: by creating doubt, by throwing the smoke screen, by throwing
Speaker 3: sand in the gears, playing tag with the waves, a
Speaker 3: refreshing way to take a walk at the beach. How
Speaker 3: can you add to it with a mental cigarette? And
Speaker 3: they were able to instrumentalize science by doing that. So
Speaker 3: by funding genetics, by funding the study of viruses, they
Speaker 3: created all these blind alleys and false ideologies for disease.
Speaker 3: So it's a much more diabolical thing. Propaganda I think
Speaker 3: of as more ham handed. It's just brainwashing really, Whereas
Speaker 3: the tobacco industry was much more clever in creating doubt
Speaker 3: by emphasizing uncertain and they become really engines of uncertainty
Speaker 3: by saying, there's two sides to every question. There are
Speaker 3: two sides to a story, you know, there's so they
Speaker 3: set up the whole Tobacco Institute to promote these non
Speaker 3: tobacco causes of cancer. It's a kind of giant misdirection campaign,
Speaker 3: and that's much more subtle than just the you know,
Speaker 3: browbeating of propaganda.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mom told me a story that when she
Speaker 1: was trying to loose some weight after her first baby
Speaker 1: in the early seventies, that her obstritrician recommended taking up smoking.
Speaker 3: You know that's I'm so glad you brought that up,
Speaker 3: because until the nineteen eighties, doctors were more likely to
Speaker 3: recommend that pregnant women smoke than to recommend against it. Ah,
Speaker 3: it was the it was called the smaller babies theory,
Speaker 3: and the tobacco industry ran with it. They funded the
Speaker 3: people pushing for this theory. The theory was that, yes,
Speaker 3: it makes a smaller baby if you smoke, but they're
Speaker 3: just as healthy and it's more pleasant to just have
Speaker 3: this nice small baby. And so I've talked to several
Speaker 3: women whose doctors told them to take up smoking during pregnancy. Again,
Speaker 3: that was part of that whole you know, the sunny
Speaker 3: side of nicotine that was pushed by the tobacco industry.
Speaker 1: Just a quick side note. In nineteen thirty seven, Philip Morris,
Speaker 1: tobacco giant, ran an ad in a Saturday Evening post
Speaker 1: depicting a child bell hop offering up a silver platter
Speaker 1: of cigarettes, with the information when smokers changed to Philip Morris,
Speaker 1: every case of irritation of the nose and throat caused
Speaker 1: by smoking cleared completely or definitely improved. Then there are
Speaker 1: TV gems too.
Speaker 3: Time out where many men of medicine usually means just
Speaker 3: long enough to enjoy a cigarette.
Speaker 1: So as an agnetologist, he clearly covers smoking, but his
Speaker 1: book also includes chapter on military operations and c literal orgasms,
Speaker 1: issues with indigenous paleontology, racial ignorance and injustice, and of
Speaker 1: course commerce. What are some of the other historical especially
Speaker 1: in America, campaigns of doubt and ignorance that have kind
Speaker 1: of been waged on our collective intelligence.
Speaker 3: Well, there's so many in Washington, d c. There's fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred trade associations, you know, the Beer Institute, the Sugar Institute,
Speaker 3: the Methyl beautle Ether Task Force, Salt Institute. Basically, every
Speaker 3: product that might cause harm has an institute or a
Speaker 3: trade association designed to diminish that harm or to cast
Speaker 3: out on that harm. So there are basically every thing
Speaker 3: that causes harm, whether that be asbestos or food dies
Speaker 3: or Coca Cola through the Beverage Council or whatever it's called,
Speaker 3: there are these organizations whose job it is to rescue products.
Speaker 3: And you know, some of the more dramatic ones are
Speaker 3: things like the Lead Institute, which years ago, going back,
Speaker 3: you know, into the twenties, thirties, forties, they would promote
Speaker 3: lead and just you call cast doubts on the hazards
Speaker 3: of lead. And the Asbestos Information Association did the same thing.
Speaker 3: The Calorie Control Council, Coca Cola was funding some of
Speaker 3: these things trying to rescue the reputation of sugar, and
Speaker 3: these things often were interrelated. So the Sugar Research Foundation
Speaker 3: president in the early nineteen fifties actually goes to work
Speaker 3: for the tobacco industry, saying that he could use the
Speaker 3: same techniques that they'd use to rescue the reputation of
Speaker 3: sugar to rescue the safety of tobacco. So there's an
Speaker 3: interlocking they're even associations of trade associations. See their whole buildings.
Speaker 3: I remember one, I think it was in Atlanta, where
Speaker 3: there's a whole building full of these trade associations and
Speaker 3: they share tricks, and it's a little bit like that
Speaker 3: great scene and thank you for smoking, where there's the
Speaker 3: gun lobby and what is it sugar or tobaccos? We
Speaker 3: call ourselves the mod squad. Mod Merchants of Death were
Speaker 3: lobbyists for the tobacco, alcohol, and firearms industries. How many
Speaker 3: alcohol related does a year? Well, thou, that's what two
Speaker 3: hundred and seventy a day, tragedy. So these groups sometimes
Speaker 3: even work together as engines of uncertainty, engines of ignorance.
Speaker 1: And does that change for you? I imagine how you
Speaker 1: just live your day to day life. Do you kind
Speaker 1: of see things with like an infrared vision that maybe
Speaker 1: other people don't like When you walk down the soda
Speaker 1: isle in your store, or see flashes on social media
Speaker 1: or the news.
Speaker 3: Well, sure, yeah, you always want to know who's funding it.
Speaker 3: I remember I had an and who worked for I
Speaker 3: think it was some kind of dairy council or chicken
Speaker 3: counsel herself, even in my own family, and there was
Speaker 3: an issue on the ballot about whether to require certain
Speaker 3: minimum square footage for chickens, you know, And I remember
Speaker 3: her raising this to her, and she said, oh, chickens
Speaker 3: hate to run free, you know, they'll just peck themselves
Speaker 3: to death. And so she had kind of been bought in,
Speaker 3: had sort of bought into this mythology of you know,
Speaker 3: chickens actually like their confinement. So I see it all
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, see the oft sided twenty fifteen study put out
Speaker 1: by the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply. They're like justice man,
Speaker 1: These chickens love cages the size of its shoe box
Speaker 1: as cozy as hell man, Actually bad news. Cage free
Speaker 1: hens do not typically spend their days roaming rolling green hills.
Speaker 1: Though they're not out there chasing grasshoppers, singing Joni Mitchell
Speaker 1: songs into the Golden horizon. Cage free just means that
Speaker 1: they kind of hang out in a big warehouse pooping
Speaker 1: on each other. Forgive me of robbing anyone of that
Speaker 1: willful ignorance. I had cage free eggs for burgroos. And
Speaker 1: what do you think the difference is between just straight
Speaker 1: up ignorance of not being exposed to something versus willful
Speaker 1: ignorance when you maybe have an inkling that you perhaps
Speaker 1: could be wrong about something, but you just don't want
Speaker 1: to believe it. Where's where does denial fit into that?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, denial is key. There's all kinds of ignorance.
Speaker 3: There's there's native what I call native ignorance. So we
Speaker 3: all start off, you know, as embryos, we're ignorant, right,
Speaker 3: we have to come Each one of us comes into
Speaker 3: the world innocent and not knowing everything we know we
Speaker 3: have to learn, and so all of us have a
Speaker 3: kind of innocent ignorance and then our very lives as
Speaker 3: as creatures. You know, it has a lot to do
Speaker 3: with evolution because we evolved as predators. We have the
Speaker 3: forward looking eyes of the predator, which means we are
Speaker 3: highly focused. And what highly focused means we ignore almost everything.
Speaker 3: So we have the focus of the predator and not
Speaker 3: the eternal watchfulness of prey. A horse sees three sixty,
Speaker 3: but nothing in particular. They're out there on the watch
Speaker 3: for everything, but they don't focus on any one thing.
Speaker 3: And the biology of that is, you know, deep in
Speaker 3: our neural circuits.
Speaker 1: At this moment, I felt embarrassed for Robert because he
Speaker 1: clearly went one hundred and eighty degrees, because you know
Speaker 1: how people will say she changed her mind and did
Speaker 1: him three sixty, but you're like, well, technically that just
Speaker 1: means that they came full circle. I think you mean
Speaker 1: one eighty. And I looked it up and it read
Speaker 1: horses have a range of vision of about three hundred and.
Speaker 2: Fifty degrees what so he was totally right.
Speaker 1: Horses can see almost everything around them.
Speaker 2: I was ignorant of this.
Speaker 1: They could pretty much see everything but their own butts.
Speaker 1: Also their I anatomy involves something called a nervous tunic,
Speaker 1: which sounds like something I would wear in a nightmare
Speaker 1: of me giving a ted talk. Anyway, human eyesight is
Speaker 1: more literally straightforward.
Speaker 3: We have a phobia which concentrates our perception, and that's
Speaker 3: very different from a prey like a deer, And so
Speaker 3: even in our biology it means that we have this
Speaker 3: intensive focus and we have to ignore everything. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you think about it, if you saw everything at once,
Speaker 3: you could see nothing, or if you remembered everything you've
Speaker 3: ever known, you would also know nothing. So a big
Speaker 3: part of learning is forgetting. A big part of focus
Speaker 3: is in attention. You know, you can't focus without defocusing
Speaker 3: at the very same time on most things that are
Speaker 3: around you.
Speaker 2: So twenty twenty five me here.
Speaker 1: So since this episode aired, we have put out a
Speaker 1: three part ADHD episode series that will either change your
Speaker 1: life or maybe the life of someone in your life.
Speaker 1: It's linked in the show notes. It's a banger, okay, cool.
Speaker 3: So that's another aspect of agnetology is actually looking at
Speaker 3: the creation of ignorance, even in the non human animal world.
Speaker 3: So the reason that deer have white bellies is that's
Speaker 3: how they create themselves as a non object. All objects
Speaker 3: in the world have a shadow on the bottom, and
Speaker 3: if you're prey, you create a white underbelly to dissolve
Speaker 3: yourself as an object into the surrounding. So that's a
Speaker 3: form of ignorance creation or creating the invisibility or camouflage,
Speaker 3: and many many animals do that. So as long as
Speaker 3: there's been predation, there's been camouflage. And that's a kind
Speaker 3: of way of making yourself invisible.
Speaker 1: So next time you see a deer or a frog
Speaker 1: or a lizard, just feel free to say that's called countershading.
Speaker 1: And then if you want, you can high five yourself.
Speaker 1: And what about what is say, happening on a nationwide
Speaker 1: level the last few years in particular, do you have
Speaker 1: to use maps at all to study higher levels maybe
Speaker 1: of willful ignorance or how do you how do you
Speaker 1: parse out who is maybe more susceptible to believing certain things?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's it's true. There's a there's a geography
Speaker 3: of ignorance. So while it's true that basically everything that
Speaker 3: has been known has been forgotten, it's also true that
Speaker 3: many of the things that have been forgotten are known
Speaker 3: to some people. And in a way, that's what the
Speaker 3: whole field of history is is to recover lost lost knowledge.
Speaker 3: But education is very selective, right, people are well educated,
Speaker 3: they're poorly educated. There's a big geography of knowledge, and
Speaker 3: humorous deal with this very well. I remember Jay Leno,
Speaker 3: the comedian, used to do what he called jaywalking and
Speaker 3: he would ask people, how many moons does the Earth have?
Speaker 3: What is our galaxy? Call I am it's also a
Speaker 3: candy bars. I mean, it was kind of one of
Speaker 3: those who's buried in Grant's tomb kind of questions. But
Speaker 3: a lot of people don't know a lot of things.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the things I actually do in
Speaker 3: my classes is I do a kind of what I
Speaker 3: call an agnetology survey, where I ask people something else
Speaker 3: that's really how old is the Earth? And it's surprising.
Speaker 3: I remember when I did this at Harvard for the
Speaker 3: undergraduates about it turned out about fifteen percent of the
Speaker 3: biology majors at Harvard were creationists. I thought the world
Speaker 3: was six thousand years old, So it's In other words,
Speaker 3: I developed what I call agnometrics, the measurement of ignorance.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's lots of techniques for studying ignorance
Speaker 3: and surveys you can do, and yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 1: Agnometrics, by the way, isn't the only great word that
Speaker 1: you're going to learn today? Also consider agnogenesis, which is
Speaker 1: creating doubt for nefarious purposes, or agnometric generators, which are
Speaker 1: the forces generating the doubt. Now Why do some opinions
Speaker 1: seem so regional? What creates factors that are agnogeographical which
Speaker 1: is a word that I just made up. Is there
Speaker 1: something about perhaps the geography of being near a port
Speaker 1: city or a body of water that exposes people to say,
Speaker 1: different cultures or different types of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that historically has been true. That's why a lot
Speaker 3: of the great early empires and intellectual centers are built
Speaker 3: on maritime commercial centers. You think of the ancient Greeks
Speaker 3: trading amongst the city states, or you think of the
Speaker 3: river cultures, either in Mesoamerica or ancient China. So trade,
Speaker 3: that's one of the old theories of actually the rise
Speaker 3: of modern science is that it's deeply connected with cosmopolitan trade.
Speaker 3: And so there definitely is something to isolation and the
Speaker 3: monkish life. You might say that's not conducive to intellectual discovery.
Speaker 3: Intellectual discovery involves a kind of mixing of ideas, and
Speaker 3: that allows you to see yourself as a as a
Speaker 3: parochial agent.
Speaker 2: Oh ps.
Speaker 1: A parochial agent is someone who's narrow minded or doesn't
Speaker 1: know a lot, which is a humbling thing.
Speaker 3: To have to google, but it certainly is a that's
Speaker 3: part of the need is to you know, to get
Speaker 3: rid of parochialism, to ask why are we the way
Speaker 3: we are? You know, that's kind of the graduate experience.
Speaker 1: And what about social media or just the democratization of
Speaker 1: information in the digital age. Do you think that we're
Speaker 1: getting more brainwashed more quickly or are we finally getting
Speaker 1: exposure to voices that have been systemically oppressed for a
Speaker 1: long time through large media channels. I'm learning a lot
Speaker 1: more about just how to word things and how to
Speaker 1: include people, But at the same time, it seems like
Speaker 1: we're distracted by stupid stuff.
Speaker 3: No, for sure, I think we live in the golden
Speaker 3: age of ignorance. Ignorance spreads at the speed of light now,
Speaker 3: and with the rise of conspiracy theories, with the rise
Speaker 3: of denial campaigns, with the siloing of people into reinforcing
Speaker 3: like communities through Facebook or whatever, it's easy to find,
Speaker 3: you know, self reinforcing bubble worlds, and that's a huge
Speaker 3: problem now. Is also the kind of the flattening of
Speaker 3: data and source, the sheer flatness of an iPhone. If
Speaker 3: you're getting information off that or a laptop, it doesn't
Speaker 3: discriminate by quality, and so that democratization has also been
Speaker 3: a kind of a dumbing down. I think a lot
Speaker 3: of media and it's very easy to circulate. If everyone
Speaker 3: can pop off anything they want on Twitter and that's
Speaker 3: all you read, there's no quality control there, so that
Speaker 3: is a big problem.
Speaker 2: Do you remember Twitter? We were so young.
Speaker 1: Since this episode first aired, Twitter is now x having
Speaker 1: been purchased by Emerald mind Air and richest person in
Speaker 1: the world Elon Musk, and other media forces who control
Speaker 1: the information kind of making its way to your brain
Speaker 1: are the founders of Meta and Google execs, the TikTok
Speaker 1: Top Brass, the one time book retailer and now newspaper
Speaker 1: owner Jeff Bezos, and others who prominently attended the last
Speaker 1: president inauguration and are holding some critical positions in the government. Also,
Speaker 1: since this episode was recorded, we have a new friend
Speaker 1: in our pocket, a little chat GPT and other artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence services, And for this I wanted to see what
Speaker 1: AI had to say about me, So I googled myself
Speaker 1: and I followed the prompt whatever happened to Ali ward,
Speaker 1: which was the most humbling thing I have ever read.
Speaker 1: But the AI overview then confidently listed the recent removal
Speaker 1: of my thyroid is this ongoing health issue and my thyroid,
Speaker 1: which is stationed faithfully still in my throat, was insulted
Speaker 1: and frankly pissed at this misinformation. I have a thyroid,
Speaker 1: But if I didn't know me, I might assume that
Speaker 1: that bullshit was factual. It was right in the AI overview.
Speaker 2: Isn't that vetted?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: And to prove also that this update is fresh. Just yesterday,
Speaker 1: February tenth, twenty twenty five, a paper came out in
Speaker 1: the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, and it was
Speaker 1: titled Turning Right, An Experimental Study on the Political value
Speaker 1: ship in large language models, and it found that chat GPTs,
Speaker 1: social economic and political biases show quote a clear and
Speaker 1: statistically significant right word shift in ideological positioning over time.
Speaker 1: But it's tough to keep an eye or a study
Speaker 1: focused on bias these days. Just in the last few
Speaker 1: weeks in twenty twenty five, the National Science Fundation has
Speaker 1: been ordered to scrub certain words from its website, including
Speaker 1: flagged words like advocacy, biased, bias towards biases towards BIPOC,
Speaker 1: black disabilities, diverse equality, equitable female gender hate speech, LGBT, marginalized,
Speaker 1: racial justice, sexual preferences, trauma stereotypes, socioeconomic victim women, and
Speaker 1: more so, if you find it infuriating and unnerving that
Speaker 1: there's been some shakeups in governmental agencies, you can stick
Speaker 1: around to the end of the episode. Want to give
Speaker 1: you some resources from some folks that work with those agencies.
Speaker 1: But why is science frequently in the crosshairs?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: Since this episode first air, Doctor Procter has also published
Speaker 1: a book titled Science and the Production of Ignorance When
Speaker 1: the Quest for Knowledge Is Thwarted, in which he explains
Speaker 1: that when industries know they're up to some harmful stuff,
Speaker 1: they can fund research with deliberately murky results, and then
Speaker 1: they can say they don't know for sure. If say
Speaker 1: smoking is bad for you, they'll say it needs more research.
Speaker 1: And doctor Procter writes that it's really quite brilliant because
Speaker 1: it captures the authority of science and the allegiance of scientists,
Speaker 1: and it made the tobacco industry seem open minded, and
Speaker 1: it made public health advocates seem like closed minded fanatics.
Speaker 1: So that is an interesting read. We'll link that in
Speaker 1: the show notes, and also this week in this illuminating
Speaker 1: interview featuring political scientist and professor of public policy at
Speaker 1: the Harvard Kennedy School and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study,
Speaker 1: Erica Chenowith, was titled The Nature of Our Power, in
Speaker 1: which Erica says, when you see what autocratic leaders try
Speaker 1: to eliminate, you get clearer on what constrains or threatens
Speaker 1: them and why these systems, procedures, institutions, and the dedicated
Speaker 1: civil servants within them are so important to protect. So
Speaker 1: this year met US suddenly eliminating fact checking and loosening
Speaker 1: hate speech restrictions, and the Bezos owned Washington Post declining
Speaker 1: to publish a presidential endorsement for the first time in decades,
Speaker 1: or the TikTok ban and then the instant reboot in
Speaker 1: a time when tech giants control what we see, and
Speaker 1: AI can fabricate images and they can deep fake voices,
Speaker 1: and social media owners are installed rasputant like behind some
Speaker 1: pretty historical desks. Can we even trust our own perception?
Speaker 1: And I always think about, you know, even when I
Speaker 1: was growing up. I grew up in near San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and everyone had a copy of the Chronicle and that's
Speaker 1: where they got their news. You woke up in the morning,
Speaker 1: you read it when it is delivered it during the
Speaker 1: morning whenever. Granted, a lot of voices were probably stifled
Speaker 1: by not getting through to the press, but at the
Speaker 1: same time you probably had less disparate sources of information
Speaker 1: and maybe was there more collective trust.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, certainly in the pre Watergate era it was
Speaker 3: more collective trust and all kinds of institutions.
Speaker 1: Oh, in the Watergate era, in case you're like, was
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen seventies. So all you youngins who
Speaker 1: were born after the mid nineteen seventies, which technically is
Speaker 1: me FYI very young and cool.
Speaker 3: But you know it's It's also another whole thing I
Speaker 3: look at is virtuous ignorance. So not all ignorance is bad.
Speaker 3: That's another one of our myths. In fact, many of
Speaker 3: our forms of ignorance. You have to have the whole
Speaker 3: right to privacy is a form of ignorance that you
Speaker 3: don't want other people to know everything about you, your
Speaker 3: medical records or personal life for whatever. So we create
Speaker 3: ignorance about things all the time in order just to
Speaker 3: have a right to privacy. The same thing with all
Speaker 3: kinds of dangerous knowledge. Right, no science magazine will publish,
Speaker 3: you know, a recipe book on how to make aids airborne? Right,
Speaker 3: I mean there's all kinds of dangerous things that should
Speaker 3: not be known. And uh, there are all kinds of
Speaker 3: institutions that require ignorance. So juries must be ignorant of
Speaker 3: the particulars of a of a case before they go in,
Speaker 3: or or there's medical confidentiality. There's all kinds of virtuous ignorance.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's there's a mix in how things circulate,
Speaker 3: and the flatness is a big, big concern I have.
Speaker 3: But it's also important to realize, you we can. It's
Speaker 3: easy to be a wash in information and as easily
Speaker 3: to be a wash and and misinformation.
Speaker 2: And how do we.
Speaker 1: Know if we're ignorant or not? I mean, I understand
Speaker 1: people say ignorance is blissed. I don't know how you
Speaker 1: feel about that, But how do we know if we're
Speaker 1: the dummies who are misbelieving things?
Speaker 3: Well, for one thing, all of us are profoundly ignorant.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the things I work on is gemstones.
Speaker 3: I saw you had an interesting episode on gymology, and
Speaker 3: that's one of the things I do is I cut
Speaker 3: and polished stones. And what I fantasize about are all
Speaker 3: the gemstones on other planets? I call them exo agates,
Speaker 3: you know, and we'll never know about that, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: think of the infinity of beautiful gemstones on other planets.
Speaker 3: So each of us is profoundly ignorant. You know, we
Speaker 3: walk through a tiny slice of life, and you know
Speaker 3: that's you know, Socratic wisdom is knowing the limits of
Speaker 3: what you know. So all we can do is, you know,
Speaker 3: scrape together a few and hopefully those turn out to
Speaker 3: be true.
Speaker 1: Just a side note disclaimer That Gemology episode was one
Speaker 1: of the first ever recorded, and it's a wild ride
Speaker 1: not just through minerals and rocks, but also exploring the
Speaker 1: gemologists faith in crystal powers, which I discuss from a
Speaker 1: neuroscience perspective. The mechanisms of the placebo effect are very
Speaker 1: thrilling and interesting. So does having a point gem in
Speaker 1: your bra cause you to alter your decisions throughout the day.
Speaker 1: Feel free to run the experiment yourself. Now, let's move
Speaker 1: on from my bra to the apocalypse. Climate change. So
Speaker 1: the top contributors worldwide to carbon emissions China and the US.
Speaker 1: So while many of us in industrialized nations are wringing
Speaker 1: our hands every day. Looking at climate data as a whole,
Speaker 1: there's actually a lot of shrugs. According to some Gallop data,
Speaker 1: which is now admittedly ten years old, residents of the
Speaker 1: US and China are less worried about climate change and
Speaker 1: less likely to agree with do you think rising temperatures
Speaker 1: are a result of human activities? Less likely to agree
Speaker 1: In the nations with the biggest carbon emissions Latin America,
Speaker 1: European countries, they're like, hell yeah, but the Middle East
Speaker 1: is also like, probably not because of humans. So, as
Speaker 1: you'll hear in my ignorant question coming up, I thought
Speaker 1: the US was more vocal and concerned, but no, oh no,
Speaker 1: we're not. It's just my little bubble. And a twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five update for you, So yes. According to the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three paper Climate Watch Historical GHG emissions via
Speaker 1: the World Resources Institute, the top five contributors of greenhouse
Speaker 1: gases per capita are the United States, Russia, South Korea, Iran, Japan,
Speaker 1: and then China. That was six extra bonus, but US
Speaker 1: very much in the top there. And a twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four paper in the journal Nature titled the Social Anatomy
Speaker 1: of climate change in the United States found that nearly
Speaker 1: fifteen percent of Americans deny that climate change is real,
Speaker 1: and that denialism is highest in the South, with more
Speaker 1: than twenty percent of the populations of Oklahoma and Misissippi
Speaker 1: Alabama consisting of deniers. Along the West and East coasts,
Speaker 1: belief in climate change tends to be higher, but a
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen paper also in Nature, titled Relationships among conspiratorial beliefs,
Speaker 1: conservatism and climate skepticism across Nations notes that there is
Speaker 1: a political culture in the United States that offers particularly
Speaker 1: strong encouragement for citizens to appraise climate science through the
Speaker 1: lens of their worldviews. So why does this happen? Why
Speaker 1: does the nation that contributes the most per capita toward
Speaker 1: climate change? Why do we believe it the least? Is
Speaker 1: because you can't see something because it's so close to
Speaker 1: you and it could unmore your sense of safety and
Speaker 1: your identity, kind of like having eyebrow blindness. Because we
Speaker 1: tend to have more resources but are the most maybe
Speaker 1: vocal in terms of combat and climate change, but we're
Speaker 1: the biggest contributors. How does anyone kind of grapple with that?
Speaker 3: Well, both those things are true in a way, we
Speaker 3: diagnosed the problem earlier than a lot of people because
Speaker 3: we're the ones making the problem, right, And it's exactly
Speaker 3: true what you say. We're the biggest culprits, and we're
Speaker 3: going to have to lead out of the mess that
Speaker 3: we've created. Now. Fortunately, you know, we do have a
Speaker 3: lot of critiques and tools that we can use to
Speaker 3: try to undo some of the ignorance the damage that's
Speaker 3: been done. But again, that's why I'm so interested in
Speaker 3: a lot of other people are interested in climate agnetology,
Speaker 3: because there are these dedicated bodies, bodies like the American
Speaker 3: Petroleum Institute or these various fronts of oil producers whose
Speaker 3: job is dedicated to continuing the carbon world. And so
Speaker 3: that's what we've really got to expose and fight again.
Speaker 3: So it's just a big debate in our Senate at
Speaker 3: Stanford last week about whether to divest from carbon stocks,
Speaker 3: you know, big oil and so forth. So a lot
Speaker 3: of institutions have already done that. Harvard has done that,
Speaker 3: and a lot of other institutions. So there's going to
Speaker 3: have to be a reckoning and a break with this
Speaker 3: carbon world. And unfortunately things are heading in the wrong
Speaker 3: direction at present.
Speaker 1: Most of that comes down to, of course, greed. Now
Speaker 1: what about how power is established or maintained through willful
Speaker 1: ignorance and hate?
Speaker 2: And what about racial justice?
Speaker 1: It always struck me, even as a kid, reading that
Speaker 1: all men are created equal, which a left out women
Speaker 1: entire and was written by slaveholders. At what point do
Speaker 1: you think that this country might start to recognize its
Speaker 1: own ignorance and racism and correct course.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's what's what's been going on for years now, right,
Speaker 3: is a slow study, you know, one step forward, several
Speaker 3: steps back sometimes. That was actually yet another prompt for
Speaker 3: agnetology as I I I was studying science and wanted
Speaker 3: to go I thought about going to MIT out of
Speaker 3: high school, and I looked at it. It was ninety six
Speaker 3: percent male, and I wasn't going to go spend my
Speaker 3: best hormonal years at MIT around you know, ninety six
Speaker 3: percent guys. And I thought about going there for graduate
Speaker 3: school again and it was still ninety two percent male.
Speaker 3: So I became aware of that very early. That's how
Speaker 3: I became a feminist and involved in feminist critiques of
Speaker 3: science early on. And I was amazed that no one
Speaker 3: was researching this or that this was not a primary
Speaker 3: object of study. I'm talking about the late nineteen seventies now,
Speaker 3: and that again was like a gaping hole. Why is
Speaker 3: no one studying this? Why is there silence around that?
Speaker 3: The same sery with racial equality and inequality. Again, I
Speaker 3: came from the Deep South where I remember White's only
Speaker 3: signs in the early nineteen sixties, late nineteen fifties, and
Speaker 3: why were people not studying that? And that's why I
Speaker 3: actually wrote two books on Nazi medicine, looking at how
Speaker 3: the American racial experience was actually used by Hitler and
Speaker 3: by the Germans and the Nazi regime to carry out
Speaker 3: their programs of racial destruction. That there was this bond
Speaker 3: between American racialism and the racism of Nazi Germany. And
Speaker 3: people hadn't really written on that either. So that was
Speaker 3: another gaping hole. So we've got a lot of these holes.
Speaker 3: They have not been properly excavated or filled.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems a little bit.
Speaker 1: It seems that that is what's happening a bit with
Speaker 1: police brutality and Black lives matter.
Speaker 3: That's right. Well, And of course one glimmer of hope
Speaker 3: is that these things are being filmed, you know, that's
Speaker 3: why body cams are so important, as we can actually
Speaker 3: get a record of this, this horror, and that makes
Speaker 3: it possible to address it. I mean, imagine how difficult
Speaker 3: it would be to prove something like what we saw
Speaker 3: with the George Floyd case thirty years ago, you know,
Speaker 3: before ubiquitous or so.
Speaker 1: Even now without video, even with video, you know, so
Speaker 1: imagine that without video, right, Yeah, do you get along
Speaker 1: with all your relatives in this house still or do
Speaker 1: you just not talk? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I get along with them. Yeah, I don't see them
Speaker 3: a lot, but yeah, I think we know we have different,
Speaker 3: different points of view. But it is interesting because my mom,
Speaker 3: she didn't even know that her dad was in the
Speaker 3: Ku Klux Klan, and I could sort of tell by
Speaker 3: talking with him something like this was going on, and
Speaker 3: she was surprised to learn it from me that her
Speaker 3: own dad had been in the Klan. So some aspects
Speaker 3: of this get covered up. It's agatten part of the
Speaker 3: sort of psychological denial maybe that you were bringing up earlier.
Speaker 1: Having studied this. I know that there's a difference between
Speaker 1: research and diagnosing versus prescription, perhaps, but do any studies
Speaker 1: come up that show what is effective in changing ignorance
Speaker 1: in ourselves.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, that's what heedagogy is all about. That's
Speaker 3: why a lot of educators have become so interested in agnetology,
Speaker 3: because that's what education is all about. In a way,
Speaker 3: it's about overcoming overcoming ignorance. You know, there's no magic
Speaker 3: wand that you can waive. But the thing you can do,
Speaker 3: I think, is, you know, try to get some of
Speaker 3: the big money out of politics to try to go
Speaker 3: after these institutions that create ignorance. And one of the
Speaker 3: things I do I testify against the tobacco industry as
Speaker 3: an expert witness, and that's one of the things we
Speaker 3: always talk about is how the hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 3: millions of dollars were spent to create this fantasy world
Speaker 3: of what was called alternative causation or the sunny side
Speaker 3: of nicotine, and so exposing that how that worked, diagnosing it,
Speaker 3: and showing how it went to very high levels. Because
Speaker 3: what I found is that twenty five Nobel laureates have
Speaker 3: taken money from big tobaccos. So the corruption of science,
Speaker 3: that's one of the main things I'm interested in, is
Speaker 3: how science itself can become corrupted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or
Speaker 1: not they could they didn't stop to think.
Speaker 3: They should good science as part of these engines of
Speaker 3: ignorance to create distractions about well, cancer is all genetic,
Speaker 3: it's your ancestry, it's all food dies, it's all you know,
Speaker 3: anything but cigarette. So once you understand how these powerful
Speaker 3: institutions work, that lets you understand, you know how they
Speaker 3: might be dismantled.
Speaker 1: And side note, it's easy to look back on horrible
Speaker 1: ignorance and injustice and lies and say, of course that
Speaker 1: was wrong. How could people not know then? How could
Speaker 1: their intuition or moral compass be so skewed by outside sources,
Speaker 1: from cigarette commercials to misogyny and more. Now, what will
Speaker 1: future generations look back on now with utter mortification? What
Speaker 1: would they profess to build a time machine to come
Speaker 1: back and fight? How opoids are marketed and have led
Speaker 1: to an epidemic, our daily dependence on oil, how we
Speaker 1: vaped on TikTok or America's love affair with cheeseburgers. And
Speaker 1: since we last recorded this, we're now in February of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. That list of potential future mortifications is like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's like so cute, now, it's so innocent.
Speaker 3: Well, sure, and that's why you have these ag gag
Speaker 3: laws in so many states where you can't even film
Speaker 3: inside a slaughter house. There's a recognition that if people
Speaker 3: saw the horror of some of the ways we process animals,
Speaker 3: that this might give us pause. So there are a
Speaker 3: lot of things we do in life that are really
Speaker 3: made possible by a kind of invisibility, a kind of distancing.
Speaker 3: That's something that's important to realize is that a lot
Speaker 3: of what we are able to see is only because
Speaker 3: we are allowed to see it. I remember when I
Speaker 3: was at Penn State, we were calling to range of
Speaker 3: a lecture series and I called up and it was like,
Speaker 3: this is the Department of Undersea Warfare. And this wasn't
Speaker 3: even the card in the catalog, the college catalog that
Speaker 3: we that we had whole section or division on undersea warfare.
Speaker 3: And so there are a lot of things that are
Speaker 3: kept from us. And again that's why I like to
Speaker 3: expose secrets. I like whistleblowing. You know, you have to
Speaker 3: see these things to let the sunshine in.
Speaker 1: Please see our episode on genocide with Doctor Dork Moses
Speaker 1: for more. In this vein, and I have questions from listeners.
Speaker 1: Is it okay to pepper you with them?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: So many questions.
Speaker 1: And before we get to questions, some words from sponsors
Speaker 1: of the show, who make it possible to donate to
Speaker 1: a cause each week. And this week, while researching, I
Speaker 1: learned of a lecture our guest gave citing some extremely
Speaker 1: hurtful racist tobacco advertising in an effort to teach students
Speaker 1: about how big industries use systemic racism as a weapon,
Speaker 1: and he read off the names of a few of
Speaker 1: the brands that many people in attendance were deeply hurt
Speaker 1: to hear aloud, and later released a statement saying it
Speaker 1: was in effort to illuminate the wrongness of the messages, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: my whole career has been devoted to exposing, analyzing, and
Speaker 1: condemning racism and white privilege. And I wanted to support
Speaker 1: the National Black Law Students Association, who spoke out about
Speaker 1: the incident and educated so many on the pain that
Speaker 1: words can cause, even in historical and scholastic contexts.
Speaker 2: So this week I'm.
Speaker 1: Choosing that a donation will be going to them, and
Speaker 1: I support the shared goal of dismantling systemic racism, and
Speaker 1: I think organizations who work to keep us all less ignorant,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to intentions versus impact, which is
Speaker 1: so important. Doctor Procter also wanted to support Saving Black
Speaker 1: Lives dot org, which is the African American Tobacco Control
Speaker 1: Leadership Council which educates the public about tobacco products and
Speaker 1: their effects on Black American and African immigrant populations. And
Speaker 1: he's been working closely with them for years. So goes
Speaker 1: to them, and why not let's do a third donation.
Speaker 1: This is an important topic. It's going to go to
Speaker 1: the Public Health Advocacy Institute. They use the civil justice
Speaker 1: system to improve public health by focusing on litigation targeting
Speaker 1: tobacco industry products and unhealthy foods, and deceptive health marketing
Speaker 1: maybe jade eggs, I'm not sure, but deceptive gambling practices
Speaker 1: also all to advance public health and social justice. So
Speaker 1: a lot of great donations this week, and a lot
Speaker 1: of ignorance on all of our parts, But what's important
Speaker 1: is the willingness to learn. So those donations were made
Speaker 1: possible by sponsors who you may hear about. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: now to your questions. Now, the first question is about
Speaker 1: willful ignorance and if it's related to the Dunning Krueger effect,
Speaker 1: in which the less you know, the smarter you think
Speaker 1: you are. Nicole Hawley, Joe Michello, l wink Ed, Mastervek
Speaker 1: and first time question asker Phyllis.
Speaker 2: Wanted to know.
Speaker 1: People are very excited at the topic, and some people
Speaker 1: asked about the Dunning Dunning Kruger effect and whether or
Speaker 1: not agnetology is related to the Dunning Kruger effect, where
Speaker 1: people who maybe think that they're more intelligent than they
Speaker 1: are are are ignorant of what they don't know. Do
Speaker 1: you do you use that in research at all?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't use that specifically, but that's certainly true.
Speaker 3: Is there's a kind of I link it also to
Speaker 3: a kind of myopia of specialization. You know, the more
Speaker 3: expertise you often get in science, the more narrow is
Speaker 3: your focus, and that becomes a kind of tragedy because
Speaker 3: it's you don't see the forest for the for the trees,
Speaker 3: and I believe that the truth is in the hole
Speaker 3: and you have to see the big picture. I'm a
Speaker 3: big fan of what we call big history and also
Speaker 3: the unity of what we know with what animals know
Speaker 3: as well our unity of biological life in the course
Speaker 3: of evolution, or that's one of the things I study
Speaker 3: all so as human origins, how we became human, A
Speaker 3: lot of our deep biology is still expressed in our
Speaker 3: limitations today.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick question, because I am unwillingly ignorant. What is
Speaker 1: big History?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 1: I looked it up and it's history taught from the
Speaker 1: Big Bang onward instead of just starting when us harry
Speaker 1: humans meandered on the scene. So big history ends up
Speaker 1: being kind of multidisciplinary because in order to teach how
Speaker 1: the planets and the stars formed and the universe expanding,
Speaker 1: you got to go back and learn about physics and astrophysics.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a hodgepodge of sciences, which is fun.
Speaker 1: And for more on that, you can enjoy the two
Speaker 1: parter on cosmology with doctor Katie Mack, wherein I get
Speaker 1: cosmic vertigo, which is a kind of horror at the
Speaker 1: scale of things. Now, speaking of fear, who asked about
Speaker 1: fear fueling ignorance? Turns out a lot of you First
Speaker 1: time question asker Ethan Stoller, Aaron Maglisik Stutton, Taggart, Megan Walker,
Speaker 1: Zora Phoenix, Devan Robertson, Miss Don Bethmanico, Sam Korea, and
Speaker 1: Greg A few people had a question about whether or
Speaker 1: not fear plays into ignorance, and Emily Meridith Lewis is
Speaker 1: a first time question asker asks how much does vulnerability
Speaker 1: play into it versus entitlement.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a great question too. That's why we talk
Speaker 3: about homophobia. That's fairly new to talk about ignorance as
Speaker 3: a kind of fear, or fear as a kind of
Speaker 3: ignorance to not know what it really means to say,
Speaker 3: be homosexual, for example, leads to a kind of alien misunderstanding,
Speaker 3: and that I think is a really important part just
Speaker 3: of human relations. Is the distancing of peoples from one
Speaker 3: another allows stereotypes to develop, and stereotyping and blanket ignorances.
Speaker 3: It goes back to your point about circulation and travel.
Speaker 3: Descartes used to say, there's three great principles for science, travel, travel, travel,
Speaker 3: because it's really knowing the other and walking in their shoes.
Speaker 3: That's why I talk about the importance of in the
Speaker 3: history of science of wonder, sympathy, and critique. You want
Speaker 3: to wonder like a child, but you also want to
Speaker 3: have sympathy and you want to have critiques. So sympathy
Speaker 3: part is you want to walk in the shoes of
Speaker 3: the past or in this case, in someone else's experience,
Speaker 3: to understand them so you don't fear them. And then
Speaker 3: but then you still retain your humanity in your recognition
Speaker 3: there is right and wrong, and you can't you are
Speaker 3: free to critique. You don't want to lose yourself in
Speaker 3: someone else's shoes. So you want to maintain principles. So
Speaker 3: those are three of the principles I operate with. Wonder,
Speaker 3: sympathy and critique.
Speaker 1: Oh that's beautiful. When it comes to the travel, travel,
Speaker 1: travel part, what if that causes more of a carbon footprint.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, that's that's part of the big problem.
Speaker 3: The world of the future is going to be very different.
Speaker 3: We're not going to have you bick with it's travel,
Speaker 3: We're not going to have you know, cigarettes being sold,
Speaker 3: We're not going to have meat consumption the way we've
Speaker 3: had it, and hopefully we'll even have a lower population
Speaker 3: because that's also part of the problem. So the world
Speaker 3: of the future is going to have to be very different.
Speaker 3: We're kind of sailing away as people like to say,
Speaker 3: running the Book of Genesis backwards, you know, and creating
Speaker 3: this unholy world, and that's going to have to change.
Speaker 1: I'm doing my part by being infertile.
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
Speaker 1: Now, did anyone ask about the demographics of climate science believers?
Speaker 1: Katas around He did, as well as Hannah Johnson also
Speaker 1: was the first time question Aser asked if there have
Speaker 1: been research about the demographics of people who are more
Speaker 1: likely to be science deniers, like significant different differences across gender, education, level, income,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 3: Yes. Well, of course, of course wealth is power. Power
Speaker 3: is wealth, knowledge is power. Wealth helps create knowledge. Wealth
Speaker 3: can also destroy knowledge. But of course there's huge, huge
Speaker 3: differences in that regard. There an interesting connection with climate
Speaker 3: science denialism is the whole evangelical problem, because a lot
Speaker 3: of climate denialists are evangelical Christians who don't want to
Speaker 3: confront a world where their God is abandoning them in
Speaker 3: a sense or allowing us to follow our own nest.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's some problems even with the recency of
Speaker 3: the age of the Earth in that whole view. But
Speaker 3: there are some progressive evangelical critics of us fouling our
Speaker 3: net and That's why we need to think very important
Speaker 3: metaphorically about what kinds of metaphors do we use to
Speaker 3: overcome denialism, Metaphors of the garden, of the steward, of
Speaker 3: the of the flock, and you know, the caring for
Speaker 3: our own life for other people. So we're going to
Speaker 3: have to rethink our metaphors. You know, we can't just
Speaker 3: get away with polar bears and even the one two
Speaker 3: three degree threshold problem. That's not good enough. We've got
Speaker 3: to think much more creatively about how to bond people
Speaker 3: in the stories we tell, the allegories, the stories we
Speaker 3: tell about why we need to act differently from how
Speaker 3: we've acted in the past.
Speaker 1: And I did a little bit of research on this,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that evangelical Christians that just means
Speaker 1: Christians who want to spread the good news, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of been co opted a little bit to mean
Speaker 1: the Christian right. But there are a lot of evangelical
Speaker 1: Christians who do not find that the teachings of Christ
Speaker 1: align with certain political parties. Holy Holy with a w
Speaker 1: Amy Black is a professor of political science at Wheaton
Speaker 1: College and writes a lot about faith and politics. She
Speaker 1: wrote in twenty sixteen. Because evangelical voters are an important
Speaker 1: voting bloc, politicians have many incentives to pander to them.
Speaker 1: In this time of rapid social change, church leaders need
Speaker 1: to train people in the pews on how to respond,
Speaker 1: helping them understand and embody the core commitments of the
Speaker 1: Christian faith. Now, what about folks who do not have
Speaker 1: faith that the Earth is round? A lot of you
Speaker 1: asked about flat earthers, including Deebi Narverson, Mackenzie Campbell, Kate Stomps,
Speaker 1: Kaylee Douglas, Cassidy Williams, science teacher, Karen Blaisdell, another science
Speaker 1: teacher and first time question asker Chloe Chambers. First time
Speaker 1: question askers Kevin Biemer and Mara Rosenbloom, and Ben Bignell,
Speaker 1: who says, I drive by a sign for flat Earth,
Speaker 1: Canada twice a day, five days a week and wonder
Speaker 1: every day why people can believe it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, is the road flat? Ben? Think about it?
Speaker 1: Kind of asked along that line, like, without the ability
Speaker 1: to connect with people digitally, do you think that there'd.
Speaker 2: Be fewer flat earthers?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: When did we start believing the Earth was flat?
Speaker 3: No, that's actually a great question. One of the favorite
Speaker 3: gotcha's or corrections historians of science like to make is actually,
Speaker 3: most people did not think the earth was flat. Say,
Speaker 3: in the Middle Ages, people knew the world was round.
Speaker 3: That goes back to antiquity. The actually myth that people
Speaker 3: used to think the earth was flat really arises in
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century in order to basically beat our own
Speaker 3: chest and say how much greater we are than the
Speaker 3: Middle Ages. There's a whole book about this about how
Speaker 3: in the eighteen thirties the myth that people used to
Speaker 3: think the world was flat arose. Now, obviously if you
Speaker 3: go back far enough, I'm sure most people were flat earthers.
Speaker 3: But yeah, since we are in a world where misinformation
Speaker 3: disinformation circulates faster than ever before, I think your questioner
Speaker 3: is quite right. That's allowing some of this craziness to flourish,
Speaker 3: you know, And so there may be more flat earthers
Speaker 3: now than there have been in the last three hundred years.
Speaker 1: Just going to toss in real quick. If you want
Speaker 1: more info on this, watch the documentary Behind the Curve.
Speaker 1: I just saw the trailer for it, and wow, wow wow.
Speaker 1: Thank you to patron Nicole Thomas, who wrote in quote.
Speaker 1: At first I was furious, but after watching that, I
Speaker 1: understand that people who operate on the fringe beliefs usually
Speaker 1: get further marginalized and isolated with their thoughts. And since
Speaker 1: no one is engaging them with the correct information and
Speaker 1: they've isolated themselves from everyone that has a different set
Speaker 1: of beliefs, it's really easy to retreat to the community
Speaker 1: bubbles that have the same belief set. Thanks for writing in,
Speaker 1: Nicole Thomas, good point. Indeed, you know Francesca Huggins and
Speaker 1: Toby kris Nick second of this question. Francesca just asked
Speaker 1: religion what gives? And I do wonder you mentioned evangelical Christians.
Speaker 1: It seems sometimes that there's a disconnect between the teachings
Speaker 1: of a certain religion and the actions of its most
Speaker 1: extreme promoters of the religion. And twenty twenty five update here.
Speaker 1: So this confused me because we got this new president
Speaker 1: who signed all these executive orders, and one was an
Speaker 1: executive order titled Eradication of Anti Christian Bias, which is
Speaker 1: confusing because I thought that the administration didn't believe in bias.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this executive order is supposed to quote ensure
Speaker 1: that any unlawful and improper conduct, policies or practices that
Speaker 1: target Christians are identified, terminated and rectified. And the President
Speaker 1: also signed an order that establishes a White House Faith Office,
Speaker 1: which is to be led by this televangelist who has
Speaker 1: been married like three times. She was caught having an
Speaker 1: affair with another televangelist, But I'm not sure if that
Speaker 1: goes against any like personal or religious beliefs. And really
Speaker 1: who people sleep with is like none of my business.
Speaker 1: But anyway, a few weeks ago, at the customary interfaith
Speaker 1: service of Prayer for the Nation at the Washington National Cathedral,
Speaker 1: this Episcopalian Bishop maryon Buddy sermon spoke to Christian values
Speaker 1: send family values that a lot of political leaders have
Speaker 1: often used to galvanize their cause.
Speaker 4: In the name of our God, I ask you to
Speaker 4: have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared. Now.
Speaker 4: There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican
Speaker 4: and independent families, some who fear for their lives. And
Speaker 4: the people the people who pick our crops and clean
Speaker 4: our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat
Speaker 4: packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in
Speaker 4: restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may
Speaker 4: not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the
Speaker 4: vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes
Speaker 4: and our good neighbors. They are faithful members of our
Speaker 4: churches and mosques, synagogues, wadhara and temples.
Speaker 1: And for some reason, that sermon didn't sit right with
Speaker 1: some high level politicians in the front few rows, and
Speaker 1: our sitting president later posted that Bishop Buddy quote brought
Speaker 1: her church into the world of politics in a very
Speaker 1: ungracious way, and that she was nasty in tone and
Speaker 1: not compelling or smart. He continues, apart from her inappropriate statements,
Speaker 1: the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She
Speaker 1: is not very good at her job. She and her
Speaker 1: church owe the public and apology, and Time magazine asked
Speaker 1: for the bishop's reaction to that, and she said that
Speaker 1: her message quote was rooted in Jesus, she said, not
Speaker 1: a partisan agenda, and she continued, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: apologize for asking for mercy for others. She also warned
Speaker 1: against America's culture of contempt, as well as the harms
Speaker 1: of polarizing nirrits and a week or so after the sermon,
Speaker 1: some folks were still fuming. One US House of Representative
Speaker 1: said that Bishop Buddies should be deported. Bishop Buddy is
Speaker 1: from New Jersey, so.
Speaker 2: I think she's safe.
Speaker 1: But yes, why sometimes do politicians appeal to the Christian right?
Speaker 1: Like why sell a line of sixty dollars bibles to
Speaker 1: be used in public schools but not place your hand
Speaker 1: on a Bible for swearing in? Did chat GPT come
Speaker 1: out with a recent translation of the scriptures that's different?
Speaker 1: Where is that disconnect where you're like, I don't think
Speaker 1: Christ would do that.
Speaker 3: That's for sure. I mean, you know, the sermon on
Speaker 3: the mound is very different from some of the craziness
Speaker 3: we hear in a megachurch nowadays. You know, there are
Speaker 3: good lessons, good principles in all religions, and there are
Speaker 3: moral aspects, there's ontological aspects, and so I think part
Speaker 3: of the problem is they become this this commercialization of
Speaker 3: the churches, the merger of churches with the Tea party movement,
Speaker 3: which itself was created by big oil and big tobacco
Speaker 3: in order to fight taxation, in fact, fight governmental regulation.
Speaker 3: So you have to look at these things politically in
Speaker 3: the political context and see how religions have bonded to
Speaker 3: these other powerful institutions. And in many parts of the world,
Speaker 3: you can be three religions. You know, in Japan you
Speaker 3: can be Shintoist and Daoist and Confucian. There's no contradiction there.
Speaker 3: It's really kind of the for something strange about parts
Speaker 3: of the West that we feel we have to be
Speaker 3: either Jewish or Protestant, or Catholic or Muslim. That either
Speaker 3: or is part of the problem. We need to view
Speaker 3: these things as maybe more like a buffet of practices,
Speaker 3: sacred practices, and remember the sacred means that which you value,
Speaker 3: you know, that which cannot be touched in some negative way.
Speaker 3: And we need, I think, to revisit aspects of the sacred.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know you mentioned that kind of really
Speaker 1: stark dichotomy. And I always feel like everything from the
Speaker 1: colors to the mascots. Our political parties have become like
Speaker 1: opposing sports.
Speaker 2: Teams more and more.
Speaker 1: But do you think that a strong like third party
Speaker 1: or more political parties would would help see those kind
Speaker 1: of gray areas more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that would be because there is something
Speaker 3: weird about the binary world we're in where winner takes all.
Speaker 3: Some of the European systems I think are better in
Speaker 3: the sense of parliamentary representation, you know. So I think
Speaker 3: we do have some big problems in how we organize
Speaker 3: our binary world, and I think it's getting much worse.
Speaker 3: So I do worry a lot about that.
Speaker 1: And Jessica Krag asked, is there a good way to
Speaker 1: handle talking with someone on a subject like refusal to
Speaker 1: wear a mask in any slight mentioned just makes them
Speaker 1: very angry and worked up and they are maybe incapable
Speaker 1: of hearing reason in times of pandemic and self preservation.
Speaker 1: Any way to get through to people there's that denial
Speaker 1: be just out of fear.
Speaker 3: It is odd that something as simple as wearing a
Speaker 3: mask has become politicized, you know, basically it's something you
Speaker 3: just follow the rules, right, I mean just but I
Speaker 3: think people need to be just a little more chill,
Speaker 3: you know, as we say in California, don't harsh my mellow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they call Kelsey's story had a health question, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people secondedd this. They said, why are
Speaker 1: people so willing to believe in wellness therapies such as
Speaker 1: cleanses to remove toxins from our bodies a thanksliver, but
Speaker 1: so resistant to facts from actual health professionals.
Speaker 3: A lot of my agnatology class I teach both an
Speaker 3: introduction to agnetology and an advanced dignatology class, and we've
Speaker 3: had several students do interesting projects on food supplements and
Speaker 3: how people will pay hundreds of dollars for basically something
Speaker 3: which is basically additives without food. And you know, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of mythology surrounding what we eat. I'm a
Speaker 3: big fan of Michael Pollen, you know, eat simply there's
Speaker 3: so many mythologies about what we put in our bodies.
Speaker 3: I think because we've had so many powerful trade associations
Speaker 3: promoting sugar or additives or salt or whatever, highly highly
Speaker 3: packaged processed food. So that's been part of the problem.
Speaker 3: Is that trade association problem I mentioned. I mean, just
Speaker 3: one simple example of that, my granddad. Three of my
Speaker 3: four grandparents died from smoking, but my dad's dad, he
Speaker 3: died of a heart attack, and he had smoked two
Speaker 3: packs a day and died in his mid fifties. But
Speaker 3: the theory promoted by the tobacco industry at that time
Speaker 3: was that eggs are what kill you? And so the
Speaker 3: family story was always he died of eggs, So I
Speaker 3: was always terrified of eggs. And then when I finally
Speaker 3: realized by reading the industry's secret documents that bacco industry
Speaker 3: basically created that theory attacking eggs, that in order to
Speaker 3: exonerate smoking. Oh my god, So you know we do live.
Speaker 3: A wash in mythology is about what.
Speaker 1: We eat, So so so many patrons ask this next question,
Speaker 1: almost fifty It's the one question on literally all of
Speaker 1: our minds. So I'm just going to read the names
Speaker 1: of the first time question submitters who asked it. Another
Speaker 1: high school science teacher, Miranda Chavez, Susan Webb, A Lloyd
Speaker 1: Johnson scientist, Courtney Malo, Emily Taylor, Kazio, Wisnooski, Troy Langnek,
Speaker 1: Samantha Sonitch, and Kevin Lee He who is the second
Speaker 1: time question asker, but forgot to say it was their
Speaker 1: first time last time. And also, you know all of
Speaker 1: us want to know. And one last question a lot
Speaker 1: of listeners had essentially like in Shirley Dark's words, as
Speaker 1: they say, I know others who seem to hold tight
Speaker 1: to their wrong ideas. What are some good steps to
Speaker 1: take to make sure you can maybe get through to people,
Speaker 1: and that that's also you're not clinging to fall information.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I just see, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the fake news, a lot of the the
Speaker 1: doubts cast on a lot of media.
Speaker 2: How do how do we correct that? What do we do?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, if it's one on one, of course, intelligent
Speaker 3: listening and sympathetic listening is absolutely crucial. You know, I
Speaker 3: think there's too much often too much talking, not enough
Speaker 3: listening and so and and you know, view other people as,
Speaker 3: if nothing else, as anthropologically fascinating. You know, my own
Speaker 3: brother has become all right recently, and we've had many
Speaker 3: back and forth about that, but if nothing else, I
Speaker 3: still love him, and I'm still fascinated by how in
Speaker 3: the world this happened, almost you know, in a medical sense.
Speaker 3: But you know, I think we need to be sympathetic
Speaker 3: and to listen and to learn from people whose views
Speaker 3: are very different from us. That's the kind of the
Speaker 3: anthropological ethnographic aspect of think of being a scholar or
Speaker 3: an ordinary person in the world is learning from others,
Speaker 3: however strange they they may seem.
Speaker 1: Is there a way to use empathy to kind of
Speaker 1: de escalate the denial that might come with ignorance.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that's why I have an idea I developed
Speaker 3: it called on surrogacy. Basically, when people deny evolution or
Speaker 3: climate change, they're really not so much dying evolution or
Speaker 3: climate change. There's something usually that is behind that. So
Speaker 3: we need to understand a particular form of denialism as
Speaker 3: possibly standing for something else. If someone is doesn't believe
Speaker 3: in climate change, is that because they're worried economically that
Speaker 3: their way of life is going to disappear, their way
Speaker 3: about a threat to religion, a religious view that they
Speaker 3: might have it. In other words, what stands behind these movements?
Speaker 3: Because a lot of this goes back to our talk
Speaker 3: about fear. A lot of ignorance is really as you said,
Speaker 3: about fear.
Speaker 1: And so maybe we would have better luck having an
Speaker 1: open discourse by being empathetic to the fears that are
Speaker 1: behind that and addressing those, rather than to say with
Speaker 1: the people in our lives that we might see having
Speaker 1: viewpoints that are not super kind.
Speaker 3: I think that's exactly right. Yeah, you have to say
Speaker 3: what is at stake? Who benefits? What are the alternatives?
Speaker 3: You know, and until you get behind those than it
Speaker 3: could be just you know, shadow boxing or useless confrontation.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that, especially right now, it's imperative that
Speaker 1: white people in their lives have those conversations with people
Speaker 1: that they know. It's almost harder to speak up on
Speaker 1: a family group text than it is to post a
Speaker 1: lot of hashtags on Twitter to people who agree with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get out of your bubble.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so and have those conversations, you know, privately
Speaker 1: with people in your life as well as public ator
Speaker 1: the people who agree with you. Right, and last questions,
Speaker 1: I always ask every guest what is the worst thing
Speaker 1: about your job or the thing that you dislike the most.
Speaker 1: What is something that sticks in your cra either from
Speaker 1: a philosophical or just from a practical standpoint, like filing.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I have a great job, which is
Speaker 3: being a professor. I get to interact with students. I
Speaker 3: do miss the personal contact because now it's all over zoom,
Speaker 3: and I miss the interaction in terms of artifacts. When
Speaker 3: I teach ignorance, or I teach world history, or I
Speaker 3: teach human origins, I bring in artifacts and it's not
Speaker 3: the same in the screened world. We already live obsessively
Speaker 3: in a screened world, and so I do miss the
Speaker 3: loss of the artifactual world. So I guess that would
Speaker 3: I would say, is the worst part of my job
Speaker 3: right at the moment. But I'm hopefully hoping that will change.
Speaker 2: What about the thing that you love the most? About
Speaker 2: what you do?
Speaker 3: Well? I love dealing with young people who are learning
Speaker 3: about the world. I love challenging my own views. I
Speaker 3: love finding out where I'm wrong. What I didn't know?
Speaker 3: You know, I wasn't so long ago. I learned there
Speaker 3: was a color called done. I never heard of the
Speaker 3: color done before. So I love learning new things. And
Speaker 3: if people can tell me something I didn't know that,
Speaker 3: I just what could be better?
Speaker 1: And that is what he is trying to do for us. Also,
Speaker 1: what color is done? How does one even spell that?
Speaker 1: Of course I looked at up for us and it's
Speaker 1: a cammely creamy kind of buckskin color.
Speaker 2: Du win.
Speaker 1: So a dun horse is like a pretty beige horse.
Speaker 1: So when in doubt, google a reputable source? What else
Speaker 1: any any places people can start to look if they
Speaker 1: want to make sure that they're dismantling their own ignorance.
Speaker 3: Well, they can always check any of these books that
Speaker 3: are coming out now about ignorance. There's there's a whole
Speaker 3: slew of them. There's a new one, Science and the
Speaker 3: Production of Ignorance, that just came out by a Janet
Speaker 3: Karini and Martin Carrier. Those are people who are agnetology.
Speaker 3: It is also being taught now in Europe. And there's
Speaker 3: the Oreskis Conway book Merchants of Doubt. There's our agnetology book,
Speaker 3: or you know, I've published a lot of other books
Speaker 3: on One is called the Golden Holocaust, which is about
Speaker 3: the use of science as a form of deception by
Speaker 3: the by the tobacco industry. You know. So there's so
Speaker 3: many great. I just finished as signing to students the
Speaker 3: Wallace Well's Uninhabitable Earth.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 3: And before that we did The Shock of the Anthropist Scene,
Speaker 3: which is such a great book. So you know, those
Speaker 3: are some of the hot topics that we like to
Speaker 3: explore in the Agnetology world.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 1: I will put links to those in the show notes
Speaker 1: as well as to yours. Agnetology the making and unmaking
Speaker 1: of ignorance, So we'll make sure that we put that
Speaker 1: up to But this was so amazing.
Speaker 2: I can't thank you enough for doing this.
Speaker 1: This is an episode people couldn't be more thrilled already for.
Speaker 3: So great, that's very timely.
Speaker 1: It is indeed, so ask smart people stupid questions, because
Speaker 1: the only thing worse than ignorance is when you don't
Speaker 1: want to do anything to get rid of it.
Speaker 2: So, yes, that was doctor Robert Proctor.
Speaker 1: You can grab his book Agnetology, The Making and Unmaking
Speaker 1: of Ignorance, which was co edited with Londa Schebinger wherever
Speaker 1: books are sold. And dude also came through with some book.
Speaker 1: So if you hit the link in the show notes
Speaker 1: to Alleyward dot com slash ologies slash Agnetology, there will
Speaker 1: be links to all of those books he mentioned, including
Speaker 1: his So I hope you'll call a local bookstore and
Speaker 1: order those up. We are at ologies on Blue Sky
Speaker 1: and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward with one L on both.
Speaker 1: If you need perhaps an ology sweatshirt, a beanie, maybe
Speaker 1: a T shirt, don't hesitate to hit upologiesmerch dot com.
Speaker 1: We also now have smologies. Those are shorter, classroom safe,
Speaker 1: kid friendly versions of Ologies episodes. They're in their own
Speaker 1: g rated feed. You can look for smologies smoligs wherever
Speaker 1: you find podcasts it's got new green artwork, or you
Speaker 1: can find it linked to the show notes. Thank you
Speaker 1: to Aaron Talbert for admitting the wonderful Facebook group. Hello
Speaker 1: to all the ologies redditors. Thanks to all the folks
Speaker 1: who support at patreon dot com slash Ologies. Avelie Malick
Speaker 1: makes our professional transcripts. Noel Dilworth is scheduling producer. Susan
Speaker 1: Hale managing directs the whole shabang. This episode was initially
Speaker 1: edited by Stephen Ray Morris and Jarrett Sleeper of Mindjam Media.
Speaker 1: Jake Chafey is one wonderful editor here. Mercedes Maitland is
Speaker 1: our lead editor and did some extra producing on this encore.
Speaker 1: Nick Thorburn wrote and performed our theme music. If you
Speaker 1: stick around to the end of the episode, I tell
Speaker 1: you secret and this week. Before we get to that,
Speaker 1: I promised you some resources for what to do about
Speaker 1: government agencies, particularly in the science sector, being targeted and censored.
Speaker 1: One thing I'll say is to read these executive orders firsthand.
Speaker 1: When we see a headline, we often don't get the
Speaker 1: full scope of the wording, especially on like so many
Speaker 1: recent executive orders coming all at once, so no one
Speaker 1: can possibly go through them in one sitting, but it's
Speaker 1: very illuminating and a little bit more shocking. But when
Speaker 1: you actually read the executive orders, you'll feel more ready
Speaker 1: to sort of digest the enormity of them. So if
Speaker 1: something's going to scare you or piss you off, you
Speaker 1: kind of owe it to yourself to read it fully
Speaker 1: because it's oftentimes worse than expected. Or if you're in
Speaker 1: support of these, then it's good to know exactly what
Speaker 1: you're supporting word for word, so you can go to
Speaker 1: white House dot gov slash Presidential dash Actions to see
Speaker 1: exactly what's getting side. Also, I've been chatting with our
Speaker 1: lovely sea turtle scientist and coloniologist, doctor Cameron Allen, and
Speaker 1: she works with Noah a lot. She gave me a
Speaker 1: list which we can also put on our website, which
Speaker 1: can be found at the link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: She said, if any of the censoring of science is
Speaker 1: bothering you, then you can speak out against current and
Speaker 1: future harmful executive orders and funding cuts. You can go
Speaker 1: to five calls dot org. You can also go to
Speaker 1: Senate dot gov and House dot gov where you can
Speaker 1: look up senators and representatives by state and get contact information.
Speaker 1: Another thing you can do is donate to NGOs which
Speaker 1: are suing against the unlawful executive orders, and you can
Speaker 1: go to ACLU dot org. You can go to NRDC
Speaker 1: dot org. She also says keep speaking your truth on
Speaker 1: your social media accounts and connecting with trusted media sources.
Speaker 1: You can educate yourself on all that's happening to the
Speaker 1: federal workforce. Heathercox Richardson has a substack that covers that.
Speaker 1: The Public Service Alliance dot com is another one, and
Speaker 1: if you want to find out more about how the
Speaker 1: federal workforce is important to you the public, you can
Speaker 1: check out a link that we'll post to Noah dot gov.
Speaker 1: They have a popodcast called Planet Noah From Sun to
Speaker 1: the Sea and Everything in Between where they talk about
Speaker 1: what Noah does. So we'll put those resources up on
Speaker 1: our website. And then the second secret is that I'm
Speaker 1: drinking hot tea out of a vase. It was a
Speaker 1: vase that came with flowers from the nice lady who
Speaker 1: helped us design our new kitchen cabinets. I used it
Speaker 1: as a vase and then I washed all the flowergunk
Speaker 1: out and now I use it as a mug. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have handles, which means it can hurt my hands,
Speaker 1: but the size is right, and I just I guess
Speaker 1: I've remained willingly ignorant about how the situation is just
Speaker 1: not convenient, it's not intelligent. Sometimes I put a sock
Speaker 1: on it, and then I'm just drinking out of a
Speaker 1: vase with a sock on it. Okay, Bye bye, pacodermatology, homology, cryptozoology, lithology, zology, meteorologyology, nathology, ceiology, elithology.
Speaker 3: Oh we want aime on. Shame on you